The Rust leadership tolerates harassment and threats as long as its against the right wing. One of Rust's top people wants to violently purge the tech community.

https://archive.is/BtDaA

"right wing" or "far right wing". Remember we're talking about literal neo-nazis here, not just Conservatives.

No, we're talking about applying the violence historically used against literal fascist marches against people online he's declared to be his enemies, because "the only things fascists respond to is violence". We're talking about an online culture where it doesn't matter if the targets are actually neo-Nazis or conservatives or anything else, because disputing any accusation against them no matter how trivially falsifiable marks you as supporting them. Our political discourse is in a dangerous place and I see no way out anymore.

I wasn't planning on jumping in on this thread, but I will leave one (and only one) comment here, just to make this crystal clear:

I have no advocated that anyone commit violence against "people online [I've] declared to be [my enemies]." In fact, in the thread you're linking to, right above the archived tweet, I say that I don't know what an anti-fascist movement in tech looks like. And today, years later, I still do not. But if you were ask me "hey Steve let's start a street fight with GamerGate, what do you think?" my first comment would be "what?" and my second comment would be "that sounds like a really dumb idea, don't do that."

Not advocating violence, but "100% okay with that"? Don't be disingenuous.

Okay, fine, one more comment. Last one for real this time, I think this clarifies something I was missing above.

You'll note that the subject at hand changed during this conversation: the parent I replied to suggested that I was suggesting something specific regarding the right wing in technology, but that response is about abstract antifa actions in France. It's also why I responded the way that I did: the equivalence between the two (European antifa and European fascist organizations) is laughable. But it's just Twitter; I'm not going to get into a debate about the details, I'm just going to say "okay" and move on.

But I did not and do not think, as I said above, that someone should go find tech fascists and cause them bodily harm. It's not something I did suggest or would support today.

Y'know what, fair enough, my bad. I read that tweet as applying to a hypothetical tech antifa, not as applying to actual EU antifa, but clearly I should've given a bit more thought to applying the principle of charity, and I'm sorry & apologize for that.

Thank you very much, no worries.

That's not how it goes in practice. The fact that the people in that twitter thread endorse antifa shows that they are either ignorant of what antifa actually is (as opposed to what it claims to be), or they endorse an organisation that is more fascist than the fascists it purports to fight.

Antifa is a label, typically self-appointed. There must be thousands, probably tens of thousands of groups that identify as antifa, most of them confined to a region or a city.

It's possible to make generalisations across all the various groups, but you're going to have huge variance across them -- in pretty much all areas, including internal structure, attitude towards violence and political positions.

Of course groups are aware of one another and cooperate (as well as conflict, I assume) in an anarchic way, but there is no centralized power or executive. It's certainly not a single organisation.

From an organisational perspective, sports fan clubs are rather similar (mostly independent of one another, mostly local, very heterogeneous in how they work internally and interact with the world).

One only has to look at that twitter thread to see what kind of antifa they are endorsing:

> we have an "antifa" movement in France (reacting to our rising far right), and they're often just as violent :-(

reply:

> yup, 100% okay with that, personally

> Me too (mostly). Personally trying to flush out internalised cishet machismo, but if there was ever an outlet...

> the only things fascists respond to is violence. Ignoring them or letting them attack you doesn't help

> good! bash their brains in tbh

It is clear that the kind of antifa they are endorsing falls on a particular point on the "huge variance" spectrum of attitude to violence. It is clear that the code of conduct is being applied selectively to one half of the political spectrum. And I say this as somebody who has always voted for the most left wing party in my country. This attitude towards violence and censorship and social shaming from my side worries me greatly.

“The anti-fascists are the real fascists!” is a tired argument and it has been for more than 70 years, ever since that was said in actual Nazi Germany and the fascists proceeded to win.

Violence is never an appropriate response to speech. I don't care what the Nazis are saying, if you use violence to silence them, you are the problem, and I will support their free speech rights. Free speech is not simply for ideas you like, it's for ideas you hate, too.

Says "GunboatDiplomat"[1]... ;-)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunboat_diplomacy

When the so called anti-fascists use violence against peaceful protesters and against the police who try to stop them, then yes.

"""If fascism could be defeated in debate, I assure you that it would never have happened, neither in Germany, nor in Italy, nor anywhere else. Those who recognised its threat at the time and tried to stop it were, I assume, also called “a mob”. Regrettably too many “fair-minded” people didn’t either try, or want to stop it, and, as I witnessed myself during the war, accommodated themselves when it took over … People who witnessed fascism at its height are dying out, but the ideology is still here, and its apologists are working hard at a comeback. Past experience should teach us that fascism must be stopped before it takes hold again of too many minds, and becomes useful once again to some powerful interests""" <--- Franz Frison, Holocaust survivor

That's misleading. In neither Italy nor Germany did the fascists seize power without using violence. In Germany, the SA was used by the Nazis to suppress their opponents in elections and intimidate the powers that be. Even then, they only won like 40% of the vote and had to manufacture a crisis to seize full control. Similar in Italy.

