Internet trolls hitting very close to home

[Mendalla]

Saw this article on Yahoo! this morning. Makes me cringe a little as I am in an interracial marriage myself and have a mixed race son.

https://ca.style.yahoo.com/post/143738507045/this-old-navy-ad-featuring-an-interracial-family

I thought the whole interracial marriage thing had long since been put to bed in North America but I guess some folks never give up. Makes me worry for my son that there are still people out there decrying "miscegenation" when they see a mixed race family.

I'm not sure what is the answer. As a longtime supporter of an open Internet, I can't simply say "ban their asses back to the Stone Age" but at the same time, seeing stuff like this in the 21st century makes me rather sad.

 

[Jaebius]

Saw this article on Yahoo! this morning. Makes me cringe a little as I am in an interracial marriage myself and have a mixed race son.

https://ca.style.yahoo.com/post/143738507045/this-old-navy-ad-featuring-an-interracial-family

I thought the whole interracial marriage thing had long since been put to bed in North America but I guess some folks never give up. Makes me worry for my son that there are still people out there decrying "miscegenation" when they see a mixed race family.

I'm not sure what is the answer. As a longtime supporter of an open Internet, I can't simply say "ban their asses back to the Stone Age" but at the same time, seeing stuff like this in the 21st century makes me rather sad.

Yeah... trolls... haters...

I'm thinking we're going to see more of this in the future too.

The question is, how are we as good people to respond.

 

[Pinga]

It is hateful.

Do you think they are trolls or they believe it.
Reason that I ask: the response is different.

I feel trolls should be able to be sanctioned and banned, lost posting. The challenge is that you shutdown one account, they spring up with another.
The option is that government gets engaged in serious trollers with fines/penalties for abuse...

 

[Jaebius]

It is hateful.

Do you think they are trolls or they believe it.
Reason that I ask: the response is different.

I feel trolls should be able to be sanctioned and banned, lost posting. The challenge is that you shutdown one account, they spring up with another.
The option is that government gets engaged in serious trollers with fines/penalties for abuse...

What about freedom of speech?

 

[Mendalla]

It is hateful.

Do you think they are trolls or they believe it.
Reason that I ask: the response is different.

I feel trolls should be able to be sanctioned and banned, lost posting. The challenge is that you shutdown one account, they spring up with another.
The option is that government gets engaged in serious trollers with fines/penalties for abuse...

That's part of the problem, isn't it? You never who is being serious and who is trolling. I suspect it's a mix, really. Given that the KKK is still in business, I'm sure there's at least a small bunch of extreme racists out there who believe that mixed race is evil, but that doesn't mean some of these aren't garden-variety trolls trying to stir up s**t.

However, legally speaking, hate speech should be hate speech whether the intent to was to demonize the other or just cause trouble. The problem is that to prosecute these as hate speech, you need to be able to positively identify the poster well enough to stand up in court and they need to be in your jurisdiction. Canada's hate laws probably can't be used against a poster in Oz and so on.

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

This is coming from the U.S. where there has been renewed racial tension higher than what we see in Canada. It's here too, there's always been some element of racism here too, but in the last 50 years not nearly as high here as it ever was down south - even at the best of times there has been much more entrenched racism in parts of the U.S. - and it's rearing its ugly head in the south again, it looks like. I noticed that one of the trolls mentioned was a Trump supporter. Trump is giving (illegitimate) legitimacy to the haters.. I think that, and the attitude that seems to come with that, is what is fueling crap like this and it will hopefully fade away when Trump loses the election, the GOP mends its ways after this election debacle if they're ever going to be a viable and respected party, and sanity is restored to government in the U.S. If that happens there wouldn't need to be crackdown on trolls - the problem would settle down on its own once reasonable and just attitudes are restored....I hope.

 

[Pinga]

What about freedom of speech?

