Farrakhan is, to be frank, not a tough case. There are plenty of people who have incited mass hatred who also were, not coincidentally, very much promoters of their own ethnic identity and superiority. Yes, black people have faced and continue to face unjust oppression. But that doesn't give carte blanche for anti-Semitism, with quotes like:

“The Jews, a small handful, control the movement of this great nation, like a radar controls the movement of a great ship in the waters. … The Jews got a stranglehold on the Congress."

Or implying that Jews are subhuman insects:

“I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite.”

Or veiled calls to violence:

“And you do with me as is written, but remember that I have warned you that Allah will punish you. You are wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell. But I warn you in the name of Allah, you would be wise to leave me alone. But if you choose to crucify me, know that Allah will crucify you.”

Or explicit calls to violence:

"Can that be the holy land, and you have gay parades, and want to permit to have a gay parade in Jerusalem when no prophet ever sanctioned that behavior. How can that be the Israel, how can that be Jerusalem with secular people running the holy land when it should be the holy people running the holy land. That land is gonna be cleansed with blood!"

Seriously, this is cut and dry. There are plenty of other people to lionize for e.g. promoting black bodies. And if wanting to kill all the Jews and loudly, repeatedly proclaiming his belief that they're evil and worthy of death to his religious followers on social media isn't a big enough deal to make it non-complicated, we're talking about the guy who called for the death of Malcolm X and whose religious followers carried out his assassination within months. He is violent and deranged and his followers have acted violently at his behest before.

(Also, respectfully, I don't think Farrakhan's anti-Semitic proclamations feel particularly "cartoonish" to the Jews he's targeting.)

The point is not whether there are people to “lionize” that are better. The point is whether an organization like Facebook (which didn’t have a single black board member until last year) has standing to police such opinions.

I vociferously oppose him, and think liberals have made a huge mistake being soft on anti-semitism lately. But leave that aside. Would just the stuff he has said about white people justify Facebook banning him? If so, that’s a pretty breathtaking assertion of power to police a very complex range of narratives.

> But leave that aside.

Anti-Semitism is literally what he's being banned for. How can you "leave that aside?"

Should FB be able to ban religious leaders who repeatedly, consistently, publicly call for the death of Jews from their platform? If they should be able to ban Milo, then — yes, obviously.

If you're arguing that no one should be able to be banned, I think our opinions differ, but I suppose we're each internally consistent with our values.

The OP I was responding to just said people should be able to be banned for “racism” without qualifying it to anti-semitism. While that might be Facebook’s ostensible justification, the fact is that Farrakhan is famous for representing one of the extremes in the spectrum of black attitudes towards whites.

I also think facebook should be able to ban people. But I think that Facebook banning someone like Farrakhan, who is famous for being an anti-white extremist in a country where white people enslaved black people, and where white police officers routinely gun down black people, opens up a huge can of worms. It’s an organization where black Americans are almost completely unrepresented policing the spectrum of responses black people are allowed to have in response to their treatment in this country.

He is a notable anti-Semite and extremist hate leader who blames black slavery on the Jews. Trying to provide cover for him by claiming it's simply "anti-white" is disingenuous at best. If you don't trust me, trust the Southern Poverty Law Center: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi...

Being black in America doesn't give you a free pass on anti-Semitism. If you can't see that, I don't know what to tell you.

I don’t know how old you are, but I think you’re being ignorant about the full spectrum of what Farrakhan represents. He co-organized the Million Man March, which was a defining event in the 1990s, much like the Ferguson shooting is today. A recent Rasmussen poll found that over half of black likely voters had an at least somewhat favorable impression of him. You’re acting like he’s just anti-Semitic and not culturally significant for other reasons. That you can ban him for that one thing and that makes no statement about what he represents overall. Farrakhan has always been anti-Semitic, and nonetheless many black people have been willing to overlook that. Here is a poll from 1986 where blacks split about evenly in their view on his favor ability (still, twice as high as Reagan’s): https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/01/18/r...

Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban. Maybe any one of his extreme view warrants a ban. But it’s very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.

