It doesn't have the connotation of a slur, but it's undeniably "a derogatory race-based term." I don't see how an in-person organization in the U.S. could be successful while allowing that, so it's always struck me as extremely online that we do.
This is a case of "page of reactionary screed that includes one decent point made poorly," and us being reflexively contrarian, which is 90% right when dealing with reactionaries but still leaves some considerable blind spots.
There are plenty of people who are interested in socialism, but if they show up to a socialist org and get called a cracker they'll leave. It's an insult.
We're talking about politics and organizing people, right? To succeed at those you have to get people to like you, or at least not insult them, no matter how right you are. "Anyone who takes issue when I insult them is unreachable" is extremely online.
There are plenty of people who are interested in socialism, but if they show up to a socialist org and get called a cracker they'll leave. It's an insult.
This also applies to pigpoopballs and you can pry my ppb from my cold dead hands.
I suppose the question might be more: when wouldn't you use PPB? If you're familiar with Huey P. Newton, in an interview he gave the same year he was assassinated (RIP; Rest In Power) he spoke against what he referred to (and what I am suggesting is quite similar) as the dirty word movement. Is it really so difficult to accept one of the consequences of using some language, whatever it is, can be deleterious or on the whole considered by comrades to be less than helpful in specific circumstances?
With language, and what appear to be brainworms with most folk (the reasons why are justified, I'd never argue against or attempt to invalidate that; if I have I apologize, please let me know and I'll offer a proper apology and ideally would like to listen & learn to prevent it) including comrades, stating a reasonable unwanted consequence is tantamount to "silencing expression". Which it is of course, and if dialectics were employed, it is also harmful in ways which are considered by other comrades. What's the major issue with what seems like invalidation of comrades' concerns when it pertains to the material affects of specific kinds of communication?
I have some ideas, they don't seem particularly respectful and are accusatory, which is why I'd rather hear what others have to say. I want to stay in that uncomfortable space of cognitive dissonance before reaching a dialect on the subject of interest.
I suppose the question might be more: when wouldn't you use PPB? If you're familiar with Huey P. Newton, in an interview he gave the same year he was assassinated (RIP; Rest In Power) he spoke against what he referred to (and what I am suggesting is quite similar) as the dirty word movement. Is it really so difficult to accept one of the consequences of using some language, whatever it is, can be deleterious or on the whole considered by comrades to be less than helpful in specific circumstances?
I have a carrot and stick philosophy to brainworms, if I see a person as genuinely potentially possible to talk to and turn then I engage with them in as friendly a way as I can possibly muster - earnestly demonstrating that I'm educated and worth listening to and a potential source of learning.
If however they are clearly not going to allow that to happen I use the stick.
My interaction with this person is not the last ever interaction this person will have with a communist. They will have others in future, and I prefer to give them the stick to deter behaviour they demonstrated in this conversation so that there is a greater chance of them engaging in a better way for a future comrade. I don't view interactions in a vacuum, I view things hollistically. The general intent being that having an incredibly negative experience as a result of the way they engaged me results in them engaging with someone else in a different way.
also;
i do think the carrot and stick is a good heuristic, it really makes a clear distinction i think to like, how to frame one's responses & engagements
I prefer to give them the stick to deter behaviour they demonstrated in this conversation so that there is a greater chance of them engaging in a better way for a future comrade.
That's a great strategy, and way to think about interacting with people.
The idea that we have to only use the carrot in all situations because that is the sole interaction that will determine whether the other person becomes a comrade or a fascist, is, besides being silly, a lot of pressure to place on an individual.
It's also entirely unrealistic. Like, do people only meet nice liberals? Nice fascists? Is each interaction people have with them something you only view in a vacuum?
The decision to join a political camp is not determined by how nice your interactions with the people in that camp are, but by how significant their political positions resonate with your lived experiences. The biggest barrier, for communists, is that anticommunism and mccarthyism closes people off to even considering our political points. The biggest and most important thing then is to develop a strategy for the destruction of that barrier. Once you destroy that barrier you gain access to a person's mind. Without the destruction of that barrier you are literally wasting your time.
