Discussion
Sorry but DHH calling people wolves that need to be shot does not come "from a place of caring" https://lobste.rs/c/1k43c5
You can defend any horrible genocidist this way: oh they were a good family member, a nice neighbor, they're worried about their kids. But what you're doing with that is enabling genocide https://lobste.rs/s/ipy9xw/normalized_fascism_open_source_12#c_gzsbdi
> As Europeans living through the fourth year of a war
Fucking hell. How incredibly blind do you have to be to be sitting in rich and peaceful Vienna and make out like you can at all compare your situation, in a country which is manifestly not at war, with those of people in Kyiv, Mariupol, and Bakhmut
There’s empathy, there’s solidarity, and then there’s talking like you’re personally affected when you’re fucking not
@cwebber at this point I have to conclude pushcxknows what he wants on his site and it's this sort of straight up apologetics. He's been told enough times by enough people. You become what you keep doing.
@davidgerard @cwebber No one has ever told me the Nazi bar parable. I've read it and referenced it for years, but you're making stuff up when you write like this.
I've been mostly offline the last few days. Us mods are still handling stuff from the big story.
@pushcx @davidgerard I *personally* tend to think lobste.rs is relatively well moderated given the challenge of moderating that kind of space at all. The moderation can be a bit cautiously slow, but I tend to agree with most of the decisions once they happen.
Certainly light years better than the orange site.
That said holy moly, the DHH thread certainly has bubbled a lot of the people I've raised eyebrows at slightly before on threads right to the surface.
@cwebber «[DHH] observing a failing Europe.»
If Europe is failing, it's because of people like DHH suport fascists like Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon.
@cwebber great money, great responsibility. 🤷 fuck dhh.
@cwebber People trying to defend DHH then trying position that as 'balanced' FFS.
No, the guy is a Nazi. If you defend him you are defending a Nazi, which means very likely you are too.
People do the same with Trump, Farage in the UK, it's the same playbook, every time.
@cwebber and Magda Goebbels made a great strudel
We should stop humanizing horrible people. If someone calls for or supports genocide, nobody should care what else they are doing. They could be the largest philanthropist in the world. It should not matter. They are still a horrible person!
@cwebber @inthehands The Zone of Interest is a nice movie about decent, hardworking and caring family people. https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-zone-of-interest
@cwebber Anyone who embraces any narrative about wolves needing to be shit knows nothing about wolves. :(
@cwebber Adolph Hitler really cared about Germany after all. *sarcasm*
@cwebber Ah, the kindness of racists when they're dealing with people of their colour.
Truly a moving example of human compassion
@cwebber Reading Armin Ronacher defend DHH has been infuriating. Sad, too—I love the libraries he created for Pytjon and genuinely admired him
@davidgerard @alys @cwebber That lobsters comment reada like "rephrase that with a slightly different number of words, please"
@alys We relied heavily on said libraries for MediaGoblin. Sad to see the path he's on... honestly, I worry he's being radicalized himself
Yes, it's good, and important when feasible, to participate in de-radicalizing people by approaching them with empathy and helping them understand that the path they are on is dangerous
But publicly *excusing* someone powerful and famous who's deep down that rabbit hole isn't that.
@cwebber Quite the leap to suggest one can't indirectly discuss someone's intolerant ideas bluntly because being directly empathetic can make them change their mind (after a LOT of work and frequently just a small improvement).
But saying "but he's a caring father" ain't even indirectly being empathetic. Favorably, it's asking (begging) everyone else (who likely has no access to DHH) to have direct empathetic talks. Unfavorably, it's just glazing.
@cwebber Two things can be true: Daryl Davis seems to be a truly wonderful human being doing The Lord's Work(TM) in trying to reach out to people who are racist, etc., and teach them better ways. I admire him greatly.
I sometimes wonder if Davis is unintentionally doing more harm than good, though, because his story gets trotted out in so many discussions with the implication (or outright assertion) that you can't be intolerant of bigots because they allegedly can be turned around if everybody just works hard enough. It's not their fault, really; they're just misguided. Don't be mean to them; even when they're openly working toward eradicating whole groups of people, *you* just have to work harder!
The fact that someone like Davis can *sometimes* reach those folks and walk them back does not excuse them one iota. It certainly does not obligate the rest of us to tolerate bigotry and worse when people like DHH use their position to advocate for what amounts to genocide or at least apartheid. (Being charitable, let's assume that DHH and Co. would be content to "merely" segregate Europe and the US so that white people are the majority and hold power.)
In my mind, the right approach is to ostracize bigots, etc., and work to prevent harm. Only after they are unable to inflict harm on their targets is it a priority to reach them and try to bring them back into a healthy society. As long as they are hurting people it is not reasonable to let that continue in the hopes that *maybe* they can be compassioned into reason. And there are some folks, like DHH, that I don't think can be reached regardless.
Some people are bigoted and cruel because it's what they've learned and they can unlearn it. Some people just like it, and you could try everything under the Sun and never reach them. It is unimportant to me to try to distinguish between those groups as long as they are a threat to innocent people.
@jzb @cwebber The problem, I think, is that...
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