So what's the solution?

Because attacking people for beliefs you don't like doesn't exactly make things better.

A lot of the people that seem to be trying to attack those they see as facist would be just as bad in the power as those they oppose. Except you know, with different targets.

One rule of thumb would to be to recognize that, within all groups, there are extremists (and they often have the loudest voices). It is wise not to denounce an entire group based on the extremists. It is wise not to flippantly dismiss concerns raised based on the behavior of the extremists.

The problem I see with a heck of a lot of online conversations is that it ridiculously fails this rule. Often times there are some issues on both sides of the coin worth discussing, but it's hard to discuss things rationally when the loudest voices on both sides are acting like spoiled toddlers or often worse. Often times, the extremists dominate the conversation and the resulting discussion is toxic.

Violence is never the solution, but isn't it possible to be anti-fascist (or against any other political movement that more relies on emotionalism instead of rationalism) without being violent? I would think so.

Of course it's possible to be anti facist without being violent. It's possible to non violently get changes in the world, at least if you're in a remotely democratic society like the one you're in at the moment. People like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi proved it.

Responding to political concerns with violence just begets more violence. It just entrenches people's beliefs even further, inspires revenge from the 'other side' (or at least, their own axe crazy extremists) and eventually causes everything to erupt even further (through a civil war).

Honestly, I'd say this part in the most recent series of Doctor Who sums up some of the issues with people trying to solve all their problems with violence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvGND1i6Dj0

Martin Luther King changed the world because America decided that it would rather deal with him, then the far more violent parts of the black liberation movement.

If those more violent parts didn't put the fear of God into the government, he could have been safely ignored.

The standard I often judge groups by is whether it's possible to be a decent person and remain a member of the group; rather than looking at the assholes, I look at how the group treats members who stand up to the assholes. Unfortunately, a lot of groups have been failing this spectacularly, and the older a group the worse it often seems to get.

"If too many people disagree with me, we need to kill them". How about no? There is nothing wrong with fascism, and suggesting that people whose political views differ from ones own are subhumans who need to be killed is pretty ironic coming from a supposed holocaust survivor.

Did anyone in Nazi Germany really claim that the anti-Nazis were the real Nazis or fascists or something? Sounds unlikely somehow.

Well, if you replace "fascists"/"Nazis" with "totalitarian threat" -- the former is modern shorthand for the latter but obviously want used that way until after experience of their rule established that perception -- a big part of the Nazi schtick was portraying other groups that way (Communists, the supposed global Jewish conspiracy, etc.)

Yep! The communists claimed the social democrats were fascists because they wanted to own the left, for example.

No, in particular since neither national socialism nor fascism was a boogeyman then.

Before the Nazis came to power, there were plenty of people in Germany who thought the Nazi party & Hitler were thugs and dangerous.

Yes, but they were not a boogeyman, like I said. Where you can just say "you are a nazi!" to shut down any discussion of anything you please. There's a difference between "some people didn't like them" and being a boogeyman.

See "Brownshirts"[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung

Very similar to "anti identity politics leftists are the true leftists" which is probably relevant to this discussion.

To clarify the context, are you saying that gamergate members are literal neo-nazis?

I would definitely say that there is a strong overlap between the two groups

And what do you base this claim on? What the people in the Anti-GG media have been telling everyone?

High incidents of hate speech, abusive behavior online, high overlap with swatting, death threats, and chasing women off the internet. The movement acts as a hate group and is made up of typical "red pilled" men's rights type people. And, much like most extreme right groups, all of these ills are dismissed as illusions by a nebulous liberal media that is against their hateful cause.

GamerGate exposed clear ethical violations in the gaming media. Do you dispute that too? That same media has yet to clean up it's mess and famously doubled down by ignoring the legitimate claims or blowing them off while conveniently pretending that every troll/kid with a keyboard are really the spokespeople of the movement.

GG spent the vast majority of its energy harassing and personally attacking two women, one of whom wasn't even involved in gaming journalism.

GG also completely ignored the fundamental ethical violation in traditional game journalism - that review sites make all their money by advertising the products they review. Instead, it spent all of its time complaining about how some idie game developer is friends with an indie game reviewer, and sending death threats to Anita and Zoe.

If it looks like a thug, walks like a thug, and quacks like a thug... You can't expect anyone to take its valid points particularly seriously.

In a stunning lack of self-awareness, GG has never considered that perhaps it should apply its expectations for ethical behaviour to itself.

Gaming media was never good and was used as a cover to harass women online en masse. MRA go home

Do white nationalists count (example: Vox Day)

No, we're not. We're talking about everything from center left libertarians to plain old conservatives. It is just that far left authoritarians call them nazis because that is the easiest way to dismiss people they disagree with.

