Why nazis aren't tolerated. Or: The importance of a community's space · 11:46pm Oct 29th, 2018
Hey everyone. sorry for not being up as of lately. No, i'm not leaving, but I have other stuff keeping me at arm's reach for the time being. Still, to show I care, here's an important message I found and my first thought was to share it here. We should really take this in consideration as a community.
It occurs to us that we have followers who don't follow furries and haven't heard about the controversy around "Nazi furs fuck off" ribbons at Anthrocon. Let us take a sec to explain why that sort of thing is important.
In any social space, there's some people who feel safe being themselves and there's some who don't. It's pretty common that people talk about their desire to create safe spaces, without acknowledging the truth that no space is safe for everybody.
So for example, if you're creating a support community for people with PTSD, you're probably going to end up excluding people with certain other sorts of mental illness, because no matter how hard you try, people need different communication styles. You can create the most affirming, inclusive culture possible, but somebody is going to find that culture stifling and not be able to stand it. That's not the fault of the community leaders, it's inevitable. People's needs are different.
So as a community leader, it pays to be intentional about who you want your social space to be for. Because if you don't make those decisions consciously, they'll be made for you by default. Watching cultural backlash in a community you run can be frightening and confusing. It's always the case, in any social space, that there are some people who make others uncomfortable. If you have a user Alex who is always making objectifying jokes about women, and you treat him as a valued community member, over time most of the women will leave.
It works both ways: if you have a lot of people in your community who enjoy talking to each other about the societal impact of misogyny and what to do about it, and you as a community leader support that sort of thing, then over time, you'll discover that you don't have a lot of users whose self identity is closely bound up with their ability to make misogynistic jokes. Because they won't feel safe expressing that part of themselves in this space, so they'll go elsewhere. We picked feminism and misogyny as an example of this dynamic, where people actively fight over who the space is going to be safe for, because that one is such a common conflict that probably almost everyone has seen it.
Nazis understand these social dynamics, or at least they understand how to use them. A huge part of Nazi strategy is around taking over communities by adjusting who it's a safe space for. For a while now, there have been Nazis, wearing fursuits, attempting to attend furry conventions while wearing armbands with swastikas. When challenged, they say they enjoy military history. Maybe somebody who goes to cons can remind us when that started. We think last year.
Hopefully by now you see why we think this is a dynamic everyone should take the time to understand, whether you're part of furry culture or not. You've probably already seen analogues to it in your own communities, and if not, you will at some point. The point of swastika armbands is to push the people who care most out of the social space. Over time, that leaves the community vulnerable to a total take over, because everyone who understands and cares has already left.
The public display of imagery is a social signal. It says: it's safe to show this symbol here. It's not safe to ask for it to be removed. When this first started happening, it was mostly Nazis who understood how important it was. But theirs isn't the only symbol.
We don't actually participate in furry fandom, so we haven't seen the extent of these "Nazi furs fuck off" ribbons. But it's the exact right response. A show of solidarity, proving who the space is safe for - and who it isn't.
Good luck.
Source: https://twitter.com/ireneista/status/1015635201550999552
Also, if you agree, please give this a signal boost. I'm aware I haven't been active enough to keep my following, and I consider this should be discussed site-wide.
Ah, the German Workers Socialist Party. The things it accomplished were astonishing and horrifyingly expensive. The cost of their actions and ambitions was millions of lives.
I do not condone such things. Nor shall I ever. I may not be a Furry, but I find them adorable. And having such a blight upon them? I find it abhorrent.
Time to wreck a Party... now, how do I "signal boost"?
It's called the paradox of tolerance.
As a good journalist, I should make clear my personal editorial line is against authoritarianism and absolutism on general principle. Being from a country that suffered under a dictatorship, I can't be anywhere else in that regard.
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I don't think it should be the breaking of a party. Calling them that gives them too much validation to begin with. Also, I meant copying and pasting the quote and source. Or sharing the link. Sorry if I wasn't clear.
Also, yeah, nazism is not "something we disagree with". It's an ideology that promotes race supremacy and ethnic cleansing, which makes it outright dangerous for everyone else. I can't even catalogue it as counterculture. It's just depredation on social and ethnic scales.
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I think not. Nazism, on abstract, is against tolerance. As said above, it's operative principle is domination. One can tolerate it to the point of it remaining a discourse, and wait until it's taken to action. But Mein Kampf is a call to action to begin with. Letting it happen for the sake of pacifism is being the good man, doing nothing while evil prevails.
If not, remember British ex-Prime Minister Chamberlain and how 'playing safe' worked out for him and thousands of East Europeans.
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Err... the paradox of tolerance is that a tolerant society must not tolerate intolerance in order to be tolerant.
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Oh, that one. I'm more used on "tolerance must tolerate everything, included intolerance". My bad.