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Ravelry bans support of Trump

Q99

Well-known member
Remember how RPGnet banned open support of Trump?

Knitting site Ravelry has followed suit. Noteworthy in both citing RPGnet's call explicitly, and for being a much larger website, the knitting community being of significantly greater size than the RPG community.

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And, well, it makes sense. If you have an openly-bigoted person/group, then waving. Your options are to make a place friendly for bigots, or make a place friendly for everyone they're bigoted against. The RPGnet policy had time to work and rather than having a negative effect on conversation as some were worried about, removing people virtue-signalling bigotry by expressing support of Trump as a way to derail discussions they don't like did end up making things more open and discussion (and membership) increased, rather than decreased.

With a big site like Ravelry doing so, I do wonder if more will follow suit.
 
Interesting,

I think a better litmas test would be why the person supports Trump. So if they support him because they're a well meaning clueless person that has "somehow" thinks the Dems are literally Pol Pot tier than I'd object.

If they're a racist bigot that doesn't like all them Mexicans coming over and "taking our jobs" then boot them and be done with.

If you vote for Trump in 2016, you're either clueless or racist. If you vote for him in the primaries you're a racist.
 
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More odd would be that the knitting site had enough of a political discussion to warrant a ban.

I suppose that they could be sharing tips on making red toques with 'MAGA' on them, but one would think that their discourse would be a bit more subdued. At least the RPG crowd are actively involved in worldbuilding, so they would naturally gravitate to political events.

Then again, it is pretty much impossible to look at any comment section on the internet without someone the alt-right jumping in to defend Trumpie. The ban probably came from a wall hanging of "There is no place like home", followed by cheering for ICE roundups keeping home safe and promoting the concentration camps.
 
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Interesting,

I think a better litmas test would be why the person supports Trump. So if they support him because they're a well meaning clueless person that has "somehow" thinks the Dems are literally Pol Pot tier than I'd object.

If they're a racist bigot that doesn't like all them Mexicans coming over and "taking our jobs" then boot them and be done with.

If you vote for Trump in 2016, you're either clueless or racist. If you vote for him in the primaries you're a racist.

The thing is, 'why' doesn't matter to the people being bigoted against. If you're a black person and you come into a restaurant and see a couple KKK hoods or 'Jefferson Davis was Right' shirts, or if you're gay and see 'God Hates Fags,' signs, do you check to see if they're wearing them ironically or if their dad told them to but they aren't really into it, or do you turn around and leave? You turn around and leave because you've unambiguously gotten a message the place is unwelcoming to you. You can have bigots or the people they're bigoted against, not both, and the bigots are the ones at fault for that, not the others.

Also, people can and did do "Oh that's not why I support him..." while conveniently managing to drop their political affiliation or say "you can't bring up the racism or the transphobia, I'm sure like me they only supported him because of (economic anxiety/whatever other made-up reason)!" as a way to try and shut down people bringing up real stuff he and the administration has done, or otherwise try and find out exactly where was too blatant and then dance right below that. There was a bunch of bad faith actors, finding out what level of support / professed reasons was ok and then putting that forward purely so they can openly wave support (part of why the 'have 'em in the open so as to reveal them/debate them down' doesn't work- bigots aren't generally speaking open to changing their mind on their bigotry where they discuss, but they are 100% for doing what they can to make people uncomfortable while hiding their level of bigotry). The good faith actors simply... stopped bringing up their support of Trump. Because, if you really don't know about the bigotry or don't care, you're capable of restraining yourself, reading the discussing, and discovering why- and the RPGnet one does include a list of bigoted actions so someone would pretty much have to try to be ignorant, not knowing it is not believeable. And if you're willing to stand up and push for Trump 'despite' the bigotry, then you are at bare minimum sending the message of 'I'm ok with these people who hate you.' And sending it loudly. And if someone is loudly saying 'I'm ok with bigots who hate you,' then they're a bigot making things uncomfortable for non-bigots.

Note the policy isn't based on someone's vote, it's about open support. Someone who voted Trump can still participate (at either RPGnet or Ravelry), just no Trump support.

