Of course.

What's the issue?

the entire last 3 years of your life here?

The issue: is why are you distracting us with this whole 'extremist' side show to begin with? You keep saying I shouldn't lump in KKK members with, I guess, LTers who want to repeal the CRA. Why? Why do you keep saying this? Why shouldn't I?

Think carefully about your answer.

Because if it's a variation on this old canard regarding 'counterproductivity' to the Librulz cause... I'm just going to call BS. That would be a non-obvious claim about out IRL. As such, it's subject to Alta's citation rule. So... if you wanna go that way, best get your linkees at the ready.

There is extreme, very extreme and extremely extreme?

You may disagree but if you're making it about 'should's' then why 'shouldn't' people consider those arguing for genocide as more extreme than those arguing for a wall.

I'd simply say that genocide is more extreme than a border wall. Personally, I'm strongly against both but far more against genocide. I'm not convinced this is remotely controversial.

Even evil has gradations. All wrong but some even more so.

No, no, no. You are doing that chezing thing now. I'm not making it about "shouldn'ts". You already did. I'm asking you why you did.

Why do you feel this need to put some peeps into the "extremist" box, and put some other peeps in another box(es). Why do you feel a need to make this "extremist" distinction at all?

Because it's the truth?

Well apart from anything else I believe in restrictions on the activities of extremist organisations and the criminalising of hate speech (which is going to incorporate how extreme it is)

Then I guess the problem is where you draw the line between racism and your 'extreme' racism, and how this resulted in an entire subforum being closed and deleted.

I don’t think the people who fall under the umbrella are equivalent. Some of them are totally lost causes (lol toothsayer), while others might be looking for a genuine discussion and be a bit misguided. Part of it is adapting to the social mores of a particular forum. Too often people import behaviors from other places without regard for the place they are entering.

This has been an issue for online communities since the BBS days. That’s why I have always advocated people lurk and learn about a place before ever posting let alone starting a topic. I suspect many who post here regular have views that would strongly be opposed by others and in some cases offensive. However we enter a social contract to maintain a certain level of discourse.

Sure you will see cries of favoritism and hypocrisy but as Wookie noted the people who post with a conservative / right wing bent here never talk about policy on ANYTHING. So right away they are digging themselves a hole. It comes across at best ignorant and worse disingenuous. Then you expand that to only being focused on extremism and hatred based ideology and it’s s lost cause.

The obvious answer is people regardless of political affiliation need to learn and embrace the mores and traditions when participating. My history regularly posting here is not very long so I know others might have other opinions but a guy like SeattleLou was someone whose opinions I appreciated here even if in many cases he was in an extreme minority. So no I don’t think you necessarily have to just ban everyone but you certainly have to act on the extremists first while giving everyone else a chance to modify their behavior.

I ate a temp ban from wookie once which I believe I even cried about to you. In hindsight it was lol on my part but I adjust my behavior and moved on. I used to be a regular on bbv4l way back when which you know was unfettered chaos. I think twoplustwo is a place where individual forums have drastically different accepted behavior and people can’t just assume how they behave in one forum is ok in another. I think this is fairly atypical on even large forums.

Back to the issue when policy issues are being discussed and all people can talk about are emails or whacked conspiracies everyone is going to mentally write them off. Especially if that is the totality of their contributions.

I totally accept I messed up but apart from that, even when not messing up, it's very difficult to know where to draw the line in a politics discussion forum (especially given how extreme real life politics is becoming).

The use of 'racist' is an old semantic/communication issue that it's really not worth getting into again. It's not related to how extreme people are or even how racist people are (whichever meaning is used).

So. Some neo-fascists are right handed, and some are left handed. That's a truth. Why are some peep claiming this "extreme" distinction is relevant, while nobody is chatting about this "handed" distinction at all?

So, would it be fair to say, you find this "extreme" distinction has tactical utility out IRL?

This seems like a perilous argument to get into here, given the history of complaints about tone policing and the usual problems with them on 2+2, but nevertheless, I think it's interesting you write the above, but you also wrote this:

So it seems like the only reason you think it's not counterproductive to conflate KKK members with garden variety racists is seemingly because you don't think persuasion, or attempts to raise consciousness or to change ideology matter at all to the achievement of political goals relating to racial inequality. That is, I'm referencing your other comments about the futility of worrying about doing therapy over addressing structural issues. It seems like you think that changes in power structures can be achieved without any effort to change the dominant ideologies. I don't think that's true.

If changing culture and beliefs is a necessary component of achieving political goals relating to inequality, then thinking about how to frame those issues persuasively does have some importance, although of course that doesn't mean every lame tone policing argument ever made on 2+2 is a good argument. I've pretty much always disagreed with chez's seemingly child-like arguments about "being mean to people" or whatever. I'm not trying to work my way up to some proposal for a new 2+2 rule to censure fly here.

