Tweeted Elon Musk, quoted in "Kanye West suspended from Twitter after posting swastika inside Star of David/Elon Musk intervenes after rapper posted image hours after airing antisemitic views in Alex Jones interview" (The Guardian).
In case you thought Elon Musk was a free-speech absolutist.
Notice that it's not a matter of rules, but how the rules are applied. Old Twitter kicked out Trump because he violated the rule against incitement to violence, but how close was Trump to inciting violence?
Now, how close was Ye?
The suspension took place hours after Ye praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in an interview on InfoWars, a show hosted by the rightwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.... On Thursday night, Ye [tweeted] the image of the swastika over the Star of David, a symbol of Judaism. The tweet was swiftly deleted....
I can certainly see why Musk wants to get that off his social-media platform, but it was within what First Amendment doctrine protects from government suppression.
Now — as I said above — it depends on how the rules are applied. What if you really wanted to conclude that an image of a swastika over the Star of David was a direct incitement of imminent, violent action that is likely to produce violence?
Musk doesn't have to follow First Amendment doctrine, of course. He owns the company. But he has called himself a "free-speech absolutist," and some people have expressed deep anxiety about that. Maybe they should calm down.
On the other hand, you know what they say: Eternal vigilance is the price of suppression.
Posts
89 comments:
I don't see incitement to violence. Black lives matter ought to be concerned though, if he's that loose about it.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss - as The Who said.
Everybody's a big mouth absolutist until you get punched in the mouth for it.
Eternal vigilance is the price of....liberty.
"Maybe they should calm down."
Yes, maybe they should. Everyone is so absolutist about everything. Everyone must be so pure. Like Aryans used to think they had to be (though, of course, as humans, they weren't. Not ever.) Elon is trying his best to make Twitter an open forum. But even open forums have to have some limits.
But what are his standards? What are the guidelines for all to see? I dunno. Maybe common sense. Does anybody reading this think the swastika over the Star of David is appropriate, given recent history? Given Kanye's millions of followers getting dosed with previous high levels of anti-Semitic hate?
This one was a no-brainer. He was given a lot of leeway. He abused it and drove well beyond a line even he had to know was coming.
Now we know what unsaid things can’t be said on Twitter.
Trump was banned for refusing to go to the inauguration, which he did not do via Twitter. This was considered "incitement to violence" due to a complicated series of rationalizations projected onto other people.
I don’t want anything to happen to Kanye… not while our democracy is alive.
I think that Kanye was trying to make an artistic point about Hitler and our culture's use of Hitler and Nazism as a cudgel to shut people up. Are you a vegetarian? You are repeating Hitler's talking points! I have a certain sympathy for that point of view, having been style a nazi for simply believing that we should have some modicum of control over who comes over our borders, and after the Canadian truckers were dubbed nazis after some guy the Canadian government knows, but refuses to identify for "national security" reasons was seen waving a Nazi flag at the protests. But saying that the holocaust never happened is a no-no, and he did. Even though nobody seems to care, honestly, about ethnic cleansing being done right now by Kiev. "Never again" is a joke.
"I tried my best" is always a lie.
We might feel like we tried.
But you could always have tried harder, and bigger, and more and more.
"I tried my best" is a wimpy complaint from somebody under stress.
(Kurosawa says that he never finishes a movie, he just abandons them).
Alec Ryrie, Professor of Divinity, Gresham College thoughts on the unique place Hitler and Nazism occupy in modern Western morality discussed in the context of the development of atheism, this being the last lecture in a series on the development of atheistic thought. There's a transcript in addition to the filmed lecture, you can scroll about half way through IIRC for the meat of this discussion.