And this is generally what informs my somewhat rough behaviour with people when I recognise they have that barrier up and are not doing anything to try and break it. I can't break it for them, they have to want to break it themselves. The only way I have to encourage them to break that barrier down is to give them a god awful experience because of its existence, and to make it very clear that it's because they have that barrier up that they're getting this awful experience. This, I then hope, results in them taking a different approach to the next comrade they come across. Or it might even be me next time, and my completely different attitude and behaviour with them because they don't have the barrier up results in reinforcing that they lower it.
ah that's fair and it makes sense. you'd say something like my confusion would be a consequence of not knowing or being familiar with your engagement philosophy and history, right? it feels like it would be difficult for others maybe to know that as well which may also explain some reticence on others' part.
i also don't see things in rather short slices, and don't think my internal presumptions–i.e. inherently containing a tendency towards non-scientific positivist thinking; it lacks peer-review or the broader phenomena of explicit social critique of which all have the reference materials available which in this case are categorically excluded from such folks, for good reason of course and, holistically, it would be amiss i think to ignore its lack of presence.
i think i honestly got super excited and really did not read the room well vis-à-vis the original poster. after rereading your prior comment and other comrades i think i severely misunderstood and misconstrued what the OP was saying... it honestly kinda reminds me of dronerights a bit and my interactions at that time.
There are plenty of people who are interested in socialism, but if they show up to a socialist org and get called a cracker they'll leave. It's an insult.
We aren't a fucking org. No one is joining an org to come in and start swinging minute 1 about how akshually Stalin was Hitler unless they are joining an org that holds that stance to begin with. If someone does join an ML org and do that, they get what they fucking deserve.
But we are not an org, and them coming into some thread to take shots does not represent remotely the same opportunity to us that a new member does to an organizer.
I didn't say we're an org, and I didn't say this asshole shouldn't have been banned.
I said allowing race-based insults, even those directed at white people, is extremely online behavior. You can see this because it's not tolerated in person.
It's not tolerated in person with an org member. If you're at a counterprotest or whatever and a PoC comrade calls a fascist on the other side of the line a cracker, there typically won't be a disciplinary hearing over it. Your comment is useless equivocating because it completely obscures the variety of different group dynamics that appear in person. It's not as though "cracker" was first said to a white person over AOL in the 90s.
Cracker is used on here all the time; it's not exclusively directed at reactionaries. And of course one of the big problems with race-based insults (or insults based on any other group characteristic) is that even if the intent is only to insult someone deserving of insult, comrades who are also in the group hear it, too.
I'm white and getting offended at "cracker" is comical. Furthermore, even if it's not exclusively directed at reactionaries, you are in essence conceding that the hypothetical you posed at the start is simply worthless.
"Why would anyone feel insulted by my insult I'm using to rip on them" is not convincing. Sure, it has maybe the same sting as calling someone an asshole, but when someone is checking a place out, that's not going to help them stick around. If someone kept calling other comrades assholes we'd tell them to knock if off.
the hypothetical you posed at the start
I didn't pose any hypothetical, I said casually insulting white people based on their race is not tolerated in any real life org. It's extremely online.
You are by this point correcting me because you are completely failing to follow the conversational thread.
"Why would anyone feel insulted by my insult I'm using to rip on them" is not convincing.
Remember the context, that being "but if someone calls a white fash a cracker, a white comrade's feelings are hurt" which means that the person who I think is being ridiculous is not the person actually being targeted with the insult.
I didn't pose any hypothetical
Do you not know that conditional statements are usually hypotheticals?
There are plenty of people who are interested in socialism, but if they show up to a socialist org and get called a cracker they'll leave. It's an insult.
That bold part is a hypothetical situation
You can't be this sniveling and then completely fail to follow the conversation at a rudimentary level on top of correcting others on it, it's just insufferable. I doubt it's even a language issue because people speaking a second language usually have the good sense or conscientiousness to check if they are missing something should they have an understanding so at odds with who they are speaking to.
You are extremely online if you don't see how insulting members of your group, then insulting them again if they take issue, is bad for the group. No amount of will change that.