But, collectively this forum has spent a lot of time talking about the failures of the Democratic party to effectively construct persuasive political messages. And while an important part of that argument is about the party spending too much time trying to convince Republicans and not enough time motivating Democrats, I think it's problematic to say that any attempt to communicate persuasively with people who hold prejudiced beliefs and attitudes on race is doomed because of the presumption that all such people are equally intransigent. The people most likely to directly make offensive arguments on 2+2 politics forums are probably not persuadable, but referring back to the GSS data I linked before, it's clear there are plenty of Democratic voters (even marginal ones) who also hold prejudiced views. I think it is reasonable to to suggest, for reasons not unlike your argument against the "full logic attack" approach, that the framing of social justice issues makes some difference to the effectiveness of social justice activism. It would take a lot of work to write a persuasive essay in favor of the conclusion that there are counterproductive ways of framing antagonists of racial justice movements, but I think that conclusion is almost certainly true, even if it's not the only problem, and even if the usual 2+2 tone policing arguments are nonsense.

edit: also for the record I'm not arguing that effective persuasion is always necessarily non-combative or "civil" or whatever. I don't think that's true. I think there is an important place for anger and strong expression of social norms against bigotry. Hence part of my disagreement with chez. But I am arguing that it's worthwhile to think about how to persuade at least some people who have learned and hold prejudicial views.

This is a lie, by the way. It's a lie before we even get to the next word,
LOL you have absolutely no problems drawing lines when libs are rude, chez. But gotta be careful when it comes to like, abstract arguments about the desirability of a white ethnostate vs. explicit calls for genocide. Would not want to paint anyone with a broad brush.

This is such a classic SMP bull**** post, by the way. It's a small thing but worth delving into just how awful these people are for the forum. Not even for the racism ****, that's independently bad, but just taking their **** on their own word.

chezlaw ASSUMES WV is quite large(it is not, but that's also besides the point). How ****ing big a geographic area is not a ****ing logical premise that is assumed, it's a ****ing empirical fact. Don't ever tell other people what they "need to do" to discuss a subject when you're too ****ing stupid to look at a map.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia

Close to 2 million people, about 30 people/km^2 or 80/sq mi.

Etc. Something to build possible facts on.

That's just me not making it clear enough when I'm doing my usual MissileDog thingee (the above re:why) -vs- when I'm just dispensing some factoids (the below re:how to jawbone).

Not at all. I've never said anything of the sort. Obviously doing the propaganda is important. What I have been saying is that doing the propaganda is a means, one of many. However, it is not a sufficient means, not even close, and it's not the ends.

Again, never said that. What I have been saying is this: dominant ideologies don't cause power structures. Power structures cause their ideologies to dominate. Jawboning by itself will never disrupt those dominate ideologies. "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will" ~ F.Douglass. The struggle requires moving beyond jawboning, and taking action.

This is my point.

We are constantly asked to swallow this shiz about "counterproductivity" whole cloth. Nobody is showing us that essay. Where is the IRL research needed to back up any such essay to begin with?

On the flipside (and not counting chezlaw), who do we see always harping on this alleged "counterproductivity"... well, among others, that would be the concern trolls derping on about how the SJWers won the election for Trump.

• "Mar Del Lago serves cute little cooked puppies for brunch. Don't eat there!" ~ good for the F&B Dept.?
• "Mar Del Lago serves cute little cooked puppies for brunch. Don't vote for it's owner" ~ good for getting votes?

Sure. Only linked those to show change can happen even to the most deplorable.

Ok. But it seems like the conceptualization of the relationship between ideology and structure is a bit beside the point if you concede that framing is important in some fashion. Although I don't understand the distinction between propaganda and jawboning that you seem to be making. I disagree with you about the causal relationship between ideology and structure, but it seems like it doesn't matter much to this conversation, and I've already said as much previously.

The question was about whether certain ways of communicating could be counterproductive to liberal goals. You seem to be admitting that the answer is probably "yes" but pointing out that it's not a simple question or one that's easy to provide a definitive empirical answer for. Which I also agree with, as I also agree that how people talk about these issues isn't the only thing that matters. Even so, though, there does exist empirical evidence to suggest the conclusion that certain ways of communicating can be counterproductive, and it's a reasonable position to hold. There are a lot of positions I think are both reasonable to hold and difficult to argue persuasively on an internet forum, just because of the sheer amount of research you'd have to present which most people aren't familiar with.

If you are ok with a complete ban on Muslim immigration and ok with a Muslim registry and support politicians who push those things. You are extremist. Think many in p7 fit that.

Building the wall to keep out illegal immigrant Mexican rapists too.

Especially if you work with them eight hours a day.

Exactly.

It's usually impossible to persuade them.

You can't use logic because the reason they hold these views is because they're profoundly illogical people.

You can't use facts about genetics because their eyes glaze over.

All you can do is invoke Godwin and compare their views to Hitler's, at which point one of them (an Ulsterman, which tells its own story) last Friday said to me "I'm allowed to hold whatever opinions I want".

lol