Once the most potent moral figure in western culture was Jesus Christ. Believer or unbeliever, you took your ethical bearings from him, or professed to. To question his morals was to expose yourself as a monster. Now, the most potent moral figure in western culture is Adolf Hitler. It is as monstrous to praise him as it would once
have been to disparage Jesus. He has become the fixed reference point by which we define evil. Ken Livingstone might have thought that after a lifetime of courting controversy there was nothing he could say that would damage him: but it turned out there was one thing. The humanist ethic which Brown summarises is almost a precisely inverted image of Nazism. In the seventeenth century, arguments tended to end with someone calling someone else ‘atheist’, marking the point at which the discussion hit a brick wall. In our own times, as Godwin’s Law notes, the final, absolute and conversation-ending insult is to call someone a Nazi. That’s not an accident or a sign of intellectual laziness. It’s because Nazism is an absolute standard: it is where argument ends, because whether it is good or evil is not up for debate. Or again, while Christian imagery, crosses and crucifixes, have lost much of their potency in our culture, there is no visual image which now packs as visceral an emotional punch as a swastika.
Sigh. Talk about jumping the shark. Is he sick?
I think the Professor talked about this with Bob Wright. A society has a range of things you can talk about. If you are suppressing the opinion of Nazis, who are held in contempt by >99% of the society, that's normal. If you are trying to suppress an opinion that a large fraction of the society holds, you're the fascist.
The link is wrong.
the image of the swastika over the Star of David
Such an image is not an "incitement to violence".
The image's meaning is that Jews are, on their insides, like Nazis.
Musk is being stupid in this case.
Meanwhile Letitia James is pushing laws in New York to criminalize speech that somebody somewhere might find “humiliating” or “vilifying,” let alone inciting violence.
Pass the popcorn.
"I don't see incitement to violence." Maybe you would see more clearly if you removed your head from your anus. The swastika symbolizes the extermination of millions of innocent jewish men women and children. Comingled with the Star of David, the violent message is apparent to any normal caring person over the age of five.
Slightly off topic - how nice that everytime you post I have to see your ass and your dog's ass.
I have to disagree with Musk on this one.
Ye should be allowed to make his point.
The real problem here is that nobody is calling out the massive racially motivated wave of Black violence against Jews.
Everyone thinks Ye is some sort of outlier here. But he has succeeded in getting the media to notice black anti-semitism.
There needs to be more discussion of this, not less.
Let's pass judgement on suspensions without stating if we would or not have suspended YE for the Star of David / Nazi symbol.
I'm not sure Musk claims to be an "absolutist" as described in this post. That's a purposeful misrepresentation of his position. It's a ridiculous description. Everyone knows you can't yell fire in a crowded room to create danger and chaos.
Trump didn't incite violence. The FBI and CIA did. So we're not even dealing with truths in this particular attempt at analyzing Musk. We're playing make believe.
Musk is doing a much better, and more even handed job than the coordinated censorship and suspensions under Twitter's old management and their coordination with the US Gov't. That was mainly to cover election fraud and shove the poison mRNA shots up everyone's asses.
A simple Thank you Elon would suffice.
That anyone would feel OK with that level of insanity? Of course he should be booted
If you throw a party and someone walks in wearing Antifa/ Swastika Nazi gear - you'd throw them out.
Of course Trump should never have been banned from Twitter.
apples and oranges.
jim5301 at 7:23 AM
Maybe you would see more clearly if you removed your head from your anus. The swastika symbolizes the extermination of millions of innocent jewish men women and children. Comingled with the Star of David, the violent message is apparent to any normal caring person over the age of five. .... how nice that everytime you post I have to see your ass and your dog's ass.
You seem to be an extraordinarily obnoxious, nasty person.
I would support a decision to ban you from this blog.
"Old Twitter kicked out Trump because he violated the rule against incitement to violence, but how close was Trump to inciting violence?"
Really? Is that a documented truth? Or something cooked up après coup. Old Twitter was not in the habit of explaining its actions or publishing its standards, assuming there were any that did any justice to the reasonable notion thereof, something I'm inclined to doubt. What was Trump's tweet, verbatim? I don't know. I've never seen it quoted, but I've read a passel of hysterical "opinions" about the former President's Twitter presence that were typically long on breathless rage and very short on specifics.
