Lexicus vs Vincour

[Bootstoots]

Lexicus is requesting a review of this infraction. The PM chain is below the infraction message; both Vincour's and Lexicus's versions agree.

Lexicus,

Your message (BBC changing history) contains inappropriate content:

What reason could the BBC have to normalize mass immigration or remove "whiteness" from the identity of Europeans? What's their motive?

If the BBC were actually trying to remove whiteness from the identity of Europeans, I would help them any way I could because whiteness is something that needs to be killed with fire.

If you replace "whiteness" with "blackness", is your statement appropriate for CFC?

The answer to this is an obvious 'no'. Much like calling others racist is against the rules, openly calling for the extermination of an entire ethnicity is also against the rules.

This is a one point infraction which will expire in a week.

- Vincour

Here is the PM chain starting from there:

There is a lot wrong with this.

1) The standard for whether a thing is racist is not whether we can replace "white" with "black" and have it be racist. "Black power" is not racist; white power is. Black pride is not racist, white pride is. And so forth.

2) Calling for the destruction of whiteness is not calling for the extermination of anyone; whiteness is a spurious concept that is nothing more than a way of asserting superiority over black people. The historical function of whiteness has always been exclusion and domination.

Sorry, but no. It's all racist. Don't call for ethnicities to be "killed with fire". Thanks.

I'm formally appealing this infraction then, because I wasn't calling for the extermination of anyone and obviously you cannot be "racist against white people" anyway.

Okay. You can send your appeal request to a super moderator such as @ori or @Bootstoots.

-------

Additional reasoning provided by Vincour:

Reasoning: Lexicus has made several posts like this in the past. It's never been meant as a meme in those instances and there is no reason to think it's a light-hearted meme now. I won't go through the effort of finding specific examples of similar sentiments but you can [0]=125098]run a search for Lexicus' posts that include the word "white" and see a trend over the first two pages of results. Going back further will just continue to increase evidence towards the claim that Lexicus regularly makes posts that could be construed as anti-white.

Furthermore, Lexicus' behaviour in this specific thread already got him two infractions for attacking the OP. Each instance got him a generous 3 points in total, whereas ordinarily his conduct in this thread would have gotten him 2-3 points per offense (especially since outbursts like this are common with Lexicus). One point for saying what he said is what I personally consider to be merciful.

Our conversation was at an impasse and I do recommend that this go through to an appeal. I am frankly not interested in counterarguments from Lexicus that amount to "you can't be racist against white people" or "it's just a meme". I am okay if that plays against me in the appeal process. I personally do not find either argument to be legitimate.

Additional reasoning provided by Lexicus:

I was not calling for the extermination of anyone: the destruction of whiteness simply means the end of the material/cultural advantages enjoyed by white people over non-white people, and what I said combined this sentiment with the common "kill it with fire" meme.

I think it is fairly clear from context that I did not mean killing or exterminating anyone given I mentioned "removing whiteness from the identities of Europeans" in that post.

 

[Bootstoots]

I haven't really been paying attention to OT in the past few weeks with the exception of the global warming thread and a couple of others. But here I am anyway. (edit: removed a sentence about not reading context; I have thought about this a bit more and do see the context in the thread)

The concept of "whiteness" occupies a special negative position in the lexicon of Lexicus (lame pun-like thing intended), and more broadly to many left-wing social justice types. "Whiteness" is seen as inextricable from the advantages that people who are considered "white" have in countries with European majorities.

Vincour pointed out that wanting to eliminate "blackness" would be unacceptable, which Lexicus appears to agree with. I also do not think that this is calling for the physical elimination of anyone, but rather the elimination of "whiteness" from European identity. But Lexicus's phrasing here is quite different and may be infractible, even though it's true that he's just using a popular internet meme and that he's agreeing with an acceptable opinion.

I suppose analogous things that we'd treat as acceptable from around the world would be that the concept of being Han should be eliminated from the concept of being Chinese (thereby including Tibetans, Uyghurs, Sui, etc as members of the Chinese nation), or that the concept of being ethnically Russian should be eliminated from the concept of belonging to the Russian nation, or that the concept of being ethnically Turkish should be eliminated from belonging to the Turkish nation, etc.

But to say that Hanness, ethnic Russianness, or ethnic Turkishness should be "killed with fire" is probably not an acceptable statement. "Whiteness" is a much broader category, but I can't see any analogous cases where we'd accept a "kill with fire" type of statement about any other broad grouping of ethnicities either. We might accept a "kill white privilege with fire" type of post, but "kill whiteness with fire", not so much.

Currently I'm leaning toward this sentiment being acceptable if phrased properly, but not being acceptable if phrased the way Lexicus did in this particular post. I'll look more at the rest of the thread before stating my "official" position on whether to uphold or not.

 

[Bootstoots]

Okay, I've seen enough - the context is what I thought it was. I vote to uphold based on the reasoning above. I'd probably not vote to uphold if he had said something like "white privilege should be killed with fire", or if he had said that "whiteness" should be removed from "European-ness", but I doubt Vincour would have issued the infraction anyway had he said it like that.

"Whiteness" is most commonly understood as being a characteristic of most or all European-originating ethnic groups, so one is not allowed to advocate "killing it with fire", even if they're not actually arguing for physical extermination.

 

[leif erikson]

Thank you for the explanation you provided Boots. I read the thread last night...

Concur with your conclusion and vote to uphold the infraction.

 

[Lefty Scaevola]

Concur with uphold

Disagree with dicta that " or if he had said that "whiteness" should be removed from "European-ness" or even merely "white privilege should be killed with fire" would not be infractible racism.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

I agree; uphold.

 

[ori]

I also vote to uphold as well, agreeing with Bootstoots points.

 

[Bootstoots]

It seems we all agree to uphold; if someone else wants to chime in they should do so quickly.

I'm going to be away from tomorrow until the 20th, so could someone else wrap this up?

 

[Bootstoots]

At long last, I've finally gotten around to calling this one. I sent both Lexicus and Vincour the following PM to inform them of the result and ask whether they consent to having their PMs published:

The infraction review for this post has been completed. It was completed well over a week ago, actually, but I was away and/or too busy for most of that time, and it did not get officially closed.

The infraction was upheld in a 5-0 decision. The full reasoning will be visible when we post the thread in the Infraction Review subforum.

Before I do so, I need to know from each of you whether you consent to having your own PMs from the infraction PM chain to be published in the Infraction Review subforum. Anyone who does not consent will have all of their own PMs redacted when the infraction review is posted publicly.

 

[Bootstoots]

They've now both gotten back to me. Both have consented, and there's no sensitive information either, so there's nothing to redact. I'll copy this thread directly into the public forum unchanged.

edit: Since I was the one who provided the main reasoning, and this was broadly agreed to, anyone on the site who has any questions or comments about this decision should PM me.