I'm fairly old, thanks, and I understand that Farrakhan has been a loud voice in America. But a radical anti-Semite who uses social media to promote violence against Jews being banned from FB is, IMO, the right thing to do. Being a black political figure isn't an excuse.

> Farrakhan has always been anti-Semitic, and nonetheless many black people have been willing to overlook that.

Have the Jews he's been targeting with death threats been willing to overlook that?

> Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban.

Yup.

> But it's very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.

Frankly, on this one, no. Anti-Semitism is abhorrent regardless of what race you are. Being black does not excuse anti-Semitism. Should FB have more black leadership? Obviously yes. And it deserves to be called out on that. But banning someone for explicit, obvious anti-Semitism isn't problematic because they're black.

If Farrakhan were banned for being "anti-white," as you previously tried to provide cover for, that would be something else. But explicitly targeting a minority religious group with repeated, credible death threats (and one that has faced horrifying degrees of ethnic cleansing within the last century, and continues to face persecution in America today, such as the recent San Diego synagogue mass shooting) is unconscionable, and FB is entirely within its rights to ban Farrakhan for that.

Let me be clear: I think antisemitism should get you banned from Facebook (in the abstract). But if you think that's what this conversation is about, then you're missing the point entirely. My point is: Who are you or I, or the almost entirely white executive leadership and board at Facebook to make the judgment call that his antisemitism justifies silencing his other views, in contravention to how black people have historically done the balancing? I think, at the very least, that presents a hard question.

Furthermore, you're being obtuse by saying that it's just a matter of Farrakhan "being black." There is a spectrum of views among black people about America. For better or worse, Farrakhan is a culturally significant part of that spectrum. And he's a fixture of black politics. (Here he is standing next to Obama in 2005 at a Congressional Black Caucus event: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-appearances/the-...). Facebook is now silencing all of his messages. I think there is a real question of whether a company that almost entirely lacks black leadership has the moral authority to do that.

> If Farrakhan were banned for being "anti-white," as you previously tried to provide cover for,

I don't know where you got the idea that I was covering for anything. The original post I was replying to didn't specifically mention antisemitism, it said "racism" is justification for banning someone. That leads to the obvious question of whether Facebook would be justified in banning Farrakhan over his anti-white statements. After all, that would seem to follow if "racism" (generically) is a justification for being banned on Facebook. Would you agree that would be a harder question to answer?

Being a culturally significant figure in black politics isn't a good reason to keep someone who's attempting to incite mass murder against a minority religious group on a forum like Facebook. You mention the picture of him standing next to Obama: that's actually a fairly famous photo. Obama explicitly rejected and denounced Farrakhan [1] when he ran for president, and in an ironic turn of events (considering the nascent alt-right's smear of Obama as being supposedly-Muslim) Farrakhan later accused Obama of being "the first Jewish president" who was "selected before he was elected ... [by] rich, powerful members of the Jewish community." [2]

Silencing Farrakhan in general on Facebook is a consequence of silencing his particularly horrifying views about Jews and removing access to the platform he uses to spread them. This isn't because he's a culturally significant black man, it's because he's an anti-Semite. The others de-platformed along with him are not fellow black leaders, they are racists and conspiracy theorists who are similarly dangerous and have similarly used these platforms to spread hatred to millions of followers.

> The original post I was replying to didn't specifically mention antisemitism, it said "racism" is justification for banning someone.

While on the one hand you're claiming to only refer to the hypothetical question of a black leader who is anti-white, you also specifically defend Farrakhan's presence on social media, and question whether Facebook should be able to ban specifically him for his anti-Semitism; for example:

> I don’t know how old you are, but I think you’re being ignorant about the full spectrum of what Farrakhan represents. He co-organized the Million Man March, which was a defining event in the 1990s, much like the Ferguson shooting is today . . . Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban. Maybe any one of his extreme view warrants a ban. But it’s very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.

