Side discussion about General Topics forum

[Onkel Neal]

I'm going to say this again, if only to ensure I am being more clear: stop calling names. In every argument or discussion there are 2, 3 or more sides, and yours is not by law morally superior. You need to make your point without labeling the other member. Dismissing someone as a "bigot" is a lazy way to win an argument; you are really just trying to shut down the discussion.

If someone does post something with racist hatred, it will be pretty clear; what they say will reveal them.

[Oberon]

Likewise, calling people naive, fools, sheep for not believing in the same thing you are is a bad thing. Likewise calling for the death of people and the destruction of society is probably a bad thing too.

But there you go.

[TarJak]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

I'm going to say this again, if only to ensure I am being more clear: stop calling names. In every argument or discussion there are 2, 3 or more sides, and yours is not by law morally superior. You need to make your point without labeling the other member. Dismissing someone as a "bigot" is a lazy way to win an argument; you are really just trying to shut down the discussion.

If someone does post something with racist hatred, it will be pretty clear; what they say will reveal them.

If I've crossed a line the infract, brig or keelhaul me for it. If I see bigotry then I call it what it is. Whether you or anyone else call it lazy, I don't care.

If you're happy for Subsim to be a vehicle for hate, then that's fine I 'll be on my way.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by TarJak

If I've crossed a line the infract, brig or keelhaul me for it. If I see bigotry then I call it what it is. Whether you or anyone else call it lazy, I don't care.

If you're happy for Subsim to be a vehicle for hate, then that's fine I 'll be on my way.

A vehicle for hate? You really think that's what we have? If only "hate" was easy to pin down, and not subject to opinion and personal bias.

[Oberon]

Hate is defined as 'intense dislike', I would tend to concur that Skybird has an 'intense dislike' for Islam to the point where it has become irrational.
If it was radical Islam, or ISIL I could understand, but to him there is no difference between the lot.

It's pretty clear that there is a dislike of Islam on this forum, and that is pretty much emotionally based, and leads to unhelpful comments such as "Let's turn the Middle East to glass" or "We should just nuke 'em" and so on and so forth, the sort of gung-ho phrase that you attach to a stereotypical caricature of an American (or 'Murcan' to be precise )

Of course, the question is how does this sort of attitude reflect on the rules? These state:

Subsim allows for a wide range of opinions, politics, and attitudes but we do not accept members who are associated with hate groups. Examples include but are not limited to Neo-Nazi groups, Westboro Baptist Church types, racist supremacists, Klansmen, black militants, Islamic militants, Jewish conspiracists, anti-Semites, posting links to racist music, propaganda denying the Holocaust.

Now, we've already got one person who is a Jewish conspiracist (Alex), and one who was quite anti-Sematic (Zeewolf), but where does this wave of anti-Islam fit into the rules? Is it not the same thing as anti-Semitism? A clear and continual attack on a religion and the avocation of the dissolution of both the religion and many of its members? Are we not in danger of walking down a path last trod in western Europe (and America) in the late 1920s and the 1930s which lead to the Holocaust? If one were to take one of the many popular anti-Islam rants on the internet and replace the words Muslim or Islam with Jew or Jewish, how dissimilar would it be to something from that dark time?
Let me be clear, I'm not saying that we should ban discussion on radical Islam, because the radicalisation and politicisation of Islam is a concern to all alike, even to Muslims themselves, however I think that there should be more encouragement to steer people away from associating 2.2bn people with the actions of 100,000, lest we encourage other gross generalisations.