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 Manchu wrote:

Yeah, I very much do think the terminology here is very important. I absolutely do not take these people at their word. I hear and see references to the Third Reich, just like I can see them trying to develop some kind of vocabulary of "European heritage." I don't buy any of it. What I actually see here is something that goes back to before there was any such thing as a Nazi, something that isn't a problem smuggled in from Europe before/during WW2. What I see is a completely American issue, going back to the colonization of North America by people who would gradually come to see themselves as "white", namely white supremacy. White supremacy is a fundamental issue of American history. The allusions to the Third Reich, in addition to being pathetic, have a clear strategic purpose: being outlandish and controversial gets attention.

It seems foolish to me to not take them at their word. Their actions, their rhetoric, speaks volumes and just because they do not meet a very specific set of criterion to be "actual, literal Nazis" is irrelevant if they are wrapping themselves in the imagery and ideology of Nazis. You argue it is to get attention, and sure, that is probably true to an extent, but I don't think that is their overriding motivation.These sick bastards actually believe in the superiority of their "race" and all the other ugly trappings that are associated with white supremacy and neo-Nazism.

It is one thing to hold up a sign that say "God hates fags!" to get on the news. That is outlandish and controversial, but it is also technically defensible using Biblical scripture (the god of Leviticus certainly seemed to hate homosexuals). It is another thing entirely to march down a street with a Nazi flag, throwing the Nazi and KKK salutes and adopting the beliefs of those hate groups to the point where you are willing to be photographed in public supporting the cause of white supremacy. There is no defensible argument for Nazism, there is no defensible argument for the ideology of white supremacy. For me, the people who marched are the genuine article. They aren't doing this just to get a rise out of people or get more air time on the local or national news. They think the country is at a turning point, they think the president has their back, and they are ready to make their sick vision of America a reality.

 Ouze wrote:
You know where this kind of stuff happens a lot? Arguments about gun control. Whenever you have someone talking about gun violence, there is always a faction that is laser-focused on the terminology as the most important thing - these guys can't be right because they called it a clip instead of a magazine, these aren't really assault weapons like a stg 44, etc etc. It's a good way of concentrating on the peas instead of the steak and it almost always works.

This. Nit-picking terminology in this case, or trying to make some arbitrary distinction between I guess what we will call "historical" Nazis and these neo-Nazis, seems like an exercise in futility.

To then do what Mr. Clark did and lump the protesters opposing the white supremacists and neo-Nazis as "no better" is horribly misguided.

The NAZI party had socialist members in the beginning. Then, they Istvaan III'd them.
Plus, if somebody reads the Mein Kampf Hitler explain how they just picked the "Socialist" term and the red because as someother poster said, it was the trendy back then, and it allowed them to go to "left" political meetings, etc...

I'm in the "both sides are wrong" camp. Extremism in any direction is dangerous. Full stop. That simple. Rationalizing it by pointing at 'the enemy' is simply that: Rationalizing.

As far as this person goes, I don't think a person should get fired for their personal comments, but this person listed where he worked online, and so my sympathy wanes for him. Deliberate, intentional, right or wrong, he associated him and his toxic comments with his workplace. That's a bad call.

 Ouze wrote:
You know where this kind of stuff happens a lot? Arguments about gun control. Whenever you have someone talking about gun violence, there is always a faction that is laser-focused on the terminology as the most important thing - these guys can't be right because they called it a clip instead of a magazine, these aren't really assault weapons like a stg 44, etc etc. It's a good way of concentrating on the peas instead of the steak and it almost always works.

In between escaping into terminology as the most important thing, and the inevitable off-topic moral relativism tangent on how some other political system also killed people so who can really be good or bad, I expect we'll be done here within an hour or two, tops.

to be fair, with respect to the gun thing, there are instances where the terminology matters, and often either has a distinct legal meaning that can spell the difference between legality and a 10 year vacation in club fed

 Manchu wrote:
I don't get twitter, either. The best use I can think of it is to subscribe to game companies' twitter feeds and use that as a kind of digest for their announcements.

As a place to have a discussion? As a place to air opinions?

No thanks. Same with FB, IMO.

most social media is a really poor platform for discussion and ideas deeper than single sentence responses. FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc. They really just arent built for it.


Twitter is especially vacuous however.

 Vaktathi wrote:
to be fair, with respect to the gun thing, there are instances where the terminology matters, and often either has a distinct legal meaning that can spell the difference between legality and a 10 year vacation in club fed

I agree, but the usage I usually see employed is to divert discussion. Look at any prior gun thread here, after all.

