[INDOLOGY] About Godwin

Sun Jun 30 17:36:43 UTC 2019

The wiki article is quite informative. Remarkably, Godwin apparently does not oppose calling racists what they are.

Thanks for the reference, Patricia.

HHH

On 30 Jun2019, at 12:25, Patricia Sauthoff via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:

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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