Class prejudice, anyone? Why not caption this “the deplorables�
Likely you are getting into a huff because you don’t realize the point of the photo – the Daily Stormer is a neo-Nazi website. If the individual sporting this had been a buff, chisel-jawed specimen of ideal-typical Aryan physique, I’d be posting it just the same. The point is not (contra your claim on your website) that Trump supporters are overweight. It is that we live in a country where it is now unremarkable for people to wear neo-Nazi t-shirts. Clear now?
Sorry but this is just creepy. Wearing offensive t shirts is not illegal and even if they were were I wouldn’t want to live it in a world where citizens shame or denounce each other publicly over the internet . You could have shared these photos privately or simply described them to us. I don’t see how this is different from Christian groups broadcasting pictures of people entering abortion clinics or brothels. There should be laws against this -which assure that individuals enjoy the same level of privacy as existed before the internet- and in fact in some countries I think there are. At a minimum you should have blurred the faces to make the subjects unidentifiable. You would have made your point and preserved the privacy they can expect to enjoy , even in a public place.
Wait. (Re #4) We should not denounce and shame neo-Nazis? When did that happen?
Silence in the face of evil is what’s creepy.
Of course wearing a neo-Nazi t-shirt is not illegal in the USA, and as a member of that polity I fully support the right to wear it in the USA without suffering any interference from the state. But we citizens and residents are not the state: we have every right, and I would argue duty, to express revulsion, to shame the wearers, perhaps even in some cases to shun them — so long as we do not invoke state power to do so.
The privacy in public you assert is here wielded as a shield behind which to use the sword of wearing a message in public reasonably calculated to upset and perhaps intimidate members of the groups that neo-Nazis wish to harm, expel, or exterminate, as may be the case. That earns and deserves our scorn and is well worth calling out in person or on line — and on line may be safer as it will less likely lead to violence.
(I will grant that there may be a special case for very young people, who ought not perhaps to have youthful idiocy showcased on line so it can follow them for all their days. But I do not see how this applies to most adults when the facts reported about them are true.)
Again, the — very dear — right to free expression is a right against state coercion and retaliation. It is not a right to force others to suffer your views in silence, nor is it a right to avoid embarrassment when the community around you expresses its justified disgust peacefully and, especially, civilly.
See, the meaning of wearing a nazi t-shirt is “I endorse naziism”, and the meaning of naziism is — inter-alia — “jews should be killed by the government”.
So to wear a nazi t-shirt is to declare to all that see you that you think that jews should be killed, and it should be treated exactly the same as, you know, walking up to people and saying it in words. Because it has the same meaning and content.
Depending on how I enter this thread I get a completely different set of 7 comments. Weird.
Tom Moody — how do you know the class of these young men exactly? Maybe you just assume that educated upper class people wouldn’t be Nazis? Is that class prejudice? Neither the dress sense nor the body shapes of the young men would be out of place on my (highly selective) campus. Well, the Nazi T-shirt would.
I do agree with Michael, Collin and Alan that if you wear a Nazi (or, generally, a very provocative) symbol you are fair game. I don’t know exactly wear to draw the line, though — Planned Parenthood, or Trump/Pence, T-shirts seem off-limits to me (unless you are Trump or Pence, obviously….)
Of course, he might have picked it up at Goodwill, and be entirely innocent of the meaning.
Harry. Yeah. If you click on the comments you get the alt-right thread with Tom Moody and Philippe, but if you click on the picture you get an entirely different set of comments with engels and Dr. Hilarius, etc.,(6 as of now). Anyway, I think the man with the microphone in the roses has it covered. The dual thread stuff is pure genius on Henry’s part.
– and by responding: ”there is always California” -(or something similar) – and ”moderation” not posting such a remark – you pointed to an important point.
People with Daily Stormer T-shirts might be indeed ”Trump’s America” –
and that’s why a lot of Europeans now like to call America ”Trumpland”.
But the ”great” thing about ”Trumpland” is – that it produced such a ”great” -(and also tremendously humorous) backlash against ”Trumps America”.
And I say that as a European-American, who also thought for a while that Trump -(and his fans) were some kind of ”hardcore (Neo) Nazis” who HAD to be stopped – the way Germany -(or France) stops it’s violent ”Neo Nazis” – and ”anti-Semites” and any hateful racists of any race or religious conviction with laws against distributing ”Neo-Nazi Gedankengut” or ”Hate speech”.
But with my homeland having this… let’s call it: ”Love for free speech” and lawyers like the legendary Glenn Greenwald stressing the point – that also the last ”Nazi” has a right to ”free speech” and HAS to be defended -(ironically in the words of the cult of Greenwald against some ”Nazi State”) – the situation in my homeland -(and thusly also the so called ”Nazis”) – seem to be a lot different than in Europe?
And as I have come to the conclusion – that Trump is more or less this ”doofus-idiot” with for sure all kind of ”fascistic” ideas – but NOT in the way – for example a ”hardcore German Neo-Nazi” would express it -(by really ”killing”) – I really don’t know IF:
”To wear a nazi t-shirt -(in America) is to declare to all that see you that you think that jews should be killed, and it should be treated exactly the same as, you know, walking up to people and saying it in words.”
And referring to the thread of Chris Bertram – and ”the Jewish Question” – in France and in Germany I probably would call the police in order to have them rip the shirt of this dude – but in the US… I just don’t know???!
Dual threads depending on whether someone agrees with you seems a little dicey but it’s your blog. Am happy to be coded with Philippe (comment 4) but perhaps not too happy to have that commentary characterized as “the alt-right thread with Tom Moody and Philippe.”
A lot of assumptions are being made on this thread concerning the beliefs and intentions of the subjects without any form of discovery or confrontation whatsoever. That’s just prosecutorial abuse of power. While these assumptions may be reasonable , the lack of due process is a denial of justice. The internet imposes that publishers meet a greater threshold of responsibility than is required with forms of publication that are less viral.
So CT is now existing in two parallel universes? That explains A LOT OF THINGS. (Like the guy on the other thread who I think is calling me a climate change denier – it all makes sense because in a parallel universe I COULD BE)
My two favorite T-shirts are: ”Speak slowly I am blond” – and a black Warner Brothers T-Shirt with Bugs Bunny on it – which I wear all the time in the US – but nearly never in Europe – as I know I get a lot more compliments in my homeland for such ”self-promotion” – which is saying – if you put on a T-shirt which says something – you definitely want others to read it and compliment (and photograph?) you.
I know that for sure – and so Henry just did the good looking dude with his beautiful T-Shirt a yuuuge favor!
-(he made him no even famous on Crooked Timber!)
Once it would have been the KKK. Modern America is much less Natzi inclined and prejudiced than it used to be. Recall father Coughlin of blessed memory?
The odd t shirt and the nasty unpleasantness online should not be taken out of historical context. The main problem is the apathy and cynicism that produces low political participation by most people. Plus the huge ignorance that Trump has and the large minority of people who are as ignorant as their president. Hopefully the uptick in stupid will be temporary. Many countries have a much more serious problem with Fascism and authoritarian politics. Poland is run by the ideological decedents of the good father Coughlin.
I disagree with Froomkin @ 5. Not that I have any problems with posting the picture. But to me, the key distinction isn’t public-private. (Employees have no free speech rights, and I’m not fine with this.) It is that there are limits to tolerance. Our cockamamie First Amendment jurisprudence doesn’t recognize such limits–Citizens United being a particularly egregious example. Most European countries–and Canada!–understand that there is a difference between, say, socialism and Naziism. The US doesn’t.
Maybe this is all for the best. Maybe we need a ridiculous fence around the law because we can’t govern ourselves. But even if this is true, it is not what we should be wanting.
Philippe: “Wearing offensive t shirts is not illegal and even if they were were I wouldn’t want to live it in a world where citizens shame or denounce each other publicly over the internet.”
People with Nazi views should be shamed and denounced. Why not?
Harry @ 7: thanks, I had no idea my comment had been posted in an alternate universe and was wondering why I was not seeing it here (did I spell something wrong? forget to hit submit? give offense in some way?). The internet is a wily beast.
I am presuming that the dual comment thread problem is a database glitch. I actually hadn’t realized that there was a second comment thread in the ether somewhere, and spent 20 minutes in WordPress yesterday trying to figure out where the comments I had approved were going to, and failing.
Compare Philippe:
A lot of assumptions are being made on this thread concerning the beliefs and intentions of the subjects without any form of discovery or confrontation whatsoever. That’s just prosecutorial abuse of power. While these assumptions may be reasonable , the lack of due process is a denial of justice.
and what PGD tells us about the advertising for the t-shirt:
“You will get a rush secretly wearing a Nazi t-shirt in public without having to suffer the consequences of wearing a Nazi t-shirt in public.â€
In general, I think that some generosity of interpretation is warranted in people’s proclamation of their attachment to causes – but when they are publicly attaching themselves to a cause noted for the mass murder of Jews, black people, those with severe disabilities, members of the Roma and so on, my generosity finds its limits. Perhaps, if I was calling for this person to be doxxed and shunned by friends, employers etc, there would be fair grounds for a pushback, on the grounds that he might (barely conceivably) have been wearing it ironically, but I am not doing that. Instead, I’m pointing out that he is wearing a neo-Nazi t-shirt (publicizing a website that names itself after Julius Streich’s notoriously vile hate sheet Der Stuermer) in public, and that I presume he had to go to some effort to direct order from the site (I don’t believe there are other, more mainstream stores that carry this particular line of merchandise, for all the obvious reasons). That’s not something I would have expected to see in the major airport for Washington DC nine months ago. And that the t-shirt is advertised as allowing you to display your Nazi views, without suffering the public consequences, only makes the case stronger.
I’m amused by the picture (though I’m not 100% sure both guys are over 18). But it makes me uncomfortable to say the objections have no merit. 1. I don’t care for arguments that “the group” is right to shame anyone they don’t like. This is an extreme but some commenters are using arguments that don’t only apply to extremes. They might say a reasonable person knows that absolute arguments shouldn’t be made unless they really apply, but I don’t know how to tell that’s what they’re doing. 2. I’m dubious about arguments that every person should get the right to be judge and jury in others’ cases. The guy may deserve to be shamed but that doesn’t mean we all have a duty to shame him. It’s not as if we’re so close to being taken for Nazis that we have to vehemently declare that we’re not. 3. The technology is new and I don’t think it will turn out to have been clear that individuals are right to publish other people’s images worldwide in the way news organizations do, or even with fewer restrictions than they do.
Again, their shirts are extreme but in rather different circumstances they could have been wearing shirts for a heavy metal band with overt Satanist overtones that large numbers of people would find very objectionable.
On the other hand, I don’t think the airport should permit these guys to stand there for any passenger disembarking to see.
Update: Henry says the point of the photo is that one of the Trump Americans is wearing a neo-Nazi website T-shirt. Therefore, one supposes, it’s OK to generalize about everyone else in the pic, because they are tolerating his presence. We must be eternally vigilant, etc. My comment was posted — apparently Henry has dual comment threads depending on whether you click the photo or the blog title, very confusing.
is a bit off. You got your initial condemnation wrong, which is fine – it happens. But then, you replaced the condemnation with a grumpy statement to the effect that I was now in the game of condemning people for controversial t-shirts, which you then deleted, and have now replaced with yet a third unrelated complaint about how I am supposedly slurring the bystanders for their toleration. As far as I can see, the only common thread in your argument is that I am wrong (for three successive, but completely different reasons) and that you are completely right in your initial decision to be critical of me. I recommend Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber’s fantastic new book, The Enigma of Reason for a detailed discussion of what lies behind this model of argumentation (see especially the final chapters) – while, as they argue it can be harnessed for useful purposes at the collective level, it can also look a bit ungainly at the individual (consider this intervention the kind of social correction that Mercier and Sperber call for, and an invitation to reconsider your style of arguing and reasoning).
Philippe: “A lot of assumptions are being made on this thread concerning the beliefs and intentions of the subjects without any form of discovery or confrontation whatsoever.”
Really, I think this is ridiculous. If a person chooses to wear a social or political slogan in a public place, it’s reasonable to assume they are happy to be, even that they want to be, associated by the public with that social or political slogan. If they’re happy to be publicly associated with it, what’s the objection to publicly associating them with it? These pictures were not stolen from their private collection, or secretly taken in their home without their knowledge. They were taken in public, where the wearer of the slogan intended to be seen. If you want to imagine that the wearer is innocent, that he doesn’t know what his t-shirt means, then of course you’re free to do that; but in that case I think you’re the one doing the disservice of assumption, by assuming that he’s stupid.
You can’t say “How did you miss the neo-nazi shirt?” and then rely on someone else’s research that the shirt is a trick (hiding-nazism-in-plain-sight), to show that you gave the issue a fair hearing. Is it covert or overt? Your assumption seems to be that everyone should recognize the shirt and stand as far away from the wearer as possible, and if they don’t they are fair game to lumped into a photo called “Trump’s America.”
Yes, it took a few tries on my site to nail what I find so troubling about your photo and caption. I wouldn’t call that a model of argumentation but thanks for taking my criticism so seriously.
Mercier and Sperber argue (I think rightly) that it is the way in which we all tend to reason and argue, but that under the right collective circumstances it can be a good rather than a bad thing (we don’t want to converge too quickly on what is apparently the ‘right’ answer). It really is a quite brilliant book, which I’m recommending to everyone.
You can’t say “How did you miss the neo-nazi shirt?†and then rely on someone else’s research that the shirt is a trick (hiding-nazism-in-plain-sight), to show that you gave the issue a fair hearing. Is it covert or overt? Your assumption seems to be that everyone should recognize the shirt and stand as far away from the wearer as possible, and if they don’t they are fair game to lumped into a photo called “Trump’s America.â€
On the substantive point, I didn’t say “How did you miss the neo-Nazi t-shirt?” What I said was more like ‘you missed the neo-Nazi t-shirt – are you clear now’ – a correction of a mistake rather than an expression of disbelief that you could have made the mistake in the first place. I imagine a lot of CT readers got the t-shirt, either because they follow the American extreme right, or because they are familiar with the website’s actual-Nazi predecessor. But I also imagine that a fair number didn’t. And I don’t expect that most people at Dulles had any idea. In an ideal world, I’d like to think that the guy with the flowers was giving Nazi t-shirt guy the fish-eye because, but I imagine that’s almost certainly an accident of composition and timing.
