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What exactly does get you banned on Barbelith?

  
  

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Alex's Grandma
10:04 / 23.03.06
I was completely surprised at my being banned

For what it's worth, I'm inclined to believe this - I think as long as he's prepared (as he's said he is) to keep his opinions on the Holocaust to himself in future, he should be allowed to stay.

Let's face it, any one of us might think any number of terrible things that we don't talk about on Barbelith - as long as we keep it that way, it's a manageable situation, surely?
 
 
Smoothly
10:22 / 23.03.06
With regard to the line between what is acceptable (albeit unpalatable) and unacceptable (and bannable), at what point did zeomancer’s Head Shop thread cross it? For example, if he was soliciting refutations of the standard revisionist claims, without the scare-quotes and diaphanously veiled anti-semitism (eg. his assertions about what The Jews are like), could that thread have been redeemed?
I mean, clearly, we can discuss Holocaust Denial here – as demonstrated by the David Irving Thread in the Switchboard. So I wonder – as an exercise, and since we have a concrete example – what would have to be done to zeomancer’s opening post in that thread to have kept it in bounds.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:38 / 23.03.06
Except:

This is a strongly held belief of mine and I can never be persuaded to
believe otherwise.


Zoemancer has no sense of what is and is not appropriate speech. Only FREE SPEACH! As such, do we intend to analyze every post he makes to check if it is anti-semitic or racist? He claims to want to uncover "the truth" about the Holocaust - although not to the extent of reading a book or anything crazy like that - but has no wish to be persuaded to believe anything other than what he believes on key issues.

See also:

Ok before I go any farther with this I need to know how many of you actually know what free speech is? Do any of you know what liberty and freedom really is? Do you care?

Only Zoemancer understands what free speech is. And:

Also, while he claims not to be a racist, he appears not to have gotten the hang of the idea that to deny the Holocaust is to succour and to practice anti-Semitism. His claim not to be a "Nazi apologist" fails too take into account that one cannot deny the Holocaust without acting as an apologist for Nazism.

I'm pretty confident that a) Zoemancer has nothing of worth to add to Barbelith - he's a Holocaust denier, he is a specacularly credulous magician (Masaru Emoto? THE GAME?), and if anyone disagrees with him, after a bunch of badly-punctuated rants he will say that he is no longer going to engage with anyone who doesn't talk the way he wants them to - see Coincidence Driver and David Irving, in both of which he says that he is no longer going to listen to anyone who does not say what he wants them to. He appears not to understand what a discussion board is for.

Ban him now or ban him next time - it makes no difference to me. On the other hand, I didn't lose any family in the camps which he claims did not exist.

Incidentally, Alex's Grandma - are you saying this because you knew his grandma back in Bury St. Edmunds?

Also, Tom, now that we have established that he sees no problem with posting racially offensive material, we have testimony from respected members that they felt racially attacked by his behaviour and that he reserves the right to act in the same way in the future, can we finally do something about Vladimir?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:40 / 23.03.06
Smoothly: Difference between discussing holocaust denial and discussing whether the Holocaust happened, presumably. Not even zoemancer denied the Holocaust in the DI thread, although he came close with the scarequotes around "official".
 
 
illmatic
10:45 / 23.03.06
For me, Smoothy (and I did see his post) the absolute minimum for that kind of discussion is an awareness of it's potential to seriously offend. Every kind of qualifer needs to be employed and thought given to every line - which was not what we had. We had instead, a bulletpointed list of angry shouting cut and pasted from the Nazi Denial FAQ.

One would also hope for a minimal knowledge of history and the counter-arguments to the claims of revisionists. Neither of which was in evidence, surprise, surprise.
 
 
Smoothly
11:01 / 23.03.06
That thread could quite easily have been a discussion of Holocaust denial. For instance, would this be acceptable?:
I have read the following claims about the Holocaust, how/where have they been best refuted?

What I’m not quite clear on is whether zeomancer has been banned for repeating the claims of Holocaust deniers, for being credulous of the claims of Holocaust deniers, for doing the former while being the latter..?

I’m not quite sure what qualifiers you have in mind, Illmatic. And I’m not exactly sure what would constitute a minimal knowledge of history but exclude knowledge of the Holocaust, if you see what I mean.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
11:09 / 23.03.06
Also, Tom, now that we have established that he sees no problem with posting racially offensive material, we have testimony from respected members that they felt racially attacked by his behaviour and that he reserves the right to act in the same way in the future, can we finally do something about Vladimir?

Yup.