Here's a key chunk present in both forum's version-
  • You can still participate if you do in fact support the administration, you just can't talk about it here.
  • We are not endorsing the Democrats nor banning Republicans.
  • We are definitely not banning conservative politics. Hate groups and intolerance are different from other types of political positions.
  • We are not banning people for past support.
  • Do not try to weaponize this policy by entrapping people who do support the Trump administration into voicing their support.
  • Similarly, antagonizing conservative members for their unstated positions is not acceptable.



More odd would be that the knitting site had enough of a political discussion to warrant a ban.

I suppose that they could be sharing tips on making red toques with 'MAGA' on them, but one would think that their discourse would be a bit more subdued. At least the RPG crowd are actively involved in worldbuilding, so they would naturally gravitate to political events.

Then again, it is pretty much impossible to look at any comment section on the internet without someone the alt-right jumping in to defend Trumpie. The ban probably came from a wall hanging of "There is no place like home", followed by cheering for ICE roundups keeping home safe and promoting the concentration camps.

Knitting has a surprisingly political history- protest knit-wear is an age old concept and there's been a fair amount of knit patterns made for specific events. That and the place is huge, it has 8 million members (or about 80 times RPGnet, which in turn is a fair amount more than SB, SV, and so on combined)- I've seen knitters say their not-knit friends asking if they've heard of ravelry is like asking someone if you've heard of twitter. If you knit, you know it and probably use it.

And yes, there was a ton of MAGA patterns, build the wall, and the like.
 
Policy wise, I quite like that list.

RPG forum anyway.
 
Ultimately a lot of it comes down to 'the mods don't mod what's deep down in your heart of hearts, they mod based on what you do.' There's the old saying of there was a name for those who supported the Nazis during the Weimar Republic for reasons like economic uncertainty or wanting to stick it to the left wing or what have you- Nazis. No-one cares why people support bigotry in the end, just whether they did.


And there was also an incident where Reddit shut down a subreddit that was overrun with Nazis- and they found that the amount of Nazi/far right racist stuff posted elsewhere dropped, including by people who had posted there before. Giving it room to breath doesn't, as some suggest, allow it to be destroyed by discussion, because it's not based on fair discussion and not trying to be (a fact even the Nazis noted- they talked about, at the time, how the open permissive nature of democracy let them in and they could use that). If something is inherently a bad-faith, bigoted ideology, only thing to do is show it the door. And that, of course, applies to a lot more than people who call themselves nazis, but people following the same bigoted path in general (though a lot more are willing to call themselves nazis or admit to being ok with nazis than you might expect!). Because we are in a position uncomfortably similar to what the Weimar Republic was in (according to people who lived through the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy, and Spain), with the benefit of having the hindsight to see that's what's happening.
 
Good. I wish other sites would start doing it too. Supporting hate groups really shouldn't be allowed in civilized society.

And Europe is so wise mature and civilised, going by recent elections. After all hate speech laws ensured that when the refugee crisis hit everyone pulled together as one and sat down around a table and ate yummy yummy ethnic food together.

Or, in reality, people just pay lip service to "yummy yummy ethnic food above all else" until they make their opinions really known at the ballot box (see: uk 2015 or Italy 2018).
 
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At this point, I absolutely support this. After Trump's unhinged racist tirade against AOC, Tlaib and others, the man needs to be removed from office - full stop. Even if the democrats lose in 2020, something has got to be done.
 
And Europe is so wise mature and civilised, going by recent elections. After all hate speech laws ensured that when the refugee crisis hit everyone pulled together as one and sat down around a table and ate yummy yummy ethnic food together.

Or, in reality, people just pay lip service to "yummy yummy ethnic food above all else" until they make their opinions really known at the ballot box (see: uk 2015 or Italy 2018).

"Something didn't stop something bad from happening entirely, therefore no-one should do it," is not that convincing of an argument. Europe having problems with racism doesn't mean that attempts to lessen it aren't a good thing, and a fair number of people are reacting much better than others.
 
"Something didn't stop something bad from happening entirely, therefore no-one should do it," is not that convincing of an argument. Europe having problems with racism doesn't mean that attempts to lessen it aren't a good thing, and a fair number of people are reacting much better than others.

Matteo Salvini, as Interior Minister is ordering that anyone who rescues refugees be subject to prosecution, and polls suggest he could get 40% of the vote in the next Italian election.