The complaints about the original post thread are much ado about very little. One wears a t-shirt with a political message to make a public political statement. Don’t want to be part of public debate, don’t wear a t-shirt with a political message.
Note this is content neutral: today, I wore to brunch a t-shirt that pronounced “Keep the Immigrants. Deport the Republicans.” Do I have a complaint if a picture of me appears on a conservative blog, from someone who decided it was a nefarious message? Hardly.
The point of Henry’s original post, as I read it, was that in Trump’s America, people feel free to make public neo-Nazi statements in ways that were once unthinkable. Seems to me that there is ample evidence to support that point.
If I had posted what I thought was a trenchant critique of Nazism in our country and someone thought it was about overweight people, I might have done a little soul searching (could the photo have been clearer? was my caption too simplistic?) before going on the attack. If “a fair number of CT readers” could have missed the reference, a better response might be “heh – maybe I should have been clearer” instead of coming after the commenter hammer and tongs, minutely tracking the revisions of his blog update as evidence of flawed reasoning, etc. But again, at least you didn’t brush off the criticism completely, or go full ad hominem.
@28
– ”In an ideal world, I’d like to think that the guy with the flowers was giving Nazi t-shirt guy the fish-eye because, but I imagine that’s almost certainly an accident of composition and timing.”
And I firstly thought it was the very… interesting composition and timing which made it ”Trumps America”?
As the man ”on the Left” with flowers in his hands – waiting to welcome ”a loved one” – looking at two obvious ”dudes” -(no value judgement intended as there are ”good” and ”bad” dudes) with one of them having ”American” writing over his -(signaling ”Ablehnung”) – folded arms -(and I’m just trying to recap what I saw first) – and then –
THEN: ”The Daily Stormer”.
And I thought that was kind of a ”better” visual ”expression” of ”Trumps America” – than the pictures of the beggars in Trump-masks and Trump-outfits we had taken in Berlin or Venice.
The problem for me is that the title Trump’s America gave me the impression you were condemning all those people– initially I didn’t even see the Nazi T shirt and wondered what the heck you were doing. Then I thought you were condemning all those people for tolerating or being friends with a guy wearing a Nazi T shirt, which would only be fair if they knew what it was. It turns out you only meant to condemn the actual wearer ( and presumably any friends in the photo who don’t mind his choice of attire).
Tom – it is completely fair to say that I should have captioned the photo more clearly – but without belabouring it, I rather think it was you who went on the attack. You first accused me of classist attacks on overweight people. Then, when I pointed out that this was wrong, you proposed in succession a variety of other attacks, which all seemed to me to be efforts to shore up your original position that there was something odious about the post, without ever quite managing to settle on a precise claim as to what that odious quality was. Obviously, this is a storm in a teacup, and none of us are at our best in comments threads, but I don’t think that your claim is correct. If you object to me pointing out the inconsistencies as “minutely tracking the revisions” (not actually so – I just happened to open up the page last night, and not finding the tab easily again this morning, opened it up again to find an entirely different claim as to why I was in the wrong), then I suppose, feel free to continue as you were. Since I’ve spent far more time on this spat than it merits, I’ll leave you to have the last word, if you want it.
I don’t think this was a confusing post. The comments though might give one pause when we consider the last 40 years of US politics and the role of racist, bigoted ‘dog whistles’.
If these fellows are white, 25 yo and own a small farm, the sainted Founding Fathers would encourage them to vote.
Not Neil De Grasse, nor Jane Addams .
Is he over 18? Does that change how we interpret the photo or the morality of doxing someone on the internet?
Who decides wrongthink and the right to dox? If a conservative Christian group starts doxing women who go to planned parenthood, is that okay? In their (wrong) opinion that’s murder, vs wearing a covertly offensive t-shirt. What about doxing abortion providers?
If the answer to this is “no, it’s totally different you moron, because i side with goodthink and not evil Nazi scum” then okay. Fair enough. The next person doxing people/children they disagree with may not share your political views.
Eventually his name will be tagged to this and he may be excluded from professional work forever. I wouldn’t think that is morally right for a murderer who is paroled, let alone a racist idiot who wore a t-shirt. Ymmv
Is your sample of one supposed to show that there are more people willing to be open Nazis now than before? Perhaps that’s so. On the other hand, I see far fewer Confederate flags nowadays than just a few years ago, and Confederate monuments are being taken down in Trump’s America. Now, here’s an interesting image from not too long ago, in somebody else’s America: https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/files/2015/06/Button-296×300.jpg
@40
”Who decides wrongthink and the right to dox?”
Just everybody by himself – as the beauty of the Internet means – you see a photo -(or the ”real thing”) – like the… ”Stilleben” – beautifully composed as if a Hollywood Set Designer had his hand init – and IT has the title:
”Trumps America” – and you really, really like Trump – you might look at the picture and you might think:
That’s a really ”hot” looking dude -(the one with the red hat and the ”American” on his breasts) – and you really, really might like the picture because Trump is your hero – and you might think but the guy with the flowers on ”the left” is really NOT ”that attractive”?
And so – seeing this photo and reading the comments here – might make you understand why for example Trump saw all these (millions) of people at his inauguration – and why – if you are a ”strong” believer of ”Trumps America” – this photo is no ”dox” or document of wrongthink – as if you are the cute dude with the green hat – the dude to dry – with the wrong think might be the one ”on the left with the flowers”!
– and as I saw this ”Scaramucci” today – he would tell you guys that ”Trumps America” is ”a very beautiful thing” and it always will be ”a beautiful thing” – not unlike why I choose the name ”nastywoman” for this blog.
We got to accept who we are – or we never gonna get over it!
Potato, I don’t do point by point refutations. If you ever get around to widening your world, especially about the particulars of individual privacy that you think a person is entitled to irrespective of the social context, implied or otherwise, you’ll likely be sad to discover that what you think now are concrete principles, evaporate upon contact with the modern ubiquitous surveillance society.
Personally I think it’s an absolutely mandatory personal survival skill to understand the facts on the ground, and in the internet, so to speak, but YMMV.
Against what? against posting images of people on the Web? or what?
which assure that individuals enjoy the same level of privacy as existed before the internet
Many years ago somebody told me I’d been seen on television, when I’d been completely unaware of it. The explanation was that Helen Razer had been being interviewed in the street for a television broadcast (I think it was Helen Razer, it’s so long ago I can’t be sure, and anyway I didn’t see the broadcast myself) and I’d been clearly visible in the background, looking at some books on a stand outside a shop in the same street. Was that a violation of my privacy? It never felt like it (and the person who told me about it certainly wasn’t suggesting that it was). That’s the sort of thing that was possible before the Internet, and that’s the kind of privacy that was possible then. When people film in the street — and people do film in the street — do they get releases from every passerby, or should they be expected to? Philippe
That’s just prosecutorial abuse of power.
That’s a weird comment. Somebody who is not wielding the power of a prosecutor cannot be abusing the power of a prosecutor.
The internet imposes that publishers meet a greater threshold of responsibility than is required with forms of publication that are less viral.
So are you now suggesting that there’s an obligation to get permission before posting somebody’s image online, when there’s not the same level of obligation before including it in a television broadcast that will only be seen by millions of people? or what?
Class prejudice, anyone? Why not caption this “the deplorables�
Let me just point out something about that, because the Right is constantly making a meal out of this, and it’s one of these factoids that get endlessly retailed without anyone checking the provenance of it.
The story everyone seems to have in their head is that Clinton called the white working class/people in flyover states who voted for Trump “deplorables” and this was classist and wrong, and in fact if she had been talking about that broad swathe of people, it certainly would have been.
I went back and read the transcript of what Clinton actually said, and it is crystal clear that by “deplorables” she was talking about the keyboard warriors of 4Chan, Breitbart and the like; NOT the broad base of Republican voters.
I suspect most of the people on the left who are apologetic about the use of the term “deplorables” have swallowed the media story, and that there is also a sizeable minority on the Right who actually do know what she said, but are being deliberately, passive-aggressively obtuse about it.
This is not a doxing. No address details were given, no name, it’s just a picture of a dude in a t shirt. He is proudly wearing a nazi t shirt in public, which means he is happy to be seen in it. Now he’s being seen in it. What next, that media should blur the faces of all participants in neo nazi rallies? Really, this is just apologia for nazism. If this is where your defense of free speech gets you – to the point of mollycoddling nazis with special protections no one else gets – then you need to have a good long hard look at yourself.
That dude there in that picture is happy to declare himself in public to be a nazi. You know, the political organization America spent three years fighting, spent thousands of young lives fighting. He declares himself publicly as a supporter of mass murder, and wants to broadcast his hate to everyone arriving at an airport. But you want to protect him from being shamed on the Internet.
Also: anti Zionism is the real threat to Americas Jews !
Strictly speaking, he’s NOT happy to declare himself in public to be a nazi. The whole point of the shirt is its crypto status. He’s in it for the thrill of publicly proclaiming his nazism and not getting caught, like a adult man sitting down next to a coed in a college library and surreptitiously masturbating. Having his photo taken and posted alongside an explanation of what he’s really doing is the last thing he wants.
It wasn’t confusing to you because I assume you immediately saw the shirt and knew what the significance was. I just saw some, um, overweight white guys with baseball caps on,one with an America T shirt which I was able to see, along with some women in the background. I wouldn’t have seen the Nazi shirt if it hadn’t been pointed out in the comments.
My wife saw the Nazi T shirt because I pointed it out to her and until I told her what it represented she didn’t think anything of it.
Not a big deal– whether it was confusing probably depends on your eyesight and knowledge of far right Nazi groups.
[Consider yourself at liberty to post another comment reiterating your substantive arguments, but without the pejoratives and the claim that everyone disagreeing with you is the victim of ‘mood affiliation’ – the eds]
I’m surprised that no one has commented specifically on the baseball caps. “American” shirt dude is wearing the classic red “Make America Great Again” Trump cap. Neo-Nazi’s green cap is somewhat blurred, but it appears to me that it also says “Make America Great Again.” The way neo-nazi is angled towards “American” dude suggests that they are traveling together (fellow travelers?).
@50 “I went back and read the transcript of what Clinton actually said, and it is crystal clear that by “deplorables†she was talking about the keyboard warriors of 4Chan, Breitbart and the like; NOT the broad base of Republican voters.”
This is incorrect.
She explicitly says that it’s half of Trump voters. It’s worth noting, too, that even if your interpretation were correct, a common response from the left was, “so what, it’s true,” demonstrating that the right’ complaint about liberal snobbery isn’t entirely unjustified.
Personally, I think it’s true that half of Trump voters are deplorable. I also think half of Hillary voters are deplorable, if mostly to a lesser degree.
What was really offensive was Hillary’s claim they are *unredeemable.* that was a truly deplorable thing to say.
Here’s the full context:
“We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
Im not 100% comfortable with the picture mainly because the internet has a habit not to forget. He might reform and then he might still never find a job. No objection to punching down in general if the punch is so deserved however.
60 Yan: She explicitly says that it’s half of Trump voters.
That also manages to create a contrast with the half of Trump voters who are not deplorable, and even more Republicans who could not bring themselves to vote for Trump. Of course, many of these “good” Republicans had Trump-voting acquaintances, and so many Republican women did not cross party lines as hoped because calling their fathers and brothers deplorables offended them.
In addition, HRC wanted to keep Congressional Republicans reasonably happy, because she was unlikely to get a Democratic Senate in 2016 or 2018 and Clinton had great neoliberal deals to make. She wanted to run on specific policy programs without large progressive commitments that would offend, not ideological or moral differences between the parties. Then she could could be forced as President to make the tough decisions that governing requires at a depth of policy detail that would be more difficult to criticize. See Clinton, Bill; Obama, Barack.
Personally, I think it’s true that half of Trump voters are deplorable. I also think half of Hillary voters are deplorable, if mostly to a lesser degree.
Yep. Also I think you can believe they’re deplorable, as I do, without inflecting this attitude with class snobbery in the way liberals tend to.
Also I agree with Henry: if you don’t want your photo taken don’t walk around in public wearing a Nazi T-shirt.
Yan, you are talking with 20-20 hindsight where we know that Trump got a high enough proportion of the votes to win the presidency, even without an actual majority. At the time Clinton was speaking, it was still possible for reasonable people to think that the idea that so many people would actually vote for the clownstick was the stuff of situation comedies and that relatively few people would do so. So no, she wasn’t talking about broad swathes of the US population. She’s talking about the alt-right. The phrase “their websites” is the clue.
Yan, you even quoted HRC specifying what qualities she found deplorable: “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. … Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.†— Yet you feigned she applied the ‘irredeemable’ label to the whole as well.
She explicitly says that it’s half of Trump voters.
Which actually equates to around 10% of the population. It’s like “quarter-pounder”; sure-as-fuck sounds like a lot, but when you do the numbers it’s… really not?
One of the key Nazi beliefs was that it’s OK to murder people based on unchangeable characteristics about themselves that they didn’t choose: having Jewish ancestors, being gay, etc. If people don’t want to employ him at some hypothetical point in the future when he no longer wears Nazi clothing because Henry posted this picture, then at least they’re judging him based on something he chose to do.
@Yan, as long as you’re parsing the text, you might note that Hillary says only _some_ of the deplorables are irredeemable; not all or even most of them. Just as you agree with her that half of Trump’s voters are deplorable, I’m guessing you also agree that some of those are irredeemable.
Going further, Hillary’s ‘deplorables’ comment, like Barack’s ‘clinging to their guns’ comment before it, are classic examples of political gaffes, where gaffe means ‘making the mistake of telling the truth about something’.
I think you can believe they’re deplorable, as I do, without inflecting this attitude with class snobbery in the way liberals tend to.
Or using–“irredeemable” in connection with what turned out to sound a lot like a Bible quote–apparently Calvinist dogwhistles. Someone in the campaign seemed to have thought they were going to win on traditional morality against the libertine.
Collin @66 “It’s like “quarter-pounderâ€; sure-as-fuck sounds like a lot, but when you do the numbers it’s… really not?”
Except that it’s not about abstract numbers, it’s about human beings, more specifically about regions, populations, communities. If you live in a place where everyone you know always votes Republicsn, she’s saying half the people you know deserve hell.
