Saying racist stuff constantly but playing it off as "ironic" and wearing a suit doesn't make it less racist. Good, they should have kicked these guys off years ago.
I don't know much about either of those people, though, so I can't say whether or not Facebook should boot them off.
It can be, if the site decides it is. Other places, it isn't!
> Hence, they should be liable for the speech that they do allow.
I see this sentiment often on HN, as if the latter somehow logically and necessarily follows from the former. It doesn't, and if that is what you advocate then you should justify it with proper arguments.
Being a platform, like ATT telephone lines, bring certain protections from lawsuits of content. The core of net neutrality is also based on a similar idea; with net neutrality, platforms (cable companies) can not between distinguish services (like throttling Netflix).
In the exact same vein, if Facebook is a platform, it cannot distinguish between the “services” (users producing the content) unless that content is federally criminally illegal. With this, they are not liable for civil matters like slander.
However, if Facebook is a publisher, meaning it can editorialize the content (similar to att choosing to throttle Netflix ), then it will become liable just like every other publishing company (nytimes, nymag, Rolling Stones, you name it).
Hope this helps. There is a lot more info about this on the internet. There were even House hearings on this topic. I encourage you to go look them up.
Facebook is no different in this respect.
You make it sound like platforms are these wild west environments where anything goes. It's not like that.
Thanks for the clarification, but I don't find it convincing.
I disagree with the underlying premise that we should clump social media into (only) two categories (platforms and publishers) where if you exercise any editorial control you are immediately categorized as "publisher" (category that is appropriate for an entity that explicitly and deliberately chooses everything it publishes) and where only "platforms" are protected from lawsuit about their users' content.
If I'm not mistaken, this is a matter of existing case law, so our agreement or disagreement doesn't really matter.
Facebook or any similar website can not be expected to vet every single piece of content. There is simply too much and mistakes will be made with automated processes. But what they can do is vet individuals who routinely post inappropriate conduct.
You're going to have to repeal §230 of the CDA, then.
https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
Good luck.
They are black supremacist.
To quote:
"Farrakhan blames Jews for the slave trade, plantation slavery, Jim Crow, sharecropping and general black oppression. Farrakhan’s tone grew more belligerent in June 2010, when he sent letters to several leaders of the Jewish community as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center demanding that they acknowledge the evils they have perpetrated and that they work to further Farrakhan’s goals. The letter ended with a threat to “ruin and destroy your power and influence here and throughout the world” if his terms were not met."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_of_Islam
"Critics have described the organization as being black supremacist[4] and antisemitic.[5][6][7] The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks the NOI as a hate group.[8][9] Its official newspaper is The Final Call. In 2007, the core membership was estimated to be between 20,000 and 50,000.[1]"
i'm not a kook or an extremist.
look up their theology and creation mythology/eschatology -
the teaching is that all humans descend from 'the afro asiatic blackman', that whites are devils that are spawned by a science project, other races were failed attempts at this experiment (aka the 'blacker' you are, the more 'pure' you are), and that at the end times the prophet elijah will circle the earth in a UFO and and destroy the 'devils' (aka white devils) and the nonbelievers and save the believers.
Malcom X left NOI specifically when he undertook the Haaj and realized it had nothing to do with actual Islam, which, separate point, I also disagree with, but that's a separate topic, and at least it isn't a racist religion. This is likely (at least part of) why he was assassinated.
and yes, antisemitism fits in as a part of this belief system.
but to categorize the group as only 'antisemitic'
is to do a disservice to the general level of divisive, racist drivel that they promote against all humanity, including africans and african americans (by encouraging belief in this nonsense).
Facts.
but yes, facebook banning them is also just as silly. but if they are banning them, it should be for the wider racism, and not just one among many (antisemitism).
First, he's cartoonishly anti-semitic and has been for years. He's as much of a hate monger as any of the other people who were banned and that's enough reason to ban him.
That given, he has also materially supported vulnerable populations in a way that few organizations have. He has pushed very hard for black people to be proud of their blackness and to create narratives in which blackness is not looked down upon. This is good, needed work.