Assuming his tweet(s) did "incite violence" in a manner that a disinterested observer could classify as such, it wasn't practical, given that the only definitive violence done that day was done to the demonstrators rather than by them. So let us define close to inciting violence in astronomical units. One or two AUs is in the ballpark.
As for Mr. Kanye West's recent tweet (I'm not going to indulge his eccentricities by using the new appellation, Kanye is bogus enough as it is.) his use of a National Socialist swastika enclosed by the Magen David is much closer to incitement, like rubbing elbows with violence against Jews. That graphic in one form or another has been used for decades -- at least the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine -- by unashamedly violent antisemitic terrorist groups, such as the PLO, Black September, and most recently by Hamas, ISIS, and the Islamic Republic of Iran in official publications. These groups need no incitement. However, there are groups here in the United States that advocate violence against Jews and have used the swastika with the star, many of them populated by blacks. I'm thinking of the notorious and insanely stupid Black Israelite religion specifically. Members of that sect have a criminal history of deadly attacks on Jews, so posting a graphic historically used to incite violence against Jews, particularly by a hip-hop performer (an art form not unaccustomed to violent rhetoric directed at Jews), strikes me as uncommonly egregious and therefore unacceptable on a reasonably tolerant public forum.
It's a distasteful opinion, but there is no incitement there.
"If you throw a party and someone walks in wearing Antifa/ Swastika Nazi gear - you'd throw them out."
What if your party's theme is "Your Favorite Musical" and yours is "The Producers"?
Marcus B. THEOLDMAN
The problem is not with Twitter censorship.
That was never the problem.
The problem was the federal government using its relationship with Facebook and Twitter to censor its critics.
Musk spent billions to stop that evil shit.
I'm noting that the swastika is an ancient Asian symbol too. It remains plastered all over temples across Japan.
Here's a Google Maps search for "Japan, Kyoto Temples", where I see 15 swastikas by default. Kyoto is the historical capital of Japan and the the top city for seeing its history (Tokyo is newer and was also burned to the ground in WW2).
https://www.google.com/maps/search/japan,+kyoto+temples
The Red Cross had to invent the Red Crescent because of the medieval Christian crusades...something about a religious warrior's cross didn't fit with medical assistance...
We long ago passed the point where universalism can or will be accepted. Neuter everything or there will be war. Now let's talk about perhaps quixotic, internally hateful "Coexist" bumper stickers:
https://www.etsy.com/market/coexist_bumper_sticker
Temujin said...This one was a no-brainer. He was given a lot of leeway.
It's possible that West was determined to cross the line wherever it was, but how is this anything more than an opinion we don't like? This is exactly the sort of behavior for which the concept of free speech was created.
And as many have pointed out on Twitter, West has marginalized himself. He has been ejected from all civilized conversation. He has no mass following and he isn't building one. I can think of no clearer case of banning being unnecessary to achieve the claimed goals of banning.
This is banning for banning's sake with no more noble purpose.
Saint Croix for the thread.
My favorite free speech case is this one.
Unanimous.
Personally I would adopt that standard.
Musk is an immigrant and he doesn't understand free speech very well.
Liberals used to understand it very well!
Brandenburg was a 9-0 opinion!
It's the high-water mark in free speech jurisprudence.
Literally my favorite free speech case.
That's my standard, Mr. Musk, if you want suggestions for a good law.
*fixed* ->
Swastikas are like the "N" word -- you don't go there.
Unless you are black. We should ASK Whoopee Goldberg. She will know.
1) Musk can make the rules. Now I want to see if any comments that are made from the progressive left or Iran are banned as well. And those comments should not just apply to Jews. Any emotionally related comment about whites, blacks, old farts like me, etc. should now be removed.
2) Blacks hate Jews. The left wants to hide that fact from Jews because it would splinter the already fragile coalition.
If Musk doesn't draw the line at swastikas... where does he draw it?
Imagine the reaction if he let YE and all the other Nazi-huggers go wild?
I'm anti-censorship. but as Saint Croix said - the worst kind of censorship is the managed censorship we get from Democrat-Xi elites and their coordination with Tech Oligarchs who place their thumb on the scales for the Dem-Xi (Fauci) masters.