By comparison, Trumps said many Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists (he said some are good, therefore most aren’t). A majority of Mexican immigrants isn’t a huge number, but it’s still a racist asshole sentiment.
The same applies to right wing sliming of “gay activists” and “Islamists.” They don’t have to slander large numbers or the majority of a population to be assholes.
According to PolitiFact, she said this on Sept. 9. According to the RealClearPolitics poll average as of Sept 9, Trump was expected to get 42.9 % of the vote.
Actually I left out some stages. Fermi numbers we get:
+ voters half the population
+ republicans half of voters
+ primary voters half of republicans
+ trump voters half of primary voters
+ and half of them irredemably evil
One in thirty-two, or about three percent? Sounds pretty reasonable to me: the lessons here are:
+ indirect electoral processes leave you extremely vulnerable to coordinated cluques, and
+ don’t let fascists accumulate in out-of-the-way corners of your political syatem.
Mood affiliation is now a pejorative. And banthink.
No worries. I’ll retreat back to the rationalist community. I knew better, and I apologize for engaging. Some forums are for internal agreement and rousing the troops. Outsiders aren’t allowed. Signaling allegiance to the tribe is the only purpose of the ritual. Scott Alexander is shaking his head at my stupidity for an attempt at dialogue I’m sure. I didn’t mean to spoil your hate party.
I won’t contaminate the tribal pile on ever again with a comment.
A lot of assumptions are being made on this thread concerning the beliefs and intentions of the subjects without any form of discovery or confrontation whatsoever.
Absolutely. Some far more likely explanations:
1) He’s wearing it ironically, as kids did in my day.
2) He got it from someone else, possibly a donation bin, and the unfortunate soul has no idea what he’s wearing. The shirt is a symbol for how we take care of each other in difficult times, and the hats a sign of respect for the president who ultimately made it possible.
3) It was a plain black t-shirt and the photo was edited by PC class warriors to malign the Right.
“He’s a public nazi” is really the least likely, once you think about it.
To cease the flippancy for a moment: I’m not in America, and at the moment not even in the West, so watching this from the outside is just really confusing. How on earth did you folks get so quickly from Godwin’s Law (comparing someone to real nazis being just so outlandish that it’s effectively a discussion-stopper) to being coy about labelling _actual nazis_? This commitment of fairness and benefit of doubt to humanity’s most awful people is beyond idealism, it’s almost fetishistic.
taj @ 74“Some far more likely explanations†— Uhhhh, beg to differ.
Had you said, “Some other possible/plausible explanationsâ€, I’d have agreed… but there have been far too many public hate-shirt wearers and Confederate-flag wavers for me to think that “‘He’s a public nazi’ is really the least likely,†as you put it. Heck, when I first moved to Milwaukee in 1978, the friend who suggested I come here (a former Israeli border guard) invited me along while he and his buddies stood watch next to an American Nazi Party rally in a city park. The ANP were very very public in full uniform then… and some vandalizing of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries occurred… though oddly enough a bunch of ANP members started leaving town after that, and the rallies stopped for lack of numbers. I suppose somehow they felt they’d worn out their welcome.
My apologies Raven. I’m going to chalk this down as a lesson that I should signal ironic statements more clearly, not least because these arguments are indistinguishable from sincere opinions that are both far too common these days and too often unchallenged under the misguided notion of fairness.
If these gents feel bad, I’m going to say to them what is regularly said to brown people who are escorted off flights for the audacity of reading or speaking in Arabic: “Yes it’s all very sad but you should have known better.”
[Faustusnotes – feel free to submit a comment making your substantive argument without the suggestion that the people disagreeing with you belong at the Daily Stormer etc]
taj @ 79: The hard-won experience over on Daily Kos has been expressed as, “Untagged snark will be unrecognized.”
That can be as full as: <snark>…ironic statement…</snark> ….
or as slim as: …ironic statement…</s> ….
and if creating mock angle tags is a bother, just use brackets: [/s]
That’s not a ***rule***, mind you, neither there nor here, just an offer of a possible clarifier of meaning, like an emoticon.
I was on Twitter just long enough to conclude that of the millions of photographs of strangers that go viral to a large or small degree, enough of them probably fall into taj’s category three to make it likely everyone will end up seeing those. Henry’s is obviously not, though.
It may turn out to be that we’ll shrug that off as another unfortunate effect of the technology, that we’ll continue insisting taj’s 2 is mandatory in person but not expected online, or even the reverse . . . who knows? It’s out of our hands, I guess.
Raven @65 and Layman @68: “Hillary says only _some_ of the deplorables are irredeemable; not all or even most of them. Just as you agree with her that half of Trump’s voters are deplorable, I’m guessing you also agree that some of those are irredeemable.”
You’re both right–I missed that she limits the irredeemable to only some. But don’t use this as an excuse to ignore the larger point that the deplorable comment was about half of Trump voters, not a small group of internet trolls.
I’d add that when she stars by identifying half of a group as deplorable, then goes on to note only some are redeemable, the misinterpretation is largely her fault. Just as Trump was largely at fault that people misinterpreted him as saying all Mexican immigrants are criminals, since the qualification of “some,” in both cases, was added briefly and weakly after making sweeping generalizations.
Layman, no, I don’t think very many human beings are irredeemable. As much as I’d like to believe some are–it’s a satisfying feeling–if pressed I’d have to admit probably none are.
The reason is that I don’t think the language of redemption can be divorced from superstitious nonsense about sin, moral responsibility, and freedom of the will. Some people are, to use the quaint language, truly evil, but the truly evil have no option of not being so, so there’s no question of sin or salvation or redemption, while those who do have the option are precisely the redeemable.
Potato – if that’s your idea of “dialogue,” it’s a very different notion than mine. Next time you look to argue with people whom you disagree with, I suggest you employ a very different approach, if you want them actually to listen to you.
nastywoman – for your future reference, I’m not putting your comments through on my posts, not because they are offensive, but because they’re mostly off-topic, and don’t seem to me to add particularly to the conversation that other people are trying to have, however imperfectly.
Sigh! I can’t even! But trying again without the daily stormer reference.
1. noone is ever going to find this dude here while googling him after a job search, to suggest so is the most pathetic concern trolling ever in the history of ever.
2. To reiterate, this is not a doxxing, and the dude is not being shamed, though he deserves to be
3. When you concern troll people for putting a random picture of an unknown dude up on the internet and criticizing him for being an actual nazi (reminder: murders Jews, has a plan to kill everyone on earth who is not white, general all round arsehole), you are engaging in apologia for nazism.
4. I’ll add: people who follow the Daily Stormer to the level this dude does are typically big lovers of the Turner Diaries. In case you aren’t aware of how nasty the shit they believe is, I read it for you and I can tell you they are very nasty. If you think that is just two sides of a political debate you’re a fool. If further doubt remains, remember these people idolize Timothy McVeigh. They want to do what he did, to you and yours. That man wearing that t-shirt is almost certainly a firm believer in that particular ideology – you don’t go that deep down the rabbit hole without picking up some dirt.
Finally, Yan, Clinton is clearly referring to the alt-right, not to Trump voters. She didn’t say “voters” (contra your “clearly said voters”) and she references their websites and tweets (she even gives numbers of followers). Now why would an ostensibly left wing person be on a left wing website reciting right wing lies as if they were truths? I wonder …
This is a new level of intellectual dishonesty for Faustusnotes, inventing a completely fictional quotation for me (“contra your ‘clearly said voters'”).
As for the point made with the phony quote, it is, like Raven and Layman’s, a piece of misdirection.
The debate was whether Hillary about the *half* part, not about unredeemables or about whether it’s voters or supporters. Of course half of Trump’s supporters is an even grosser generalization than Trump voters, so, again, Faustusnotes just trying to misdirect.
Here’s Hillary’s words again: “you know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.”
She was clearly referring to no such thing. If she were clearly referring as you claim, there would not have been the backlash against it there was, and when the quote was viewed in context you could point to where she said such things rather than making vague references to which parts suggest that we should infer them.
Mainstream liberals at the time were not arguing she meant “the alt-right”, in case you’ve forgotten; they were arguing she meant all of the racists/sexists/xenophobes in the Republican Party. A lot of them were specific that these were the cultural conservatives who vote against their economic interests… because their values are deplorable.
It was a dog whistle, plain and simple. At the time, there was a triumphalist thread in mainstream liberal expectations for November that included such heady topics as how post-election the GOP would collapse and the redeemable (i.e., fiscal center-right but socially libertarian-ish) portions could be folded into a demographically-mandated permanent Democratic majority (and even better, one that would be unbeholden to impolite leftists who lack proper bourgeois sensibilities). The reaction I saw in liberal social contexts at the time was most often “yeah, f**k all those bigots”, with a heavy dose of class prejudice behind them. This was red meat for the base. It was meant to be offensive, but able to be parsed deniably as well. There really is no better description than “liberal dog whistle”.
Yan: “You’re both right–I missed that she limits the irredeemable to only some. But don’t use this as an excuse to ignore the larger point that the deplorable comment was about half of Trump voters, not a small group of internet trolls.”
This is frankly a bizarre complaint, given that you previously wrote:
“Personally, I think it’s true that half of Trump voters are deplorable.”
…and went on to say the offensive part of her comment was the irredeemable part, which you now admit you got wrong. Apparently you agree with her main point, mistook her corollary point, and blame her for your mistake.
faustusnotes seems to be arguing, in effect, that anyone who doesn’t like black bloc tactics (I’m not saying Henry used those, only that fn and others seem to be defending them) is a Nazi apologist. In effect, that the antifas and the black bloc are the only ones we can rely on to save us from Nazi, fascist goons.
And that anyone entering “political debate” who can be identified and targeted is fair game. (People wearing ACT-UP t shirts, people posting about abortion rights rallies, women going into synagogue.)
How far I would trust people who really believe that in any situation where I might be exposed is not very far at all.
@72
“By comparison, Trumps said many Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists”
This thread has gone a strange direction, hasn’t it? “Precisely how many people are in Clinton’s ‘Basket of Deplorables?’ Nate Silver will be joining us next…”
Look, people, smart politicians generally avoid statements of this kind because they have a rudimentary understanding of human nature. If you go to Cleveland to give a speech and say, “some of the people here are stupid,” a not insubstantial proportion of your audience hears, “he just said we’re stupid.” Next day the local paper headline is, “Speaker Calls Clevelanders ‘Stupid'”, and away we go.
When Trump made his infamous remark about rapists he of course did not say, “all Mexicans are rapists,” though that’s what most people heard. What he actually said was bizarre and racist enough; essentially that there was some sort of coordinated effort to send criminals, whatever their relative proportion of the population might be, to the U.S. But that’s not what got heard and reported around the world.
So I don’t see how it matters how many Deplorables Clinton really thinks exist, she was stupid to have said this within earshot of anyone who might have reported it out.
On another general point: what is the possible point of engaging someone like this? Seventy years of mainstream discussion and evidence has failed to convince these sober rationalists that Nazism may be a substandard idea. Are we to hope that a single dose of Socratic dialogue in an airport lobby will do the trick, or are we just giving them a chance to redeem themselves and admit that they think Hitler had only a few good ideas? Or more generally, has Nazism ever been reasoned out of existence? IIRC that didn’t go so well the first time, but I’m open to contrary evidence.
Anyway, I think these fellows will be fine. A man with the presence of mind to don his tactical shorts in the morning is clearly one who is ready for anything.
(/s? I’ve no idea any more. The world’s just too weird)
bianca steele
I’m not clear on what your position is, in relation to Henry’s original post. Would you argue that we should not post images of people online without their permission? If not, how is your position different from that?
Heliopause @91. Thanks! Thats similar to my point, no matter how well covered by caveats you think you are, the opposition is going to do their darndest to hang you with your own words. So they will deliberately taken them out of context, or apply misleading framing or whatever to make it sound like you are hating on a good many people. Its why political debate is so hard -because there is always a dedicated team whose job is to find ways to make you be misunderstood in a way which generates maximum blowback.
Individual autonomy is sacred (“he has a right to wear whatever shirt he wants to”) and any social commitments that go beyond ensuring individual autonomy are profane (“sure, expressing support for fascism is a bad thing, but so is accidentally hurting someone’s on-line profile!”).
Valuing individual autonomy and collective well-being should be in dynamic tension. We are way out of balance (for good historical reasons, but…), becoming a horde of self-realized egos on the precipice of consumerist tyranny and ecological collapse.
Mainstream liberals at the time were not arguing she meant “the alt-rightâ€, in case you’ve forgotten; they were arguing she meant all of the racists/sexists/xenophobes in the Republican Party. A lot of them were specific that these were the cultural conservatives who vote against their economic interests… because their values are deplorable.
It was a dog whistle, plain and simple.
Oh, so not the alt-right. Just ordinary, common or garden racists, sexists and xenophobes.
You’re right then. Completely unreasonable of her.
And criticising racists/sexists/xenophobes is a “dog whistle” now and not to be tolerated? Beam me up, Scotty.
So I don’t see how it matters how many Deplorables Clinton really thinks exist, she was stupid to have said this within earshot of anyone who might have reported it out.
Totally agree. I just don’t agree the factoid version of what she actually meant should be endlessly retailed as if it was gospel truth.
[This is the point at which Soullite has permanently barred himself from my threads].
I’ll need to find someone else to taunt, then.
Potato 07.25.17 at 4:21 am:
I won’t contaminate the tribal pile on ever again with a comment.
Missed my chance there, too.
Then, taj brilliantly parodies the give-a-Nazi-shirt-wearer-the-benefit-of-the-doubt arguments (in a fashion often seen on CT), but runs up against Poe’s Law.
I am glad that I clicked on whatever brought me to this parallel universe. Or thread – whatever.
Bianca, this dude has not been identified. He will not and cannot be identified from that picture. Do you understand this? Because all the pro-nazi concern trolling happening here is irrelevant in the face of this simple fact: no one is doxxing this dude.
Yan, at comment 60 you directly claimed that Clinton said it was half of trump voters. Hence my “you clearly said voters”. You went on to say you yourself think half of trump voters are deplorable. All your words, not me putting words in your mouth. You then, having claimed she identifies voters explicitly, not supporters, put her quote directly in your comment. In the quote she does not say voters once, refers only to supporters, then elaborates on her point by explaining that their (the supporters) websites have gone from 11000 to 111 million views and that trump retweets their (his supporters) hate speech.
