[INDOLOGY] About Godwin

[Arnaud Fournet]

Le 30/06/2019 à 18:00, indology-request at list.indology.info a écrit :
> Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2019 13:45:23 -0600
> From: Patricia Sauthoff<sauthoff at ualberta.ca>
> To: Indology<indology at list.indology.info>
> Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Supporting each other in public
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAPAr6cGGK1NkzM0eetnNrjGgCSc0A-OhcWGsa2ZqPW17xi0axQ at mail.gmail.com>
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>
> For those who are unaware of the tactics adopted by the far-right,

Godwin1


>   you may
> enjoy reading this short article
> http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/praxis1313/jeff-stein-strategic-speech-and-alt-right-metapolitics/,
> You'll see that Dr. Elst utilizes them all, from trolling and gaslighting,
> to victimization, to turning everything into a free speech issue.
>
> Make no mistake, there is nothing unintentional about this and it is a
> performance for those lurkers who silently agree. It is meant to bait those
> who do not agree into "debate" in order to try to turn their words around
> against them, as Elst attempted to do in his response to me.
>
> In his earlier email, Elst presents Pamela Geller
> <https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/pamela-geller>
> and Robert Spencer
> <https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/robert-spencer>
> as subjects who have had their free speech trampled. This is a dog whistle.
> Geller and Spencer are opportunistic far-right

Godwin2


> anti-Muslim activists.
> Spencer was banned from the UK in 2013 due to his extremism. A security
> guard was shot
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/us/gunmen-killed-after-firing-on-anti-islam-groups-event.html>
> at a stunt in Texas in which they offered a $10K prize to the person who
> drew the "best" cartoon of the Prophet Muhammed.
>
> These writers, Elst, and many other far-right writers

Godwin3


>   were cited for their
> anti-Islamic views in the manifesto written by the Norwegian terrorist
> Anders Brevik. If that name isn't familiar, perhaps you'll remember the
> 2011 Oslo bombing and subsequent mass shooting of teenagers on an island by
> a "lone wolf" who killed 77 people in total. Brevik's manifesto
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik#Manifesto:_2083:_A_European_Declaration_of_Independence>
> is
> now canon among the violent far-right

Godwin4


> as it lays out tactics and strategies
> for online harassment and real-world terrorism. The Austrailian-born
> Christchurch shooter made reference to it as inspiration in his own
> manifesto.
>
> To me, the most worrying tactic of the online far-right

Godwin5


>   is its penchant for
> making lists of "leftists" in order to target them. Recently an online
> publication
> <https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/11/intellectual-dark-web-quillette-claire-lehmann-221917>
> ran an article with a list of journalists they believed to be connected to
> the anti-fascist movement
> <https://www.cjr.org/analysis/quillette-antifa-journalist-smear-campaign.php>.
> The article "was circulated approvingly on white supremacist forum
> Stormfront the day after its publication; a day later, a YouTube user
> uploaded a video of imagery of mass shooters intercut with images of the
> reporters mentioned by Lenihan under the heading ?Sunset the Media.?"
>
> Scary stuff. Turns out words on the internet aren't just words afterall. I
> worry that lurkers on this email listserv may build their own list of
> targets, i.e., some of us.

yes, I agree that jerks who overuse the word "far-right" should rather 
create their own list somewhere else.