Members of the black community have spoken about and wrestled with this difficulty. [1][2] I don't think I can add anything other than to agree his situation is more complicated, though I also agree that he should be excluded from the public square as long as he continues to promote hatred.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/nation-... [2] https://www.theroot.com/a-word-about-louis-farrakhan-and-tam...
so like:
In the Nation of Islam, both God and the devil are human beings. Elijah Muhammad identified the devil as the white man, the Caucasian race. According to Elijah, though the black race is many trillions of years old, the white race began a mere six thousand years ago with Yakub, one of the Black Gods of this time cycle.[15]
Elijah explained, "The white race is not equal with darker people because the white race was not created by the God of Righteousness. . . . They were made by Yakub, an original Black Man—who is from the Creator. Yakub, the father of the devil, made the white race, a race of devils—enemies of the darker people of the earth. The white race is not made by nature to accept righteousness."[16]
is 'good, needed work'??
However, just like Christianity has been able to do some amount of "good work" while insisting that "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says"[1], the Nation is not "all bad." I personally would judge its good works to be more crippled by its doctrine than most faiths.
If you want to read a good thinking wrestling with the Nation of Islam I recommend The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. I think he does a good job of capturing the contradictions and attractions of Elijah Muhammad (another undeniably hateful man) in the flesh.
[1] 1 Corinthians 14:34, NIV
People who look down on Christianity love to bring up this scripture, but do you actually know any significant branches of Christianity that enforce this? I'm a fan of one of the most stringent denominations around, and even we have A LOT of women speakers and ministers in our organization. I honestly don't know any which abides by a literal application of this scripure. I've only ever seen it used as a wedge issue against strict biblical interpretation.
oh right, but those things are really 'supressing women'.
Not universally. I think there are denominations that use that passage as justification to keep women from being Deacons but I couldn't cite one off the top of my head.
That said, I used it as an example and I'm sure if you're that knowledgeable about scripture you're familiar with the other parts of scripture that are (or have been) used with questionable intent. If I wanted to be less fair I could have cited the passages that slave owners used to argue that slavery was "christian." I could also have talked about the anti-homosexual (or perhaps anti-decadence) passages in romans.
I also could have cited the Mormon church's doctrine around skin color, but that's a bit of a horse of a different color.
My point, which I think is preserved, is that scripture and practice are two different things. Scripture colors practice - but the Nation of Islam is not (as far as I know) going around hurting white people because they're demons any more than Christian denominations go around forcing women to be silent because there's a passage from Paul.
Is it desirable for white people to be proud of their whiteness? If you allow for one of these and not the other, you'd be a racist.
Mirror tests work when the things being swapped are actually, in relevant context, similarly situated, but that is simply not the case in Black vs. White identity.
Abstractly, there's nothing wrong with positive White racial identity, but in the real world, that doesn't exist as free-floating thing detached from White supremacist ideology.
Yes, it is. Both exist (well, at least black identity and black nationalism do, and that's close enough that I'm not going to quibble about it), but while black nationalism depends on black identity black identity exists and thrives outside of it (and historically does so as a reaction against White anti-Black racist actions and ideology), while White racial identity as opposed to ethnic identities largely does not exist outside of White racism (of which it is also a product, though not, obviously, a reaction against.)
> In fact, logic is useful in evaluating the world.
Logic is useful for evaluating the relationship between abstract concepts, but is only useful for evaluating the world when you join it with all the relevant facts about the world. When you reason about abstractions without facts, or in ways which implicitly make counterfactual assumptions, you reach conclusions that are either without material relevance or incorrect.
Other coherent cultures include the Irish, Italians, Polish, Russians, and, of course, Germans, French, and English. Parades are held for these cultures; entire sections of major cities are named for them, museums are erected for them, &c.
What people on message boards seem to have a problem with is the idea that "Black" is a culture with similar standing to the Irish --- or rather, they'd prefer to believe that there is a coherent "White" culture that functions similar to Black culture. There is not; the suggestion otherwise is literally an expression of anti-Black racism, as you can see from the way "white culture" has gradually co-opted formerly out-grouped Irish, Italian, and Jewish people, in solidarity against integration with Black people.
Nobody seriously protests the South Side Irish Parade (unless they live in Beverly and care about their lawns), the Polish American Museum, or the New York Columbus Day Parade. They do protest parades of "white pride", for reasons I assume are now obvious to you.
What does being proud to be white mean to you?
You're right that the Nation promotes the inherent superiority of black people. I didn't mean to endorse that view.
Many of the narratives that describe worlds where black bodies are "lesser than" white bodies are written by people who believe in white-supremacist ideas (even if they don't support the philosophy explicitly - Thomas Jefferson comes to mind). These are not "white supremacist" texts, but they assist in shaping a world view that a white supremacist likes.