From this – a quote which doesn’t use the word voters and which clearly explains the type of supporter she is talking about – you take her to be referring to non politically active ordinary voters.
This is a reading comprehension fail. Take note orange watch, this is how you get things wrong on the Internet.
You then take as your support not clintons words herself but the reaction of unspecified liberal commentators. but the fact that she said something not very politically astute is not evidence that she said whatever you want to think she said.
I can see that 2017is going to be a vintage year on CT, as trumps fans on the left implode as they come to realize that the dude they thought was a spokesman for the white working class is exactly the money-laundering Russian gangster nazi wannabe that we said he would be.
Yan @ 87: “This is a new level of intellectual dishonesty for Faustusnotes, inventing a completely fictional quotation for me (“contra your ‘clearly said voters’â€).â€
Yan in #60: “She explicitly says that it’s half of Trump voters.â€
What she actually, clearly, explicitly said: “We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.â€
“Voters†and “supporters†are surely overlapping sets, but just as surely not identical sets.
taj @ 93: “Or more generally, has Nazism ever been reasoned out of existence? IIRC that didn’t go so well the first time, but I’m open to contrary evidence.â€
In fact, it went so splendidly (peacefully) all the first dozen times that people expected it to go just as well the 13th time, in the mid-20th century. That’s the trouble with building up a high success rate: everyone gets too complacent and at ease.
Empathy for outright Nazis is someting we hopefully can still afford in western democracies, even in the US version. They are sufficiently marginaliced to typically do more harm to themself then to others with their troubled minds. That those minds have a levels of internal coherence and historical education that makes them automatically eleminationist is rather doubtfull considering they adhere to such an illogical ideology.
The anger and fear part of my brain usually gets activated by the not quite Nazi decently till good looking racist in a suit. By that i dont mean Trump of course, mostly because he doesnt even look decent.
Ogden@98 – my “favourite” example of Poe’s Law has to be Tomorrow Belongs to Me, the song Ebb and Kander wrote for Cabaret to illustrate the power of an ugly idea seductively delivered. Of course it’s a legit Nazi anthem now, and the fact that it was written by Jews is seen as either irrelevant – as if they were simply a household appliance through which it was delivered – or even a kind of bonus.
Are we to hope that a single dose of Socratic dialogue in an airport lobby will do the trick, or are we just giving them a chance to redeem themselves and admit that they think Hitler had only a few good ideas? Or more generally, has Nazism ever been reasoned out of existence?
Since the question has been asked, it seems worth drawing attention to the testimony of ex-Nazis: for example, Ray Hill’s The Other Side Of Terror and Ingo Hasselbach’s Fuhrer Ex.
J-D, my position is laid out in @25. I opened this thread to find people saying “everyone has a responsibility to publicly shame people who don’t behave decently” and “anyone who makes a public affirmation of political belief has forfeited the right to be left alone” (which happens to be basically what the bro dudes say when they harass women on Twitter).
Your position seems to be that a person who posts a picture of a stranger on Twitter is doing exactly what news organizations do.
Compliments to Heliopause for @91 — awesome.
I’m afraid I let Henry get away with misdescribing my blog post. He says I “replaced” my initial condemnation (regarding the ridicule of overweight people and/or Republicans). That’s not true — it’s all still there at the top of the blog post. I added a series of updates to the post as new “gotcha” information about the photo was provided by Henry and others.
Helen@97: And criticising racists/sexists/xenophobes is a “dog whistle†now and not to be tolerated?
‘m nt sr f y’r srs r jst nsltngly dsmssv, s ‘ll mk wht’s lkly mstk nd tk y srsly. The “dog whistle” aspect is not the criticism of -ists and -obes. It’s the thinly-veiled kulturekampf “aren’t you a smart, sophisticated metropolitan American, and aren’t they just a bunch of dumb, bigoted hicks?” undertone. It’s what both many liberals and many conservatives heard when she said that. Referring to it as a dog whistle is referring to how it communicates that idea while allowing complete deniability as to having said it. Clinton either knew or damned well should have known what would be heard when she said that.
bianca steele: “J-D, my position is laid out in @25.”
Let’s have a look at it.
“1. I don’t care for arguments that “the group†is right to shame anyone they don’t like.”
I guess I don’t really understand what ‘shame’ means in this context. The person in the photo is clearly advertising himself as a Trump supporter (the hat) and a Nazi (the shirt). If he is not ashamed to advertise himself that way, how is describing him as a Trump supporter and a Nazi synonymous with ‘shaming’ him?
” 2. I’m dubious about arguments that every person should get the right to be judge and jury in others’ cases.”
Well, every person has (in my view) the right to free thought and free expression, which means (I think) that were all entitled to judge others and speak those judgements aloud. It’s my right, just as it’s his right to advertise his nazism. So I don’t know how you square that with your objection here. If anything, one group is saying (in effect) ‘this fellow is wrong for being a Nazi, and you’re saying ‘you fellows are wrong for judging him’. What’s the difference between the one and the other?
bianca steele @106: I see more of a thread with a remarkable amount of defense of these Nazis (at the very least the term concern trolling sounds just about apt), and some disingenuous accusations of doxxing, when Henry did nothing of this sort. Though I agree with you that no one has a duty to shame anyone, and believe the appropriate level of restraint in formulating public criticism is a matter of degree (and a complicated function of a lot of variables).
But my main area of disagreement with you is about what I read as relativism — that this is about some people disagreeing with some statements on T-shirts, and the content of the statements is secondary to the fact of disagreement. And I just don’t think one can have an ethical judgement without considering the content. These aren’t satanist T-shirts, or animal rights T-shirts, or pro-science T-shirts, or RNC T-shirts, or anti-DAP T-shirts, or Black Lives Matter T-Shirts, or Blue Lives Matter T-Shirts or even anti-abortion T-shirts, or 1000 other kinds of T-shirts all of which would have been both controversial (offensive to some) and unremarkable in pre-Trump America. These are Nazi T-shirts. (Well, one is here – in general, I mean.) Now, in Trump’s America, being worn in public. And as Jesus said in the Sermon of the Mount, You Shall Know Them by Their T-Shirts.
1. I don’t care for arguments that … 2. I’m dubious about arguments that … 3. The technology is new and I don’t think it will turn out to have been clear that …
So if Henry, before blogging, had consulted you for advice about whether he should post the picture, your response would have been ‘I’m not sure’; or so it appears. If you perceive arguments of some weight against posting the picture, but you’re not sure they’re conclusive, then it would be reasonable for you to say that you’re not sure; but what isn’t clear to me is what (in your opinion) are the arguments against Henry’s posting the picture.
Your position seems to be that a person who posts a picture of a stranger on Twitter is doing exactly what news organizations do.
No two things are exactly the same, but so far I haven’t found an explanation of what a relevant difference might be, in your comments or in anybody else’s here; and this is connected to the fact that nobody has made clear what the objection is to Henry’s posting the picture, because if we knew what the objection was, we could compare the two situations and see whether the objection is, or is not, equally applicable to different scenarios.
On the other hand, if I were saying that posting a stranger’s picture on Twitter is the same as what news organisations do, I don’t know whether you’d agree, or disagree, or be unsure; this is another respect in which your position is unclear.
If you think I said anything that suggests relativism, I think you’re reading with remarkable uncharity. In the years since I’ve joined CT’s comments section, I’ve learned to expect better than that from you, so I’m surprised.
I’d note that you and others have mentioned Germany’s law, which as I’ve heard it described, for what it’s worth, would forbid this post by Henry if it forbids the shirt.
To both of you, I clearly said that I don’t object to the post. What I object to is others’ failing to draw clear lines to show that they understand this case is extreme.
Layman @ 109 That “I’m right to call you wrong†vs. “You’re wrong to call others wrong†is merely a matter of grammatical ‘conjugation’, like Bertrand Russell’s “I am firm, you are stubborn, he is a pig-headed foolâ€.
Bianca, of the fuckheads from the alt right restricted their attacks on feminists on twitter to tweets saying “look! Feminist x is a democrat who supports feminism” I think there would be a lot more feminists on twitter. It would be, comparatively, a warm and welcoming environment for women. But that’s not what happens : we see death threats, SWATting, revealing home addresses, rape threats, and revenge porn. Henry has done none of these things. There is no comparison between what Henry has done and what the alt right does in defense of its NAZI ideals every day. It’s important to recognize who is doing what to whom if we are to fight the tide of evil sweeping over the west. Concern trolling your own side does not help with this.
To reiterate: this is not a doxxing, it is not virtual harassment. End of story.
bianca @112: I don’t really consider relativism as such a terrible thing that suggesting it means to be uncharitable. I like to cultivate small amounts of cultural relativism myself, to keep some wriggle room in what otherwise would be inappropriately rigid judgements and open doors to interrogating the things that feel uncomfortable.
FWIW, I usually like your stuff very much. It just appeared to me that you were equating a Nazi shirt with something a goth youth would wear in a way the usefulness I didn’t see. And still don’t, but clearly I’m not understanding your point then (since you object so strenuously with the interpretation I’m putting on it), and I’m fine with leaving it here. Wasn’t Henry’s point that the shirt is extreme, and that its appearance in a commonplace, mixed public setting is somewhat emblematic of Trump’s America?
As for Germany, I did a quick search. As in other places where the rule of law is valid, what isn’t explicitly forbidden is allowed in Germany. The shirt doesn’t contain a known Nazi symbol (swastika, others) as per the list maintained by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (not sure if that’s the official name in English), AFAICT. So whether it would be forbidden depends on whether there was already a court order that assimilated the Daily Stormer, specifically, with the glorification of the NSDAP. Which I supposed could very well happen, or already have happened — or a judge could find that it doesn’t. I’d say it’s a borderline case (not everything neo-Nazi is forbidden in Germany — there’s lot of quite overt flirting and mutual cuddling between the openly operating extreme-right fringe (the identitarian movement, the AfD, the NDP etc. etc.) and actual neo-Nazis).
To both of you, I clearly said that I don’t object to the post. What I object to is others’ failing to draw clear lines to show that they understand this case is extreme.
Once again, your meaning is unclear. Do you mean that it should be acknowledged that posting a photograph of somebody online is an extreme action? or that normally photographs of people should not be posted online, but when somebody wears a Daily Stormer T-shirt that’s an extreme case that justifies an exception? or what?
bianca steele @ 106: I think the “bro dudes” who harass women should be publicly shamed for their misbehavior, to discourage repetition by themselves or others.
Cf. this Disqus debate nearly three years ago about one of the Daily Stormer’s heroes, swastika-tattooed doxxer Andrew ‘Weev’ Auernheimer (and another stalker):
[Ron Maimon]> (a) “The discussions here are dominated by those who wish to impose censorship measures in response to unfortunate but extremely rare incidents of direct hateful threats. Lack of censorship is the most important thing to preserve…. The article above, and this comment, simply make propaganda for the censoring of internet discussions. There is no need for censorship, the current censorship is already bad enough.†(b) “The cause is ensuring a free internet for all. … There was no actual imminent threat from the discussions EVEN WITH THE DOXXING. …†(c) “… The people here are FORGETTING basic human decency, and substituting a lynch mob mentality for it. ….â€
[Raven]> “I think basic human decency excludes letting women and children be stalked and harassed with death threats etc. in their own homes — and defending such actions. That you call people who want such actions to carry a prison term a ‘lynch mob’ is an example of your hyperbole making your language meaningless. Lynch mobs take men out of prison and kill them — which is exactly not what’s proposed here. …â€
To show that the defense doesn’t end at T-shirts, but extends to doxxing… if done by the right wing.
The shirt doesn’t contain a known Nazi symbol (swastika, others) as per the list maintained by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (not sure if that’s the official name in English), AFAICT.
Judging by its website, there’s no official English name; the English-language version of the website uses the German name.
{ 119 comments }
Bill Benzon 07.22.17 at 6:20 pm
A different version:
Tom Moody 07.22.17 at 8:23 pm
Class prejudice, anyone? Why not caption this “the deplorables”?
Henry 07.22.17 at 10:54 pm
Likely you are getting into a huff because you don’t realize the point of the photo – the Daily Stormer is a neo-Nazi website. If the individual sporting this had been a buff, chisel-jawed specimen of ideal-typical Aryan physique, I’d be posting it just the same. The point is not (contra your claim on your website) that Trump supporters are overweight. It is that we live in a country where it is now unremarkable for people to wear neo-Nazi t-shirts. Clear now?
Philippe 07.22.17 at 11:48 pm
Sorry but this is just creepy. Wearing offensive t shirts is not illegal and even if they were were I wouldn’t want to live it in a world where citizens shame or denounce each other publicly over the internet . You could have shared these photos privately or simply described them to us. I don’t see how this is different from Christian groups broadcasting pictures of people entering abortion clinics or brothels. There should be laws against this -which assure that individuals enjoy the same level of privacy as existed before the internet- and in fact in some countries I think there are. At a minimum you should have blurred the faces to make the subjects unidentifiable. You would have made your point and preserved the privacy they can expect to enjoy , even in a public place.
Michael Froomkin 07.23.17 at 12:25 am
Wait. (Re #4) We should not denounce and shame neo-Nazis? When did that happen?
Silence in the face of evil is what’s creepy.
Of course wearing a neo-Nazi t-shirt is not illegal in the USA, and as a member of that polity I fully support the right to wear it in the USA without suffering any interference from the state. But we citizens and residents are not the state: we have every right, and I would argue duty, to express revulsion, to shame the wearers, perhaps even in some cases to shun them — so long as we do not invoke state power to do so.
The privacy in public you assert is here wielded as a shield behind which to use the sword of wearing a message in public reasonably calculated to upset and perhaps intimidate members of the groups that neo-Nazis wish to harm, expel, or exterminate, as may be the case. That earns and deserves our scorn and is well worth calling out in person or on line — and on line may be safer as it will less likely lead to violence.
(I will grant that there may be a special case for very young people, who ought not perhaps to have youthful idiocy showcased on line so it can follow them for all their days. But I do not see how this applies to most adults when the facts reported about them are true.)
Again, the — very dear — right to free expression is a right against state coercion and retaliation. It is not a right to force others to suffer your views in silence, nor is it a right to avoid embarrassment when the community around you expresses its justified disgust peacefully and, especially, civilly.
