[INDOLOGY] About Godwin

Arnaud Fournet fournet.arnaud at wanadoo.fr
Sun Jun 30 17:29:06 UTC 2019


yes, precisely so

IMHO, the issue is that there are authorized insults like "far-right" or 
"racist" and non-authorized insults like "asshole", "bastard", etc.

The first set usually escapes moderation censureship, while the other 
set is usually not accepted.

Best regards

A.F


Le 30/06/2019 à 19:25, Patricia Sauthoff a écrit :
> Dear Dean,
>
> It's a reference to Godwin's law 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law>, "if an online 
> discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner 
> or later someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or 
> his deeds".
>
> On Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 11:13 AM Dean Michael Anderson 
> <eastwestcultural at yahoo.com <mailto:eastwestcultural at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
>     Could you please clarify your point for us who are Godwin-deprived?
>
>     Best,
>
>     Dean
>
>     On Sunday, June 30, 2019, 9:57:21 PM GMT+5:30, Arnaud Fournet via
>     INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info
>     <mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     Le 30/06/2019 à 18:00, indology-request at list.indology.info
>     <mailto:indology-request at list.indology.info> a écrit :
>     > Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2019 13:45:23 -0600
>     > From: Patricia Sauthoff<sauthoff at ualberta.ca
>     <mailto:sauthoff at ualberta.ca>>
>     > To: Indology<indology at list.indology.info
>     <mailto:indology at list.indology.info>>
>     > Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Supporting each other in public
>     > Message-ID:
>     >    
>     <CAPAr6cGGK1NkzM0eetnNrjGgCSc0A-OhcWGsa2ZqPW17xi0axQ at mail.gmail.com
>     <mailto:CAPAr6cGGK1NkzM0eetnNrjGgCSc0A-OhcWGsa2ZqPW17xi0axQ at mail.gmail.com>>
>     > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>     >
>     > 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.
>
>
>
>
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>
>
> -- 
> Patricia Sauthoff
> Postdoctoral Fellow
> AyurYog.org <http://AyurYog.org>
> Department of History and Classics
> University of Alberta
> Edmonton, Canada


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