There are plenty of people who are interested in socialism, but if they show up to a socialist org and get called a cracker they'll leave
I don't think that's a real scenario that's worth worrying about. Where are these socialist orgs that these people are going to show up at and be called crackers right away? Its silly. That's why I'm making light of it, because this is just an unserious concern
Allowing casual race-based insults is bad, even if they're directed at white people. We know this is bad because no significant in-person org allows it. Allowing it here is the definition of extremely online behavior.
People aren't getting called cracker in real life, not because its such a terrible insult, but because that has just never been a thing that happens, because white people are not oppressed in any kind of racialized way. I think its an extremely silly thing to be concerned about.
I don't think people are getting called cracker in real life. I don't think it's a terrible insult, but it is an insult. Of course white people aren't oppressed. None of my comments have said anything like any of this.
I don't think I can state what I'm talking about more clearly, and I don't think you've been trying to understand what I'm saying, so I'm going to disengage.
I'm not sure the trolley problem nor Russel's Teapot are legitimate either; I think the value is in the very clear and specificity of the thought experiment.
(unless thought experiments are bourgeois decadence, if so I will show myself out...)
(unless thought experiments are bourgeois decadence, if so I will show myself out...)
No, but they can very rapidly fall into idealist question-begging, though it is worth noting that the prompt you are giving this comparison to is not clear enough to be a useful thought experiment even by liberal standards. It is just a hazy hypothetical.
That's too much of a determined take. Why not make a more appropriate (i.e. seems more likely) kinda claim:
Anyone who appears to be not joining because of the word Cr*cker was likely not going to join*
* without an amount of effort which could likely be better used elsewhere, towards materially marginalized groups, fomenting solidarity, organizing, etc.
NOTE: I try to give others a chance at least. Thankfully comrades such as yourself and others can operate more pragmatically rather than with naïvety and so can cover my blind spots
I whined about cracker being a slur and those mean ol Hexbears just called me a cracker more instead of debating me
It doesn't have the connotation of a slur, but it's undeniably "a derogatory race-based term." I don't see how an in-person organization in the U.S. could be successful while allowing that, so it's always struck me as extremely online that we do.
This is a case of "page of reactionary screed that includes one decent point made poorly," and us being reflexively contrarian, which is 90% right when dealing with reactionaries but still leaves some considerable blind spots.
Nah. This guy already knows the counter argument and is itching to debatebro. Calling him a cracker and banning him is objectively correct
we should ban all crackers
So much for the tolerant left
I'm all for unceremoniously banning obvious reactionaries who are here in bad faith, but that's not what I'm getting at.
Anyone who is not joining because of the word Cracker was never gonna join
There are plenty of people who are interested in socialism, but if they show up to a socialist org and get called a cracker they'll leave. It's an insult.
We're talking about politics and organizing people, right? To succeed at those you have to get people to like you, or at least not insult them, no matter how right you are. "Anyone who takes issue when I insult them is unreachable" is extremely online.
This also applies to pigpoopballs and you can pry my ppb from my cold dead hands.
What is the in-person equivalent to ppb?
Pooping on your own balls
The same; you need to have a hexbear equivalent of pocket sand;
pocket ppb!
pulls out creased photo
I suppose the question might be more: when wouldn't you use PPB? If you're familiar with Huey P. Newton, in an interview he gave the same year he was assassinated (RIP; Rest In Power) he spoke against what he referred to (and what I am suggesting is quite similar) as the dirty word movement. Is it really so difficult to accept one of the consequences of using some language, whatever it is, can be deleterious or on the whole considered by comrades to be less than helpful in specific circumstances?
With language, and what appear to be brainworms with most folk (the reasons why are justified, I'd never argue against or attempt to invalidate that; if I have I apologize, please let me know and I'll offer a proper apology and ideally would like to listen & learn to prevent it) including comrades, stating a reasonable unwanted consequence is tantamount to "silencing expression". Which it is of course, and if dialectics were employed, it is also harmful in ways which are considered by other comrades. What's the major issue with what seems like invalidation of comrades' concerns when it pertains to the material affects of specific kinds of communication?
