Is this a kind of thought exercise or are some of y’all really this obtuse?
I suggest we put something up for a vote sometime this week to continue this process.
Discussions of violence. Posts that entertain causing the demise or serious harming of a specific person or group for any purpose (whether to express anger, incite a rebellion, or troll people) are not allowed. If your post contains a violent scenario (or a scenario designed to create an opportunity for violence) in which a person or groups could end up dead or seriously injured, make it as fantastical and preposterous as possible, post it at most once in a while, but ultimately, consider not posting it at all.
I don’t like the „post it at most once in a while“ language. Either this is something that we are concerned about and it shouldn’t be allowed, or it’s not that big of a deal. I prefer to remove it and leave it to the mod‘s discretion to let a post go „once a while“. I know some are opposed to mod discretion. My counter argument is to not make morons moderators so we can trust their judgement. If their judgement is off repeatedly have a mechanism in place to get rid of them. I believe we already do.
Also how often is once in a while?
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I agree with this, I don’t love that language myself, but it seemed that others liked it as it softened the rule a bit and I was trying to give a little from my absolutist position to try to get something that had a chance of passing. Do others have strong feelings on this one way or the other?
The rule should be nuked.
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Incitement to suicide shouldn’t be allowed.
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Rule 6, which we recently passed, already prohibits incitement to violence (which can be reasonably argued extends to suicide as well).
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I don’t think we should let the 2-3 biggest opponents to the rule decide ITT whether or not we have a sitewide vote on the rule as written. Seems kind of silly.
We already had a sitewide vote on the rule as written. Some people voted for it, some people voted against it, and many people said we should discuss it further. We are in the process (a very slow process) of discussing it further.
JT is driving this process. When he feels the time is right (productive discussion has ended?), he will put up another vote. Maybe there will be multiple options for different versions of the rule presumably together with an option to have no rule (i.e., letting Rule 6 do the heavy lifting).
Hi folks !!!1! Anyways, and 100% grunching… Let’s chat a little bit about the word ‘violence’.
- The word ‘violence’ means breaking things -and- directly harming beings.
- If used coherently, ‘violence’ is a term of description, not an ethical judgement.
I really, really think our rules need to reflect these points.
For example, the 100s of activists that were mass arrested at J20 were charged with participating in a violent riot. No beings were harmed (except activists by the cops). The violence referenced was a couple of broken window.
OTOH, breaking up these kinda events by the cops is almost always done violently. Using tear gas, pain-compliance techniques/etc are all violent actions.
Intentionally breaking a window as protest is a violent act, but so is breaking the glass to get to a fire extinguisher during a fire.
Shoving somebody maliciously is a violent act, shoving somebody out of the way of car to keep them from being hit is also a violent act.
Speech can never, in and of itself, be violent (although speech can encourage violent acts).
Even us activists who are overwhelmingly proponents of the general Ghandi/King tradition known as ‘Non-Violence’ will sometimes condone certain forms of violence. For example, at LA 2000, our consensus was ‘non-violence’, except for police barricades.
So…
- I think there should be an explicit distinction made between thing-violence and being-violence in our rules.
- We should have a discussion regarding: should who is using the violence in question matter in our rules. Cops tear gassing activists is just as violent as activists tear gassing cops.
Note: this is a x-post from the rule #6 discussion.
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I’ll xpost my response.
Any posts in support of police should be looked at as support for violence.
Also, hi shame_trolley!
:) I was pretty sure from “Sabo” and the content, but then I noticed the “!!!1!” and edited.
Are we allowed to fight each other for $10k yo?
ggoreo raises several good points above regarding how violence and the threat of violence permeates a great deal of political discussion, both at present and historically. To cite but one (extreme) example, when I was in high school one of the standard topics for the debate team was the dropping of the Atomic bombs on Japanese cities. I have no idea if they still use that topic or even if they still have high school debate teams.
Anyway the reason I am reminded of that is discussion of this rule. It seems as if some people want anyone who expresses support for Truman’s decision (knowing that there would be many deaths and serious injuries to civilians including women and children) to be banned from this forum.
Dropping the A-bombs on Japan is just one of a large number of historical incidents involving violence which are still discussed and debated today. And, as ggoreo rightly points out, especially in today’s environment across the globe violence is often the flip-side of protest/justice.
To mandate that only one side of the issue can be supported seems misguided and downright absurd.
Literally who here has actually suggested that?
The verbiage of rule 7 suggests it, and there was originally a proposed rule that basically said “If you don’t like these rules, gtfo”.
And someone was banned for the unsympathetic support of a governmental police action where innocents were killed.
Yeah, that’s definitely an accurate summary of NBZ’s banning.
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Even if you think the characterization is unfair, the larger point that oreo is making is why this rule is untenable