The texts and ideas promoted by the Nation are generally explicitly founded on black supremacy (which is unfortunate) but also portray black bodies as superior to white ones - a rare trait. If I can see the good, lofty goals of the US Constitution "through" slavery and the designation of black people as being only 60% the value of whites, I can also appreciate the Nation's work through its own incorrect racial hierarchy.
I also think that both white and black people can appreciate the heritage they come from[1]. The struggles of black americans against all odds are, to me, unambiguously heroic. The innovations and inventions of white americans' European (or American) ancestors are, I think, also worth celebrating.
[1] This gets very tricky because, of course, people who want to promote white people as inherently superior often take this tack. Culture is hard and messy and I think we probably come down a little hard on celebrating European history, but I think we should be far, far, far more celebratory of the the insane stories of various African Americans. Check out this dude! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smalls
Edit: Also we must keep in mind that the magnitude of the problem is related to the amount of power the particular group has. If a prisoner is espousing a philosophy that makes prisoners superior to other humans, even if it's incorrect, it's hard to argue we "need" to crack down on it. Narratives of white supremacy are so harmful precisely because white people have been in a position to ignore the welfare of other groups.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've done this a lot and we've warned you before. If you continue, we're going to have to ban you. Not for ideological reasons; for boredom avoidance reasons.
“The Jews, a small handful, control the movement of this great nation, like a radar controls the movement of a great ship in the waters. … The Jews got a stranglehold on the Congress."
Or implying that Jews are subhuman insects:
“I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite.”
Or veiled calls to violence:
“And you do with me as is written, but remember that I have warned you that Allah will punish you. You are wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell. But I warn you in the name of Allah, you would be wise to leave me alone. But if you choose to crucify me, know that Allah will crucify you.”
Or explicit calls to violence:
"Can that be the holy land, and you have gay parades, and want to permit to have a gay parade in Jerusalem when no prophet ever sanctioned that behavior. How can that be the Israel, how can that be Jerusalem with secular people running the holy land when it should be the holy people running the holy land. That land is gonna be cleansed with blood!"
Seriously, this is cut and dry. There are plenty of other people to lionize for e.g. promoting black bodies. And if wanting to kill all the Jews and loudly, repeatedly proclaiming his belief that they're evil and worthy of death to his religious followers on social media isn't a big enough deal to make it non-complicated, we're talking about the guy who called for the death of Malcolm X and whose religious followers carried out his assassination within months. He is violent and deranged and his followers have acted violently at his behest before.
(Also, respectfully, I don't think Farrakhan's anti-Semitic proclamations feel particularly "cartoonish" to the Jews he's targeting.)
I vociferously oppose him, and think liberals have made a huge mistake being soft on anti-semitism lately. But leave that aside. Would just the stuff he has said about white people justify Facebook banning him? If so, that’s a pretty breathtaking assertion of power to police a very complex range of narratives.
Anti-Semitism is literally what he's being banned for. How can you "leave that aside?"
Should FB be able to ban religious leaders who repeatedly, consistently, publicly call for the death of Jews from their platform? If they should be able to ban Milo, then — yes, obviously.
If you're arguing that no one should be able to be banned, I think our opinions differ, but I suppose we're each internally consistent with our values.
I also think facebook should be able to ban people. But I think that Facebook banning someone like Farrakhan, who is famous for being an anti-white extremist in a country where white people enslaved black people, and where white police officers routinely gun down black people, opens up a huge can of worms. It’s an organization where black Americans are almost completely unrepresented policing the spectrum of responses black people are allowed to have in response to their treatment in this country.
Being black in America doesn't give you a free pass on anti-Semitism. If you can't see that, I don't know what to tell you.
Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban. Maybe any one of his extreme view warrants a ban. But it’s very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.
> Farrakhan has always been anti-Semitic, and nonetheless many black people have been willing to overlook that.
Have the Jews he's been targeting with death threats been willing to overlook that?
> Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban.
Yup.
> But it's very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.
Frankly, on this one, no. Anti-Semitism is abhorrent regardless of what race you are. Being black does not excuse anti-Semitism. Should FB have more black leadership? Obviously yes. And it deserves to be called out on that. But banning someone for explicit, obvious anti-Semitism isn't problematic because they're black.
If Farrakhan were banned for being "anti-white," as you previously tried to provide cover for, that would be something else. But explicitly targeting a minority religious group with repeated, credible death threats (and one that has faced horrifying degrees of ethnic cleansing within the last century, and continues to face persecution in America today, such as the recent San Diego synagogue mass shooting) is unconscionable, and FB is entirely within its rights to ban Farrakhan for that.