The media still hide the Biden's corruption. Clinton's, too. Bill was a client/ pal of Epstein. You will hear none of it!
Nazis gained and held power by lies and terror, directing the population through propaganda, bullying, and systemic disenfranchisement. Controlling speech was a big part of that. You simply dared not say certain things; and if you did, or failed to utter the required catechism, you were reported and taken away.
That system of censorship takes different forms today —arguably is less extensive— but none should doubt the power of the Wokies to destroy those who speak too freely. Maybe the N word is “Nazi.”
MikeR said...
Sigh. Talk about jumping the shark. Is he sick?
Very likely he's bipolar and in a manic phase. His wealth and fame are working against him getting the help he needs. Self-serving creatures without conscience are using him and encouraging him in his self-destruction. It's very sad to see and it could get even worse.
jim5301 said...
"I don't see incitement to violence."
Maybe you would see more clearly if you removed your head from your anus. The swastika symbolizes the extermination of millions of innocent jewish men women and children. Comingled with the Star of David, the violent message is apparent to any normal caring person over the age of five.
Slightly off topic - how nice that everytime you post I have to see your ass and your dog's ass.
Welp. That's the 80 IQ take.
Someone had to do it...
There are absolutists.
There are anarchists.
There are boundaries.
Go Musk.
Once you place a marker, others will test it. See Obama's red line regarding Syria, or Biden's minor incursion line regarding Russia/Ukraine. Twitter is a mild game relatively and cheaper than FTX.
While one can argue whether or not Musk should have censored West in this case, to equate Musk's actions with old Twitter is either stupid or dishonest. Old Twitter censored to boost their candidates and suppress the other half of the electorate. Not even remotely the same thing.
Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker said...
If Musk doesn't draw the line at swastikas... where does he draw it?
Imagine the reaction if he let YE and all the other Nazi-huggers go wild?
Whats wrong with that?
Do you think people will join them because they publicly espouse what disgusting people they are?
The problem right now is that we are not allowing them to publicly out themselves and we are pretending that if we ban them from the public square that they don't exist.
We need to confront these people openly and with sunlight. Let them talk and let us respond.
We need more discussion about antisemitism not less. We need to be more courageous in our defense of our values.
Censorship is the cowards way out.
I just don’t care about the whining about perceived non actionable racism that is so prevalent in our victim society.
Remember when Prince Harry showed up at a party in Nazi gear?
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2076816_2076800_2076811,00.html
“ In 2005, just two weeks before Holocaust Memorial Day, Prince Harry figured it was a good idea to turn up at a "colonials and natives" costume party dressed as a Nazi. British tabloid the Sun published a photo of the prince wearing a swastika armband and a desert uniform similar to those worn by Erwin Rommel's German Afrika Korps.”
In case you thought Elon Musk was a free-speech absolutist.
Musk isn't a free-speech absolutist, but he is an apply the rules the same for everyone absolutist.
That's what scares the hell out of the blue checks.
Bob Boyd said...
MikeR said...
"Sigh. Talk about jumping the shark. Is he sick?
Very likely he's bipolar and in a manic phase. His wealth and fame are working against him getting the help he needs. Self-serving creatures without conscience are using him and encouraging him in his self-destruction. It's very sad to see and it could get even worse."
That was my take as well. He's being exploited when he's at his most vulnerable.
Although. Howar trying to act tough is funny as hell.
Bob Boyd said...
MikeR said...
"Sigh. Talk about jumping the shark. Is he sick?
Very likely he's bipolar and in a manic phase. His wealth and fame are working against him getting the help he needs. Self-serving creatures without conscience are using him and encouraging him in his self-destruction. It's very sad to see and it could get even worse."
That was my take as well. He's being exploited when he's at his most vulnerable.
Although. Howard trying to act tough is funny as hell.
I think that Kanye was trying to make an artistic point about Hitler and our culture's use of Hitler and Nazism as a cudgel to shut people up.
I think Kanye is just looking for attention.