FWIW, I have said this before in discussions of Vlad, but I'll quite happily say it explictly here:

reading the kinds of entries that been excerpted on this that and others, I definitely feel that this poster is attacking people on the basis of race.

Further, his continued presence on this board indicates to me that some forms of enthnicity and culture are considered more deserving of an atmosphere free from hatespeech directed at them than others.

To pick just one example: the sweeping generalisations about 'Indians' and their cock-rotting properties are like something out of a Colonial guide to the natives, and V's continual statement of what he sees as his 'right' to propogate them is hatespeech.

There's no enagement with the offense caused, no recognition that offence is being caused, merely a reponse that people who are offended are 'humourless'. Because offensive racial stereotyping is chuckle central.

So why is he still here?
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
11:12 / 23.03.06
Also, it shouldn't matter whether it is a member of the attacked ethnicity(/group) makes the complaint or a concerned member of the community.

Saying otherwise puts the impetus/pressure on those attacked to justify their presence on the board.

I can handle racist speech without it making me cry, it's a part of life.

I just don't think there's any reason why I or anyone else should have to on Barbelith, where we have some possibility of controls.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
11:42 / 23.03.06
Also, it shouldn't matter whether it is a member of the attacked ethnicity(/group) makes the complaint or a concerned member of the community.

Quite. As has often been pointed out, Barbelith is, by accident of demographic or something like that, predominantly white. The fact that we have no-one from (picking an example at random- I have no idea whether we do or not, though I think not) Somalia here does not mean that we would condone anti-Somali hate speech just because there aren't any to stick up for themselves. In the same way, if the board were entirely composed of heterosexuals, that wouldn't be an excuse for homophobic attitudes.

The fact that it isn't, and isn't entirely white either (therefore there are people who can be directly offended and upset by comments made effectively TO THEM) puts the onus on us even more as a community (because we are a community, and it would be a pretty shit community that didn't rally round when its members were under attack, even by other members of that community), not just the individuals on the receiving end, not to put up with that kind of bullshit.
 
 
grant
12:09 / 23.03.06
Ban him now or ban him next time - it makes no difference to me. On the other hand, I didn't lose any family in the camps which he claims did not exist.

I'd rather ban him next time, provided it's swift. I suppose we should ask Tom if that's a reasonable expectation or if *now* is the time to get things done.
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:17 / 23.03.06
Some of you guys must be buying a hell of a lot of Viagra.

It's for research purposes I assure you!

Zoemancer (assuming you're reading),

Without deviation, without exception, without any ifs, buts, or
whereases, freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to
people either for the views they express, or the words they speak or write.

Fair enough, but this doesn't grant carte blanche for you to talk about stuff that you know is going to, if not get you kicked off of the board, then at the very least generate a tremendous amount of negative reaction. You saw in the Irving thread how this Holocaust denial crap gets recieved here, you can see from incidents across the board how Barbelith as a community views it. You've seen how hatespeech is treated here.

Freedom of speech is not freedom from responsibility. It is not the freedom to cause offense or to degrade and abuse another. It is not the freedom to spew whatever little theory you come up with unopposed.

I was under the impression that Barbelith was a free speech zone.

It is. But it is also a place that demands personal responsibility. If these are your views then you should be aware of the offense that saying such things can cause, especially considering the diverse nature of the Barbelith posters. Your views could well be read by someone with relations still alive who were witness to the terrible acts that you believe never happened.

You should be capable of presenting your views in such a way as to not offend others. How can you do that? Well, read the boards for Darwin's sake! There are a thousand and one ways of presenting an unpopular view that won't get you blasted off the site.

As to this whole pooka thing. IMO Barbelith doesn't need yet another idiot who feels it's their duty to "provoke debate with their extreme views". No-one asked you to perform that duty. No-one else thinks we need someone to spout offense in name of breaking us out of our narrow little reality tunnels. If someone did, or wanted to know if others did, then you can be sure it'd be at the top of one of the forums being discussed.

Personally I don't feel you should be let back on the board. You've already made it clear that you believe you have a right of expression that supercedes the rights of everyone else on here.

I know you're "just a guy". I know you're not a one-dimensional monster. But having a wife and a kid is no defence for being an ass.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:37 / 23.03.06
grant: Could you give me an idea of the benefits you think accrue from letting Zoemancer back on Barbelith?

Stoats:

The fact that it isn't, and isn't entirely white either (therefore there are people who can be directly offended and upset by comments made effectively TO THEM) puts the onus on us even more as a community (because we are a community, and it would be a pretty shit community that didn't rally round when its members were under attack, even by other members of that community), not just the individuals on the receiving end, not to put up with that kind of bullshit.

