I am setting up this blog to address a number of technical and legal issues that, over the long run, can affect the freedom of media newbies like me to speak freely on the Internet and other low-cost media that have developed in the past ten years.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
Facebook bans some forms of nationalism and separatism as essentially racist (FB's explanation)
Although I added a link to a previous blog post (March
20) on this, I think it’s useful to link to Facebook’s own blog poston its
policy change, to regard (essentially ban) content advocating “white separatism”
or “white nationalism” as indistinguishable from “white supremacy”.
The title of the post is “Standing Against Hate”
(leading) and it links back to well known prohibitions against certain hate (or
terror) groups using the platform.Twitter had announced a similar “purge” on Dec. 18, 2017.
Vox has a long article by P.R. Lockhart here. As an anti-tribal non-identarian myself, I personally have no interest in supporting the identarian group aims of anyone; but I am concerned about the principles underneath this regarding the credibility and objectivity of public speech.
It is true that federal law (as administered by the
DOJ) prohibits organizing for the purposes of criminal activity (whether drug
or sex trafficking, money laundering, or actual terror or other violent crime,
or even overthrowing the government).
So up to a point, banning “groups” or certain
organizing by platforms (or even their hosting as
banned by most host AUP’s) does make sense.
The problem, however, is that typically social justice
issues (even ones we now see as legitimate) tend to lead non-profits to try to
organize and enlist everyone.The First
Amendment guarantees both free speech and free assembly, and sometimes in
practical situations assembly and individual speech can come into conflict. Individuals often turn to group organizing when
they fall behind economically as individuals or families (e.g,. Prager U on “Why
Trump Won”).Others who are better off
will resent the pressure from others to join up.
So it seems very objectionable to say that PoC can
organize and sometimes go to the edge with some objectionable goals, but “whites”
may not – even understanding the historical context in the US specifically (slavery
and segregation), as it might be compared with that in other countries (Germany,
Israel, South Africa, etc).
Facebook says it had wanted to consider ideas like
patriotism and nationalism as legitimate; but given US history, it could not do
that with “white” issues specifically, given partly the history of privilege in
the past, and the constant connection to probably unlawful “groups” (and
incidents like OKC, Atlanta (1996), Charleston SC, and Christchurch). That
position would seem to apply to Europe, where in some countries the problem
(with respect to separatism) sounds similar (consider Poland, Hungary, “soft
fascism”).It is also a big controversy
in Russia among the former republics. The comparison to Zionism in Israel is said to
be a canard.
There’s another particularly sensitive issue:
population demographics.For a number of
years, right-wing publications have complained that white families (in Europe and in North America) don’t have
enough children, with ties into the migrant issue. But there is a larger
context.In the United States, immigrants
(even non-white from Mexico) often lower their birth rates and, when faced with economic
pressures of middle class life, often delay having children in the same
way.The low birth rate issue can be
seen in terms of increasing eldercare burdens for everyone (not just whites),
as with Social Security and Medicare, and even the ability to find and hire
caregivers. Low (native ethnic) birth rates also feel anti-gay sentiments in some countries,
especially Russia (even now with the politicization of “Eugene Onegin”).This was a particular issue for me back in
1961 because I am an only child (the importance of lineage to parents). Some
people will see the birth rate issue as racist, but it is not;it is more about basic economics.
So at a certain level, Facebook’s action, while
understandable and probably not having much effect on most users, is still disturbing
from a free speech perspective. It's a little concerning that it manipulates and redirects search results rather than even simply banning them.
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