You do not have the right to stand in a movie theatre and scream at everyone who is female that they are whores. You do not have the right to stand in a restaurant and scream at everyone that is sitting with two of the same gender at a table that they are gay. you do not have the right to stand in a grocery store and tell every family that is mixed race that they are evil.

If you are trolling, placing obnoxious comments on a post which is not related to that topic, and you persist when asked to stop, then you are doing similar to above. That is disruptive behaviour.

There are limits to speech which involve how they impact others. Those rights have not yet evolved yet in the online world; however, they will.

 

[Mendalla]

This is coming from the U.S. where there has been renewed racial tension higher than what we see in Canada.

I think that is part of it, but I think there's a more general mean-spiritedness going around and I'm not sure if it is people feeling disenfranchised or what.

I mean, besides this story, you've got:

• People getting upset (or pretending to) because two of the three new leads in Star Wars are non-white (John Boyega is Black and Oscar Isaacs is Latino) while the third (Daisy Ridley) is a woman. Which had a lot of us cheering but some threatened boycotts because it was too "politically correct" and "anti-white".
• The Sad Puppy and Rabid Puppy movements railing against too many women and non-white minorities in science fiction and fantasy and using bloc voting to try to influence the Hugo awards.
• The Gamergate problem, where rabid anti-feminists (or at least folks claiming to be such) are using threats and intimidation to try to shut women out of video and computer gaming, both as players and developers.

Is this apparent sense of lost entitlement new or is it just guys airing their old, previously private, grievances in ways that are more public and destructive?

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

I think it's the latter, mostly. And I think these haters do not represent the majority of Americans, and certainly not the majority of Canadians. This hateful attitude was stirred up by the Tea Party element of the GOP's backlash against Obama - the whole "birther" thing that was used as a political tool to try to delegitimize Obama, because he's black. Trump furthered it to just about every other non-white and/ or minority group, but he really brought the hate out of the shadows, and I don't think the hate will prevail.

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

And what is also happening down there is the ecomomic woes have everybody looking for a scapegoat - and that anger becomes pervasive in more and more aspects of society, and opportunistic politicians who leverage that anger and misdirect it, so we're seeing it manifest in more places because everybody feels it's somebody else's fault.

 

[Pinga]

Is this apparent sense of lost entitlement new or is it just guys airing their old, previously private, grievances in ways that are more public and destructive?

It's always been there. You just usually only encountered it at bars when those a**holes had had too much to drink. Now, they get to go online any time, and let their rabid thoughts fly...

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

...and what is also happening is backlash against "the establishment(s)"... People are tired of systemic disadvantage at the hands of elites ... And when light is shone on the real source of the power imbalance, whoever has held the imbalance of power will look for a scapegoat....and then you've got race struggle, class struggle, etc. in the forefront again - but if a fair, just, establishment were re-established that will settle down.

 

[revsdd]

There is so much hatred out there, and the internet gives a way for it to be expressed easily and anonymously. Malia Obama (President Obama's older daughter) has been accepted to Harvard to start in 2017 after a gap year. There have been racist attacks against her on the FOX News website in the comments section of the story (until even FOX couldn't take it anymore and removed it) and then on Twitter. I can't even bring myself to say what some of the attacks are because they're so disgusting. If you're interested, here's one story:

http://bossip.com/1309733/privilege...t-malia-obama-over-her-acceptance-to-harvard/

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

That is disgusting.

This is history repeating itself...just like the 60s...anti-establishment backlash and scapegoating arising from it.


There were a lot of entitled haters who really didn't like the idea of a black president - and a party who represented those haters far too much - with the birther thing and trying to block Obama any which way they could. What it is, is a last ditch desperate attempt to cling to privilege and entitlement. What I think many of these haters haven't figured out is that they have been and are being used as pawns by the GOP for votes - in an economic rough patch the basest thing they can use to create "us and them" is the race card. They haven't figured out that a fair society for everybody benefits them too and race shouldn't have anything to do with it. If they did figure it out the hate would dial down.