I have some ideas, they don't seem particularly respectful and are accusatory, which is why I'd rather hear what others have to say. I want to stay in that uncomfortable space of cognitive dissonance before reaching a dialect on the subject of interest.
I have a carrot and stick philosophy to brainworms, if I see a person as genuinely potentially possible to talk to and turn then I engage with them in as friendly a way as I can possibly muster - earnestly demonstrating that I'm educated and worth listening to and a potential source of learning.
If however they are clearly not going to allow that to happen I use the stick.
My interaction with this person is not the last ever interaction this person will have with a communist. They will have others in future, and I prefer to give them the stick to deter behaviour they demonstrated in this conversation so that there is a greater chance of them engaging in a better way for a future comrade. I don't view interactions in a vacuum, I view things hollistically. The general intent being that having an incredibly negative experience as a result of the way they engaged me results in them engaging with someone else in a different way.
also; i do think the carrot and stick is a good heuristic, it really makes a clear distinction i think to like, how to frame one's responses & engagements
That's a great strategy, and way to think about interacting with people.
The idea that we have to only use the carrot in all situations because that is the sole interaction that will determine whether the other person becomes a comrade or a fascist, is, besides being silly, a lot of pressure to place on an individual.
It's also entirely unrealistic. Like, do people only meet nice liberals? Nice fascists? Is each interaction people have with them something you only view in a vacuum?
The decision to join a political camp is not determined by how nice your interactions with the people in that camp are, but by how significant their political positions resonate with your lived experiences. The biggest barrier, for communists, is that anticommunism and mccarthyism closes people off to even considering our political points. The biggest and most important thing then is to develop a strategy for the destruction of that barrier. Once you destroy that barrier you gain access to a person's mind. Without the destruction of that barrier you are literally wasting your time.
And this is generally what informs my somewhat rough behaviour with people when I recognise they have that barrier up and are not doing anything to try and break it. I can't break it for them, they have to want to break it themselves. The only way I have to encourage them to break that barrier down is to give them a god awful experience because of its existence, and to make it very clear that it's because they have that barrier up that they're getting this awful experience. This, I then hope, results in them taking a different approach to the next comrade they come across. Or it might even be me next time, and my completely different attitude and behaviour with them because they don't have the barrier up results in reinforcing that they lower it.
ah that's fair and it makes sense. you'd say something like my confusion would be a consequence of not knowing or being familiar with your engagement philosophy and history, right? it feels like it would be difficult for others maybe to know that as well which may also explain some reticence on others' part.
i also don't see things in rather short slices, and don't think my internal presumptions–i.e. inherently containing a tendency towards non-scientific positivist thinking; it lacks peer-review or the broader phenomena of explicit social critique of which all have the reference materials available which in this case are categorically excluded from such folks, for good reason of course and, holistically, it would be amiss i think to ignore its lack of presence.
i think i honestly got super excited and really did not read the room well vis-à-vis the original poster. after rereading your prior comment and other comrades i think i severely misunderstood and misconstrued what the OP was saying... it honestly kinda reminds me of dronerights a bit and my interactions at that time.
We aren't a fucking org. No one is joining an org to come in and start swinging minute 1 about how akshually Stalin was Hitler unless they are joining an org that holds that stance to begin with. If someone does join an ML org and do that, they get what they fucking deserve.
But we are not an org, and them coming into some thread to take shots does not represent remotely the same opportunity to us that a new member does to an organizer.
I didn't say we're an org, and I didn't say this asshole shouldn't have been banned.
I said allowing race-based insults, even those directed at white people, is extremely online behavior. You can see this because it's not tolerated in person.
It's not tolerated in person with an org member. If you're at a counterprotest or whatever and a PoC comrade calls a fascist on the other side of the line a cracker, there typically won't be a disciplinary hearing over it. Your comment is useless equivocating because it completely obscures the variety of different group dynamics that appear in person. It's not as though "cracker" was first said to a white person over AOL in the 90s.
Cracker is used on here all the time; it's not exclusively directed at reactionaries. And of course one of the big problems with race-based insults (or insults based on any other group characteristic) is that even if the intent is only to insult someone deserving of insult, comrades who are also in the group hear it, too.
