Author: Robert Mariani

Send me a tweet: @robert_mariani Email me: rjmariani0 AT gmail DOT com

Auto-SPLC

About a year ago, I was having coffee with a friend, discussing the ever-expanding definition of “harassment” on social media.  I raised a question that I still think is pretty interesting: what if someone created a program to track how many “harassing” or “hateful” accounts someone was following on Twitter? If an account follows too many such accounts, it could be labeled as a second-order hate account. Accounts that follow too many of those kind of accounts could be third-order offenders, and so on and so forth. It’s an Orwellian idea that seemed entirely possible, even probable.

A company called Little Bird, which specializes in social media data analysis, has done almost exactly that. From their website:

Inspired by a new Twitter account that tweets out the bios of anyone Donald Trump retweets (because they’re often remarkable), we went and looked up those people he’s introducing to his audience of 5 million+ Twitter followers.  In order to learn more about them, we analyzed the networks of people that those people he retweeted are following on Twitter, using Little Bird’s influencer discovery and social network analysis software. 

It turns out that Donald Trump mostly retweets white supremacists saying nice things about him.  At least so far this week’s that’s how it’s gone.  This isn’t one person, of the last 21 accounts retweeted by @RealDonaldTrump so far this week, our automated analysis of their accounts finds that:  

  • 28% of them follow at least one of the top 50 White Nationalist accounts on Twitter (6 of 21)
  • 62% of them follow at least 3 people who’ve used hashtag #WhiteGenocide lately (13 of 21)

In an attempt to call Trump even more racist than everyone else is calling him, Little Bird is painting people with an absurdly gigantic brush. You’re you follow one white nationalist account, you’re a white supremacist by the company’s standards. If you follow three people who have used the #WhiteGenocide hashtag, you’re a white supremacist.

How exactly this makes sense isn’t clear. The accounts that supposed white supremacists would have to follow are only themselves white nationalists. White nationalism is kind of a lower-intensity white supremacism.

A bigger problem with such overheated name-calling is the fact that ideology obviously doesn’t trickle down from followed to follower.  Remember how a retweet isn’t an endorsement? That pretty much goes without saying, and it should be equally obvious that following a Twitter account also isn’t an endorsement or a sign that you agree with everything or even anything that they say. Little Bird didn’t even have the statistical honesty to say what percentage of all accounts followed by these Trump supporters fit their criteria. I follow around 500 people, and I probably do more than most to keep my timeline uncluttered.

In addition to following a couple white nationalists, I follow social justice warriors, conservatives, progressives, libertarians, socialists, and even three Catholic communists.

I wonder how many Joseph Stalin apologists are followed by the SPLC types that make these kinds of accusations. I follow at least one.

Reddit mods are creepy ideologues

I avoid using reddit, mostly because it has a bad layout, a bad userbase, and bad mods (the cyberpunk subreddit is cool though). Today, upon hearing about the recent New Year’s mass sexual assault and other lawbreaking by migrants in Germany. I decided to wander over to the news subreddits to see if the mods were squelching facts that they didn’t like. It turns out that they were, and my bias was confirmed.

Major subreddits were deleting all reports of the sex attacks. Despite it occurring to perhaps thousands of people in the major cities of Hamburg, Cologne and Stuttgart, mods on /r/new and /r/worldnews all said that it wasn’t allowed, using obviously bullshit excuses like “Wrong subreddit” or “local crime story.” Both of these subreddits regularly break 10,000 users reading at any given time.

Their narrative broke down it was clear that the incidents were so bad that Angela Merkel publicly condemned them. So I notify the mods that the Chancellor of Germany commented on this crisis that other officials had already called “unprecedented.” This forced them to allow one heavily-buried thread in the subreddit after about 24 hours of total censorship.

standardWait, commentary from a head of state is required for such a submission? I immediately know that’s bullshit from links that other “local crime” stories (that coincidentally painted migrants in a positive light) compiled by a user in another thread, and so I send them this message containing these links to point out how the argument clearly doesn’t hold up. Posted in text form so the links can be clicked:

It’s obvious that you don’t like the political implications, since these stories were not removed.