 

[Jaebius]

There is so much hatred out there, and the internet gives a way for it to be expressed easily and anonymously. Malia Obama (President Obama's older daughter) has been accepted to Harvard to start in 2017 after a gap year. There have been racist attacks against her on the FOX News website in the comments section of the story (until even FOX couldn't take it anymore and removed it) and then on Twitter. I can't even bring myself to say what some of the attacks are because they're so disgusting. If you're interested, here's one story:

http://bossip.com/1309733/privilege...t-malia-obama-over-her-acceptance-to-harvard/

From the article - "As previously reported the First Daughter is taking a year off before pursuing her degree at the institution, much to the dismay of racists who think her last name and affirmative action got her accepted to the school."

While racism is always wrong, there's nothing necessarily racist in suggesting that she got her ticket to Harvard because of who her father is (the POTUS), and because of affirmative action.

 

[Mendalla]

they have been and are being used as pawns by the GOP for votes

I'm not so sure that they are unaware of this anymore. The GOP establishment reaction to Trump suggests that the "pawns" have more power than the power brokers are comfortable with and that the GOP establishment is losing control of the game they've been playing with these people. One of my worries about The Donald is that him getting the nom could be seen by some of these people as legitimizing them.

From the article - "As previously reported the First Daughter is taking a year off before pursuing her degree at the institution, much to the dismay of racists who think her last name and affirmative action got her accepted to the school."

While racism is always wrong, there's nothing necessarily racist in suggesting that she got her ticket to Harvard because of who her father is (the POTUS), and because of affirmative action.

Right, but read the article and some of the tweets being quoted. While questioning affirmative action may not be racist, calling a black teenager a "monkey" and worse most certainly is. Malia is a person deserving of more respect than that. Yes, her Daddy's name and position probably helped her get in. So what? That's how the Ivy League operates by and large. Kids of prominent powerful men and wealthy alumni have been getting through their doors on that basis forever. Do you think that Barbara Pierce Bush, W's daughter, got in to Yale on her own merits, given that her father, grandfather, and great-grandfather are/were all well-heeled, well-positioned Yale alumni? Did these people even make a peep about that? Not that I heard of, and that's likely because the Bushes are white conservatives.

 

[Luce NDs]

Some people can't get beyond the old dogma ... and thus confined mindfulness ... or occult mindlessness?

 

[Kimmio Laughterlove]

I didn't get past the disgusting headline.

In the 60s a previous generation of haters was livid about allowing black people to vote, let alone attend Ivy League universities. No, I don't think they'd be saying that if the Obamas were white.

There are people, and I think Obama was one of them, who have ideals of being able to change the establishment by joining it - and so, coming from less privileged backgrounds, fight their way to the top to be in a position to give more people better opportunity once they get there. Barack and Michelle were not trust fund kids. Their kids have had more privilege than they had but it was not based on any sense of silver spoon entitlement - or entrenched colonial sense of entitlement dating back centuries. If I were Obama I'd want my kids to have the best education and opportunity, as I would for any kid.

 

[revsdd]

From the article - "As previously reported the First Daughter is taking a year off before pursuing her degree at the institution, much to the dismay of racists who think her last name and affirmative action got her accepted to the school."

While racism is always wrong, there's nothing necessarily racist in suggesting that she got her ticket to Harvard because of who her father is (the POTUS), and because of affirmative action.

True.

But you also have to account for the "n****r" comments, the desire that she catch "cancer, aids or some other coloured disease," the idea that at least 1000 of her GPA score was because she's black, the suggestion that during her gap year she should begin breeding like "they" all do, or that she could spend her down time helping her parents steal the White House dinnerware, or that she was a "MuDSLime" (I assume a take on "Muslim.") There were other delightful comments made - not to mention that those who question her intelligence (a) don't know her, and (b) have pretty bad spelling and grammar for those who would question someone else's intelligence.

 

[BetteTheRed]

Our racism up here tends to be a bit different. Better disguised, and more narrowly focussed on our indigenous neighbours.