But of course if we dwell on this, it's to the same effect

DarkTraveller777 -

It's totally foolish to take Richard Spencer at his word. He is a manipulator. Critically examining his statements is crucial to understaning and opposing his political strategy. Without superficially evoking Nazism, Spencer cannot get the media coverage he requires to further his goals. And we can deduce from his strategy that his goal is not really direct persuasion because referencing Nazism positively is overwhemlingly repulsive in the US. Therefore, it becomes clear that his real goal is indirect influence. He wants to be labeled a Nazi in order to shift discussion away from white supremacy itself, which vanishingly few Americans find sympathetic, to a (exceedingly bad faith) fight about the culture of political free speech. When he gets punched, this is his victory. When he is denounced as a Nazi and his permit to protest is rescinded, on doubtful legal grounds, such that the ACLU steps up in his defense, this is his victory. When he can confuse the issue to the point where we are not focused on the illegitimacy of white supremacy and instead focus on violent suppression of political speech, this is his victory.

The American value of free speech in politics is founded upon the belief that extremism is in no one's interest, at a broad social level. With the actions of white supremacist terrorists, we can see nobody is safe from this insidious ideology - including white people, like Heather Heyer - just like Muslims are so obviously endangered by Al Queda, ISIS, etc. These extremist ideologies are clearly unsound, given their extreme unpopularity. By advocating suppression, especially including by violence, people are giving them a platform they don't deserve.

I'm not overly fussed about the bloke nitpicking over Nazi definitions, it's hardly something worth firing someone over. The racist meme picture though? Yeah, that qualifies as sufficient reason to can someone, even if they posted it three months back. Someone would have to talk pretty fast to convince me their views have radically changed since they thought it was funny to share that.


On the slight side tangent, speaking purely from what I'd personally consider as a Nazi without consulting textbooks.

Being a white supremacist does not make someone a Nazi. Putting a swastika armband on a white supremacist also does not make them a Nazi. It just makes them a white supremacist in a distasteful armband. If the armband had a hammer and sickle on it, it wouldn't make them a Soviet branch communist, and there's no reason it would make them a Nazi.

If however, they adhere to more general Nazi-style beliefs (so euthanising the disabled, locking up and gassing Jews, that an armed military struggle is the natural evolution of humans/nations) and so forth? Then I'd qualify them as a Neo(or new)-nazi. That's because they hold some similar general sentiments to the Nazis, warped into their own context.

In order for me to qualify them as actual dedicated Nazis, they'd need all the above plus a religious level worship for Hitler, a personal copy of Mein Kampf, a detailed belief in facistic government, hold to the Aryan myth, and so forth. In other words, they would need to represent what Nazism would be if Adolf resurrected tomorrow and began assembling his new SS unit.

The latter is possible, and people like that do exist. But for every actual Nazi there's fifty Neo-Nazis, and for every Neo-Nazi there's fifty thick white supremacist thugs who don a swastika to inflame opinions.

I am a Bones 4 backer, and this issue was raising its head today on the Kickstarter campaign.

This is appalling timing for Reaper because their Bones kickstarters are a sizable core of their income stream condensed into a single month.
They are in a bad place as it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.

As for the outcome, we have not had anything concrete from Reaper to my knowledge just conflicted rumours. I see nothing yet that confirms he was fired. This is not unwise as any outcome might trigger more people.

As for the incident. The Reaper employee was being baited, but chose a bad time to comment on a controversial issue. It didn't help that the baiting SJW, who edited their own name from the editted transcript they plastered everywhere, claimed descent from Holocaust survivors as status to generate extra moral merit for being triggered.

Lesson 1: don't be attached to your employer on social media. I haven't listed my employer on my Facebook for a long time.

Lesson 2: your employer cares about money, and not about you. If you do something that costs them money, you will pay for it. If they have to choose between you and bad PR that will cost them money, they will choose money.

Lesson 3: don't say gak in public unless you are willing to pay the price for saying it.

Is not even talking gak. is like the Spanish consul that was removed from office because he joked about the accent of one of the biggest political figures in Spain.
If you have are in a public level part of a company (Or a goverment), you aren't only representing you when you talk online. So bear with the consequences.

You all giving a lot of credits to these Chuckleheads of being educated to know what Fascism, Nazi's, and what the Third Reich was. Probably a good damn chunk never even read Hitler book Mein Kampf let alone know that it evens exist.