Local crime story: https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3vn1w3/gay_refugees_placed_in_separate_accommodation/

Local crime story: https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3wsr9a/french_teacher_invented_school_attack/

Local crime story: https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3x3mmy/two_paris_attack_link_suspects_arrested_in/

Local crime story: https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3vk68q/germany_ablaze_over_200_attacks_on_refugee_homes/

Local crime story: https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3xbvaq/violence_erupts_between_police_and_demonstrators/

Local crime story: https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3jlmmi/five_people_have_been_injured_in_a_fire_in_a/

Local crime story: https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3s342w/berlin_protesters_clash_with_police_near/

Here’s the only response I got from the not-at-all ideological moderators:

mutedWhy the sudden stonewalling after a reasonable question is brought up during a reasonable exchange?

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Reactionary gay rights

Here’s a great exchange in the comment section of a post over at Slate Star Codex.

One commenter (who earlier identified as queer) marveled at the breakneck speed that culture and policy is moving to the left, and worried about things snapping back in the opposite direction.

No joke. Cthulhu swims left and all that, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m in Weimar Berlin. The future is unknown territory. But it’s probably just me being paranoid

Another user noted that he might also have to worry about the trend continuing on its current trajectory.

Alternatively, if Cthulhu will swim left fast enough, you could see the Overton Window swoosh above your head and leave you far behind. For example:

Gay marriage could be banned, because all marriage will be banned. The next generation will consider the idea of marriage just as horrible as slavery (or even worse).

Progressives may throw gays under the bus because, after all, they are men, and supporting any kind of men’s rights would be misogynist. Mentioning gay rights online will mostly get you an ironic “yeah, what about teh poor oppressed menz” and a ban. Gay rights websites will be classified as hate speech and will be illegal. Gays will be described in media as men who hate women so much that they even refuse to have sex with them.

Yeah, today both of these examples seem silly, but that’s the point.

Apparently not so silly, since an Oxford student association actually did attack gay men for being the SJW’s version of class enemies, as a third commenter pointed out.

Pretty sure the National Union of Students here in the UK has accused gays of benefiting from male privilege. Or, as one senior member put it, “Fuck privileged gays”.

Bertmer Wolves

Moral distortion

“We can’t refuse immigrants – that would be racist. We will just have to settle for implementing a police state to keep us safe from the consequences of mass immigration.”

I’ve heard Bill de Blasio, David Cameron and many other pro-immigration political figures from the West discussing why every consumer device needs a government backdoor installed into it to compromise its security so countries can deal with the social burden created by importing a third world underclass. Similar arguments are made for gun control. This line of logic makes sense when it’s granted that racism is the worst thing in the world, even worse than living in an Orwellian dystopia.

That’s an unnerving system of ideas to say the least. And thanks to my bizarre and recent habit of talking about Donald Trump with strangers at social events, I got to witness a genuine instance of “racism is insurmountably evil.”

I mention not hating Trump and the customary hush falls over the room, but some guy is willing to play ball and asks me why I don’t share the opinion of every basic DC bitch. I mention how he’s actually reliably anti-immigration, but how his most recent comments have alienated me, like when he mentioned that he wants to kill the families of terrorists. That’s eyerolly shit that neocons actually believe in their heart of hearts, a far cry from the funny-but-true, emperor-has-no-clothes type comments Trump is known and loved for.

Another recent Trump comment that I can’t get behind, I explain, is the total ban on Muslims entering. That’s stupid for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Shia, Ibadi and Ahmadiyya Muslims are pretty alright. But I point out that that comment isn’t really bad, in the grand scheme of things, since mainstream politicians talk about war and killing like it’s no big deal. War and killing is worse than mere discrimination, right? …Right!?

Wrong, apparently.

He mentions how that’s, like, racist and stuff. I mention how people in staying their original countries might be less than ideal, but it’s not as bad as killing. Noah Millman articulated it really well over at The American Conservative:

But why are these not more important hallmarks of an incipient American fascism than the fact that Trump regularly sounds like a more obnoxious and egotistical version of Archie Bunker? And why is saying “no Muslims should be allowed onto American soil until we’ve got a process for monitoring them” more outrageous than a threat to “find out if sand can glow in the dark” (Ted Cruz’s threat to nuke ISIS)? Why is threatening mass-murder less horrifying than threatening discrimination in immigration on the basis of religion?

I’m not saying that having a President – or even a major candidate – who spouts xenophobic rants is a good thing. It’s a bad thing. I’m just suggesting that we’ve long since gotten used to things that are much worse, and perhaps we should pay a bit more attention to that fact.

I point this out to the guy I am talking to, and then mentions how there’s people dying in Colombia. That’s obviously an exception that we’re not talking about, so he shows his hand as not having any interesting ideas and the conversation ends.

