Reddit Is Removing Nazi and Alt-Right Groups and Some Users Are Confused | Hacker News Reader

Reddit Is Removing Nazi and Alt-Right Groups and Some Users Are Confused

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25 pointsrobin_reala29 comments

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I can just imagine the outrage. "We have freedom of speech! We are protected!"

That doesn't mean people have to host you.

I don't think that's the argument. Reddit has every right NOT to host any subreddit it doesn't want to.

The question is, why ban far-right subreddits, but leave far-left subreddits intact? That's the issue.

How else will they get their leftist echo chamber?

Serious question: what far-left subreddits? Not trying for snark, I really don't know what the left equivalent of like... /r/DylannRoofInnocent would be on reddit.

/r/latestagecapitalism and the plethora of antifa subreddits often call for violence against anyone that doesn't agree with them.

It should be clarified that late stage capitalism critique and antifa do not have any ideological or associational overlap. The former is theory limited to effects of economic relations, while the latter is a reactionary-by-nature political call to action. I realize this is not obvious in the names.

Fears from raised awareness of late stage capitalism would not by any sound logic even motivate assiciation with something like Antifa. It would more likely inform and divert one’s alignment with something like that.

In my view, one would have to be willfully ignorant to deny the first, and willfully ignorant to align with the latter. In my view, this is a pretty good example of why censoring these conversations is a terrible solution. It can only serve to limit our ability to have nuanced understandings about the world we live in.

For what it is worth I'd be categorized as far right and I agree with the spirit of what you're saying.

There are a lot of failure modes in politics and the widely held feeling that if only we nipped the 'extremes' at either end of the spectrum and everything would be alright, that is bunk.

I continue to see a conflation of violent extremism and how far the political orientation is from the center of politics.

One of the most important failures of the political spectrum model is the inability to recognize the center is a homogeneous place while the edges are extremely diverse. Like everything else it's a tree structure.

As I see it the most important error in recent years was the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions. That didn't come about as a result of far right extremism or far left agitating. Broadly speaking neither faction wanted the war, so it must have come from the center.

It irks me that most attention is paid to the handful of violent ideologues, when the worst strategic errors are overlooked because they are closer to the center and have a body of political support. This is not a coherent way to police political violence.

Not saying it's equivalent..... But there is /r/SocialistRA/ its a place where people are actively organizing armed groups for the purpose of a theoretical future communist revolution :\

I hung around there for a bit, as a liberal supporter of the second amendment, and advocate for socialized healthcare... but when I clarified their positions, I found them to be far more extreme then I was personally comfortable with.

Had never heard of that, just popped in there. Definitely seems like it falls into the same group as some of these banned subs. A lot of just generic gun related content, but then a fair number of posts about killing political adversaries. Didn't have to scroll down very far to find a post about having a large magazine so as to be able to kill many racists.

Not good, should get banned under new policy IMO.

You should report them to Reddit!

The hate and neo-nazi subreddits are entirely on the far-right.

Because they didn't ban far-right subreddits. Why lie about the issue?

Which far-left subreddits support and advocate the extermination of entire ethnic/religious groups?

Pretty much any subreddit that idolizes marxism, communism, the soviet union, or che guevara is in some way supporting or advocating the extermination of entire ethnic and religious groups. It's kind of hard to play the "only nazis want to kill people" when you have a soviet flag and hammer and sickle in your subreddit.

Proof of Soviet / Communist ethic cleansing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_Soviet_Union

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3229636/Martin%2...

Don't know why this got downvoted. Communism has killed more than Nazi's, so if we're banning Nazi's because they're a potentially violent threat, it follows that communism/marxist subreddits would also be banned.

Because Marxist Communism is about everyone being equal.

... and anyone who doesn't agree with Communism's version of that is an evil person who is promoting the exploitation of the downtrodden, and therefore inevitably will be violently opposed.

That is, though Marxist Communism talks about everyone being equal, it also talks about violence to those who disagree. And in practice, the violence has shown up more reliably than the equality has.

Equally oppressed under a government regime.

Governments of communist countries have killed millions, not communism itself. Communism is a political theory designed to try and support the common good and break a cycle of oppression and revolt. Hasn't worked in practice, probably won't, but it's certainly not a hate doctrine like Nazism.

Glorification of the USSR would be more complicated, and could be perceived as endorsing violence.

"Individuals of Nazi ideologies have killed millions, not naziism itself."

If we're banning one -ism because it's considered violent/hateful, we need to ban all of the -isms that are more hateful/violent.

The primary element of Nazism is violent racism. This is somewhat unique among political ideologies and makes these comparisons poor. If you ask a communist to describe their utopia, it almost certainly doesn't include millions of people being executed by the state. But ask a Nazi and it will.

Just because they don't describe it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Communist governments have killed more than Nazi governments. Banning one without the other is hypocritical.

Perhaps Reddit is okay with being hypocritical, just as long as they own up to it.

Have you met any tankies.

They do advocate for millions of class enemies to be killed.

Personally I feel, and I know many people disagree, that parallels between today and '30s are overrated.

While history can rhythm, the modern left and right have mythologized that period to the point it is unrecognizable.

People don't actually read books on WWII.

>>Communism has killed more than Nazi's

Only because the USA decided to enter WW2 and helped defeat Germany. If the Nazis had won you would be looking at greatly elevated body count numbers today. After all Hitler viewed Aryans as the master race and all other races inferior, and the extermination of the Jews was simply the beginning of his grand plan.

Don't conflate these. Glorification of the USSR is pretty bad, and is ignoring or endorsing a history of violence and oppression, similar to Nazi supporters. Advocating Communism is emphatically not the same thing, and has absolutely nothing to do with "the extermination of ethnic and religious groups."

"Glorification of the Nazi Germany is pretty bad, and is ignoring or endorsing a history of violence and oppression, similar to Soviet supporters. Advocating National Socialism is emphatically not the same thing, and has absolutely nothing to do with "the extermination of ethnic and religious groups. National Socialism can exist without "the extermination of ethnic and religious groups."

Its targets would be based on class.

"Its only violence if its against me, not if its against those I disagree with" - most of the replies to this

I notice that each time websites ban or delist far right websites, that the temperature jumps a notch, often with accompanying antisemitism on more mainstream sites or subreddits.

It's nice that Google and Reddit's staff are feeling virtuous but it is becoming harder to talk civilly than it used to be and if it doesn't stop the pro-violence extremists will become validated and nothing positive starts from there.

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