I've literally exposed these members as actual nazis and or white nationalists during the times when their masks slipped. All of them have made posts that either directly referenced/stated their ideology, many even posted shit like, "1488" or "White Pride." I don't throw this term around loosely. Please don't assume I am just labeling people I don't agree with as "nazis," I don't make accusations without evidence.
My post insinuated that once you began banning people on their political ideology, the system can become gamed in such a way that people begin to abuse it try trying to force rhetoric that people they do not like are of those ideologies who have been banned -- so that they can ban the person they're targeting.
That I'm aware, GBATemp seemingly has no precedent for banning people on political ideology alone. Once it does though, it sets bad precedent that people begin to prey on and will begin bending narratives.
Given there is no precedent (that I'm aware of), I did not implicate that you were "throwing things around lightly". I'd be more inclined to if you supposedly had a history of it, but I've no interest in stalking any particular member here to prove a point. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I assume you have not.
I 100% believe the people who you are referring to using white supremacist/nazi dog whistles genuinely did use them and having implicated themselves as those ideologies. Truthfully, I imagine they deliberately did so to get a rise out of you and likely were doing it ironically. However, by
no means should that mean it's acceptable or dismissal. Ironic or not, I still believe politics have no place in a community such as this.
Nazi apologia has always been about moving the goalposts. First it starts with, "You crazy lefties just call everyone a nazi!" And then even though they can't prove that happens they just run with it anyways. When actual nazis are exposed, they go "YEAH, WELL, AT LEAST THEY AREN'T BAD PEOPLE!"
And thus, my point is proven within 2 replies to my post. I am now a Nazi sympathizer after making an argument that politics don't belong on a video game modding forum, thus implicating that white supremacy/nazi ideology would too, not have a platform here.
Next thing you know, the exposed people start posting literal white nationalist propaganda. And then the apologia for it is "w-well, at least they're not bad YET!"
So on, so forth, etc etc, until it reaches a point where the nazis have ruined your community like they consistently do, and all you hear in response is either "muh free speech" or "w-w-well the left is just as bad!!"
This is already pointless meandering to try and paint rhetoric of your boogeyman. My point stands that it shouldn't be tolerated in the first place. In a forum where the agenda is not that of any type of political ideology, the first alluding to it should be met with immediate deletion, a warning to the member, and a ban if the offense is repeated. Yes, that includes white nationalism and nazism.
Now, in response to each of your points, there's been a continued implication here that I'm somehow a white supremacist/nazi or white supremacist/nazi sympathizer or apologist, and that its
the demographic to get off this site because of just how evil and villainous they are. 10-15 years ago on the internet, outside of circles of say, like 4chan, such rhetoric would have had them dismissed as "dumb rednecks" and people would have moved on -- yet today, it's a witch hunt for anyone with those ideologies.
(If the undertone here isn't explicit, white supremacy/nazism is ridiculous and their stupidity shouldn't be tolerated, the argument here is about target demographics in general, not sympathy for this awful demographic)
But who picks the "good and bad" demographics that are acceptable? For sake of giving a very real and a very dissenting opinion: I'm going to throw a controversial counter-argument out. I, for one, think that any transgender ideologies should also not be expressed on websites such as this. Not because I don't believe transgenders shouldn't be allowed to be transgender, but because this is a community forum full of impressionable teenagers trying to find their identity in life and may be coerced to make irreversible physiological alterations to their body they may later regret but can't undo.
Is my opinion at all valid? I imagine by majority opinion alone, the perspective is likely no. However, it begs the question on the staff of this website has to make such decisions in the first place because, again, this is a video game modding website and the questions of drawing lines in the sand of where to draw the line in the sand of "how much nazi/white supremacist dog whistling is too much" and "at what point is transgender expression simply expression vs the grooming of some of our more impressionable members of this site" at all relevant to this site's interests?
If you eliminate the opportunity for such things to be expressed, be it in a containment board or the site itself, you don't have to get into such semantic arguments and divide your community.
If you want to be a white nationalist? Great, 4chan is that way. Want to have a community focused around transgenderism? I imagine there's more than enough sub-reddit and other communities focused on exactly that.