Ravelry Bans Trump Support; Tech Review Cries Free Speech

Durham, NC, Sat, 07 Mar 2020 20:57:09 -0500

How a ban on pro-Trump patterns unraveled the online knitting world

(The title is kinda... sensationalist. We've seen no evidence of a substantial rift on Ravelry, much less in the knitting world at large.)

Banning Trumpsterfire supporters from a caring community is an entirely appropriate response. Trump stands for everything that any reasonable, caring person should be against -- and Ravelry has consistently been a caring and supportive community. Yes, there are people who haven't figured that out yet -- but nobody should feel obliged to make them feel comfortable with their ignorance.

We don't allow that kind of thing on toot.cat, either, or on any of the other instances we federate with. This isn't a sports match; it actually objectively matters who we elect, and anyone who is the least bit informed and not hopelessly bamboozled by right-wing/oligarchian propaganda understands that We Do Not Want Four More Years Like This.

Ravelryâ€™s equation of Trump support with white supremacy is a controversial move

Srsly? It's about as controversial as saying the world is round. Yes, there are (somehow) a few people out there who claim otherwise...

When knitting site Ravelry banned all pro-Trump content it caused a schism in the communityâ€”but it also shone a spotlight on how women are using niche sites to politicize.

cross-posted at Facebook

politics election Trump gullibles #errorism

show all 10 comments

Doug Senko

Sat, 07 Mar 2020 21:30:02 -0500 from Diaspora

If Ravelry is a privately owned site, "free speech" is not necessarily in play. All they have to do is make it a condition of usage and there you go.

Paul Hosking

Sat, 07 Mar 2020 21:43:40 -0500 from Diaspora

Maybe Ravelry wants to exercise its own free speech. I believe that's the kind of mindset behind situations like Hobby Lobby eliminating birth control from its health insurance plan.

Woozle Hypertwin

Sun, 08 Mar 2020 08:38:02 -0400

Oh, make no mistake -- "freedom of speech" as enshrined in the Constitution does not apply here; FoS is about whether the government has a right to selectively suppress speech it doesn't like, not about whether anyone else does.

One could make a valid argument that by eliminating advocacy of positions they don't like, the owners of Ravelry are creating a walled garden where bad ideas can flourish in the absence of diversity of opinion (yes, the Right is trying to make a diversity argument here, but of course they daren't use that word because they've done their best to demonize it as a cause of "national disunity, weakening, and ultimately, destruction") -- but there has to be a line drawn between good faith and bad faith...

...and right-wing philosophy is heavily based on the idea that belief is a weapon, and convincing people to follow your beliefs by any means necessary is fully justified by the power-base this creates, because power is everything -- which isn't to say that most Trump supporters understand this, but they've been indoctrinated into the mindset of defending belief in the face of truth, rather than the other way around, and therefore cannot be trusted to engage in good faith discussion.

There's also the fact (which might be open to dispute, if the disputants could be trusted to make honest arguments, which they can't) that what Trump supports is actively harmful and oppressive to many people, while opposing him is not. The moral case for keeping Trumpism out was already pretty clear; this additional fact makes it an imperative for a caring community.

Trump himself encouraged his own followers to physically abuse those who disagree with him, so it's sheerest hypocrisy of Trumpists to cry "unfair!" when we want to keep them out of our safe spaces.

(I know I'm probably preaching to the choir, here, but maybe wording things this way will be helpful to others in clarifying their own positions.)

Woozle Hypertwin

Sun, 08 Mar 2020 08:47:10 -0400

And replying directly to @Paul Hosking -- right, except that Hobby Lobby's actions (and also those of the baker who refused to serve a gay couple) are materially harmful, whereas banning people from a discussion forum isn't really anything more than centralized social shunning (with reason given, which often is omitted in real-life shunning).

This is part of what I mean about right-wing philosophy and belief-as-a-weapon: "hypocrisy" is a null concept to them, because they believe that sounding credible is more important than being honest. If they can use ideas they've previously demonized (like "diversity" or "free speech") to score points for their side, then that's pure profit to them.

Paul Hosking

Sun, 08 Mar 2020 12:31:38 -0400 from Diaspora

@Woozle Hypertwin fair point.

I often find the "hypocrisy" argument ultra-conservatives and Trumpists make to be disingenuous in most cases. Meanwhile, pointing out of the hypocrisy of that same group tends to be so trivially easy and ultimately inconsequential that it's little more than a party trick.

Which... is kind of maddening to me, personally. I'm inclined to believe that vigorous debate is important to a democratic society. Yet it's hard to do that when the participants are not making genuine arguments. I see "polarization" pop up a lot as a meta-theme to political discussions these days. And little context that what has fueled that polarization is Trumpism and the propaganda out of Fox News.

Woozle Hypertwin

Sun, 08 Mar 2020 12:51:28 -0400

@Paul Hosking Right-wingism is basically a security exploit of civilization, a denial-of-reality attck. (I call it "errorism".) The more broadly we can recognize this, the better we'll be able to fight it.

Paul Hosking

Sun, 08 Mar 2020 13:08:11 -0400 from Diaspora

@Woozle Hypertwin interesting way to look at it. I would argue that there's nothing special about a right-wing position that demands this. Though I'd concede that it is prevalent in those halls and a seemingly cornerstone of Trumpism and the environment that enables it.

Woozle Hypertwin

Sun, 08 Mar 2020 13:12:55 -0400

It seems inherent to me -- at least in the core "power is everything" aspect of right-wingism, which (it seems to me) is what Republicanism, Trumpism, fascism, etc. all pretty much boil down to.

McKenna :nonbinary_flag:

Sun, 08 Mar 2020 23:20:04 -0400 from ActivityPub

uspol

View article

Woozle Hypertwin

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 13:46:45 -0400

Dang, I wish I had time to listen to that. The name Douglas Rushkoff is familiar to me, but I don't remember the details.