I am probably just going to get buried but I don't think this is a simple as many people will think it is.
To me this is another indication of how excessively polarized worldviews are. And I think it goes for quite a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum. There is a strong tendency towards one political extreme or another.
It's to the point where people are basically living in alternate realities from each other.
And some people may react to that with "yeah, it's one worldview that is intolerant and wrong and one that isn't" or if they are from the other side "yeah, it's one worldview where it's ok to be say you are white and another where it isn't". But it's way more than that. The hint of intolerance (or on the other side, political correctness) is used to identify people as being in the enemy camp. And it is then a proxy for their worth as a human being and all of the other beliefs they might supposedly have are grouped together.
I wonder if another political operating mode is possible.
What does "not tolerating" mean? Excluding him from everything?
If that's the approach, what stops you from trying to get someone you don't like excluded by searching through everything they have ever said or done, surfacing one example that you call "objectionable", and using that to shame them?
I mean, while it's weird and sucks that the original creator of Minecraft won't be there, Microsoft is definitely free to distance themselves from outspoken individuals that don't reflect the PC culture they're going for.
I certainly wouldn't want someone whose only relevance is armchair Twitter warring representing something that brings my company substantial (?) revenue.
I guess for an ideological disclaimer, I vehemently disagree with his politics, but I'd take the same position for a bellicose liberal.
> I certainly wouldn't want someone whose only relevance is armchair Twitter warring representing something that brings my company substantial (?) revenue.
Did you refer the creator of Minecraft as "someone whose only relevance is armchair Twitter warring"?
Would be asking too much to request that he limits his talks to the subject of Minecraft at a Minecraft event? Does he have a history of giving unprompted politically-charged speeches in public, or is it just Twitter? If not, then I'd say this is an unnecessary letdown for the game's fans.
Should black US athletes limit their talk to the subject of sports, and refrain from politically charged moves such as kneeling for the anthem, or giving the black power salute at the Olympics? Should video game or other 'tech' panels stick to the topic, and not proselytize how important diversity is?
I feel like this is sarcasm but the real answer is you should act appropriately for your surroundings. Someone else’s event is not your platform, especially so in this case.
Correct. A slave on a plantation should simply do their job. It is never appropriate to espouse political opinions in a place of business. The promotion of business interests trumps any humanistic interests, which have their set places and times to be addressed in a quiet and easily ignored manner.
Comparing the expectation of relatively apolitical professionalism to slavery is absurd.
There are valid reasons why keeping the workplace apolitical is valuable. When it isn't, one political group usually established dominance and suppresses the opposition. The workplace becomes an environment where a subset of political views monopolize conversation, and a large portion of workers are alienated as a result. If your goal is to hire the best employees regardless of political leanings, then maintaining an apolitical workplace is a good choice.
>f your goal is to hire the best employees regardless of political leanings, then maintaining an apolitical workplace is a good choice.
My point is that your goals do not trump everyone else's goals just because they're reasonable business goals. There are things in life that are more important than hiring the best employees.
Surely it would not be a problem to have Markus stay on topic and avoid any controversial territory in his remarks.
However, is it possible to ask others to refrain from "calling him out" in such a public setting? No, not at all. Notch is a hated figure, and he is hated with an intensity that only Progressive religious fervor can bring about.
This is how you silence people. By your own actions, make association with the target so troublesome that the institutions - reliably feckless as they are - will simply prefer to exclude them.
>Would be asking too much to request that he limits his talks to the subject of Minecraft at a Minecraft event?
If Microsoft et al choose to make public statements regarding contentious non-technical issues, then it seems unreasonable to me that they attempt to silence dissenting views.
> has increasingly ostracized himself with his Twitter comments, including transphobic statements and comments about a “heterosexual pride day,” and that “it’s ok to be white.”
Is it not ok to be White or heterosexual? This kind of exclusion over these statements likely harms Microsoft's reputation more than it helps it.
> Persson’s is not an isolated tweet. “It’s ok to be white” was invented by the trollsters of the “politically incorrect” messaging board on 4chan. The phrase was carefully designed to trick progressive, left-leaning Americans into saying the contrary—that it is not ok to be white—in a strange nationwide campaign to finally expose anti-white bias.
And it's evidently working. Taking offense to the phrase "it's okay to be White" is falling straight into the trolls' hands. If we want to stop the machinations of said trolls then we should stop taking offense to the statement, since taking offense to the statement "it's okay to be X" necessarily implies that it's not okay to be X.
If Microsoft was aware of the phrase's history then their behavior is even more counterproductive; they knowingly walked into this trap.