If we were talking about a hypothetical black leader who was anti-white (and whether you can call that racism is, IMO, up for debate), and who was not virulently anti-Semitic, I would definitely agree that's a harder question to answer; I'd probably be against banning someone like that, for reasons that are long and complicated and that you'd probably agree with. That isn't what happened here, though, and it's not who we've been talking about: we've been talking about Farrakhan, who's in both my opinion and Obama's opinion fairly indefensible.

[1]: https://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/02/26/obama-denounces-fa...

[2]: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi...

> While on the one hand you're claiming to only refer to the hypothetical question of a black leader who is anti-white, you also specifically defend Farrakhan's presence on social media, and question whether Facebook should be able to ban specifically him for his anti-Semitism; for example:

I'm not "defending" anything--I'm simply stating that it's a complicated issue, while you're denying that there is any complexity. And I don't think we really disagree on much. As you state, you might be against banning him if it was just his anti-white rhetoric. My point simply is that, whatever complexity might exist in that hypothetical does not go away just because there is an alternate, easier basis for banning him. Especially given that, many black people themselves have confronted those issues and have been willing to hear him out for his other messages: http://www.cnn.com/US/9510/megamarch/10-14/march/index.html

> "If the house is on fire, I'm not going to sit there and let the house burn just because I have differences with the person who sounded the alarm and started the water going," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Having Facebook--which has almost no black leadership--make the contrary decision is thorny, is all I am saying.

>He has pushed very hard for black people to be proud of their blackness and to create narratives in which blackness is not looked down upon. This is good, needed work.

(disclaimer : i'm about as anti FB and anti-censorship as one can be.)

Well, he (Farrakhan) mostly just taught blacks to hate whites -- which I guess achieves more 'black pride', but not in any manner that I think is sustainable or responsible. Rather than raising one group up, he just taught that the other group was worse than perceived.

"White people are potential humans – they haven’t evolved yet."

“You are not now, nor have you ever been a citizen of America. You are a slave to white America.”

and my personal favorite, although unrelated to whites in America :

“Qadaffi’s a revolutionary, he’s my friend, he’s my brother. And I would never deny him because you don’t like him… I love him.”

So you've established that it's desirable for black people to be proud of their blackness.

Is it desirable for white people to be proud of their whiteness? If you allow for one of these and not the other, you'd be a racist.

Please don't take royal roads to internet flamewars on HN. There's nothing new to be had from any of these arguments. If you want to rehearse them, please do so some other place.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've done this a lot and we've warned you before. If you continue, we're going to have to ban you. Not for ideological reasons; for boredom avoidance reasons.

I spoke imprecisely and I appreciate the opportunity to be more specific.

You're right that the Nation promotes the inherent superiority of black people. I didn't mean to endorse that view.

Many of the narratives that describe worlds where black bodies are "lesser than" white bodies are written by people who believe in white-supremacist ideas (even if they don't support the philosophy explicitly - Thomas Jefferson comes to mind). These are not "white supremacist" texts, but they assist in shaping a world view that a white supremacist likes.

The texts and ideas promoted by the Nation are generally explicitly founded on black supremacy (which is unfortunate) but also portray black bodies as superior to white ones - a rare trait. If I can see the good, lofty goals of the US Constitution "through" slavery and the designation of black people as being only 60% the value of whites, I can also appreciate the Nation's work through its own incorrect racial hierarchy.

I also think that both white and black people can appreciate the heritage they come from[1]. The struggles of black americans against all odds are, to me, unambiguously heroic. The innovations and inventions of white americans' European (or American) ancestors are, I think, also worth celebrating.

[1] This gets very tricky because, of course, people who want to promote white people as inherently superior often take this tack. Culture is hard and messy and I think we probably come down a little hard on celebrating European history, but I think we should be far, far, far more celebratory of the the insane stories of various African Americans. Check out this dude! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smalls

Edit: Also we must keep in mind that the magnitude of the problem is related to the amount of power the particular group has. If a prisoner is espousing a philosophy that makes prisoners superior to other humans, even if it's incorrect, it's hard to argue we "need" to crack down on it. Narratives of white supremacy are so harmful precisely because white people have been in a position to ignore the welfare of other groups.