I agree entirely. Vlad's comment would have been unacceptable whether or not it had been read by anyone in the group being targeted, and it's not the duty of people in the targeted group to identify attacks. I was specifically speaking to his belief that novody had any right to be offended, and Duncan's attempt to reason with him by saying that, at the very least, he had to admit that people with experience of being on the receiving end of racist abuse for being Indian might have a better eye for determining what was racially offensive than he did. We're back to abstracts again - that this was not some abstract statement that may or may not be tagged as racist with no consequences - it was something which caused anger, upset, offence, to people who registered it and (one might assume) people who didn't.

Vladimir's gifts to the board have been many - exquisite English, Emily Porter dressed up like a trollop, in typical female style, full disclosure: I count Rushkoff a friend, phosphorescent serpahimcakes - but I fear this intransigence makes his position on Barbelith untenable.
 
 
grant
13:54 / 23.03.06
grant: Could you give me an idea of the benefits you think accrue from letting Zoemancer back on Barbelith?

It would please me to think he might actually examine his beliefs, and might gradually embrace the value of criticism* when launching projects (as in that Temple thread). I mean, some of the ideas were interesting or valuable (witness: Stoatie's last post).

On the other hand, I'm not sure most people are going to be willing to engage with anything coming from zoemancer now. Would things be different in a month? (Presuming we could use Nid as an option.) I don't know. Ze's certainly better at the apology business than VJB.

(*odd -- all of a sudden I got a flash of the Cultural Revolution there.)
 
 
grant
13:58 / 23.03.06
Ze's certainly better at the apology business than VJB.

Which, after re-reading the letter, isn't saying that much.
 
 
grant
14:02 / 23.03.06
This is, as a note, the best defense I can offer the guy.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:03 / 23.03.06
Well, perhaps the best thing to do then would be to wipe out this suit. He can then reapply for a new suit, and try to use that one a little more responsibly. There is a natural delay in his membership, and he gets that clean slate you were talking about a few pages ago.

And then he says something that makes people reading it feel revulsed, nauseated and/or attacked, and gets banned again, but there we go. If we're going to indulge these people, why the Hell not. However, find me one moment in his post where he goes anywhere near apologising and I will shrimp you into a coma.

I'm tickled by the thought that we could possibly also change Barbelith's google listing to "Barbelith - for those not entirely convinced by Holocaust revisionism", thus killing two Policy birds with one stone. We could be, like, the skeptical wing of the revisionist movement...
 
 
grant
14:19 / 23.03.06
You're right, you're right.


The thought strikes me: is there any way that "banning" is different than what you're describing? Is there a list somewhere of banned email addresses in the applications group? If not, and unless we want to make what you've just described the standard policy, then maybe there should be.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:32 / 23.03.06
Not really, no - banning is likely to slow somebody down rather than prevent them from ever getting back on the board. Even if we keep a tally of their email addresses, they can with a bit of effort get another one, and construct a new online identity fishcakes. So, yes, a list of banned email addresses/corroborating websites would make it a bit harder yet to get back in. The idea is that most people will once banned lose interest and drift away rather than join the back of the queue for entry just to get banned again, asuming they creep back in. That's less successful for mad people with a lot of time on their hands.

In this particular case, I can see your case for one more chance - I'd like very much to see Barbelith as a place of education. On the other hand, if somebody, faced with the vast corpus of knowledge available about the Final Solution, decides that they are not entirely convinced that it didn't happen, it seems to me very likely that they have worked very, very hard on ignoring the evidence that it did.
 
 
Ganesh
14:40 / 23.03.06
This is what I identified in Shadowsax as "LLBIMG syndrome" - the belief that one is a clever iconoclast, when one is actually behaving like a dim reactionary.

Oh, the 'I'm teh firestarter' defence predates LLBIMG. It's as old as the hills on which we placid old Barbesheeple safely graze.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
16:13 / 23.03.06
I was under the impression that Barbelith was a free speech zone.

Evil Scientist: It is.

It isn't. It never was. That's blunt, but this has come up frequently in the past and the answer is simple: Barbelith does not operate with a policy of 'anything goes' and never has done.

GGM: Further, his continued presence on this board indicates to me that some forms of enthnicity and culture are considered more deserving of an atmosphere free from hatespeech directed at them than others.

Quoting this because it's

A) true and
B) in danger of becoming lost in amongst all the zoemancer stuff.

