News of the Restless

Well, this is a shock:

Turns out that Dickie Spencer — yes, the same one who constantly whines about Freeze Peach so he can infiltrate college campuses — doesn’t actually care about free speech. He only wants a platform.

So the thing to do, if you REALLY care about free speech, is deny him a platform, instead of letting him abuse the First Amendment, federal and state laws, and everything else these Freeze Peach Nazis are abusing. Because if this bastard ever gets a foot in the door, the first thing he’s going to do is bar leftists, and anyone else who’s not Nazi enough for his liking, from speaking.

Just another example of the fundamental dishonesty of “white separatists/nationalists/identitarians”/whatever the fuck else the Nazis are now calling themselves. And for all their right-wing talk about “taqiyya” (i.e. Muslims lying to spread Islam), there’s not a shred of evidence that any such thing is really happening. The word doesn’t even mean lying for propagandistic reasons; it means a prudent caution, based on fear of religious persecution.

On the other hand, fascists lying to spread fascism? Been happening for as long as there have been fascists. Ho hum. Nothing new under the Sun!

Now, the question remains: Why are they STILL allowed on Facebook?

And the answer, predictably, is that Facebook’s policies are lame…and hypocritical:

In January, 5 months after Charlottesville, Facebook added slides discussing the company’s position on white nationalism, supremacy, and separatism. While it says Facebook does not allow praise, support, or representation of white supremacy, it does allow the same sort of positions for white nationalism and separatism, according to one of the slides obtained by Motherboard.

Explaining its motivation, another section of the document reads that nationalism is an “extreme right movement and ideology, but it doesn’t seem to be always associated with racism (at least not explicitly).” Facebook then acknowledges that “In fact, some white nationalists carefully avoid the term supremacy because it has negative connotations.”

Negative connotations? I would hope so!

So…how do “nationalism” and “separatism” NOT have negative connotations? Because both are exclusionary, and that alone is pretty damn negative. And because it’s all the same shit, only in differently named piles. White “nationalists” — or “separatists”, if you must — want a white country because they think they’re better than non-whites, and no one BUT whites should be living there. And they’re willing to drive out or kill everybody who’s not pale enough in order to achieve that goal. How is this materially any different from white supremacism?

Uhhhh…it’s not. And that’s the whole point. They’ve just renamed and rebranded their same old swastika-wearing, hooded-sheet, cross-burning fascism to confuse the rest of us. As long as they have a platform to spout it from, it doesn’t matter what they call it. If they call it King Kong Kung Fu, it probably won’t violate Facebook’s terms of service, but it WILL still be out there, attracting flies. Fascism is going to spread, and that’s exactly what they want. It doesn’t much matter what they call it.

The other problem is that Facebook isn’t keeping pace with what anti-hate organizations are learning about the ever-mutating viruses of racism and fascism.

Another document explicitly says that Facebook does not consider every organization the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) flags a hate group as such. (In its statement Facebook said “Online extremism can only be tackled with strong partnerships which is why we continue to work closely with academics and organisations, including the Anti-Defamation League, to further develop and refine this process.”)

So they’re not really working with people who actually track and monitor hate, but they SAY they are, probably to appease an angry, wary public. Orwellian doublespeak, designed to make something windy look weighty.

Who does THAT remind you of?