“Black” and “White” as identities are both products of White racism (outside of White racism, individual ethnic identities have historically been prominent, but not a racial identity.) Positive Black racial identity is a reaction against White racism, whereas White racial identity is it's continuation. And it remains the case that the effort to advance a broad crosd-ethnic White racial identity is intimately connected with White supremacy.

Mirror tests work when the things being swapped are actually, in relevant context, similarly situated, but that is simply not the case in Black vs. White identity.

Abstractly, there's nothing wrong with positive White racial identity, but in the real world, that doesn't exist as free-floating thing detached from White supremacist ideology.

And black identity is detached from black supremacist ideology? In fact, logic is useful in evaluating the world. All of it.

"Black", in the "African American" sense we're talking about here, is a distinct and coherent culture, ironically one forcibly created by white slave traders who kidnapped Africans and stripped them of their names, languages, and cultures and left them in 19th century North America to build a new one for themselves, which they did. American Black culture includes jazz and (later) hip-hop, the Harlem Renaissance, a huge chunk of 20th century dance, African American Vernacular English, Black churches (and the civil rights movement), soul food, and so on.

Other coherent cultures include the Irish, Italians, Polish, Russians, and, of course, Germans, French, and English. Parades are held for these cultures; entire sections of major cities are named for them, museums are erected for them, &c.

What people on message boards seem to have a problem with is the idea that "Black" is a culture with similar standing to the Irish --- or rather, they'd prefer to believe that there is a coherent "White" culture that functions similar to Black culture. There is not; the suggestion otherwise is literally an expression of anti-Black racism, as you can see from the way "white culture" has gradually co-opted formerly out-grouped Irish, Italian, and Jewish people, in solidarity against integration with Black people.

Nobody seriously protests the South Side Irish Parade (unless they live in Beverly and care about their lawns), the Polish American Museum, or the New York Columbus Day Parade. They do protest parades of "white pride", for reasons I assume are now obvious to you.

There is no point in attempting to argue with racists.

Who's arguing? The question was asked, and I'm answering it. This is like one of the very few social controversies you can resolve axiomatically in an HN comment.

> And black identity is detached from black supremacist ideology?

Yes, it is. Both exist (well, at least black identity and black nationalism do, and that's close enough that I'm not going to quibble about it), but while black nationalism depends on black identity black identity exists and thrives outside of it (and historically does so as a reaction against White anti-Black racist actions and ideology), while White racial identity as opposed to ethnic identities largely does not exist outside of White racism (of which it is also a product, though not, obviously, a reaction against.)

> In fact, logic is useful in evaluating the world.

Logic is useful for evaluating the relationship between abstract concepts, but is only useful for evaluating the world when you join it with all the relevant facts about the world. When you reason about abstractions without facts, or in ways which implicitly make counterfactual assumptions, you reach conclusions that are either without material relevance or incorrect.

Oh my sweet summer child.

What does being proud to be white mean to you?

Please don't respond to flamebait with more of the same. That only leads to hell, and we're trying for this site not to go there.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is exactly like being proud to be black, but white.

So white pride is celebrating prominent white actors, educators, inventors, business leaders, and culture--things that have historically been denied or discounted.

Someone better tell the South Side Irish to call off their 2020 parade.

> to create narratives in which blackness is not looked down upon. This is good, needed work.

so like:

In the Nation of Islam, both God and the devil are human beings. Elijah Muhammad identified the devil as the white man, the Caucasian race. According to Elijah, though the black race is many trillions of years old, the white race began a mere six thousand years ago with Yakub, one of the Black Gods of this time cycle.[15]

Elijah explained, "The white race is not equal with darker people because the white race was not created by the God of Righteousness. . . . They were made by Yakub, an original Black Man—who is from the Creator. Yakub, the father of the devil, made the white race, a race of devils—enemies of the darker people of the earth. The white race is not made by nature to accept righteousness."[16]

is 'good, needed work'??

https://www.answering-islam.org/NoI/noi2.html

Hah, no, I would not say that's the "good" part of the the Nation of Islam.