Collin Street 07.23.17 at 2:34 am
See, the meaning of wearing a nazi t-shirt is “I endorse naziism”, and the meaning of naziism is — inter-alia — “jews should be killed by the government”.
So to wear a nazi t-shirt is to declare to all that see you that you think that jews should be killed, and it should be treated exactly the same as, you know, walking up to people and saying it in words. Because it has the same meaning and content.
Alan White 07.23.17 at 3:48 am
Michael @ 5 gets it right.
Harry 07.23.17 at 6:45 am
Depending on how I enter this thread I get a completely different set of 7 comments. Weird.
Tom Moody — how do you know the class of these young men exactly? Maybe you just assume that educated upper class people wouldn’t be Nazis? Is that class prejudice? Neither the dress sense nor the body shapes of the young men would be out of place on my (highly selective) campus. Well, the Nazi T-shirt would.
I do agree with Michael, Collin and Alan that if you wear a Nazi (or, generally, a very provocative) symbol you are fair game. I don’t know exactly wear to draw the line, though — Planned Parenthood, or Trump/Pence, T-shirts seem off-limits to me (unless you are Trump or Pence, obviously….)
Of course, he might have picked it up at Goodwill, and be entirely innocent of the meaning.
e julius drivingstorm 07.23.17 at 7:08 am
Harry. Yeah. If you click on the comments you get the alt-right thread with Tom Moody and Philippe, but if you click on the picture you get an entirely different set of comments with engels and Dr. Hilarius, etc.,(6 as of now). Anyway, I think the man with the microphone in the roses has it covered. The dual thread stuff is pure genius on Henry’s part.
nastywoman 07.23.17 at 9:05 am
– and by responding: ”there is always California” -(or something similar) – and ”moderation” not posting such a remark – you pointed to an important point.
People with Daily Stormer T-shirts might be indeed ”Trump’s America” –
and that’s why a lot of Europeans now like to call America ”Trumpland”.
But the ”great” thing about ”Trumpland” is – that it produced such a ”great” -(and also tremendously humorous) backlash against ”Trumps America”.
And I say that as a European-American, who also thought for a while that Trump -(and his fans) were some kind of ”hardcore (Neo) Nazis” who HAD to be stopped – the way Germany -(or France) stops it’s violent ”Neo Nazis” – and ”anti-Semites” and any hateful racists of any race or religious conviction with laws against distributing ”Neo-Nazi Gedankengut” or ”Hate speech”.
But with my homeland having this… let’s call it: ”Love for free speech” and lawyers like the legendary Glenn Greenwald stressing the point – that also the last ”Nazi” has a right to ”free speech” and HAS to be defended -(ironically in the words of the cult of Greenwald against some ”Nazi State”) – the situation in my homeland -(and thusly also the so called ”Nazis”) – seem to be a lot different than in Europe?
And as I have come to the conclusion – that Trump is more or less this ”doofus-idiot” with for sure all kind of ”fascistic” ideas – but NOT in the way – for example a ”hardcore German Neo-Nazi” would express it -(by really ”killing”) – I really don’t know IF:
”To wear a nazi t-shirt -(in America) is to declare to all that see you that you think that jews should be killed, and it should be treated exactly the same as, you know, walking up to people and saying it in words.”
And referring to the thread of Chris Bertram – and ”the Jewish Question” – in France and in Germany I probably would call the police in order to have them rip the shirt of this dude – but in the US… I just don’t know???!
nastywoman 07.23.17 at 9:13 am
@10
and wait I would like to have may last comment in this comment section and NOT in ”the other one”.
Tom Moody 07.23.17 at 9:58 am
Dual threads depending on whether someone agrees with you seems a little dicey but it’s your blog. Am happy to be coded with Philippe (comment 4) but perhaps not too happy to have that commentary characterized as “the alt-right thread with Tom Moody and Philippe.”
Faustusnotes 07.23.17 at 11:07 am
Wait! Wasnt antisemitism a European problem!?
Philippe 07.23.17 at 11:44 am
A lot of assumptions are being made on this thread concerning the beliefs and intentions of the subjects without any form of discovery or confrontation whatsoever. That’s just prosecutorial abuse of power. While these assumptions may be reasonable , the lack of due process is a denial of justice. The internet imposes that publishers meet a greater threshold of responsibility than is required with forms of publication that are less viral.
Val 07.23.17 at 11:56 am
So CT is now existing in two parallel universes? That explains A LOT OF THINGS. (Like the guy on the other thread who I think is calling me a climate change denier – it all makes sense because in a parallel universe I COULD BE)
Val 07.23.17 at 11:58 am
And engels saying that I support capitalism! In a parallel universe I PROBABLY DO.
nastywoman 07.23.17 at 12:00 pm
@12
”but perhaps not to happy”
My two favorite T-shirts are: ”Speak slowly I am blond” – and a black Warner Brothers T-Shirt with Bugs Bunny on it – which I wear all the time in the US – but nearly never in Europe – as I know I get a lot more compliments in my homeland for such ”self-promotion” – which is saying – if you put on a T-shirt which says something – you definitely want others to read it and compliment (and photograph?) you.
I know that for sure – and so Henry just did the good looking dude with his beautiful T-Shirt a yuuuge favor!
-(he made him no even famous on Crooked Timber!)
Keith 07.23.17 at 1:06 pm
Once it would have been the KKK. Modern America is much less Natzi inclined and prejudiced than it used to be. Recall father Coughlin of blessed memory?
The odd t shirt and the nasty unpleasantness online should not be taken out of historical context. The main problem is the apathy and cynicism that produces low political participation by most people. Plus the huge ignorance that Trump has and the large minority of people who are as ignorant as their president. Hopefully the uptick in stupid will be temporary. Many countries have a much more serious problem with Fascism and authoritarian politics. Poland is run by the ideological decedents of the good father Coughlin.
Ebenezer Scrooge 07.23.17 at 1:25 pm
I disagree with Froomkin @ 5. Not that I have any problems with posting the picture. But to me, the key distinction isn’t public-private. (Employees have no free speech rights, and I’m not fine with this.) It is that there are limits to tolerance. Our cockamamie First Amendment jurisprudence doesn’t recognize such limits–Citizens United being a particularly egregious example. Most European countries–and Canada!–understand that there is a difference between, say, socialism and Naziism. The US doesn’t.
Maybe this is all for the best. Maybe we need a ridiculous fence around the law because we can’t govern ourselves. But even if this is true, it is not what we should be wanting.
soullite 07.23.17 at 1:25 pm
[This is the point at which Soullite has permanently barred himself from my threads].
Goodbye.
PGD 07.23.17 at 1:58 pm
I am as pro-free speech as it gets but think it’s fine to post a public photo of this guy wearing a t-shirt in public, and point out what it means.
Check out the description of the t-shirt on the DS web site, which includes the following advertising line:
“You will get a rush secretly wearing a Nazi t-shirt in public without having to suffer the consequences of wearing a Nazi t-shirt in public.”
https://www.dailystormer.com/get-the-daily-stormer-t-shirt-now/
Layman 07.23.17 at 2:21 pm
Philippe: “Wearing offensive t shirts is not illegal and even if they were were I wouldn’t want to live it in a world where citizens shame or denounce each other publicly over the internet.”
People with Nazi views should be shamed and denounced. Why not?
Dr. Hilarius 07.23.17 at 3:05 pm
Harry @ 7: thanks, I had no idea my comment had been posted in an alternate universe and was wondering why I was not seeing it here (did I spell something wrong? forget to hit submit? give offense in some way?). The internet is a wily beast.
Henry 07.23.17 at 3:32 pm
I am presuming that the dual comment thread problem is a database glitch. I actually hadn’t realized that there was a second comment thread in the ether somewhere, and spent 20 minutes in WordPress yesterday trying to figure out where the comments I had approved were going to, and failing.
Compare Philippe:
and what PGD tells us about the advertising for the t-shirt:
In general, I think that some generosity of interpretation is warranted in people’s proclamation of their attachment to causes – but when they are publicly attaching themselves to a cause noted for the mass murder of Jews, black people, those with severe disabilities, members of the Roma and so on, my generosity finds its limits. Perhaps, if I was calling for this person to be doxxed and shunned by friends, employers etc, there would be fair grounds for a pushback, on the grounds that he might (barely conceivably) have been wearing it ironically, but I am not doing that. Instead, I’m pointing out that he is wearing a neo-Nazi t-shirt (publicizing a website that names itself after Julius Streich’s notoriously vile hate sheet Der Stuermer) in public, and that I presume he had to go to some effort to direct order from the site (I don’t believe there are other, more mainstream stores that carry this particular line of merchandise, for all the obvious reasons). That’s not something I would have expected to see in the major airport for Washington DC nine months ago. And that the t-shirt is advertised as allowing you to display your Nazi views, without suffering the public consequences, only makes the case stronger.
bianca steele 07.23.17 at 3:48 pm
I’m amused by the picture (though I’m not 100% sure both guys are over 18). But it makes me uncomfortable to say the objections have no merit. 1. I don’t care for arguments that “the group” is right to shame anyone they don’t like. This is an extreme but some commenters are using arguments that don’t only apply to extremes. They might say a reasonable person knows that absolute arguments shouldn’t be made unless they really apply, but I don’t know how to tell that’s what they’re doing. 2. I’m dubious about arguments that every person should get the right to be judge and jury in others’ cases. The guy may deserve to be shamed but that doesn’t mean we all have a duty to shame him. It’s not as if we’re so close to being taken for Nazis that we have to vehemently declare that we’re not. 3. The technology is new and I don’t think it will turn out to have been clear that individuals are right to publish other people’s images worldwide in the way news organizations do, or even with fewer restrictions than they do.
Again, their shirts are extreme but in rather different circumstances they could have been wearing shirts for a heavy metal band with overt Satanist overtones that large numbers of people would find very objectionable.
On the other hand, I don’t think the airport should permit these guys to stand there for any passenger disembarking to see.
Henry 07.23.17 at 3:51 pm
And Tom Moody – this, from your website:
is a bit off. You got your initial condemnation wrong, which is fine – it happens. But then, you replaced the condemnation with a grumpy statement to the effect that I was now in the game of condemning people for controversial t-shirts, which you then deleted, and have now replaced with yet a third unrelated complaint about how I am supposedly slurring the bystanders for their toleration. As far as I can see, the only common thread in your argument is that I am wrong (for three successive, but completely different reasons) and that you are completely right in your initial decision to be critical of me. I recommend Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber’s fantastic new book, The Enigma of Reason for a detailed discussion of what lies behind this model of argumentation (see especially the final chapters) – while, as they argue it can be harnessed for useful purposes at the collective level, it can also look a bit ungainly at the individual (consider this intervention the kind of social correction that Mercier and Sperber call for, and an invitation to reconsider your style of arguing and reasoning).
Layman 07.23.17 at 3:53 pm
Philippe: “A lot of assumptions are being made on this thread concerning the beliefs and intentions of the subjects without any form of discovery or confrontation whatsoever.”
Really, I think this is ridiculous. If a person chooses to wear a social or political slogan in a public place, it’s reasonable to assume they are happy to be, even that they want to be, associated by the public with that social or political slogan. If they’re happy to be publicly associated with it, what’s the objection to publicly associating them with it? These pictures were not stolen from their private collection, or secretly taken in their home without their knowledge. They were taken in public, where the wearer of the slogan intended to be seen. If you want to imagine that the wearer is innocent, that he doesn’t know what his t-shirt means, then of course you’re free to do that; but in that case I think you’re the one doing the disservice of assumption, by assuming that he’s stupid.
Tom Moody 07.23.17 at 3:55 pm
You can’t say “How did you miss the neo-nazi shirt?” and then rely on someone else’s research that the shirt is a trick (hiding-nazism-in-plain-sight), to show that you gave the issue a fair hearing. Is it covert or overt? Your assumption seems to be that everyone should recognize the shirt and stand as far away from the wearer as possible, and if they don’t they are fair game to lumped into a photo called “Trump’s America.”
Tom Moody 07.23.17 at 3:57 pm
correction: “…to be lumped…”
Tom Moody 07.23.17 at 4:08 pm
Yes, it took a few tries on my site to nail what I find so troubling about your photo and caption. I wouldn’t call that a model of argumentation but thanks for taking my criticism so seriously.
Henry 07.23.17 at 4:15 pm
Mercier and Sperber argue (I think rightly) that it is the way in which we all tend to reason and argue, but that under the right collective circumstances it can be a good rather than a bad thing (we don’t want to converge too quickly on what is apparently the ‘right’ answer). It really is a quite brilliant book, which I’m recommending to everyone.
Henry 07.23.17 at 4:24 pm
On the substantive point, I didn’t say “How did you miss the neo-Nazi t-shirt?” What I said was more like ‘you missed the neo-Nazi t-shirt – are you clear now’ – a correction of a mistake rather than an expression of disbelief that you could have made the mistake in the first place. I imagine a lot of CT readers got the t-shirt, either because they follow the American extreme right, or because they are familiar with the website’s actual-Nazi predecessor. But I also imagine that a fair number didn’t. And I don’t expect that most people at Dulles had any idea. In an ideal world, I’d like to think that the guy with the flowers was giving Nazi t-shirt guy the fish-eye because, but I imagine that’s almost certainly an accident of composition and timing.
Leo Casey 07.23.17 at 4:49 pm
The complaints about the original post thread are much ado about very little. One wears a t-shirt with a political message to make a public political statement. Don’t want to be part of public debate, don’t wear a t-shirt with a political message.
Note this is content neutral: today, I wore to brunch a t-shirt that pronounced “Keep the Immigrants. Deport the Republicans.” Do I have a complaint if a picture of me appears on a conservative blog, from someone who decided it was a nefarious message? Hardly.
The point of Henry’s original post, as I read it, was that in Trump’s America, people feel free to make public neo-Nazi statements in ways that were once unthinkable. Seems to me that there is ample evidence to support that point.
Tom Moody 07.23.17 at 4:50 pm
If I had posted what I thought was a trenchant critique of Nazism in our country and someone thought it was about overweight people, I might have done a little soul searching (could the photo have been clearer? was my caption too simplistic?) before going on the attack. If “a fair number of CT readers” could have missed the reference, a better response might be “heh – maybe I should have been clearer” instead of coming after the commenter hammer and tongs, minutely tracking the revisions of his blog update as evidence of flawed reasoning, etc. But again, at least you didn’t brush off the criticism completely, or go full ad hominem.
nastywoman 07.23.17 at 4:56 pm
@28
– ”In an ideal world, I’d like to think that the guy with the flowers was giving Nazi t-shirt guy the fish-eye because, but I imagine that’s almost certainly an accident of composition and timing.”
And I firstly thought it was the very… interesting composition and timing which made it ”Trumps America”?
As the man ”on the Left” with flowers in his hands – waiting to welcome ”a loved one” – looking at two obvious ”dudes” -(no value judgement intended as there are ”good” and ”bad” dudes) with one of them having ”American” writing over his -(signaling ”Ablehnung”) – folded arms -(and I’m just trying to recap what I saw first) – and then –
THEN: ”The Daily Stormer”.
And I thought that was kind of a ”better” visual ”expression” of ”Trumps America” – than the pictures of the beggars in Trump-masks and Trump-outfits we had taken in Berlin or Venice.
Donald Johnson 07.23.17 at 5:22 pm
The problem for me is that the title Trump’s America gave me the impression you were condemning all those people– initially I didn’t even see the Nazi T shirt and wondered what the heck you were doing. Then I thought you were condemning all those people for tolerating or being friends with a guy wearing a Nazi T shirt, which would only be fair if they knew what it was. It turns out you only meant to condemn the actual wearer ( and presumably any friends in the photo who don’t mind his choice of attire).
I think it was a confusing post.
Henry 07.23.17 at 5:56 pm
Tom – it is completely fair to say that I should have captioned the photo more clearly – but without belabouring it, I rather think it was you who went on the attack. You first accused me of classist attacks on overweight people. Then, when I pointed out that this was wrong, you proposed in succession a variety of other attacks, which all seemed to me to be efforts to shore up your original position that there was something odious about the post, without ever quite managing to settle on a precise claim as to what that odious quality was. Obviously, this is a storm in a teacup, and none of us are at our best in comments threads, but I don’t think that your claim is correct. If you object to me pointing out the inconsistencies as “minutely tracking the revisions” (not actually so – I just happened to open up the page last night, and not finding the tab easily again this morning, opened it up again to find an entirely different claim as to why I was in the wrong), then I suppose, feel free to continue as you were. Since I’ve spent far more time on this spat than it merits, I’ll leave you to have the last word, if you want it.
Russell L. Carter 07.23.17 at 5:57 pm
I don’t think this was a confusing post. The comments though might give one pause when we consider the last 40 years of US politics and the role of racist, bigoted ‘dog whistles’.
How explicit does it have to be?
RD 07.23.17 at 5:58 pm
If these fellows are white, 25 yo and own a small farm, the sainted Founding Fathers would encourage them to vote.
Not Neil De Grasse, nor Jane Addams .
Potato 07.23.17 at 6:00 pm
Is he over 18? Does that change how we interpret the photo or the morality of doxing someone on the internet?
Who decides wrongthink and the right to dox? If a conservative Christian group starts doxing women who go to planned parenthood, is that okay? In their (wrong) opinion that’s murder, vs wearing a covertly offensive t-shirt. What about doxing abortion providers?
If the answer to this is “no, it’s totally different you moron, because i side with goodthink and not evil Nazi scum” then okay. Fair enough. The next person doxing people/children they disagree with may not share your political views.
Eventually his name will be tagged to this and he may be excluded from professional work forever. I wouldn’t think that is morally right for a murderer who is paroled, let alone a racist idiot who wore a t-shirt. Ymmv
Jane 07.23.17 at 6:07 pm
Actually it’s the guy with the flowers who really makes this picture. The body language is very interesting as he looks on these two ‘deplorables’.
Russell L. Carter 07.23.17 at 6:09 pm
Potato needs to read some David Brin. A real eye-opener, it would be.
Heliopause 07.23.17 at 6:10 pm
Is your sample of one supposed to show that there are more people willing to be open Nazis now than before? Perhaps that’s so. On the other hand, I see far fewer Confederate flags nowadays than just a few years ago, and Confederate monuments are being taken down in Trump’s America. Now, here’s an interesting image from not too long ago, in somebody else’s America: https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/files/2015/06/Button-296×300.jpg
Potato 07.23.17 at 6:38 pm
Russel,
Great point by point refutation. I’m wrong because David Brin. ðŸ‘
nastywoman 07.23.17 at 8:27 pm
@40
”Who decides wrongthink and the right to dox?”
Just everybody by himself – as the beauty of the Internet means – you see a photo -(or the ”real thing”) – like the… ”Stilleben” – beautifully composed as if a Hollywood Set Designer had his hand init – and IT has the title:
”Trumps America” – and you really, really like Trump – you might look at the picture and you might think:
That’s a really ”hot” looking dude -(the one with the red hat and the ”American” on his breasts) – and you really, really might like the picture because Trump is your hero – and you might think but the guy with the flowers on ”the left” is really NOT ”that attractive”?
And so – seeing this photo and reading the comments here – might make you understand why for example Trump saw all these (millions) of people at his inauguration – and why – if you are a ”strong” believer of ”Trumps America” – this photo is no ”dox” or document of wrongthink – as if you are the cute dude with the green hat – the dude to dry – with the wrong think might be the one ”on the left with the flowers”!
nastywoman 07.23.17 at 8:37 pm
– and as I saw this ”Scaramucci” today – he would tell you guys that ”Trumps America” is ”a very beautiful thing” and it always will be ”a beautiful thing” – not unlike why I choose the name ”nastywoman” for this blog.
We got to accept who we are – or we never gonna get over it!
Russell L. Carter 07.23.17 at 9:10 pm
Potato, I don’t do point by point refutations. If you ever get around to widening your world, especially about the particulars of individual privacy that you think a person is entitled to irrespective of the social context, implied or otherwise, you’ll likely be sad to discover that what you think now are concrete principles, evaporate upon contact with the modern ubiquitous surveillance society.
Personally I think it’s an absolutely mandatory personal survival skill to understand the facts on the ground, and in the internet, so to speak, but YMMV.
Layman 07.23.17 at 10:13 pm
Tom Moody: “But again, at least you didn’t brush off the criticism completely, or go full ad hominem.”
No, Tom, that was you.
J-D 07.23.17 at 10:17 pm
Philippe
Against what? against posting images of people on the Web? or what?
Many years ago somebody told me I’d been seen on television, when I’d been completely unaware of it. The explanation was that Helen Razer had been being interviewed in the street for a television broadcast (I think it was Helen Razer, it’s so long ago I can’t be sure, and anyway I didn’t see the broadcast myself) and I’d been clearly visible in the background, looking at some books on a stand outside a shop in the same street. Was that a violation of my privacy? It never felt like it (and the person who told me about it certainly wasn’t suggesting that it was). That’s the sort of thing that was possible before the Internet, and that’s the kind of privacy that was possible then. When people film in the street — and people do film in the street — do they get releases from every passerby, or should they be expected to?
Philippe
That’s a weird comment. Somebody who is not wielding the power of a prosecutor cannot be abusing the power of a prosecutor.
So are you now suggesting that there’s an obligation to get permission before posting somebody’s image online, when there’s not the same level of obligation before including it in a television broadcast that will only be seen by millions of people? or what?
Helen 07.23.17 at 11:38 pm
Let me just point out something about that, because the Right is constantly making a meal out of this, and it’s one of these factoids that get endlessly retailed without anyone checking the provenance of it.
The story everyone seems to have in their head is that Clinton called the white working class/people in flyover states who voted for Trump “deplorables” and this was classist and wrong, and in fact if she had been talking about that broad swathe of people, it certainly would have been.
I went back and read the transcript of what Clinton actually said, and it is crystal clear that by “deplorables” she was talking about the keyboard warriors of 4Chan, Breitbart and the like; NOT the broad base of Republican voters.
I suspect most of the people on the left who are apologetic about the use of the term “deplorables” have swallowed the media story, and that there is also a sizeable minority on the Right who actually do know what she said, but are being deliberately, passive-aggressively obtuse about it.
Faustusnotes 07.24.17 at 12:11 am
This is not a doxing. No address details were given, no name, it’s just a picture of a dude in a t shirt. He is proudly wearing a nazi t shirt in public, which means he is happy to be seen in it. Now he’s being seen in it. What next, that media should blur the faces of all participants in neo nazi rallies? Really, this is just apologia for nazism. If this is where your defense of free speech gets you – to the point of mollycoddling nazis with special protections no one else gets – then you need to have a good long hard look at yourself.
That dude there in that picture is happy to declare himself in public to be a nazi. You know, the political organization America spent three years fighting, spent thousands of young lives fighting. He declares himself publicly as a supporter of mass murder, and wants to broadcast his hate to everyone arriving at an airport. But you want to protect him from being shamed on the Internet.
Also: anti Zionism is the real threat to Americas Jews !
Patrick 07.24.17 at 1:44 am
Strictly speaking, he’s NOT happy to declare himself in public to be a nazi. The whole point of the shirt is its crypto status. He’s in it for the thrill of publicly proclaiming his nazism and not getting caught, like a adult man sitting down next to a coed in a college library and surreptitiously masturbating. Having his photo taken and posted alongside an explanation of what he’s really doing is the last thing he wants.
Donald Johnson 07.24.17 at 2:49 am
Russell Carter–
It wasn’t confusing to you because I assume you immediately saw the shirt and knew what the significance was. I just saw some, um, overweight white guys with baseball caps on,one with an America T shirt which I was able to see, along with some women in the background. I wouldn’t have seen the Nazi shirt if it hadn’t been pointed out in the comments.
My wife saw the Nazi T shirt because I pointed it out to her and until I told her what it represented she didn’t think anything of it.
Not a big deal– whether it was confusing probably depends on your eyesight and knowledge of far right Nazi groups.
Faustusnotes 07.24.17 at 3:31 am
J-D, you were within sight of Helen razer and did not immediately abase yourself to her? I really expected better of you!
Helen 07.24.17 at 3:46 am
Yes, the use of the word “doxing” where no details of the individual have been issued is incorrect. Words mean things, even relatively new ones.
Potato 07.24.17 at 4:18 am
[Consider yourself at liberty to post another comment reiterating your substantive arguments, but without the pejoratives and the claim that everyone disagreeing with you is the victim of ‘mood affiliation’ – the eds]
CW 07.24.17 at 2:30 pm
fyi …
“Cleveland Indians fan’s tweet about fellow fan’s Nazi tattoos draws social media ire.”
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/07/cleveland_indians_fans_tweet_a.html#incart_most-comments
Raven 07.24.17 at 2:48 pm
Eds: May we at least assert that all the lurkers agree with us? [/s]
Nickp 07.24.17 at 5:47 pm
I’m surprised that no one has commented specifically on the baseball caps. “American” shirt dude is wearing the classic red “Make America Great Again” Trump cap. Neo-Nazi’s green cap is somewhat blurred, but it appears to me that it also says “Make America Great Again.” The way neo-nazi is angled towards “American” dude suggests that they are traveling together (fellow travelers?).
That seems relevant to Henry’s title
Yan 07.24.17 at 6:13 pm
@50 “I went back and read the transcript of what Clinton actually said, and it is crystal clear that by “deplorables†she was talking about the keyboard warriors of 4Chan, Breitbart and the like; NOT the broad base of Republican voters.”
This is incorrect.
She explicitly says that it’s half of Trump voters. It’s worth noting, too, that even if your interpretation were correct, a common response from the left was, “so what, it’s true,” demonstrating that the right’ complaint about liberal snobbery isn’t entirely unjustified.
Personally, I think it’s true that half of Trump voters are deplorable. I also think half of Hillary voters are deplorable, if mostly to a lesser degree.
What was really offensive was Hillary’s claim they are *unredeemable.* that was a truly deplorable thing to say.
Here’s the full context:
“We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
hix 07.24.17 at 6:53 pm
Im not 100% comfortable with the picture mainly because the internet has a habit not to forget. He might reform and then he might still never find a job. No objection to punching down in general if the punch is so deserved however.
bob mcmanus 07.24.17 at 8:48 pm
60 Yan: She explicitly says that it’s half of Trump voters.
That also manages to create a contrast with the half of Trump voters who are not deplorable, and even more Republicans who could not bring themselves to vote for Trump. Of course, many of these “good” Republicans had Trump-voting acquaintances, and so many Republican women did not cross party lines as hoped because calling their fathers and brothers deplorables offended them.
In addition, HRC wanted to keep Congressional Republicans reasonably happy, because she was unlikely to get a Democratic Senate in 2016 or 2018 and Clinton had great neoliberal deals to make. She wanted to run on specific policy programs without large progressive commitments that would offend, not ideological or moral differences between the parties. Then she could could be forced as President to make the tough decisions that governing requires at a depth of policy detail that would be more difficult to criticize. See Clinton, Bill; Obama, Barack.
engels 07.24.17 at 8:50 pm
Personally, I think it’s true that half of Trump voters are deplorable. I also think half of Hillary voters are deplorable, if mostly to a lesser degree.
Yep. Also I think you can believe they’re deplorable, as I do, without inflecting this attitude with class snobbery in the way liberals tend to.
Also I agree with Henry: if you don’t want your photo taken don’t walk around in public wearing a Nazi T-shirt.
Helen 07.24.17 at 9:12 pm
Yan, you are talking with 20-20 hindsight where we know that Trump got a high enough proportion of the votes to win the presidency, even without an actual majority. At the time Clinton was speaking, it was still possible for reasonable people to think that the idea that so many people would actually vote for the clownstick was the stuff of situation comedies and that relatively few people would do so. So no, she wasn’t talking about broad swathes of the US population. She’s talking about the alt-right. The phrase “their websites” is the clue.
Raven 07.24.17 at 9:13 pm
Yan, you even quoted HRC specifying what qualities she found deplorable: “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. … Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.†— Yet you feigned she applied the ‘irredeemable’ label to the whole as well.
Collin Street 07.24.17 at 9:30 pm
She explicitly says that it’s half of Trump voters.
Which actually equates to around 10% of the population. It’s like “quarter-pounder”; sure-as-fuck sounds like a lot, but when you do the numbers it’s… really not?
djr 07.24.17 at 9:51 pm
One of the key Nazi beliefs was that it’s OK to murder people based on unchangeable characteristics about themselves that they didn’t choose: having Jewish ancestors, being gay, etc. If people don’t want to employ him at some hypothetical point in the future when he no longer wears Nazi clothing because Henry posted this picture, then at least they’re judging him based on something he chose to do.