Even so... Setting traps and then trying to blame others for falling into them? Does that sound like the behavior of a trustworthy and admirable person?
I think you're missing the point. Who knows what Notch was trying to accomplish by saying "it's okay to be White". For all we know he saw people taking offense to the phrase, and was perturbed by people evidently claiming that it is not okay to be White (the link you provided included responses to the phrase that included calls for "white genocide") and wanted to emphasize his own view that being white is not something bad. If you want to portray Notch as some kind of white supremacist aligned person, then the onus is on you to prove it. The likelihood that he is part of the overwhelming majority of people that don't really care about 4chan and other obscure internet subcultures is significantly greater.
The point remains, the overwhelming majority of people will not take offense to the phrase "it's okay to be White" and will be perturbed by the people who do take offense to this phrase.
Out of context, "it's ok to be white" is not a disagreement with the phrase "it is not ok to be white", it is a disagreement with the phrase "it is ok to be non-white." The overwhelming majority of people both agree with the latter and find the former to be irrational and obscene. If he's going to comment on something so divisive, he'd better add something to the discussion beyond additional ambiguity, or else he's just fanning flames and race baiting.
> [He] wanted to emphasize his own view that being white is not something bad.
Obviously. Perhaps emphasizing that view in this context does more harm than good? Is that possible? Perhaps when someone says something obscene and stupid, you don't pile on with additional obscene and stupid responses?
> Out of context, "it's ok to be white" is not a disagreement with the phrase "it is not ok to be white", it is a disagreement with the phrase "it is ok to be non-white."
How do you interpret "it's okay to be X" to "it's not okay to be non-X"?. When somebody says "it's okay the be gay" they're actually saying it's not okay to be straight? This line of reasoning doesn't seem to hold up to scrutiny.
In my view the phrase "it's okay to be White" means exactly what is says: that it's okay to be White. It's totally fine to say "it's okay to be White and it's okay to be {Asian, Black, Latino, etc.}".
> Obviously. Perhaps emphasizing that view in this context does more harm than dood? Is that possible? Perhaps when someone says something obscene and stupid, you don't pile on with additional obscene and stupid responses?
But there's nothing obscene or stupid about saying "it's okay to be White" or "it's okay to be gay" or "it's okay to be X" (at least as long as X isn't something illegal or otherwise objectively harmful).
What's stupid are the people getting riled up about the phrase "it's okay to be White". It's needless outrage that fuels resentment. The fact that it got started by 4chan makes it even worse. The people that insist on taking offense are fostering needless outrage and they're being played by 4chan.
I'm particularly confused at why you persist in trying to condemn the phrase when you are fully aware that 4chan intended for people to condemn the phrase and thus portray themselves as harboring negativity towards whites. Why are you doing exactly what 4chan wants you to do?
The article you posted even advises against the bevhavior you're engaging in:
> Lundberg’s expert suggestion is not to reject the phrase. “I think that the best response is to deny them the pleasure of the fight—of course it is ok to be white: now how can we make it ok to be a person of any color?”
It's like saying white lives matter or blue lives matter, yeah, duh, no segment of society that wields power has ever questioned that. When you say one of those phrases you're being obtuse and just distracting from a conversation that needs to be had. At which point I've got to assume you've got nefarious reasons for being obtuse.
> It's like saying white lives matter or blue lives matter, yeah, duh, no segment of society that wields power has ever questioned that.
This is evidently not correct, since a significant portion of the population is offended by the phrase "it's okay to be white". If someone is being obtuse in this conversion, I'm going to go with the people that insist that no segment of society thinks that it isn't okay to be white while simultaneously denigrating the people who say "it's okay to be white".
What on Earth do people hope to achieve by condemning the people who say "it's okay to be White"? I get that a segment of the population interprets statements about a specific group as implying that the statement doesn't apply to other groups (e.g. people saying "Black Live Matter" is racist because it implies that only Black lives matter), but it should be plainly obvious to see why objecting to the phrase "it's okay to be white" is not a good idea. Apparently this is the work of 4chan as a means of duping people into making anti-white statements. If so, then the trolls have had a resounding success: they even managed to dupe a significant portion of HN commenters.
Then why are we taking offense to the phrase? Worse yet, why are we taking offense to the phrase despite knowing that the alt-right wants us to take offense to the phrase because most onlookers will see it as anti-white (which is a reasonable conclusion, for the overwhelming majority of people that don't follow internet culture).
Grass is green. Water is wet. The sky is blue. It's ok to be white.