However, just like Christianity has been able to do some amount of "good work" while insisting that "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says"[1], the Nation is not "all bad." I personally would judge its good works to be more crippled by its doctrine than most faiths.

If you want to read a good thinking wrestling with the Nation of Islam I recommend The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. I think he does a good job of capturing the contradictions and attractions of Elijah Muhammad (another undeniably hateful man) in the flesh.

[1] 1 Corinthians 14:34, NIV

That was PART of the apostle Paul's admonition about keeping order in a gathering of the saints, from a wide variety of angles. I think the context is explained by the next verse: If they have questions, let them ask their husbands at home. Ergo: don't disrupt the proceedings with distractions. (And even if you accept this interpretation, you may now commence criticizing Paul for inferring that only women needed to be told this.)

People who look down on Christianity love to bring up this scripture, but do you actually know any significant branches of Christianity that enforce this? I'm a fan of one of the most stringent denominations around, and even we have A LOT of women speakers and ministers in our organization. I honestly don't know any which abides by a literal application of this scripure. I've only ever seen it used as a wedge issue against strict biblical interpretation.

> do you actually know any significant branches of Christianity that enforce this?

Not universally. I think there are denominations that use that passage as justification to keep women from being Deacons but I couldn't cite one off the top of my head.

That said, I used it as an example and I'm sure if you're that knowledgeable about scripture you're familiar with the other parts of scripture that are (or have been) used with questionable intent. If I wanted to be less fair I could have cited the passages that slave owners used to argue that slavery was "christian." I could also have talked about the anti-homosexual (or perhaps anti-decadence) passages in romans.

I also could have cited the Mormon church's doctrine around skin color, but that's a bit of a horse of a different color.

My point, which I think is preserved, is that scripture and practice are two different things. Scripture colors practice - but the Nation of Islam is not (as far as I know) going around hurting white people because they're demons any more than Christian denominations go around forcing women to be silent because there's a passage from Paul.

nevermind the glorification of mary, spreading the practice practicing of monogamy instead of male:multi-female polygamy, being anti-prostitution, etc..

oh right, but those things are really 'supressing women'.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, let alone generic religious flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Other religions that have kept their popularity and adherents over the centuries(and much in the past century) have, part, reformed and toned down the significance of these violent mythologies especially in their relevance to doctrine. To assert otherwise seems like arguing in bad faith.

Yes, you are arguing in very bad faith to ignore the millions dead in the middle east in the last 20 years due to sectarian fighting between abrahamic faiths.

Hate to break the news to you, but... https://qr.ae/TWIst4

"...Anti-religion has caused more deaths than religion"

I'm no fan of abrahamic faiths nor religion in general, though. I just try to separate fact from fiction. I'm kept very busy. ;)

Are you arguing that the middle east would be more violent without religion? I said nothing about secular groups being non violent by the way.

I'm arguing that we have no way to tell if religion is simply just the excuse to make war instead of some other tribal us-vs-them mentality, which humans (throughout history, alas) are wont to do

Just one.

The level of discussion in this thread is unfortunate.

I get pretty irritated with intentional imprecision, as usually it's attempting to obfuscate what's actually happening. Unidirectional violence from exactly one religion should not be then generalized to a family of religions.

ah yes, argumentum ad cultural relitivismus.

does this actually negate my point?

nevermind the fact that it is not actually true..

christanity, buddhism, sikhism, etc. among many, many, others do not have racism as part of their theological core doctrines. This is not to say that strands of any haven't misused the theology in the name of racism, but your claim is patently false.

Some strains of Judaism do have racism at the core. They believe they are chosen by God and there are many texts that support the idea that non-jews are lesser beings.

In any case what does it matter? What matters is how many people suffer and die at the behest of a religion, regardless if you can pinpoint racism or not.

so intent is irrelevant?

and misrepresentation by another group is not usurping the purpose of the original group?

or is nuance also irrelevant, so one should tar-and-feather everything because making distinctions is difficult?

I hear hackers are bad people, so who are you for using this site?