Vlad needs banning and nobody, as yet, has managed to put forwards an argument as to why he shouldn't be. That being the case, could you do something about it please, Tom?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
16:30 / 23.03.06
As I also stated to Tom, I was completely surprised at my being banned.
I was under the impression that Barbelith was a free speech zone.

See, this is the bit that gets me. I would have thought five minutes of looking at Barbelith would make a person realise it is not a free speech zone, and give them a scintilla of a clue that we need no MesoArmenian Trickster Gods with a Beef Against Teh Jews. I say kick him, if only so we keep some shred of consistency with what Tom decided the last time we had an Anti-Semite on board and which informed board behaviour with people like Bleeding Hawksmoor.

If my continued membership requires that I get on my knees and beg for forgiveness and betray myself then I guess I will bid you all farewell for that is not in my nature to do.

I was hoping for an apology but now I'm gonna choose this instead. This sounds funner. I would only edit it to 'I get on my knees and beg for forgiveness and then crawl through broken glass with my flies undone, then gargle with petroleum'.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
16:34 / 23.03.06
GGM speaks Strong Truth. Especially since the little erk can't even be bothered to engage with this thread, instead relaying his supercilious bilge via an intermediary. Says it all really.
 
 
T Blixius
16:36 / 23.03.06
In this particular case, I can see your case for one more chance - I'd like very much to see Barbelith as a place of education.

This is very altruistic, but unfortunately, one can only learn, or be educated, if they're willing. It's quite obvious to me from the "apology" Zoemancer posted that there are no such sentiments from him.

In fact, in the Operation thread in Temple, where he states that he won't listen to anything other than yes, and again in the non-apology apology, it's apparent that these are some deeply held views that will be resistant to any form of education or change.

Basically he's saying that, "I hold neo-nazi viewpoints, and i'm not interested in changing them, and I'll just be quiet about them in the future". I don't think that is an acceptable position on his part, or that these views and barbelith membership can co-exist. It belies a terrible shallowness of his character, one that is not consistent with the current membership's mores or the stated goals of the board.

I think actually, that banning would help this individual more. If he actually was forced to seriously rexamine his viewpoint after losing membership in an educated forum on the internet, then it might have an effect much greater than if we were to forgive him after a suspension and let him continue on the board. As many have pointed out, if he really likes the board and respects it he can make an effort to come back under a new guise. That requires more effort (and thus, change) on his part, deservedly so, in my opinion.

Hopefully he will keep any new personna separated, because
I don't think many of us will be able to see him in quite the same way ever again.
 
 
illmatic
18:22 / 23.03.06
Just wanted to add my voice to the ban Vladimer chorus. Please get rid of them both.

If Zoemancer wants to re-join in a couple of months, I guess he can do so, if he actually wants to think about why pepople disagree with him so strongly. In the meantimes, if he wants a space where "anything goes" and no one will "oppress" him can always hang out on the Vice Magazine forum.
 
 
Spyder Todd 2008
18:24 / 23.03.06
What worries me is, we seem increasingly to be comfortable with the idea of banning people from the board pronto, without giving them the opportunity to explain/redeem themselves….If we didn't at least give him the chance, though, I don't really see why we're giving other people the chance to expound on their 'ism' hobby-horses, without even giving them a You Might Be Banned first warning. -Ganesh

Quoting from last page, but whatever. This worries me too, but I’m not sure for the same reason it worries Ganesh. For the most part, all the recent bannings (let’s say “recent” means “so far this year”) have been warranted, in my opinion. What worries me, though, is how surprisingly frequent the need for this kind of action has become of late.

Where once banning was something that happened maybe once in 6 or 8 months, we’ve had a string of issues in a matter of three. Is this some sort of weird coincidence? Was there some form of catalyst? I’m not suggesting that there’s some vast anti-barbelith conspiracy out there, but I find it troubling that we, as a community, have needed to take such action so often recently.

Is there any explanation for this collective bad behavior? Random chance, or something else? I honestly don’t know. And I’m not really sure which idea I like less. On the one hand, if there was some sort of convenient-if-unlikely conspiracy against Barbelith, I’d like to know what we did to deserve this nonsense from one particular person or persons. More likely though, if all these incidents are unrelated, how have we as a board attracted people who are either moronic, blatant in their overt prejudice-of-choice, or in other ways simply do not get the point? I ask because I really am not sure what to think about all this.

Barbelith does not operate with a policy of 'anything goes' and never has done.