Besides the public-facing side of things, Reaper needs to be mindful of the behind the scenes issues. Firing someone because a mob demands it is terrible for morale and has an understandable chilling effect on talented people being willing to work for/with you. Maybe the Daily Caller jumped the gun on claiming Clark has been fired. But if he was, I think Reaper is going to have to articulate why with some degree of specificity, at least internally. You can argue that people who just want to buy toys have a short memories; but people who are thinking about working for you/staying on your payroll have long memories.

See also the Google memo scandal ...

Jihadin -

I'm explicitly talking about the full time leadership of extremist groups, not the otherwise isolated (and presumably ignorant*) extremists who come out in support.

* People who think Nazism is a worthwhile political ideology are presumptively ignorant of history; even setting aside the ultimately disastrous course of WW2 for Nazism, the party was (necessarily) rife with inefficiency, willful ignorance, crippling in-fighting, and downright unworkable policies. If the Nazis hadn't inisted on dehumanizing authoritarianism and commited so many and such staggering atrocities, their political system still deserved to fail.

 Jihadin wrote:
You all giving a lot of credits to these Chuckleheads of being educated to know what Fascism, Nazi's, and what the Third Reich was. Probably a good damn chunk never even read Hitler book Mein Kampf let alone know that it evens exist.

This is my experience. I knew some self-proclaimed fascists in high school, and they weren't the type to do all the reading.

I'll give Nazis the right-of-return benefit of the doubt: if someone wants to call himself a nazi (or even look like one), I'll consider him a nazi.

 Ouze wrote:
You know where this kind of stuff happens a lot? Arguments about gun control. Whenever you have someone talking about gun violence, there is always a faction that is laser-focused on the terminology as the most important thing - these guys can't be right because they called it a clip instead of a magazine, these aren't really assault weapons like a stg 44, etc etc. It's a good way of concentrating on the peas instead of the steak and it almost always works.

The pro-gun side treats superficial features as an important thing because the anti-gun side passed federal law revolving around these superficial features.

If you pass the Red Ones Go Fasta Act banning all red cars, it's your fault if you don't know what red is and your opponents start tearing you to pieces for it.

Read the transcript, the Reaper employee never self identified as a Nazi, or claim support for Unite the Right. He said that Antifa were just as bad, which is a fair enough point to make, its a genuinely arguable one at least.

The main offense really was calling Obama a Moslem and Hillary Clinton a pig, which is offensive, but even that possibly gets a pass as its acidic political satire.

He did all this under his own identity with his employment bio unmasked. Not wise, but he was being baited by a self righteous SJW who clearly intended to out him fo whatever he/she could, edited the chat stream - we don't know what was taken out or had context removed, and redacted their own identity so they could not be verified.

 Orlanth wrote:
Read the transcript, the Reaper employee never self identified as a Nazi, or claim support for Unite the Right. He said that Antifa were just as bad, which is a fair enough point to make, its a genuinely arguable one at least.

The main offense really was calling Obama a Moslem and Hillary Clinton a pig, which is offensive, but even that possibly gets a pass as its acidic political satire.

He did all this under his own identity with his employment bio unmasked. Not wise, but he was being baited by a self righteous SJW who clearly intended to out him fo whatever he/she could, edited the chat stream - we don't know what was taken out or had context removed, and redacted their own identity so they could not be verified.

So we ageee that he did what he is accused of doing then.

Political sattire don't interest a company when you are satirizing (based in recent elections,and in a totally innacurate maner), maybe 52% of your potential customer base.


This is all about PR and money, nothing else.

 d-usa wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Read the transcript, the Reaper employee never self identified as a Nazi, or claim support for Unite the Right. He said that Antifa were just as bad, which is a fair enough point to make, its a genuinely arguable one at least.

The main offense really was calling Obama a Moslem and Hillary Clinton a pig, which is offensive, but even that possibly gets a pass as its acidic political satire.

He did all this under his own identity with his employment bio unmasked. Not wise, but he was being baited by a self righteous SJW who clearly intended to out him fo whatever he/she could, edited the chat stream - we don't know what was taken out or had context removed, and redacted their own identity so they could not be verified.

So we agree that he did what he is accused of doing then.

Yes I do agree, but not to an extent that implies culpability. Dismissal is a very harsh response. Clark did not intend any harm to Reaper, he didn't say anything under a Reaper icon, that was dug up and collaged in. The imgur image has a lot of creative and redactive editing. Including the cowardly editing of the accusers name while maximising exposure of the victim.