Layman 07.24.17 at 10:24 pm
@Yan, as long as you’re parsing the text, you might note that Hillary says only _some_ of the deplorables are irredeemable; not all or even most of them. Just as you agree with her that half of Trump’s voters are deplorable, I’m guessing you also agree that some of those are irredeemable.
Layman 07.24.17 at 10:27 pm
Going further, Hillary’s ‘deplorables’ comment, like Barack’s ‘clinging to their guns’ comment before it, are classic examples of political gaffes, where gaffe means ‘making the mistake of telling the truth about something’.
engels 07.24.17 at 10:50 pm
thankfully they are not America
…which rather neatly parallels Melenchon’s ‘Vichy wasn’t really French’ BS Corey rightly critiqued on the other thread.
Also, given the history maybe it’s time to retire the whole idea of people being UnAmerican? Just a thought…
bianca steele 07.24.17 at 11:35 pm
I think you can believe they’re deplorable, as I do, without inflecting this attitude with class snobbery in the way liberals tend to.
Or using–“irredeemable” in connection with what turned out to sound a lot like a Bible quote–apparently Calvinist dogwhistles. Someone in the campaign seemed to have thought they were going to win on traditional morality against the libertine.
Yan 07.25.17 at 12:05 am
Collin @66 “It’s like “quarter-pounderâ€; sure-as-fuck sounds like a lot, but when you do the numbers it’s… really not?”
Except that it’s not about abstract numbers, it’s about human beings, more specifically about regions, populations, communities. If you live in a place where everyone you know always votes Republicsn, she’s saying half the people you know deserve hell.
By comparison, Trumps said many Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists (he said some are good, therefore most aren’t). A majority of Mexican immigrants isn’t a huge number, but it’s still a racist asshole sentiment.
The same applies to right wing sliming of “gay activists” and “Islamists.” They don’t have to slander large numbers or the majority of a population to be assholes.
F. Foundling 07.25.17 at 1:19 am
@ Helen 07.24.17 at 9:12 pm
According to PolitiFact, she said this on Sept. 9. According to the RealClearPolitics poll average as of Sept 9, Trump was expected to get 42.9 % of the vote.
Collin Street 07.25.17 at 3:20 am
Actually I left out some stages. Fermi numbers we get:
+ voters half the population
+ republicans half of voters
+ primary voters half of republicans
+ trump voters half of primary voters
+ and half of them irredemably evil
One in thirty-two, or about three percent? Sounds pretty reasonable to me: the lessons here are:
+ indirect electoral processes leave you extremely vulnerable to coordinated cluques, and
+ don’t let fascists accumulate in out-of-the-way corners of your political syatem.
Potato 07.25.17 at 4:21 am
Mood affiliation is now a pejorative. And banthink.
No worries. I’ll retreat back to the rationalist community. I knew better, and I apologize for engaging. Some forums are for internal agreement and rousing the troops. Outsiders aren’t allowed. Signaling allegiance to the tribe is the only purpose of the ritual. Scott Alexander is shaking his head at my stupidity for an attempt at dialogue I’m sure. I didn’t mean to spoil your hate party.
I won’t contaminate the tribal pile on ever again with a comment.
Salud
taj 07.25.17 at 4:51 am
A lot of assumptions are being made on this thread concerning the beliefs and intentions of the subjects without any form of discovery or confrontation whatsoever.
Absolutely. Some far more likely explanations:
1) He’s wearing it ironically, as kids did in my day.
2) He got it from someone else, possibly a donation bin, and the unfortunate soul has no idea what he’s wearing. The shirt is a symbol for how we take care of each other in difficult times, and the hats a sign of respect for the president who ultimately made it possible.
3) It was a plain black t-shirt and the photo was edited by PC class warriors to malign the Right.
“He’s a public nazi” is really the least likely, once you think about it.
taj 07.25.17 at 6:43 am
To cease the flippancy for a moment: I’m not in America, and at the moment not even in the West, so watching this from the outside is just really confusing. How on earth did you folks get so quickly from Godwin’s Law (comparing someone to real nazis being just so outlandish that it’s effectively a discussion-stopper) to being coy about labelling _actual nazis_? This commitment of fairness and benefit of doubt to humanity’s most awful people is beyond idealism, it’s almost fetishistic.
Raven 07.25.17 at 6:54 am
taj @ 74“Some far more likely explanations†— Uhhhh, beg to differ.
Had you said, “Some other possible/plausible explanationsâ€, I’d have agreed… but there have been far too many public hate-shirt wearers and Confederate-flag wavers for me to think that “‘He’s a public nazi’ is really the least likely,†as you put it. Heck, when I first moved to Milwaukee in 1978, the friend who suggested I come here (a former Israeli border guard) invited me along while he and his buddies stood watch next to an American Nazi Party rally in a city park. The ANP were very very public in full uniform then… and some vandalizing of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries occurred… though oddly enough a bunch of ANP members started leaving town after that, and the rallies stopped for lack of numbers. I suppose somehow they felt they’d worn out their welcome.
Harry 07.25.17 at 7:30 am
I moderated taj’s first comment, and thought about emailing taj to say “this is going to be misunderstood”….
taj 07.25.17 at 7:34 am
My apologies Raven. I’m going to chalk this down as a lesson that I should signal ironic statements more clearly, not least because these arguments are indistinguishable from sincere opinions that are both far too common these days and too often unchallenged under the misguided notion of fairness.
If these gents feel bad, I’m going to say to them what is regularly said to brown people who are escorted off flights for the audacity of reading or speaking in Arabic: “Yes it’s all very sad but you should have known better.”
Faustusnotes 07.25.17 at 10:48 am
[Faustusnotes – feel free to submit a comment making your substantive argument without the suggestion that the people disagreeing with you belong at the Daily Stormer etc]
Raven 07.25.17 at 1:25 pm
taj @ 79: The hard-won experience over on Daily Kos has been expressed as, “Untagged snark will be unrecognized.”
That can be as full as: <snark>…ironic statement…</snark> ….
or as slim as: …ironic statement…</s> ….
and if creating mock angle tags is a bother, just use brackets: [/s]
That’s not a ***rule***, mind you, neither there nor here, just an offer of a possible clarifier of meaning, like an emoticon.
bianca steele 07.25.17 at 2:25 pm
I was on Twitter just long enough to conclude that of the millions of photographs of strangers that go viral to a large or small degree, enough of them probably fall into taj’s category three to make it likely everyone will end up seeing those. Henry’s is obviously not, though.
It may turn out to be that we’ll shrug that off as another unfortunate effect of the technology, that we’ll continue insisting taj’s 2 is mandatory in person but not expected online, or even the reverse . . . who knows? It’s out of our hands, I guess.
Yan 07.25.17 at 2:48 pm
Raven @65 and Layman @68: “Hillary says only _some_ of the deplorables are irredeemable; not all or even most of them. Just as you agree with her that half of Trump’s voters are deplorable, I’m guessing you also agree that some of those are irredeemable.”
You’re both right–I missed that she limits the irredeemable to only some. But don’t use this as an excuse to ignore the larger point that the deplorable comment was about half of Trump voters, not a small group of internet trolls.
I’d add that when she stars by identifying half of a group as deplorable, then goes on to note only some are redeemable, the misinterpretation is largely her fault. Just as Trump was largely at fault that people misinterpreted him as saying all Mexican immigrants are criminals, since the qualification of “some,” in both cases, was added briefly and weakly after making sweeping generalizations.
Layman, no, I don’t think very many human beings are irredeemable. As much as I’d like to believe some are–it’s a satisfying feeling–if pressed I’d have to admit probably none are.
The reason is that I don’t think the language of redemption can be divorced from superstitious nonsense about sin, moral responsibility, and freedom of the will. Some people are, to use the quaint language, truly evil, but the truly evil have no option of not being so, so there’s no question of sin or salvation or redemption, while those who do have the option are precisely the redeemable.
Henry 07.25.17 at 3:18 pm
Potato – if that’s your idea of “dialogue,” it’s a very different notion than mine. Next time you look to argue with people whom you disagree with, I suggest you employ a very different approach, if you want them actually to listen to you.
nastywoman – for your future reference, I’m not putting your comments through on my posts, not because they are offensive, but because they’re mostly off-topic, and don’t seem to me to add particularly to the conversation that other people are trying to have, however imperfectly.
faustusnotes 07.25.17 at 4:09 pm
Sigh! I can’t even! But trying again without the daily stormer reference.
1. noone is ever going to find this dude here while googling him after a job search, to suggest so is the most pathetic concern trolling ever in the history of ever.
2. To reiterate, this is not a doxxing, and the dude is not being shamed, though he deserves to be
3. When you concern troll people for putting a random picture of an unknown dude up on the internet and criticizing him for being an actual nazi (reminder: murders Jews, has a plan to kill everyone on earth who is not white, general all round arsehole), you are engaging in apologia for nazism.
4. I’ll add: people who follow the Daily Stormer to the level this dude does are typically big lovers of the Turner Diaries. In case you aren’t aware of how nasty the shit they believe is, I read it for you and I can tell you they are very nasty. If you think that is just two sides of a political debate you’re a fool. If further doubt remains, remember these people idolize Timothy McVeigh. They want to do what he did, to you and yours. That man wearing that t-shirt is almost certainly a firm believer in that particular ideology – you don’t go that deep down the rabbit hole without picking up some dirt.
Finally, Yan, Clinton is clearly referring to the alt-right, not to Trump voters. She didn’t say “voters” (contra your “clearly said voters”) and she references their websites and tweets (she even gives numbers of followers). Now why would an ostensibly left wing person be on a left wing website reciting right wing lies as if they were truths? I wonder …
Yan 07.25.17 at 5:50 pm
This is a new level of intellectual dishonesty for Faustusnotes, inventing a completely fictional quotation for me (“contra your ‘clearly said voters'”).
As for the point made with the phony quote, it is, like Raven and Layman’s, a piece of misdirection.
The debate was whether Hillary about the *half* part, not about unredeemables or about whether it’s voters or supporters. Of course half of Trump’s supporters is an even grosser generalization than Trump voters, so, again, Faustusnotes just trying to misdirect.
Here’s Hillary’s words again: “you know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.”
Orange Watch 07.25.17 at 5:53 pm
faustusnotes@86:
She was clearly referring to no such thing. If she were clearly referring as you claim, there would not have been the backlash against it there was, and when the quote was viewed in context you could point to where she said such things rather than making vague references to which parts suggest that we should infer them.
Mainstream liberals at the time were not arguing she meant “the alt-right”, in case you’ve forgotten; they were arguing she meant all of the racists/sexists/xenophobes in the Republican Party. A lot of them were specific that these were the cultural conservatives who vote against their economic interests… because their values are deplorable.
It was a dog whistle, plain and simple. At the time, there was a triumphalist thread in mainstream liberal expectations for November that included such heady topics as how post-election the GOP would collapse and the redeemable (i.e., fiscal center-right but socially libertarian-ish) portions could be folded into a demographically-mandated permanent Democratic majority (and even better, one that would be unbeholden to impolite leftists who lack proper bourgeois sensibilities). The reaction I saw in liberal social contexts at the time was most often “yeah, f**k all those bigots”, with a heavy dose of class prejudice behind them. This was red meat for the base. It was meant to be offensive, but able to be parsed deniably as well. There really is no better description than “liberal dog whistle”.
Layman 07.25.17 at 6:04 pm
Yan: “You’re both right–I missed that she limits the irredeemable to only some. But don’t use this as an excuse to ignore the larger point that the deplorable comment was about half of Trump voters, not a small group of internet trolls.”
This is frankly a bizarre complaint, given that you previously wrote:
“Personally, I think it’s true that half of Trump voters are deplorable.”
…and went on to say the offensive part of her comment was the irredeemable part, which you now admit you got wrong. Apparently you agree with her main point, mistook her corollary point, and blame her for your mistake.
bianca steele 07.25.17 at 6:04 pm
faustusnotes seems to be arguing, in effect, that anyone who doesn’t like black bloc tactics (I’m not saying Henry used those, only that fn and others seem to be defending them) is a Nazi apologist. In effect, that the antifas and the black bloc are the only ones we can rely on to save us from Nazi, fascist goons.
And that anyone entering “political debate” who can be identified and targeted is fair game. (People wearing ACT-UP t shirts, people posting about abortion rights rallies, women going into synagogue.)
How far I would trust people who really believe that in any situation where I might be exposed is not very far at all.
Heliopause 07.25.17 at 7:14 pm
@72
“By comparison, Trumps said many Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists”
This thread has gone a strange direction, hasn’t it? “Precisely how many people are in Clinton’s ‘Basket of Deplorables?’ Nate Silver will be joining us next…”
Look, people, smart politicians generally avoid statements of this kind because they have a rudimentary understanding of human nature. If you go to Cleveland to give a speech and say, “some of the people here are stupid,” a not insubstantial proportion of your audience hears, “he just said we’re stupid.” Next day the local paper headline is, “Speaker Calls Clevelanders ‘Stupid'”, and away we go.
When Trump made his infamous remark about rapists he of course did not say, “all Mexicans are rapists,” though that’s what most people heard. What he actually said was bizarre and racist enough; essentially that there was some sort of coordinated effort to send criminals, whatever their relative proportion of the population might be, to the U.S. But that’s not what got heard and reported around the world.
So I don’t see how it matters how many Deplorables Clinton really thinks exist, she was stupid to have said this within earshot of anyone who might have reported it out.
Jerry Vinokurov 07.25.17 at 7:57 pm
So cool that in 2017 the comment threads at CT are filled with objections to criticizing Nazis.
taj 07.25.17 at 9:02 pm
On another general point: what is the possible point of engaging someone like this? Seventy years of mainstream discussion and evidence has failed to convince these sober rationalists that Nazism may be a substandard idea. Are we to hope that a single dose of Socratic dialogue in an airport lobby will do the trick, or are we just giving them a chance to redeem themselves and admit that they think Hitler had only a few good ideas? Or more generally, has Nazism ever been reasoned out of existence? IIRC that didn’t go so well the first time, but I’m open to contrary evidence.