And cheers to E.R (and Our Lady), you beat me to saying it.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
18:25 / 23.03.06
Or, y'know, effing Stormfront.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
18:26 / 23.03.06
(That last to Illmatic, obv.)
 
 
Jack Denfeld
18:49 / 23.03.06
Hey, my friend said that zoemancer should be banned for his holocaust denial post, and my friend said that with all the new members on the board, holocaust denial threads shouldn't be treated as a slap on the wrist offense, and that the older members expected not to see stuff like that on Barbelith without tossing the author out, and that the new members probably didn't expect to see threads like that while they've lurked Barbelith waiting for membership. My friend says ban the fucker.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
19:01 / 23.03.06
Oh, I do see the point that Duncan F and Haus are making, and I don't think either of you were suggesting for one minute that the onus to defend be with members of the attacked group.

I guess that the way I see it is:

certain forms of hatespeech may speak more directly to certain posters, and the force of that immediate effect, whether of anger, upset, mild irritation, water-off-ducks' back etc, be experienced more vividly by those posters.

Who can, if they wish to, provide those contexts when reponding.

It is, however their choice to make reference to those identities when responding. Not an obligation.

Because the community as a whole should respond to incidents of hatespeech because they are unnacceptable within the community, rather than it coming down to personal response. Responses may be vary between memembers of a community, and individuals may respond differently at different times. Human beings are wacky like that.
 
 
Char Aina
19:04 / 23.03.06
Is there any explanation for this collective bad behavior?

there was a bit of a holdup in the applications process, and then a big push to speed things through.
a lot of people arrived at once, or at least within days of each other. that would clearly give us a spread of the sound and the not so.
i think we just havent dealt with the vlad thing, and the dealing with others makes that more apparent.

i dont think it's as bad as it seems.
 
 
Ganesh
19:07 / 23.03.06
GGM on VJB:

... his continued presence on this board indicates to me that some forms of enthnicity and culture are considered more deserving of an atmosphere free from hatespeech directed at them than others.

This is part of what I'm attempting to say. I remain ambivalent about our apparently increased willingness to chuck people off Barbelith (although reading Zoemancer's Holocaust thread does reduce that ambivalence a bit - it's probably the most clear-cut example to date in terms of being a sustained piece of hatespeech which has now been defended by Zoemancer as a serious part of his worldview), but what concerns me more is not having a clear idea of where that leaves us with regard to other hatespeech. I'm bothered by the contrast between the way one instance of 'ism' is treated and the way the other's been treated. I feel there needs to be some sort of consistency of approach - or at least some attempt at consistency.
 
 
The Falcon
20:03 / 23.03.06
Can you link some of these other examples, Ganesh? I read a lot of the board, but not all of it, and wasn't aware that someone was making light of the Rwandan genocide (presumably in Switchboard?) as you mention. Had I been, I think I'd've been horrified and then livid, most likely.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:09 / 23.03.06
Where once banning was something that happened maybe once in 6 or 8 months, we’ve had a string of issues in a matter of three. Is this some sort of weird coincidence?

No, I don't think so. We've just reopened the board, and processed a lot oof new entrants, some of whom went off quite quickly - Hawksmoor was banned shortly after he arrived, likewise Neomancer. If you have 400 new members, some of them are going to be revealed as homophobes or anti-semites. A couple of our other bannings, IIRC, were the same person, who has had suits consistently destroyed for several years. Vladimir has been a bit of an open issue, so it stands to reason that he's going to come up again during this.

I'm not seeing this is an exceptional level.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:20 / 23.03.06

Who can, if they wish to, provide those contexts when reponding.

It is, however their choice to make reference to those identities when responding. Not an obligation.

Absolutely.
 
 
Ganesh
20:20 / 23.03.06
Can you link some of these other examples, Ganesh? I read a lot of the board, but not all of it, and wasn't aware that someone was making light of the Rwandan genocide (presumably in Switchboard?) as you mention. Had I been, I think I'd've been horrified and then livid, most likely.

The Rwanda thing was a hypothetical example; I don't believe I ever claimed otherwise. I'm thinking more of the cock-rotting Indians, cabbage-smelling gypsies and some of the stuff touched upon in the Feminism thread. My point is that, if we ban outright at Point A on a notional 'offensiveness continuum' and do nothing very much at Point Z, what criteria do we use for locating a particular contribution on that continuum? Several posters have suggested, for example, that anti-Semitic and/or homophobic comments are likely to be viewed as more serious than other forms of racism and/or misogyny. Are those suggestions valid?
 
  

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