Steel bands tighten around my heart. My knees knock and my vision wavers. But then I remember I’m not on Reddit, and metacanada has not yet replaced the moderation team with pod people.
What measures are in place to ensure the continuing security of our moderation team? If it won’t compromise them to tell us.
I think there’s a difference between real-life interactions and online communities.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen a couple full blown, queerphobic, “I would beat the gay out of my children” type bigots grow into loving and accepting allies of the LGBTQ+ community through exposure, conversation, and mutual understanding. I’m not in any way denying the power of those things, and while marginalized people of all types shouldn’t be expected to be constant teachers (as it’s really quite emotionally and mentally taxing), having open conversations is probably the best way achieve a more loving and accepting society in general. It’s a lot harder to hate someone/something when you’re directly confronted with someone from that group being thoroughly reasonable and maybe even enjoyable to talk with, contrary to what you might believe.
However, in online communities, things work differently. Anonymity, asynchronous communication, the public nature of conversations, with immediate reactions and commentary from an incomprehensible number of people. These are all massive barriers to attaining that mutual understanding you describe.
At the end of the day, if I have a queerphobic or racist or sexist or otherwise bigoted person in my life, say a coworker, I don’t have a choice but to interact regularly with them so I will at least try to steer them towards a kinder perspective. Sometimes you might have to give up on a particular person, but most times we both learn some stuff and both come out of it slightly better.
On the other hand, if I enter an online space and it’s bigoted, I (and I’d wager a large number of not-bigoted people) will just leave. And then you end up with /r/Canada.
All I am trying to say in all this is, don’t say right wing when you mean fascist. Hate isn’t political. When hate is used to influence politics, that’s fascism and terrorism. They try to make us afraid to use the word but that’s what it is. Demonizing marginalized people for power is fascism.
I suppose I am using a remarkably uncynical sense of “political” here. I think that when a person expresses hatred, uses bad faith arguments, misrepresents facts, etc., they are not “doing politics” but rather trying to corrupt politics to use our collective power to harm the common good. I don’t tolerate the intolerant; I see them as outside of all meaningful political expression. But from everyone else, I think we can afford to assume good faith and aught to try.
A key characteristic of fascism is that it attacks left-wing politics, but that doesn’t make fascism right-wing politics! Fascism is really the exploitation of voters with authoritarian personalities by a small number of charismatic personalities who know some basic human psychology.
Fascist voters are scared. They are not really looking for political expression, they are looking to have their psychological needs met. They want to feel powerful. They don’t really have anything in mind to do with that power, because their whole deal is they are afraid of a future they don’t understand and feel like they can’t control.
I think when we blame things on “right wing politics” it needlessly poisons our own perspective, scorns innocent bystanders, and fails to be critical of the actual problems. Bigots and fascists are hateful, and I think we should call them what they are. Yes, most of them are right-wingers, but most right-wingers are not bigots and fascists. They’re Liberals and swing voters.