Because of his mental health issues, he does it in the most obnoxious way possible.
I take a back seat to, nobody in my denunciation and revulsion of National Socialists past and present.
I have been called a "holocaust denier" for questioning why we only talk about the 6mm Jews murdered in the death camps and ignore the other 6mm humans murdered in the death camps.
I have been accused of anti-semitism for mentioning the 20-30mm murdered by "uncle Joe" (as fdr called him) Stalin or the 60-80mm murdered by the "great leader" Mao (as Brandon recently called him)
And how many have even heard of the 6mm and counting murdered in the Congo in the past 20 years?
Somehow the murder of the 6mm Jews is special. To some people, so special that even mentioning other genocides is antisemitic.
I've always had trouble understanding why
Some of the accusations have occurred on this blog. Many have occurred elsewhere in cyberspace over the past 30+ years
John Henry
The EU warned Musk of Twitter's continued obligation to comply with their content moderation rules, and he replied Twitter would comply. Member state Germany has a thing about Nazi stuff. So seems like this was going to happen, no matter the wild excitement here and elsewhere when he bought the rest of Twitter and took an axe to its content moderation operation.
I recently became involved doing some distant assistance for Swastik (sic) Pharmaceutical
Their logo is a swastika inside a red cross. Does that mean Christians are controlled by national socialists? A la someone's comment above about the swastika in star of David.
Am I an evil antisemite if I take their money?
John Henry
Not just a potential king pretending to be a National Socialist.
In the 30s the Brits had an actual king who was an actual National Socialist.
Even worse, he married a divorced woman and had to abscond in opprobium.
It was just a step too fat
John Henry
I have read articles on otherwise informative news sites where the comments are filled with 'Jews this and Jews that.'
I don't understand it, but it points something out.
After a while, it doesn't mean anything anymore.
Post swastikas everywhere online and they become meaningless.
Just like rappers using the n-word constantly...nobody cares.
You can make a case that posting a swastika and a star of david is ethnic insult. Musk has to make sure that Twitter doesn't violate EU laws too much. Remember: In Germany/Austria/etc. you can be thrown in jail just for praising Hilter or questioning how many Jews were Killed in WW II.
This might have been too much.
Musk shouldn't have taken action. This is the essential lesson of social media, still struggling to make itself heard: If you don't like what you see, exercise your freedom to change the channel.
Instead, Musk has decided to act, pretending that this idiotic display is an incitement to violence. Okay..... It's an incitement. Who was incited, and what did they do? Show me on the doll where you felt the incitement. What Musk has done is to perpetuate the mindset of fundamentally-untruthful and arbitrary Twitter policies. In the real world, there is no 'right' to not being offended. It doesn't exist.
So rather than having an outcry against this odious display of a hateful history, rather than renew and reinvigorate the societal outrage caused by Nazism and Hitler -a useful exercise in the service of society - rather than having that conversation, we're talking about Elon suspending Ye.
But any suspension is always going to be subjective, whatever the reason, no matter how controversial. We should be having the right conversations, not endlessly repeating the wrong ones.
Certain groups have been designated hate groups (usually with good reason) and positive references to them will be taken as incitements to violence, even if those references don't literally incite people to violence.
I do notice that Hindus and other non-Westerners are trying to reclaim and rehabilitate their sacred symbol of the swastika. Too soon, too soon. No word on whether the Navajo and Arizona will join the campaign.
Twitter dropped Trump and deleted his tweets urging his supporters not to be violent. You can find the tweets online and judge for yourself.
John Henry: who ignores this stuff? Genocide studies is a thing, sadly.
Still, there does seem to be something special about the Nazi focus on Jews, don't you agree? So massive and efficient an effort that they actually closed down the main death camps after some months because the job largely done already. Although they continued to look around at "allied" countries where they didn't have cooperation in the initial operations. And diverted precious resources from the failing war effort, with a second spike around the time of the fall of Rome and Normandy. That's dedication. The Nazis' wonderful rail network was crucial in their rapid success. One of Hitler's accomplishments that Ye probably had in mind along with the microphone.
