KB, I'd say you don't know the half of it, but you consume enough media that I imagine you probably do. You'll have to forgive, this has been stewing for a couple of days and was exacerbated last night when my group of friends were harassed in a restaurant by a group of guys, two of whom were making MAGA hats. In Canada. Unironically (not that that is the sort of thing one should do ironically). I will point out that anyone whom I have ever personally heard utter the phrases "open debate", or "marketplace of ideas" has consciously or subconsciously believed that they have nothing to lose in that situation. It makes for an easy position to hold, when you believe that the "none too dangerous" things you debate can't hurt you. It's a lot harder of a sell when people are debating your existence, or debating whether you should be allowed to exist, or debating whether or not you're a person, or debating what bathroom you should be "allowed" to use. Honestly, the LGBT community figured out that reasoned debate was going to get them exactly nowhere sometime around the beginning of the postwar period, at the very least by the time the Compton's Cafeteria Riots took place. Any time "reasoned debate" has gotten the community anywhere, it has been a public face that was veneered overtop of rioting, civil disobedience, or die-ins. I am not a person of colour, but I imagine black people who lived through the civil rights era would tell you much the same. Indeed, I have heard them say it, but it is not my story to tell. This is not the first time that people more interested in debating ideas than bearing responsibility for their actions have tried to go up against bad people in "free and Honest" debate. Putting a mirror up between the "debate" around LGBT people in the Weimar Republic and the current political situation should give people reason to pause. These people that they want to debate? They're not interested in "free" or "honest". fuck, the vast majority of people in positions of power aren't really interested in "free" or "honest" if it means they lose out. At this point, I'm just trying to figure out if these people are actively malicious or passively malicious, or i guess if it really matters.I think tech culture is tone deaf to the point of criminality
Going from here to a whole bunch of problems we know jack shit about,are totally unqualified to solve, and which can only be explained to us in language that makes no sense to us are now, somehow, our problems and, worse, often they're our fault to where did all these nazis come from we thought global communication would give us enlightened cosmopolitans not nazis has been a rough ride for everyone. You're not looking at malice, you're looking at something somewhere between denial and confusion.
Global communication isn't the problem. Allowing the people on that global communication platform to place nazi doctrines on an even footing with more peaceful doctrines and expecting them to play nice is the problem. It is a global scale version of what happened in Europe during the interwar period, and the only people who didn't see it were the people who didn't know their history, and the people who thought it would somehow be different this time. Unfortunately, in this case, those who don't know their history are currently in the process of repeating it, and people like me are in the crossfire. Fuck, I'm lucky. At least I'm not a trans woman of colour - talk about an ugly death rate. I know Hanlon's Razor - Never attribute to malice what could equally be attributed to stupidity. In this case, it's both a willful stupidity and a latent malice, and honestly the only reasonable response to "We didn't know" is "Only because you ignored us trying to tell you."where did all these nazis come from we thought global communication would give us enlightened cosmopolitans not nazis
As a white kid hated by the Hispanic majority in New Mexico I thought I understood prejudice. Then I befriended black people in Los Angeles. I think it's fair to say that I'm aware of some minor percentage of it but I sure don't know it. I mean, just this morning I was explaining that Trump's tax cuts were basically written for me. Yeah there have been times I couldn't get a coffee 'cuz I was too gringo but there have also been times the cops have said "sorry for pulling you over, sir, we thought you were hispanic." Actively malicious or passively malicious is the wrong focus. Your mention of the Weimar Republic and LGBTs is right, I think. If I'm looking for an "honest debate" about whether a group of people should be treated as fellow humans, what I'm really looking for is a forum in which I can assert they aren't human. And if I can assert it convincingly enough, they aren't. "Teach the controversy" is shorthand for "we're wrong but also loud and aggressive."