I'm white and getting offended at "cracker" is comical. Furthermore, even if it's not exclusively directed at reactionaries, you are in essence conceding that the hypothetical you posed at the start is simply worthless.
"Why would anyone feel insulted by my insult I'm using to rip on them" is not convincing. Sure, it has maybe the same sting as calling someone an asshole, but when someone is checking a place out, that's not going to help them stick around. If someone kept calling other comrades assholes we'd tell them to knock if off.
I didn't pose any hypothetical, I said casually insulting white people based on their race is not tolerated in any real life org. It's extremely online.
You are by this point correcting me because you are completely failing to follow the conversational thread.
Remember the context, that being "but if someone calls a white fash a cracker, a white comrade's feelings are hurt" which means that the person who I think is being ridiculous is not the person actually being targeted with the insult.
Do you not know that conditional statements are usually hypotheticals?
That bold part is a hypothetical situation
You can't be this sniveling and then completely fail to follow the conversation at a rudimentary level on top of correcting others on it, it's just insufferable. I doubt it's even a language issue because people speaking a second language usually have the good sense or conscientiousness to check if they are missing something should they have an understanding so at odds with who they are speaking to.
You are extremely online if you don't see how insulting members of your group, then insulting them again if they take issue, is bad for the group. No amount of
will change that.
"Members of your group"
There it is again, just sliding the subject around freely because you have no point if you talk about the same thing for two consecutive comments.
i dont think its a slur, but he's kinda right.
I don't think that's a real scenario that's worth worrying about. Where are these socialist orgs that these people are going to show up at and be called crackers right away? Its silly. That's why I'm making light of it, because this is just an unserious concern
There are some pretty weird Maoist groups out there...
And those Maoist groups (not all Maoist groups, those specifically) are welcome to implode
that's absolutely true, but im pretty sure the commenter was talking about the site
Let’s be real, we do no organising here. And that’s fine, this place is mostly a place to unwind and feel sane in a world of darkest reaction.
It doesn't happen in real life because in person everyone understands that you don't insult people you're trying to work with.
"I can't imagine people saying this face-to-face" is a sign that we should ask why we're saying it at all.
It's not that i can't imagine it. Its that it just doesn't doesn't happen. Its a made up concern
I don't understand what you're actually concerned about
Allowing casual race-based insults is bad, even if they're directed at white people. We know this is bad because no significant in-person org allows it. Allowing it here is the definition of extremely online behavior.
People aren't getting called cracker in real life, not because its such a terrible insult, but because that has just never been a thing that happens, because white people are not oppressed in any kind of racialized way. I think its an extremely silly thing to be concerned about.
I don't think people are getting called cracker in real life. I don't think it's a terrible insult, but it is an insult. Of course white people aren't oppressed. None of my comments have said anything like any of this.
I don't think I can state what I'm talking about more clearly, and I don't think you've been trying to understand what I'm saying, so I'm going to disengage.
Fair. Disengage
I'm not sure the trolley problem nor Russel's Teapot are legitimate either; I think the value is in the very clear and specificity of the thought experiment.
(unless thought experiments are bourgeois decadence, if so I will show myself out...)
No, but they can very rapidly fall into idealist question-begging, though it is worth noting that the prompt you are giving this comparison to is not clear enough to be a useful thought experiment even by liberal standards. It is just a hazy hypothetical.
i think i really hurt myself in confusion in this thread; i can barely piece together what i was saying or what i meant.
i'll leave the utopian/idealist thought experiments à la roko's basilisk & what's really real to the folks on effectivr altrusim forums...
I got some bad news for you there lol
oh gosh oh crud;
That's too much of a determined take. Why not make a more appropriate (i.e. seems more likely) kinda claim:
* without an amount of effort which could likely be better used elsewhere, towards materially marginalized groups, fomenting solidarity, organizing, etc.
NOTE: I try to give others a chance at least. Thankfully comrades such as yourself and others can operate more pragmatically rather than with naïvety and so can cover my blind spots
I dont think i got your last paragraph
honestly; i don't either :'(
Kwame Ture was calling crackers for what they are every other day.