Blogger Mark said..."Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
Let's let Musk speak for himself: "The obvious reality, as long-time users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections, Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent and even-handed.”
When Musk starts censoring democrats as a boost to republicans, get back to us. Until he does, he has given you no justification not to take him at his word. Swastikas are a distraction that I think he is wise to eliminate.
In case you thought Elon Musk was a free-speech absolutist.
I watched this in real time. Kanye posted something to the effect of "this is my last tweet." Musk replied with "that's fine."
Kanye then posted a few more things, but with the above, it can be said that Kanye resigned from Twitter. He already said he was leaving.
Wonder how Kanye West would like to see the Stars 'n Bars backdropping a hangman's knot on his Twitter feed.
10:19
Original Mike- stop talking sense! The Ever-Trumpers don't like it.
During the 1930's, the Nazis struck a coin with a swastika on one side and a star of David on the other, to commemorate their pact with Weizmann and Ben-Gurion.
"The importance of the Nazi-Zionist pact for Israel’s establishment is difficult to overstate. According to a 1974 analysis in Jewish Frontier cited by Brenner, between 1933 and 1939 over 60% of all the investment in Jewish Palestine came from Nazi Germany."
There's pictures of the coin here.
Since Musk took over, I have encountered a number of people, who were fine with past Twitter moderation, but boasted of planning to test Musk's resolve. People who would demonize you for getting a pronoun wrong but happily spewed various racist, sexist, etc comments without shame because they wanted a "gotcha".
Sometimes it's about something else altogether. In politics we sometimes have people who seeming to issue a cry for help but, because of politics, it is spun to protect a party or group and doesn't address the cry for help.
Kanye has had incredibly success but has on more than occasion done things that have indicated unhappiness. He is currently seeing his marriage and family fall apart. I don't know enough to know who's at fault, but it often doesn't matter to the person in pain.
Other examples: Daughter Biden who apparently left her personal diary where it could be found. Hunter Biden (not his father's favorite son) who documented it all and left it to be found it a computer store. A more recent one: The federal official who stole a piece of luggage he could have afforded to buy just weeks after getting celebrated for an accomplishment
If West ever gets his shit together and gets the help he needs, he might even thank Musk for this.
Personally I wouldn’t suspend his account, I would just delete the offensive tweets. But then I don’t have $45 billion to put where my mouth is.
The axiom perfect is the enemy of good fits here. Musk didn't claim that Twitter would be turned into an absolutist playground, but did promise that version 2.0 would be MORE effective, MORE transparent and MORE even handed. Like within the domain of engineering there are boundaries you must operate within and trade-offs you must make or nothing ever gets done.
I recently delved into the buying and selling of Nazi/Germany-related items online. Apparently, eBay doesn't allow listing of anything with a Nazi-swastika or WWII-German items, but unless someone complains they don't do anything (and often not even then).
In the weird, anachronistic world of typewriter collecting, Nazi typewriters can be something of a flash-point, akin to Mac v. PC, Vinyl v. Digital, etc., but usually far less vociferously (go figure). Some believe all things-Nazi should be destroyed and anyone participating is "profiting off of other people's misery".
As John Henry notes, you can buy almost anything with Chairman Mao on it and he just as systematically murdered probably more people than Hitler did. Go figure.
Bill Burr had Kanye's number years ago.
If Musk doesn't draw the line at swastikas... where does he draw it?
Where the law draws it?
Stuff like actual threats and immediate incitement?
I tried to see what Kathy Griffin was tweeting about this but you need her approval to look. so..she keeps her particular crazy within her club.
Saint Croix said...
The problem is not with Twitter censorship.
That was never the problem.
--
Really, so a "platform" can just ban anyone whose opinions they don't like?
That's not a problem? It's only a matter of hubris that we know explicit ties to government. It doesn't have to be explicit.
One of the tenets of Twitter is ability to self-curate the flow of information.
The follow. The block etc.
To treat this like a message spray painted on a building you have to see every day is turning into an excercise of clenched sphincters.