Didn't some states initially started suppressing them using force and censorship, but they still popped up like mushrooms after a rain?

If you see a threat of violence on Twitter, report it.

Twitter is not part of Rust code of conduct, the code of conduct does not apply to off-project politcal conversations.

https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/conduct.html

There's nothing in there that excludes off-project conversations, and I cannot imagine such a restriction surviving the first outrage about a project member's off-site views from the left based on previous incidents.

Nazi programmers can follow the Nazi punks and etc.

Pretty much every community over a few hundred people in size will eventually be faced with a moment where the "powers that be" are forced to sit down and have the "what are we going to do about person X" talk. Every one of them. That's just the nature of human beings. If you find yourself in that position and the person is merely toxic to interact with, count yourself lucky, because it can often be a million times worse. If you are in a position of power with a community it's very important to look at codes of conduct, standards of behavior, and mechanisms for reporting/tracking/resolution early. Because building those systems early will make that "what are we gonna do" moment a zillion times easier to handle. It'll also usually mean that things get handled earlier than they would otherwise, possibly before they've escalated out of control and possibly avoiding a lot of damage that might have happened otherwise (to individuals and to the community).

To add to the list, Swift[1] had a code of conduct as soon as it was open-sourced. Mono even adopted one the same day[2] because they thought it was a good idea.

The LLVM Project is in the final stages of adopting one[3] (after much discussion) as well. This will (once adopted) apply to the LLVM backend, the Clang (C, C++, & ObjC) front-end, libc++, the LLDB debugger, etc.

[1] https://swift.org/community/#code-of-conduct [2] https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/672590341757927426 [3] http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2016-June/101807.ht...

> "We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of level of experience, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation"

Cool that they are so open towards zoophiles and the occasional pedophile.

On another note, Code of Conduct for FOSS are the equivalent of stock photos showing ethnically diverse people having a lively meeting on company websites; it does not hurt anybody, but it's an utterly useless waste of everyone's time, and you feel a bit dirty having to pretend that it matters.

It's a good way to cover your ass if you need to kick people out of the community later. They can't credibly accuse you of making up ad-hoc rules if your code of conduct has existed the entire time.

there is an inherent trade off though. would reddit have ever become so big and popular if it had enforced a strict conduct policy from day 1? many of the early users of reddit were not necessarily the mainstream "good" users that eventually came post-digg.

it can be a distraction to focus on that early on when what's most important is user adoption...

>it can be a distraction to focus on that early on when what's most important is user adoption...

Distraction?

The wrong kind of initial user adaption will create a toxic community that excludes later users. Any community that goes unmoderated for long enough inevitably turns into a cesspool.

The most important users are the initial adaptors, they form the basis of the expectations of the community.

yes exactly, and who were many of the initial users of reddit? I'm not saying it's not important, just that in the very early stages of a startup such as reddit was, it can be the wrong thing to focus on when you really need to get users first.

Most people don't need a conduct policy. Your average person isn't going to sign up for a website and start harassing other users, reposting Stormfront articles, and slinging racial slurs. On top of that, most people just click through the TOS without reading it. Do you even read the gazillion EULAs you click through when you install software? Did you read Facebook's TOS when you signed up? I thought not. It won't affect them because they'll end up obeying the TOS even if they've never paid attention to what's in the TOS.

But if you don't have a TOS and enforce it, then you're eventually going to get the attention of the nastiest, most vile people on the Internet. And given that almost the whole world is on the Internet now, that's some of the nastiest, most vile people in the world. Once you get their attention, they're going to go out of their way to make your website their new home. If you were a Neo-Nazi, and you were used to being banned from every forum you found as soon as you opened your mouth, and then you found a forum that had no rules and allowed absolute free speech, you'd fall in love right away. So much that you'd go out of your way to advertise it to your Neo-Nazi friends and coördinate a mass migration. Once the nastiest, most vile people on the Internet migrate to your site en masse, they're going to start targeting people for harassment, they're going to use it as a platform to spread hate, and they're going to take the opportunity to recruit from the general population by posting carefully crafted propaganda.

And, yes, they'll drown out the decent people. First, because the vile ones are actively invading your site in droves, while the decent people just stumble on it from random links and maybe friends' recommendations. Second, because the vile people will drive the decent people out. You know the old adage about how a thimble of wine mixed into a barrel of sewage is still sewage, but a thimble of sewage mixed into a barrel of wine is also sewage? It's kind of like that. Once there are enough vile people to make their presence known, they will turn your site into sewage even if they're the minority.

tl;dr: Most people don't need their conduct regulated, but if you don't establish and enforce regulations, your community will be thoroughly overrun by the people who do need their conduct regulated.