These things being true does not imply they are relevant. "It's ok to be non-white" is true and poignant social commentary, and thus I value it for the latter. The truth in it is necessary, but not sufficient. "It's ok to be white" is a fact, but it is simply a fact. It is nothing more than a fact.
>why are we taking offense to the phrase despite knowing that the alt-right wants us to take offense
I'm not taking offense to the phrase, I'm taking offense to the willingness of someone to say it where it is unwarranted. The phrase is not offensive. The willingness and desire to offend is. Exercising that willingness by employing an otherwise true statement is both offensive and cowardly.
In any case, I do not make decisions based on the whims of the Alt-right. What they want and what I want are not going to be intentionally correlated or anti-correlated.
>When somebody says "it's okay the be gay" they're actually saying it's not okay to be straight? This line of reasoning doesn't seem to hold up to scrutiny.
If I said "it's ok to be gay" and someone RESPONDED with "it's ok to be straight", I would have little reason to believe they weren't explicitly trying to disagree with me. (As nothing I said would imply otherwise, and it goes without saying.) If they wanted to agree or elaborate, there are far better things to respond with, and it would unfair to allow them the presumption of exclusion but deny me the same assumption.
Usually in a conversation, we're not screaming slogans into a void and trying to analyze their validity while ignoring anything meaningful that happens in the world.
> Out of context, "it's ok to be white" is not a disagreement with the phrase "it is not ok to be white", it is a disagreement with the phrase "it is ok to be non-white."
This is the exact same argument, almost word-for-word as saying that the phrase "Black Lives Matter" disparages non-Black lives by supposedly implying that they "don't" Matter. And it's clearly wrong, in both cases. Contrary to popular misconception, Exceptio probat regulam de rebus non exceptis is not a generally-applicable principle of English semantics.
You're assuming the language is inherently symmetrical by focusing on the technical meaning rather than the meaning derived from usage.
"Black Lives Matter" is a slogan. It means "Black lives also matter." If someone wanted to respond to that by saying "White Lives Matter", they would be egregiously missing the point, no? Creating conflict from something that they presumably don't disagree with? And why would anybody do that?
If you are seriously asking, the answer is that these are dog whistles for white nationalistic and homophobic groups respectively.
Furthermore, the concept of "the white race" is unscientific, and was created to group together a majority against minorities. Italians, Jews, even the Irish were consider "non-white", while the Spanish conquistadors began calling themselves blanco in order to state their superiority over the aztecs.
Accusations of "dog whistling" is often a cheap way of stuffing words into other people's mouths. Plenty of people alleged that "Black lives matter" was a dog whistle for either the supremacy of blacks (by implying that only black lives matter). Plenty of people accuse those of advocating racial reparations of "dog whistling" for Zimbabwe-style confiscation of property.
And seriously, think about what it really mans to take offense at the phrase "it's okay to be white". What would you think of someone who gets offended when people say "it's okay to be gay"? What would you think of someone that gets offended when people say "it's okay to be an immigrant?" Why, then, do you think it is at all productive to take offense at the phrase "it's okay to be White"? Whites will be just as offended as gays or immigrants, and rightly so.
Also, as far as I know the Spanish never called themselves "blanco". The Spanish word for lighter skinned people is "rubio" (though this is sometimes also used to refer to blonde hair). White Spaniards - using the modern understanding of the term White - during the conquest of the New World called themselvs "peninsulares" (after the Iberian peninsula) or "corillos" [1].
As far as the unscientific nature of the term "White" I don't find that particularly relevant. Race is a social construct, not a scientific determination. It would be just as (un)fair to criticize Black Lives Matter for referring to an unscientific concept.
Wow. I've been a minor Notch fan since way back when MC first dropped in alpha. I've seen him go through some serious emotional crap but this makes me think he's abusing something.
Everyone gets emotional sometimes because that's how humans work. Some people are just more honest about revealing their emotions and also may be celebrities so people magnify the drama out of proportion to what it really was.
Also, just because someone has a different worldview than you doesn't mean they are crazy or a drug addict.
To me this is another indication of how excessively polarized worldviews are. And I think it goes for quite a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum. There is a strong tendency towards one political extreme or another.
It's to the point where people are basically living in alternate realities from each other.
And some people may react to that with "yeah, it's one worldview that is intolerant and wrong and one that isn't" or if they are from the other side "yeah, it's one worldview where it's ok to be say you are white and another where it isn't". But it's way more than that. The hint of intolerance (or on the other side, political correctness) is used to identify people as being in the enemy camp. And it is then a proxy for their worth as a human being and all of the other beliefs they might supposedly have are grouped together.
I wonder if another political operating mode is possible.