How many people take KanYE's political/philosophical ideas seriously?
Methinks this is just an easy score for Muskk to do his usual playing both sides of the fence while implying the importance/value of Twitter.
He's been pretty quiet about his Chinese paymasters, btw.
But effin' KanYE?! Nuke him!
FWIW,
I worked on a documentary in Chi with some b/Black/Melinated folk who started some anti-semitic riffing and things got awkwardly quiet when I pushed back. I think it was just assumed...kinda llike Progressives in Madison.
Later, I worked on a music video in Chi for a fairly orthodox sect of Judaism. They had a particular style of dress so I was visibly not part of that. At one point, a camera op told me they were surprised I was hired and that they didn't hire someone "from the community". Took me a second to understand.
Musk will have crossed the threshold of civility bullshit when he refuses auditing with probable cause, incites violence against people peacefully assembled, and elects to abort... cancel people... entities for social, redistributive, clinical, political, and fair weather causes.
OMG - Bill Burr! LOL.
"Some believe all things-Nazi should be destroyed and anyone participating is "profiting off of other people's misery".
Some people believe that about the USSR and Mao's China. And anyone buying anything "Lenin or Stalin" or "Mao" is also "profitting off other people's misery". Strangely enough, many of those VERY upset at Nazi stuff don't give a rats ass about USSR and Mao China Merchandise. Wonder why?
Are all the Dead Heads and Hippies that drove Volkswagen Vans Nazi sympathizers? Holy shit.
The Dancing Bears do kind of look like they're goose-stepping.
And that steal you face skeleton sure looks a lot different to me now...
Remember when Prince Harry showed up at a party in Nazi gear?
I even remember back when Lady Gaga appeared at a rally in support of Hillary Clinton dressed in a black outfit with a red armband clearly inspired by SS uniforms. As far as I can recall there was no swastika on her armband, but I do recall that damned few believed her when she claimed not to know what her attire resembled.
In 2005, just two weeks before Holocaust Memorial Day,
Imagine that. Strange, given we all have that day marked on our Calendar.
Usually, they write something like "So-and-do did something antisemitic, just before/after/within weeks of the Jewish holiday of "X", because there seem to be a lot of Jewish Holidays and some of them seem to go on forever. I mean, doesnt Hannakuh go on for a week?
Ann is right that Elon is consciously pretending to see Ye's art as a call to violence, presumably to reassure moderate skeptics of his new approach moreso than a sign of submission to any extreme anti-speech cabal.
Hitler isn't said to be one of the founders of Israel for nothing, Jupiter.
Know what I mean?
As for why the focus on Nazis and Jews, how about this: the emancipation of the Jews released a creative, intelligent, and very dynamic force on the world, and the accomplishments of Germans, Jews, and German Jews were among the most notable and impressive in scientific and cultural history. If that sort of thing impresses you; some
people love it.
For all the real anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe at large, as Germany vaulted to the top of European powers, German Jews came to dominate all the professions and vocations they were allowed to enter in Germany, and by the 1920s some prominent Jews were worried that intermarriage would mean communal suicide in a few decades . . .
It surprised a lot of people, especially German Jews, what happened next. It still seems to be a mystery to some.
Swastikas were used by Native Americans who usually viewed the symbol as a representation of the four directions; for instance the Navajo use a design often referred to as “whirling logs” in sandpaintings, and the Hopi paint a four-armed pinwheel design on rattles symbolizing the migrations of the clans across the continent. https://messieraz.com/the-use-of-the-swastika-symbol-in-american-indian-art/
When I was in MAINE 2 years ago, there was a Native American rug in the place we rented that had swastikas on it. I was alarmed, until I looked it up.
Dumb Lefty Mark: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
Original Mike: "Let's let Musk speak for himself: "The obvious reality, as long-time users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections, Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent and even-handed.”
When Musk starts censoring democrats as a boost to republicans, get back to us. Until he does, he has given you no justification not to take him at his word. Swastikas are a distraction that I think he is wise to eliminate."