Boris Johnson is going to succeed a Prime Minister who entered a pact with a Far Right Party AFTER Losing her majority who sent Go Home Vans to Migrant communities when she was home secretary in 2013

Emmanuel Macron has openly called African women baby factories, normalising far right rhetoric in ways that even Richard Spencer and Marine Le Pen couldn't achieve.

Viktor Orban has successfully moved Europe rightward to the point they are behaving worse than Trump in some respects

A reasonable conclusion is that they don't work, and this is Europe, long exhorted as being resistant to far right politics due to hate speech laws.
 
"Something didn't stop something bad from happening entirely, therefore no-one should do it," is not that convincing of an argument. Europe having problems with racism doesn't mean that attempts to lessen it aren't a good thing, and a fair number of people are reacting much better than others.
It's actually that it seems to be actively counterproductive, as America's political situation is exploding mostly in the opposite direction, with the right-wing rallies and such in the US being mostly the same as the last 30 years, if not even drifting to the left (as seen with the absence of full-scale anti-gay rallies), while the Left is becoming increasingly violent, to the point that the flagship of counterprotesting in Antifa are one of the insanely few groups to manage to become domestic terrorists, according to US government agencies.

Meanwhile, Europe's the place where the stuff Balerion brings up is actually happening in public, bluntly stated by mainstream politicians. Hate speech laws did not meaningfully accomplish any of their objectives. Hostility towards immigrants, directly bigoted rhetoric and the rise of ultranationalists all happened after the hate speech laws were put on the books, while the US hasn't gone nearly so far. Yes, Trump's an asshole, a moron and a creep. But he's not actually saying that all immigrants need to go, he's saying that they need kept out the bulk of the time, and the ones who came illegally need to be go. Not nearly as blanket as the shit in Europe, and yet they're the ones with the hate speech laws.

The data is in. Hate speech laws don't work to prevent rise of xenophobia, in any field, except maybe genocide advocacy... And I'm both not sure about that, and the cases of such things happening in the US with any vague semblance of support are all left-wing lunatics calling for the monstrous oppression of white people to "make up for" shit that happened a hundred and sixty years ago. The "concentration camps"? Border control support, at worst being punitive deterrance. We have to do something with illegal immigrants when they're caught, and thanks to all those international laws the Left constantly claims about "blatant violations" of, we can't just throw them right back over the border, we have to process their asylum request. Do they suggest anything to fix the system? Nope, tear it all down without replacement. Of any kind. Just completely abandon border control, that'll go just fucking fine, it's not like the barest prelude of that in Europe set off a massive surge in nationalism or something. Oh wait.
 
It's actually that it seems to be actively counterproductive, as America's political situation is exploding mostly in the opposite direction, with the right-wing rallies and such in the US being mostly the same as the last 30 years, if not even drifting to the left (as seen with the absence of full-scale anti-gay rallies), while the Left is becoming increasingly violent, to the point that the flagship of counterprotesting in Antifa are one of the insanely few groups to manage to become domestic terrorists, according to US government agencies.

Meanwhile, Europe's the place where the stuff Balerion brings up is actually happening in public, bluntly stated by mainstream politicians. Hate speech laws did not meaningfully accomplish any of their objectives. Hostility towards immigrants, directly bigoted rhetoric and the rise of ultranationalists all happened after the hate speech laws were put on the books, while the US hasn't gone nearly so far. Yes, Trump's an asshole, a moron and a creep. But he's not actually saying that all immigrants need to go, he's saying that they need kept out the bulk of the time, and the ones who came illegally need to be go. Not nearly as blanket as the shit in Europe, and yet they're the ones with the hate speech laws.

The data is in. Hate speech laws don't work to prevent rise of xenophobia, in any field, except maybe genocide advocacy... And I'm both not sure about that, and the cases of such things happening in the US with any vague semblance of support are all left-wing lunatics calling for the monstrous oppression of white people to "make up for" shit that happened a hundred and sixty years ago. The "concentration camps"? Border control support, at worst being punitive deterrance. We have to do something with illegal immigrants when they're caught, and thanks to all those international laws the Left constantly claims about "blatant violations" of, we can't just throw them right back over the border, we have to process their asylum request. Do they suggest anything to fix the system? Nope, tear it all down without replacement. Of any kind. Just completely abandon border control, that'll go just fucking fine, it's not like the barest prelude of that in Europe set off a massive surge in nationalism or something. Oh wait.