Yes I can call Clark a victim, right down to accusing Clark of supporting Naziism, which is how the image was read on Reaper forums, even when Clark repeatedly stated he wasn't. Then adding an editorial claiming additional right to be upset, by claiming to have been sexually harassed,and subjected to extra offense or this and other reasons.

Also genuine Holocaust survivors families don't talk casually about 'their entire family going up in smoke'. Its a bit more serious than that for them.

I agree that this guy was baited. And even if I disagree with what he said, it wasn't anything really "OMG KILL HIM!" but...
He was using Facebook. I can't have much emphaty for people that discuss political issues on Social Media

I am not buying anything from reaper again, but mostly because other companies are making better and cheaper minis than bones (nolzurs and deep cuts). Their politics don't interest me, there are probably almost as many leftists as right wingers in gaming so they may take some hits they may not. I personally have no respect for antifa.

No big deal, he can always just go to another job right?

Conservatives on dakka taught me that private entities should have absolute power over their workers and that if a worker doesn't like it they can always go somewhere else. So I'm sure that my conservative peers on this website have nothing but applause for Reaper exercising their right.

 Galas wrote:
Political sattire don't interest a company when you are satirizing (based in recent elections,and in a totally innacurate maner), maybe 52% of your potential customer base.


This is all about PR and money, nothing else.

From my reading of the Reaper forums, the percentage of potential customers who would be offended was much higher than 52%.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
No big deal, he can always just go to another job right?

Conservatives on dakka taught me that private entities should have absolute power over their workers and that if a worker doesn't like it they can always go somewhere else. So I'm sure that my conservative peers on this website have nothing but applause for Reaper exercising their right.

I mean if you're going to try to make veiled attacks on us, you can provide some support to this statement of yours?

Or, you know, you could follow Rule #1.

 djones520 wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
No big deal, he can always just go to another job right?

Conservatives on dakka taught me that private entities should have absolute power over their workers and that if a worker doesn't like it they can always go somewhere else. So I'm sure that my conservative peers on this website have nothing but applause for Reaper exercising their right.

I mean if you're going to try to make veiled attacks on us, you can provide some support to this statement of yours?

Or, you know, you could follow Rule #1.

What djones said...

Furthermore, Reaper is fully within their right to do this as this is an 'at will' state.

Just as I'm going to choose to exercise MY right by spending my money on any Reaper products.

 whembly wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
No big deal, he can always just go to another job right?

Conservatives on dakka taught me that private entities should have absolute power over their workers and that if a worker doesn't like it they can always go somewhere else. So I'm sure that my conservative peers on this website have nothing but applause for Reaper exercising their right.

I mean if you're going to try to make veiled attacks on us, you can provide some support to this statement of yours?

Or, you know, you could follow Rule #1.

What djones said...

Furthermore, Reaper is fully within their right to do this as this is an 'at will' state.

Just as I'm going to choose to exercise MY right by spending my money on any Reaper products.

Really no real reason to buy bones anyhow, they are not as good as the new D&D and Pathfinder minis and are not as good a deal overall.

It was an overall unnecessary move by reaper to respond. There are always going to be people who are "unhappy" with you anyway.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Political sattire don't interest a company when you are satirizing (based in recent elections,and in a totally innacurate maner), maybe 52% of your potential customer base.


This is all about PR and money, nothing else.

From my reading of the Reaper forums, the percentage of potential customers who would be offended was much higher than 52%.

Pissed of people always make more noise than happy people.

Yeah, don't let internet and forums trick you. The porcentage of people that write in forums is a very, very, very, small part of any fan/customer/etc... base. And of those as D-usa said, the angry ones are gonna make much, much more noise than the happy ones.

 d-usa wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Political sattire don't interest a company when you are satirizing (based in recent elections,and in a totally innacurate maner), maybe 52% of your potential customer base.


This is all about PR and money, nothing else.

From my reading of the Reaper forums, the percentage of potential customers who would be offended was much higher than 52%.

Pissed of people always make more noise than happy people.

What about happy pissed people? Cause some people seem to really enjoy being angry all the time.

They spend all their time commenting on YouTube videos.

 djones520 wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
No big deal, he can always just go to another job right?

Conservatives on dakka taught me that private entities should have absolute power over their workers and that if a worker doesn't like it they can always go somewhere else. So I'm sure that my conservative peers on this website have nothing but applause for Reaper exercising their right.

I mean if you're going to try to make veiled attacks on us, you can provide some support to this statement of yours?

Or, you know, you could follow Rule #1.

Provide a source for what? Be specific