Anyway, I think these fellows will be fine. A man with the presence of mind to don his tactical shorts in the morning is clearly one who is ready for anything.
(/s? I’ve no idea any more. The world’s just too weird)
J-D 07.25.17 at 9:04 pm
bianca steele
I’m not clear on what your position is, in relation to Henry’s original post. Would you argue that we should not post images of people online without their permission? If not, how is your position different from that?
Omega Centauri 07.25.17 at 9:27 pm
Heliopause @91. Thanks! Thats similar to my point, no matter how well covered by caveats you think you are, the opposition is going to do their darndest to hang you with your own words. So they will deliberately taken them out of context, or apply misleading framing or whatever to make it sound like you are hating on a good many people. Its why political debate is so hard -because there is always a dedicated team whose job is to find ways to make you be misunderstood in a way which generates maximum blowback.
b9n10nt 07.25.17 at 9:41 pm
Individual autonomy is sacred (“he has a right to wear whatever shirt he wants to”) and any social commitments that go beyond ensuring individual autonomy are profane (“sure, expressing support for fascism is a bad thing, but so is accidentally hurting someone’s on-line profile!”).
Valuing individual autonomy and collective well-being should be in dynamic tension. We are way out of balance (for good historical reasons, but…), becoming a horde of self-realized egos on the precipice of consumerist tyranny and ecological collapse.
Helen 07.25.17 at 11:05 pm
Oh, so not the alt-right. Just ordinary, common or garden racists, sexists and xenophobes.
You’re right then. Completely unreasonable of her.
And criticising racists/sexists/xenophobes is a “dog whistle” now and not to be tolerated? Beam me up, Scotty.
Helen 07.25.17 at 11:07 pm
Totally agree. I just don’t agree the factoid version of what she actually meant should be endlessly retailed as if it was gospel truth.
Ogden Wernstrom 07.26.17 at 12:04 am
I’ll need to find someone else to taunt, then.
Potato 07.25.17 at 4:21 am:
Missed my chance there, too.
Then, taj brilliantly parodies the give-a-Nazi-shirt-wearer-the-benefit-of-the-doubt arguments (in a fashion often seen on CT), but runs up against Poe’s Law.
I am glad that I clicked on whatever brought me to this parallel universe. Or thread – whatever.
Faustusnotes 07.26.17 at 12:20 am
Bianca, this dude has not been identified. He will not and cannot be identified from that picture. Do you understand this? Because all the pro-nazi concern trolling happening here is irrelevant in the face of this simple fact: no one is doxxing this dude.
Yan, at comment 60 you directly claimed that Clinton said it was half of trump voters. Hence my “you clearly said voters”. You went on to say you yourself think half of trump voters are deplorable. All your words, not me putting words in your mouth. You then, having claimed she identifies voters explicitly, not supporters, put her quote directly in your comment. In the quote she does not say voters once, refers only to supporters, then elaborates on her point by explaining that their (the supporters) websites have gone from 11000 to 111 million views and that trump retweets their (his supporters) hate speech.
From this – a quote which doesn’t use the word voters and which clearly explains the type of supporter she is talking about – you take her to be referring to non politically active ordinary voters.
This is a reading comprehension fail. Take note orange watch, this is how you get things wrong on the Internet.
You then take as your support not clintons words herself but the reaction of unspecified liberal commentators. but the fact that she said something not very politically astute is not evidence that she said whatever you want to think she said.
I can see that 2017is going to be a vintage year on CT, as trumps fans on the left implode as they come to realize that the dude they thought was a spokesman for the white working class is exactly the money-laundering Russian gangster nazi wannabe that we said he would be.
Raven 07.26.17 at 3:18 am
Yan @ 87: “This is a new level of intellectual dishonesty for Faustusnotes, inventing a completely fictional quotation for me (“contra your ‘clearly said voters’â€).â€
Yan in #60: “She explicitly says that it’s half of Trump voters.â€
What she actually, clearly, explicitly said: “We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.â€
“Voters†and “supporters†are surely overlapping sets, but just as surely not identical sets.
Raven 07.26.17 at 4:33 am
taj @ 93: “Or more generally, has Nazism ever been reasoned out of existence? IIRC that didn’t go so well the first time, but I’m open to contrary evidence.â€
In fact, it went so splendidly (peacefully) all the first dozen times that people expected it to go just as well the 13th time, in the mid-20th century. That’s the trouble with building up a high success rate: everyone gets too complacent and at ease.
</s>
hix 07.26.17 at 4:45 am
Empathy for outright Nazis is someting we hopefully can still afford in western democracies, even in the US version. They are sufficiently marginaliced to typically do more harm to themself then to others with their troubled minds. That those minds have a levels of internal coherence and historical education that makes them automatically eleminationist is rather doubtfull considering they adhere to such an illogical ideology.
The anger and fear part of my brain usually gets activated by the not quite Nazi decently till good looking racist in a suit. By that i dont mean Trump of course, mostly because he doesnt even look decent.
taj 07.26.17 at 6:34 am
Ogden@98 – my “favourite” example of Poe’s Law has to be Tomorrow Belongs to Me, the song Ebb and Kander wrote for Cabaret to illustrate the power of an ugly idea seductively delivered. Of course it’s a legit Nazi anthem now, and the fact that it was written by Jews is seen as either irrelevant – as if they were simply a household appliance through which it was delivered – or even a kind of bonus.
J-D 07.26.17 at 9:07 am
Since the question has been asked, it seems worth drawing attention to the testimony of ex-Nazis: for example, Ray Hill’s The Other Side Of Terror and Ingo Hasselbach’s Fuhrer Ex.
bianca steele 07.26.17 at 12:11 pm
J-D, my position is laid out in @25. I opened this thread to find people saying “everyone has a responsibility to publicly shame people who don’t behave decently” and “anyone who makes a public affirmation of political belief has forfeited the right to be left alone” (which happens to be basically what the bro dudes say when they harass women on Twitter).
Your position seems to be that a person who posts a picture of a stranger on Twitter is doing exactly what news organizations do.
Tom Moody 07.26.17 at 4:33 pm
Compliments to Heliopause for @91 — awesome.
I’m afraid I let Henry get away with misdescribing my blog post. He says I “replaced” my initial condemnation (regarding the ridicule of overweight people and/or Republicans). That’s not true — it’s all still there at the top of the blog post. I added a series of updates to the post as new “gotcha” information about the photo was provided by Henry and others.
Orange Watch 07.26.17 at 6:30 pm
Helen@97:
And criticising racists/sexists/xenophobes is a “dog whistle†now and not to be tolerated?
‘m nt sr f y’r srs r jst nsltngly dsmssv, s ‘ll mk wht’s lkly mstk nd tk y srsly. The “dog whistle” aspect is not the criticism of -ists and -obes. It’s the thinly-veiled kulturekampf “aren’t you a smart, sophisticated metropolitan American, and aren’t they just a bunch of dumb, bigoted hicks?” undertone. It’s what both many liberals and many conservatives heard when she said that. Referring to it as a dog whistle is referring to how it communicates that idea while allowing complete deniability as to having said it. Clinton either knew or damned well should have known what would be heard when she said that.
Layman 07.26.17 at 7:12 pm
bianca steele: “J-D, my position is laid out in @25.”
Let’s have a look at it.
“1. I don’t care for arguments that “the group†is right to shame anyone they don’t like.”
I guess I don’t really understand what ‘shame’ means in this context. The person in the photo is clearly advertising himself as a Trump supporter (the hat) and a Nazi (the shirt). If he is not ashamed to advertise himself that way, how is describing him as a Trump supporter and a Nazi synonymous with ‘shaming’ him?
” 2. I’m dubious about arguments that every person should get the right to be judge and jury in others’ cases.”
Well, every person has (in my view) the right to free thought and free expression, which means (I think) that were all entitled to judge others and speak those judgements aloud. It’s my right, just as it’s his right to advertise his nazism. So I don’t know how you square that with your objection here. If anything, one group is saying (in effect) ‘this fellow is wrong for being a Nazi, and you’re saying ‘you fellows are wrong for judging him’. What’s the difference between the one and the other?
Chris (merian) W. 07.26.17 at 7:13 pm
bianca steele @106: I see more of a thread with a remarkable amount of defense of these Nazis (at the very least the term concern trolling sounds just about apt), and some disingenuous accusations of doxxing, when Henry did nothing of this sort. Though I agree with you that no one has a duty to shame anyone, and believe the appropriate level of restraint in formulating public criticism is a matter of degree (and a complicated function of a lot of variables).
But my main area of disagreement with you is about what I read as relativism — that this is about some people disagreeing with some statements on T-shirts, and the content of the statements is secondary to the fact of disagreement. And I just don’t think one can have an ethical judgement without considering the content. These aren’t satanist T-shirts, or animal rights T-shirts, or pro-science T-shirts, or RNC T-shirts, or anti-DAP T-shirts, or Black Lives Matter T-Shirts, or Blue Lives Matter T-Shirts or even anti-abortion T-shirts, or 1000 other kinds of T-shirts all of which would have been both controversial (offensive to some) and unremarkable in pre-Trump America. These are Nazi T-shirts. (Well, one is here – in general, I mean.) Now, in Trump’s America, being worn in public. And as Jesus said in the Sermon of the Mount, You Shall Know Them by Their T-Shirts.
J-D 07.26.17 at 9:54 pm
bianca steele
From your earlier comment:
So if Henry, before blogging, had consulted you for advice about whether he should post the picture, your response would have been ‘I’m not sure’; or so it appears. If you perceive arguments of some weight against posting the picture, but you’re not sure they’re conclusive, then it would be reasonable for you to say that you’re not sure; but what isn’t clear to me is what (in your opinion) are the arguments against Henry’s posting the picture.
No two things are exactly the same, but so far I haven’t found an explanation of what a relevant difference might be, in your comments or in anybody else’s here; and this is connected to the fact that nobody has made clear what the objection is to Henry’s posting the picture, because if we knew what the objection was, we could compare the two situations and see whether the objection is, or is not, equally applicable to different scenarios.
On the other hand, if I were saying that posting a stranger’s picture on Twitter is the same as what news organisations do, I don’t know whether you’d agree, or disagree, or be unsure; this is another respect in which your position is unclear.
bianca steele 07.26.17 at 10:22 pm
Chris,
If you think I said anything that suggests relativism, I think you’re reading with remarkable uncharity. In the years since I’ve joined CT’s comments section, I’ve learned to expect better than that from you, so I’m surprised.
I’d note that you and others have mentioned Germany’s law, which as I’ve heard it described, for what it’s worth, would forbid this post by Henry if it forbids the shirt.
To both of you, I clearly said that I don’t object to the post. What I object to is others’ failing to draw clear lines to show that they understand this case is extreme.
Raven 07.27.17 at 2:00 am
Layman @ 109 That “I’m right to call you wrong†vs. “You’re wrong to call others wrong†is merely a matter of grammatical ‘conjugation’, like Bertrand Russell’s “I am firm, you are stubborn, he is a pig-headed foolâ€.
Faustusnotes 07.27.17 at 12:36 pm
Bianca, of the fuckheads from the alt right restricted their attacks on feminists on twitter to tweets saying “look! Feminist x is a democrat who supports feminism” I think there would be a lot more feminists on twitter. It would be, comparatively, a warm and welcoming environment for women. But that’s not what happens : we see death threats, SWATting, revealing home addresses, rape threats, and revenge porn. Henry has done none of these things. There is no comparison between what Henry has done and what the alt right does in defense of its NAZI ideals every day. It’s important to recognize who is doing what to whom if we are to fight the tide of evil sweeping over the west. Concern trolling your own side does not help with this.
To reiterate: this is not a doxxing, it is not virtual harassment. End of story.
Chris (merian) W. 07.27.17 at 6:27 pm
bianca @112: I don’t really consider relativism as such a terrible thing that suggesting it means to be uncharitable. I like to cultivate small amounts of cultural relativism myself, to keep some wriggle room in what otherwise would be inappropriately rigid judgements and open doors to interrogating the things that feel uncomfortable.
FWIW, I usually like your stuff very much. It just appeared to me that you were equating a Nazi shirt with something a goth youth would wear in a way the usefulness I didn’t see. And still don’t, but clearly I’m not understanding your point then (since you object so strenuously with the interpretation I’m putting on it), and I’m fine with leaving it here. Wasn’t Henry’s point that the shirt is extreme, and that its appearance in a commonplace, mixed public setting is somewhat emblematic of Trump’s America?
As for Germany, I did a quick search. As in other places where the rule of law is valid, what isn’t explicitly forbidden is allowed in Germany. The shirt doesn’t contain a known Nazi symbol (swastika, others) as per the list maintained by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (not sure if that’s the official name in English), AFAICT. So whether it would be forbidden depends on whether there was already a court order that assimilated the Daily Stormer, specifically, with the glorification of the NSDAP. Which I supposed could very well happen, or already have happened — or a judge could find that it doesn’t. I’d say it’s a borderline case (not everything neo-Nazi is forbidden in Germany — there’s lot of quite overt flirting and mutual cuddling between the openly operating extreme-right fringe (the identitarian movement, the AfD, the NDP etc. etc.) and actual neo-Nazis).
J-D 07.27.17 at 10:08 pm
bianca steele
Once again, your meaning is unclear. Do you mean that it should be acknowledged that posting a photograph of somebody online is an extreme action? or that normally photographs of people should not be posted online, but when somebody wears a Daily Stormer T-shirt that’s an extreme case that justifies an exception? or what?
Raven 07.28.17 at 5:35 am
bianca steele @ 106: I think the “bro dudes” who harass women should be publicly shamed for their misbehavior, to discourage repetition by themselves or others.
Cf. this Disqus debate nearly three years ago about one of the Daily Stormer’s heroes, swastika-tattooed doxxer Andrew ‘Weev’ Auernheimer (and another stalker):
To show that the defense doesn’t end at T-shirts, but extends to doxxing… if done by the right wing.
J-D 07.28.17 at 8:53 am
Chris (merian) W
Judging by its website, there’s no official English name; the English-language version of the website uses the German name.
bianca steele 07.28.17 at 11:44 am
That you call people who want such actions to carry a prison term a ‘lynch mob’ is an example of your hyperbole making your language meaningless.
“Projection” is a good word and should maybe be used more often.
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