And even in Europe, "Let all illegal immigrants in and give them citizenship!" would be laughed out by all but the most left wing parties across the continent.
 
It's actually that it seems to be actively counterproductive, as America's political situation is exploding mostly in the opposite direction, with the right-wing rallies and such in the US being mostly the same as the last 30 years, if not even drifting to the left (as seen with the absence of full-scale anti-gay rallies), while the Left is becoming increasingly violent, to the point that the flagship of counterprotesting in Antifa are one of the insanely few groups to manage to become domestic terrorists, according to US government agencies.

Meanwhile, Europe's the place where the stuff Balerion brings up is actually happening in public, bluntly stated by mainstream politicians. Hate speech laws did not meaningfully accomplish any of their objectives. Hostility towards immigrants, directly bigoted rhetoric and the rise of ultranationalists all happened after the hate speech laws were put on the books, while the US hasn't gone nearly so far. Yes, Trump's an asshole, a moron and a creep. But he's not actually saying that all immigrants need to go, he's saying that they need kept out the bulk of the time, and the ones who came illegally need to be go. Not nearly as blanket as the shit in Europe, and yet they're the ones with the hate speech laws.

The data is in. Hate speech laws don't work to prevent rise of xenophobia, in any field, except maybe genocide advocacy... And I'm both not sure about that, and the cases of such things happening in the US with any vague semblance of support are all left-wing lunatics calling for the monstrous oppression of white people to "make up for" shit that happened a hundred and sixty years ago. The "concentration camps"? Border control support, at worst being punitive deterrance. We have to do something with illegal immigrants when they're caught, and thanks to all those international laws the Left constantly claims about "blatant violations" of, we can't just throw them right back over the border, we have to process their asylum request. Do they suggest anything to fix the system? Nope, tear it all down without replacement. Of any kind. Just completely abandon border control, that'll go just fucking fine, it's not like the barest prelude of that in Europe set off a massive surge in nationalism or something. Oh wait.
....ummmm.... Trump is currently calling for even the descendants of nonwhite immigrants to be removed.
 
And there was also an incident where Reddit shut down a subreddit that was overrun with Nazis- and they found that the amount of Nazi/far right racist stuff posted elsewhere dropped, including by people who had posted there before.
I'm surprised that anyone even found that surprising. Why do they think all dictatorships try to suppress their opponents and minimize the amount of space they have to voice their opinions?
 
....ummmm.... Trump is currently calling for even the descendants of nonwhite immigrants to be removed.
To give the actual text of the tweets that started these accusations:

So interesting to see "Progressive" Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can't leave fast enough. I'm sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

"Then come back and show us how it is done". Go to their shithole homelands, fix those places, then come back to tell Americans how they did it.
 
To give the actual text of the tweets that started these accusations:



"Then come back and show us how it is done". Go to their shithole homelands, fix those places, then come back to tell Americans how they did it.
That's like telling Cubans fleeing Castro regime that they should go back to under communist dictatorship before they could be allowed to hold any position of power in the United States politics.

What the hell, m8.
 
That's like telling Cubans fleeing Castro regime that they should go back to under communist dictatorship before they could be allowed to hold any position of power in the United States politics.

What the hell, m8.
It's a matter of "go prove your ridiculously outside the norm plans actually fucking work before you bet America on it by unfucking where you came from with those plans". Or, to use your comparison, "Go overthrow Castro and get it working over there before you demand socialism in America".

The fact they're calling for massive changes to US policy is key to the demand to go to their (familial) homelands and fix things there before calling for the US to change.
 
It's a matter of "go prove your ridiculously outside the norm plans actually fucking work before you bet America on it by unfucking where you came from with those plans". Or, to use your comparison, "Go overthrow Castro and get it working over there before you demand socialism in America".

The fact they're calling for massive changes to US policy is key to the demand to go to their (familial) homelands and fix things there before calling for the US to change.
So, yes, you would, actually, send people who escaped the communist dictatorship right back in before you could deign to allow them equal rights with the "natives"/descendants of actual fucking invaders.