When Musk starts allowing republicans to have direct contact hotlines for shutting down any democraticals they wish to or Musk starts allowing any pro-republican (spoiler: there are likely none left) deep staters to pop in and work hand in glove with establishing pro-republican narratives and killing anti-republican information, well, then Dumb Lefty Mark can get back to us.
Oh, BTW, as mentioned yesterday, did you know McConnell and his team of GOPe-er "all stars" attempted to shove the horrific JCPA bill thru the Senate on a "hotline" basis? Its hard to imagine how damaging that Act would be if passed.
But don't tell the Ever-McConnell-tards about it. Those GOPe squishes really, really don't like it.
Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker said...
10:19
Original Mike- stop talking sense! The Ever-Trumpers don't like it.
12/2/22, 11:01 AM
What the hell are you babbling about now??
This was a trap that Musk refused to get caught in. Musk was put in a no-win situation. If he didn’t remove West’s tweet, all the Leftist anti-Semites would suddenly show their love for Jews and denounce Musk for being a bigot. If he did remove it, they would claim that he was anti-free speech. Given the two alternatives the later was his only rational choice.
But suppose the engine overheated, ran out of water? Anxiety twanged at her nerves. And the deep distinctive ruts were changing to a complex pattern, like the rails in a city switchyard. She picked out the track of the one motor car that had been through here recently. It was marked with the swastika tread of the rear tires. That track was her friend; she knew and loved the driver of a car she had never seen in her life.
From the novel "Free Air" by sinclair lewis
Richard,
He banned him.
There will be endless routes to call him a bigot.
I don't do Twitter. Did Musk make his announcement or is 5pm ET something other than nearly dinner in New England?
Elon Musk never said he was a free speech absolutist.
is there any difference between
inciting violence? and inviting violence?
[not as keyboard typo]
swastika symbolizes the extermination of millions of innocent jewish men women and children
=============
call it anything but /swastika/
if you want to connect the symbol to Nazi and not deprive Hindus of iconography
I actually thought this was a humane thing for Musk to do. It's clear Kanye is obviously mentally ill and committing Hari-Kari. Its exploitative to continually allow Kanye to make a spectacle of himself and I think Musk decided to cut the curtain. Kanye is welcome to continue to soil himself on Alex Jones or any other forum exploitive enough to have him on but Musk doesn't have to play along.
The problem with the swastika, in contrast to an anti-semitic rant, is that the image is so distinctive that it's too late to "look away"--by the time you realize it's coming, you've seen it. For text, and even for less stark and symbolic images, you can always accelerate your scrolling so that you don't have to read the text (i.e., what I do here when I notice a long OCD-ish run of particular commenters). For most Normals, seeing a swastika produces immediate discomfort, and the image is not something the Normal want on a screen they are holding or sitting in front of. So, if you allow swastikas and Nazi images, you'll end up losing a LOT of your other users. It's not fair or historically correct or morally right that the symbols of other loathsome, murderous regimes (hammer and sickle, Che Guavara, Mao, Castro, the Khmer Rouge) don't have this same effect on Normals, but they don't. I wrote my first column about the idiocy of the "hate speech"(non)category back in 1991, but obviously to no avail, as that intellectually indefensible garbage-pail classification is now so deeply embedded in the minds of our midwit managerial classes that I despair of it ever being athetized from our discourse ("hate speech" will ALWAYS expand to encompass anything that the hearer strongly dislikes). A practical distinction that might a least temporarily work for Twitter would be to only ban a very few things that fall into the intersection of "obviously hateful" (sadly, we're stuck with it), "universally shocking / offensive," and "unavoidable": swastikas, the n- and c- words when spelled out, and not much else. That would preserve other users' freedom of speech to make arguments that someone, somewhere might find "offensive" or "hateful." The "just don't read/look at it" argument works much better when users aren't blindsided by something they can't un-see.
The symbol that Ye posted was from the Raelian Movement, which still has presence on Twitter. In fact, Elon Musk is an honorary member. It is not affiliated with Nazism.
https://twitter.com/Rael_usa
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