This kind of moral distortion that we’ve been expected to subscribe to is, for better or worse, probably part of the reason why Trump is so popular. People who live in most parts of the United States are fine with how they’ve lived and their assumptions – say, war being worse than racism – but are caught in disjunction between moral compass and that of political and intellectual elites.

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gnu_aclu_12

Isn’t the ACLU responsible for deaths that result from “hate-filled, anti-choice” rhetoric?

The National Rifle Association is the villain that everyone likes to remember every time a mass shooting happens. It makes sense, since blaming a conspiracy for policy you don’t like creates much less cognitive dissonance than blaming a majority of the electorate for it (you don’t hate democracy, do you?).

This is embarrassingly common, and is so mainstream that it almost doesn’t seem like a conspiracy theory. The NRA is supposed to have a never-specified hold on our government that prevents all the good stuff that every reasonable person wants implemented from actually being implemented.

But the Colorado Planned Parenthood shooting has been a little bit different. Since the target was a place that performs abortions, there is another layer of politics that spoils the already-political soup: pro-life rhetoric is mostly the bad guy here.

Ilyse Hoge, president of abortion advocate NARAL, summed up the hundreds of thinkpieces on the tragedy pretty well in a Facebook post, saying that pro-lifers and people behind the Planned Parenthood baby parts video were ultimately responsible:

Sorry, David Daleiden. You don’t get to create fake videos and accuse abortion providers of “barbaric atrocities against humanity” one day and act shocked when someone shoots to kill in those same facilities the next.

…

It’s America. You are free to have your speech. The language you choose matters. You are not free from the judgement of the consequences of your hate-filled rhetoric. ‪#‎ColoradoSpringsShootings ‪#‎DomesticTerrorism

One of the replies to the post got a great deal of likes and took the idea a step further: “Hate thoughts + hate speech = hate violence.”

So we’re getting somewhere. This time it wasn’t the NRA. It was the bad rhetoric of people who don’t like abortion, and it’s being made clear that the “violent anti-choice rhetoric must end,” as Jessica Valenti put it.

So what’s getting in the way of a speech justice? Just like the NRA’s overly-broad interpretation of the Second Amendment is to blame in most shootings, the ACLU’s overly-broad interpretation of the First Amendment – logically speaking – must be the culprit here.

The civil liberties organization has defended neo-Nazi groups, oppose regulation of violent video games that Hillary Clinton has blamed for shootings, and opposes hate speech laws that many (most?) progressives think the First Amendment should not protect.

And presumably, they support the right of people to hold strong pro-life views and produce pro-life videos.

So if violent pro-life rhetoric is responsible for shootings just as much as access to weapons is, the ACLU – which is holding our country hostage like the Koch Brothers and the NRA, or something – gets a free pass for no apparent reason. Isn’t blood on their hands?

Conservative boogeymen and the progressives who love them

I have an article over at The Daily Caller concerning the recent bouts of hysteria that have hit academia and the media.

This stuff is way, way bigger than college students being fragile babies, but Alexander correctly notes that, not for the lack of material, the media can’t seem to find an angle on it.

But it’s interesting to see the polemical contortions my favorite blogger had to tie himself into to save his article for polite society. He starts the blog post off with a caveat about how he started criticizing social justice back in 2010, saying that back then, only “wingnutty lesbianism-causes-witchcraft” circles bothered criticizing it.

He’s gesturing toward a quote made by Pat Robertson back in 1993, which has gotten lot of mileage since then as an example of a conservative being stupid.

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women,” the televangelist said. “It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

It’s important to note that that happened once, decades ago. And before we even know what he’s talking about, Alexander has to reassure readers that he isn’t right-wing bigfoot, like he needs to do that to get dispensation to have an opinion on people who are at the intersection of crazy and fashionable.

The fact that it’s expected to have these caveats isn’t the fault of Alexander or any other particular writer. But it speaks to nature of our cultural assumptions and of the parameters that define these debates. We live in a culture that uncritically believes in right-wing boogeymen.

We saw it at Yale with the boogeymen that wanted to legitimate the oppression of students by refusing to crack down on Halloween costumes. Mizzou had a supposed shit-smearing Nazi boogeyman that led to someone acting like an injured soccer player and going on a multi-day hunger strike. And then we had to have otherwise reasonable people reassure us that might be looking at these instances of boogeyman hysteria with the wrong kind of critical eye.

Go check it out.