Nice opinion, bro.
 
It's a matter of "go prove your ridiculously outside the norm plans actually fucking work before you bet America on it by unfucking where you came from with those plans". Or, to use your comparison, "Go overthrow Castro and get it working over there before you demand socialism in America".

The fact they're calling for massive changes to US policy is key to the demand to go to their (familial) homelands and fix things there before calling for the US to change.
It's not their homelands though. AOC is AMERICAN.

If you think she isn't because her family is from Purto RICO that IS racist.
 
Matteo Salvini, as Interior Minister is ordering that anyone who rescues refugees be subject to prosecution, and polls suggest he could get 40% of the vote in the next Italian election.

Boris Johnson is going to succeed a Prime Minister who entered a pact with a Far Right Party AFTER Losing her majority who sent Go Home Vans to Migrant communities when she was home secretary in 2013

Emmanuel Macron has openly called African women baby factories, normalising far right rhetoric in ways that even Richard Spencer and Marine Le Pen couldn't achieve.

Viktor Orban has successfully moved Europe rightward to the point they are behaving worse than Trump in some respects

A reasonable conclusion is that they don't work, and this is Europe, long exhorted as being resistant to far right politics due to hate speech laws.

Is that really a sign it doesn't work, or it's not done enough? Boris Johnson's level wasn't banned or restricted after all.

Boris is facing large rebellion including inside the tory party. Despite getting such a big referendum as Brexit the party's power has decreased, not increased, and attempts to push things has only resulted in more slide.

There's a right wing movement that has some support to be sure, but they've worked long and hard to get this far, they aren't something that's just popped up only something that's been able to get sway recently, and still suffer very heavy opposition.

Heck, one thing linked to the rise of far right movements is all the far-right spaces in the internet that has allowed them to radicalize people they haven't been able to reach before. /pol/, stormfront, 8chan, even twitter and youtube allows far-right types to be far more open about communication and surrounding oneself with far-right voices before.


It's a matter of "go prove your ridiculously outside the norm plans actually fucking work before you bet America on it by unfucking where you came from with those plans". Or, to use your comparison, "Go overthrow Castro and get it working over there before you demand socialism in America".

The fact they're calling for massive changes to US policy is key to the demand to go to their (familial) homelands and fix things there before calling for the US to change.


One, many of these programs have worked in other places for decades, or even more (UHC was first implemented in a major country before 1900. Every developed economy aside from the US uses it- and our method is far more unproven, considering it literally involves paying more in taxes in exchange for the bonus of having to pay bills too- it's tax-cheaper to cover everyone. Canada, Japan, and others have long proven that). Two, Democratic Socialism has been very successful in Scandinavia and similar for decades.

Three, conservative programs clearly do not. We've had about 30% more job growth from Democrat presidents than Republican ones in the last three decades- with around equivalent number of years in office for each. The growing gap between rich and poor can also be strongly linked to trickle-down economics and the like- which do not trickle down and yet have not been abandoned by the Republicans despite the failure of the core tenant and the rising debt as a result- which rises far more under Republicans than Democrats, despite the Republicans trying to use it as an excuse to not do stuff that helps people and has good rate of return in favor of spending more to do stuff which doesn't help people and is more expensive with negative rate of return.

What does and doesn't work obviously is not a major factor in why they do it.

Also, maybe you should go home. You, Trump, etc., because from the rhetoric it sure as heck isn't America- land of the free, give us your poor and huddled masses, liberty and justice for all- and no, being able to discriminate against others is not 'liberty'. You're coming into our homes and trying to say who we can and can't accept. They're bigots trying to enter the turf of others and mess with us. There's no care about freedom, sure as heck no care about equality, and the people very obviously don't factor into it either, considering the willingness to ignore both their opinions and needs in order to shove inequality and poorly-designed systems who's primary selling point is disadvantage and bigotry down our throats. Purposefully neglecting people we could easily cover, often at far greater expense than covering them, is not a selling point.


Oh! Fun fact- Utah, Republican state, start a program to reduce homelessness by... giving people places to live. Because they calculated that it's actually cheaper to do so than to deal with the problems homelessness causes. And they were right! Super-successful. Let's implement that.
 
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