The Rust leadership tolerates harassment and threats as long as its against the right wing. One of Rust's top people wants to violently purge the tech community.
Because attacking people for beliefs you don't like doesn't exactly make things better.
A lot of the people that seem to be trying to attack those they see as facist would be just as bad in the power as those they oppose. Except you know, with different targets.
The problem I see with a heck of a lot of online conversations is that it ridiculously fails this rule. Often times there are some issues on both sides of the coin worth discussing, but it's hard to discuss things rationally when the loudest voices on both sides are acting like spoiled toddlers or often worse. Often times, the extremists dominate the conversation and the resulting discussion is toxic.
Violence is never the solution, but isn't it possible to be anti-fascist (or against any other political movement that more relies on emotionalism instead of rationalism) without being violent? I would think so.
Responding to political concerns with violence just begets more violence. It just entrenches people's beliefs even further, inspires revenge from the 'other side' (or at least, their own axe crazy extremists) and eventually causes everything to erupt even further (through a civil war).
Honestly, I'd say this part in the most recent series of Doctor Who sums up some of the issues with people trying to solve all their problems with violence:
If those more violent parts didn't put the fear of God into the government, he could have been safely ignored.
It's possible to make generalisations across all the various groups, but you're going to have huge variance across them -- in pretty much all areas, including internal structure, attitude towards violence and political positions.
Of course groups are aware of one another and cooperate (as well as conflict, I assume) in an anarchic way, but there is no centralized power or executive. It's certainly not a single organisation.
From an organisational perspective, sports fan clubs are rather similar (mostly independent of one another, mostly local, very heterogeneous in how they work internally and interact with the world).
> we have an "antifa" movement in France (reacting to our rising far right), and they're often just as violent :-(
reply:
> yup, 100% okay with that, personally
> Me too (mostly). Personally trying to flush out internalised cishet machismo, but if there was ever an outlet...
> the only things fascists respond to is violence. Ignoring them or letting them attack you doesn't help
> good! bash their brains in tbh
It is clear that the kind of antifa they are endorsing falls on a particular point on the "huge variance" spectrum of attitude to violence. It is clear that the code of conduct is being applied selectively to one half of the political spectrum. And I say this as somebody who has always voted for the most left wing party in my country. This attitude towards violence and censorship and social shaming from my side worries me greatly.
GG also completely ignored the fundamental ethical violation in traditional game journalism - that review sites make all their money by advertising the products they review. Instead, it spent all of its time complaining about how some idie game developer is friends with an indie game reviewer, and sending death threats to Anita and Zoe.
If it looks like a thug, walks like a thug, and quacks like a thug... You can't expect anyone to take its valid points particularly seriously.
In a stunning lack of self-awareness, GG has never considered that perhaps it should apply its expectations for ethical behaviour to itself.
I have no advocated that anyone commit violence against "people online [I've] declared to be [my enemies]." In fact, in the thread you're linking to, right above the archived tweet, I say that I don't know what an anti-fascist movement in tech looks like. And today, years later, I still do not. But if you were ask me "hey Steve let's start a street fight with GamerGate, what do you think?" my first comment would be "what?" and my second comment would be "that sounds like a really dumb idea, don't do that."
You'll note that the subject at hand changed during this conversation: the parent I replied to suggested that I was suggesting something specific regarding the right wing in technology, but that response is about abstract antifa actions in France. It's also why I responded the way that I did: the equivalence between the two (European antifa and European fascist organizations) is laughable. But it's just Twitter; I'm not going to get into a debate about the details, I'm just going to say "okay" and move on.
But I did not and do not think, as I said above, that someone should go find tech fascists and cause them bodily harm. It's not something I did suggest or would support today.