Furthermore, you're being obtuse by saying that it's just a matter of Farrakhan "being black." There is a spectrum of views among black people about America. For better or worse, Farrakhan is a culturally significant part of that spectrum. And he's a fixture of black politics. (Here he is standing next to Obama in 2005 at a Congressional Black Caucus event: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-appearances/the-...). Facebook is now silencing all of his messages. I think there is a real question of whether a company that almost entirely lacks black leadership has the moral authority to do that.
> If Farrakhan were banned for being "anti-white," as you previously tried to provide cover for,
I don't know where you got the idea that I was covering for anything. The original post I was replying to didn't specifically mention antisemitism, it said "racism" is justification for banning someone. That leads to the obvious question of whether Facebook would be justified in banning Farrakhan over his anti-white statements. After all, that would seem to follow if "racism" (generically) is a justification for being banned on Facebook. Would you agree that would be a harder question to answer?
Silencing Farrakhan in general on Facebook is a consequence of silencing his particularly horrifying views about Jews and removing access to the platform he uses to spread them. This isn't because he's a culturally significant black man, it's because he's an anti-Semite. The others de-platformed along with him are not fellow black leaders, they are racists and conspiracy theorists who are similarly dangerous and have similarly used these platforms to spread hatred to millions of followers.
> The original post I was replying to didn't specifically mention antisemitism, it said "racism" is justification for banning someone.
While on the one hand you're claiming to only refer to the hypothetical question of a black leader who is anti-white, you also specifically defend Farrakhan's presence on social media, and question whether Facebook should be able to ban specifically him for his anti-Semitism; for example:
> I don’t know how old you are, but I think you’re being ignorant about the full spectrum of what Farrakhan represents. He co-organized the Million Man March, which was a defining event in the 1990s, much like the Ferguson shooting is today . . . Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban. Maybe any one of his extreme view warrants a ban. But it’s very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.
If we were talking about a hypothetical black leader who was anti-white (and whether you can call that racism is, IMO, up for debate), and who was not virulently anti-Semitic, I would definitely agree that's a harder question to answer; I'd probably be against banning someone like that, for reasons that are long and complicated and that you'd probably agree with. That isn't what happened here, though, and it's not who we've been talking about: we've been talking about Farrakhan, who's in both my opinion and Obama's opinion fairly indefensible.
[1]: https://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/02/26/obama-denounces-fa...
[2]: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi...
I'm not "defending" anything--I'm simply stating that it's a complicated issue, while you're denying that there is any complexity. And I don't think we really disagree on much. As you state, you might be against banning him if it was just his anti-white rhetoric. My point simply is that, whatever complexity might exist in that hypothetical does not go away just because there is an alternate, easier basis for banning him. Especially given that, many black people themselves have confronted those issues and have been willing to hear him out for his other messages: http://www.cnn.com/US/9510/megamarch/10-14/march/index.html
> "If the house is on fire, I'm not going to sit there and let the house burn just because I have differences with the person who sounded the alarm and started the water going," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Having Facebook--which has almost no black leadership--make the contrary decision is thorny, is all I am saying.
(disclaimer : i'm about as anti FB and anti-censorship as one can be.)
Well, he (Farrakhan) mostly just taught blacks to hate whites -- which I guess achieves more 'black pride', but not in any manner that I think is sustainable or responsible. Rather than raising one group up, he just taught that the other group was worse than perceived.
"White people are potential humans – they haven’t evolved yet."
“You are not now, nor have you ever been a citizen of America. You are a slave to white America.”
and my personal favorite, although unrelated to whites in America :
“Qadaffi’s a revolutionary, he’s my friend, he’s my brother. And I would never deny him because you don’t like him… I love him.”
The trick here is that you don't needlessly overcomplicate the issue. People promoting 'race realism' as a theory we should base society around, yeah those people should definitely go.
I take your point and am not trying to be snarky. I just don't see the problem here. The legitimate historical grievances of Armenians are orthogonal to what Facebook should allow to happen on their platform.
Doing this properly would be complicated, messy and expensive but if Facebook is going to be part of our society going forward I think its something they will have to deal with somehow or some other change will be forced upon them.
As I write this I realise that perhaps the ruthless arithmetic of a publicly traded company whose business model is web advertising, with shareholders to endlessly appease is probably by definition an entity that is fundamentally unable to make the above choices in the same way that I couldn't just decide to breath underwater.
They are all inextricably linked.
So yes, he's racist.
"Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents."
-Milo Yiannopoulos