2023-07-30 23:34![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zoingeroni
zoingeroniThis talk of AO3 reminds me of a time a community's mods were shown to be terribly racist.
TW: condoning a nazi
In this gaming community, there was this user who was awfully interested in WWII german planes. I confronted him and pushed him into exposing himself as aligning with nazism. My friends got involved and he messaged them a variety of awful statements, images, and links. The mods banned him. He came back on a different account (with the name NotANazi...yeah seriously) and told me he is going to continue to block evade, make different accounts, and make sure I come to realize he's a good person. My memory isn't the best but I think he might have told me he loves me.
I was afraid of being stalked or hacked. I say this not to claim I'm some kind of victim, I'm a white gentile after all, and he never followed through with his creepy threats. But this is the kind of behavior that the mods decided was not worthy of a permaban. They let him back in after a month. I don't think I need to explain why expecting a nazi harasser to just learn their lesson in a month is absurd.
I don't particularly care about the threats to me; even if he was more socially "with it", the true evil here is that the mods were fine with a nazi so long as he was not spamming chat with explicit nazi messages (though it's certain this guy's racism came through anyway). I even had a friend tell me he should be allowed to stay so long as he wasn't making a fuss (as if nazis can just "turn off" their pervasively horrendous worldviews, views that affect every one of their social interactions). If you're a white leader and you think extremely virulent bigots (or any bigot) should be allowed to "play nice", you are dangerously naive and actively complicit in the bigotry you are condoning. The bar for creating a safe community is literally on the floor here.
I also want to connect this to a sentiment I've seen in the autistic community. There are people who say special interests are involuntary and that no one should be under suspicion based on what their interest is. Now, I do not know what it's like to be Level 3 for restricted interests. Nonetheless, if this is your attitude, you are dangerously naive and are absolutely are making nice with terrible bigots just because they are a little under the radar. Bigots aren't just the loud and proud kind; the clever ones "soften" their interests and opinions in order to avoid getting swiftly judged. The nazi I had a run-in with wasn't even particularly clever; he was definitely neurodivergent, and possibly autistic himself. And he still dodged consequences by insisting he wasn't a nazi. What people are into can't be brushed off as mere entropic chance; none of us live in a social/political vacuum.
This isn't true naivety anyway, which is about being a trusting person. No, it's apathy. It's willful ignorance. It's not caring about the safety of BIPOC and Jews. And if you're chill with nazis' presence, you should be under suspicion of being a nazi yourself.
TW: condoning a nazi
In this gaming community, there was this user who was awfully interested in WWII german planes. I confronted him and pushed him into exposing himself as aligning with nazism. My friends got involved and he messaged them a variety of awful statements, images, and links. The mods banned him. He came back on a different account (with the name NotANazi...yeah seriously) and told me he is going to continue to block evade, make different accounts, and make sure I come to realize he's a good person. My memory isn't the best but I think he might have told me he loves me.
I was afraid of being stalked or hacked. I say this not to claim I'm some kind of victim, I'm a white gentile after all, and he never followed through with his creepy threats. But this is the kind of behavior that the mods decided was not worthy of a permaban. They let him back in after a month. I don't think I need to explain why expecting a nazi harasser to just learn their lesson in a month is absurd.
I don't particularly care about the threats to me; even if he was more socially "with it", the true evil here is that the mods were fine with a nazi so long as he was not spamming chat with explicit nazi messages (though it's certain this guy's racism came through anyway). I even had a friend tell me he should be allowed to stay so long as he wasn't making a fuss (as if nazis can just "turn off" their pervasively horrendous worldviews, views that affect every one of their social interactions). If you're a white leader and you think extremely virulent bigots (or any bigot) should be allowed to "play nice", you are dangerously naive and actively complicit in the bigotry you are condoning. The bar for creating a safe community is literally on the floor here.
I also want to connect this to a sentiment I've seen in the autistic community. There are people who say special interests are involuntary and that no one should be under suspicion based on what their interest is. Now, I do not know what it's like to be Level 3 for restricted interests. Nonetheless, if this is your attitude, you are dangerously naive and are absolutely are making nice with terrible bigots just because they are a little under the radar. Bigots aren't just the loud and proud kind; the clever ones "soften" their interests and opinions in order to avoid getting swiftly judged. The nazi I had a run-in with wasn't even particularly clever; he was definitely neurodivergent, and possibly autistic himself. And he still dodged consequences by insisting he wasn't a nazi. What people are into can't be brushed off as mere entropic chance; none of us live in a social/political vacuum.
This isn't true naivety anyway, which is about being a trusting person. No, it's apathy. It's willful ignorance. It's not caring about the safety of BIPOC and Jews. And if you're chill with nazis' presence, you should be under suspicion of being a nazi yourself.
◾ Tags:
