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Manchu edit - title changed to reflect updated news on this story.

This is bound to be controversial. It's just a pity that Reaper decided to throw their hat into the ring in the middle of their Kickstarter campaign.

https://twitter.com/reapermini/status/897497637728866305

http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/15/toy-company-reprimands-employee-for-condemning-antifa/

https://imgur.com/a/LjxGH

On one hand, that meme especially is reprehensable. On the other hand, he got doxxed, harassed, and had his employer contacted for just arguing something online.

Surprise, surprise, you aren't anonymous on social media, and employers don't have to tolerate s. How exactly is this news?

The Great Filter strikes again.

If you're going to make controversial statements or engage in questionable action or activities, and want to keep your job, don't do it where it's recorded and available to everyone on the planet, tied directly to you personally, and linked with your employer. Basic common sense. The 1st amendment doesn't apply to a private employer.

Make an alt profile that only your friends know about to post stuff like that, or take it to another venue or just don't bite on the bait. How hard is that? People who lack the judgement to avoid aking stupid or charged statements where it can be tied to them and their work don't get my sympathy. The lack of judgement, from an employer perspective, is what would cause me to fire an employee like this, not the pedantic argument over the meaning of terms itself.

EDIT: it's very clear that Clark starts getting trolled, someone is clearly after him to get a reaction, but is willingly participating by the end is participating with just as enthusiasm and malicious glee. Dont get into stupid arguments online and post stupid memes where it will reflect poorly on you personally and directly, especially if directly linked to your employer as well, such as on Facebook. A modicum of self control and the ability to let something go would have been better for all involved.

Looking at that Daily Caller* article, it seems like Ed Pugh was pretty hazy on the grounds for firing Clark.

I mean, it reads like the headline should be: Man Fired For Stating Reasonable Personal Beliefs, Angering Extremists.

If he was sacked for posting the Hillary/Obama pic, that's one thing. But arguing that fascism is bad no matter who advocates it and whether with words and symbols on the one hand or actions on the other ...

* I see the Daily Caller is reputedly rightist but I also read the screencaps on Imagur - Clark is certainly being snarky but he's not advocating fascism, racism, nazism, violence against anyone -- did I miss that somewhere?

Whelp... not spending my money on Reaper anymore.

Thats why I don't use social media.

I find hillarous how people love to use therms like "feminazis" but then they can't call actual Nazis... Nazis


Good part from Reaper, not because this was a left or right thing, but because you can't have your high end employees making comments like this.
McDonald is literally killing people in South America with his giant soya plantations and I don't think that stop many people from eating from them (You know, besides those that protest just for this same reason)

This is the capitalist world people. The big ones don't are big because they are nice with the planet or people in the third world. When somebody stop making business because something as stupid like this, but don't give a f*ck about all the multinationals that are killing people by their business practices in the third world... thats double standards, my friend.

At the end of the day this is a case of "A business fire a employe because he has entered a internet controversy and business don't want bad RP one way or the other".
I'm sure that if this guy did this just in the opposite left/right whay, Reaper'll fired him the same way, if the internet-noise was big enough.

Good points there, Galas. Depressing but insightful!

From the screen cap showed...

Umm I'm not seeing him supporting nazi or anti fa.
He saying violence is wrong regardless. And oppression of views is wrong regardless of who both for political means.

And yeah, alt profiles.
If it's not under your name. It cannot be as easily traced back to you.

I'm not seeing the wrong here from that part of posts on a directly political view anyway.

Edit seeing rest. There's more issues then the post highlighted by other sources.

The meme and others are going away from the post twitter highlighted in a bad way.

 Manchu wrote:
Looking at that Daily Caller* article, it seems like Ed Pugh was pretty hazy on the grounds for firing Clark.

I mean, it reads like the headline should be: Man Fired For Stating Reasonable Personal Beliefs, Angering Extremists.

Is it fair to say his argument is similar to the one you were making in the locked Charlottesville thread?


This quote of Clark's is particularly problematic:

“I never said that you should not call someone waving the flag a Nazi, all I saids was that those who do, for the most part, don’t know what being a Nazi really is—huge difference. Those who do are using it to be bigoted and elitist.

Why even go there? How can he or anyone gate-keep on who is or isn't a Nazi? The nit-picking of this by Clark, and what went down in the now locked thread, is frustrating because it normalizes the events that occurred over the weekend.

Dudes were flying Nazi flags, wearing Nazi regalia, giving Nazi and KKK hand salutes, and yet they "aren't Nazis" or they are "cosplaying Nazis" which is absurd. Take them at their word. They are Nazis. Yes, they aren't part of Hitler's party from the 1930's but that is why they usually get the prefix of "neo" attached. Clark's post looks like a defense of the Charlottesville white supremacists because it plays into the false equivalency that one group who has embraced the imagery and ideologies of one of recent history's most despised hate groups is on the same level of "bad" as the group protesting against the hateful ideologies of white supremacy.

If you show up in Nazi regalia you automatically lose any moral ground in the argument you are trying to make.

For Reaper, why would they want to have their name associated with someone who posts:

"I don't want to protect the NAZIs but i [sic] also don't supprot antiFA and what they do either. Mostly because of how and who they designated to be NAZIs. They are no better."

So again, this guy's point is that the group who was flying Nazi flags is no better than the counter-protesters. The group who is defending the statue of a traitorous general, and who support segregation of the races is no better than the counter-protesters who despise that sort of hate-fueled ideology. Again, he literally says that antiFA is no better than white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Of course Reaper is going to respond.It is a stupid, stupid, stupid argument to make, especially when the name of your company is in your profile.

 Manchu wrote:


If he was sacked for posting the Hillary/Obama pic, that's one thing.

The Obama/Hillary pic was posted over two months ago, its hardly relevant beyond the digging done by people on a witch hunt.


On one hand, he really wasn't too far out of line in his beliefs, but his behavior left something to be desired (he toed the line with sexual harassment at one point in the convo). On the other hand, they have every right to sack an employee for behavior on social media (Texas has no protections for this, some states do).

I think Reaper is waaaay over-reacting on the grounds that the people arguing with him looked his info up and tried to silence him with it, its not like he got into the argument with the starting line of "I'm QA at Reaper Minis"!

This is going to end poorly for Reaper, judging by their Twitter feed.

Admit I do agree some of the actions of Anti fa can be just as bad as those whom they protest against.

I will condemn those who riot and use violence for political means regardless of there flag or afliation they hold.

A thug is a thug regardless.
(don't support either or either use of violent tactics.)
...

Twitter feed not looking good but main post they highlighting was the one where he comments both not meme or other parts.

Ah, they "No True Nazi" defense of white supremacy appears again.

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

This is going to end poorly for Reaper, judging by their Twitter feed.

Doubtful. Gamers have a short memory. Exhibit 1: Prodos. Exhibit 2: GW. Exhibit 3: Raging Heroes.

Piss off gamers, take their money, lie to them, no problem. Dangle some new shiny and they will forgive. Reaper will be fine.

Twitter is like... the worst social media platform. The disproportionated noise that is given to what happens there is just absurd.

A guy can put a very angry post in the facebook of a business, everybody is gonna ignore that. But if that happens on Twitter... oh boy!

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

This is going to end poorly for Reaper, judging by their Twitter feed.

Doubtful. Gamers have a short memory. Exhibit 1: Prodos. Exhibit 2: GW. Exhibit 3: Raging Heroes.

Piss off gamers, take their money, lie to them, no problem. Dangle some new shiny and they will forgive. Reaper will be fine.

I'm pretty sure that 95%* of the people that is after Reaper because this """""controversy"""" hasn't buy anything from them.

(Number that I have pull out of my *ss)

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

This is going to end poorly for Reaper, judging by their Twitter feed.

Exhibit 2: GW.

*looks at empty wallet and brand new SM army* yeah...

If you've got people chanting "Blut und Boden", making Nazi salutes, walking around with Swastika flags and T-shirts with Hitler quotes without anyone reacting it's a Nazi march. Seriously. If people started walking around waving the flags with the hammer and sickle while chanting "Workers of the World unite!" it'd clearly be a communist march, so why are so many so reluctant to call this a Nazi march?

Isn't this just going to turn into a rehash of the thread that just got locked though?

Funny, I don't see anywhere on his profile that Reaper is "former" employment. He still has it as "present".

And if he was fired, there would have been no reason for him to bother with an apology.

Odds are Ed dressed him up, down, and sideways for provoking this kind of (poop)storm in the middle of a multi-million deal where any decision management makes could cost them... I'd guess 10% to 20% of the project, based on what the "I'm pulling my pledge" folks are saying. I'd also guess the ultimatum was that he post the apology at the top of his page, and if he wrote anything else public before the end of the KS, it would be taken as a resignation letter.

But that's just my guess.

And if Matt is smart, he's done talking about it in public. Ed legally can't say anything beyond "there was an issue, and we addressed it with the employee". Don't count on hearing anything else.

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:

This is going to end poorly for Reaper, judging by their Twitter feed.

Exhibit 2: GW.

*looks at empty wallet and brand new SM army* yeah...

I'm just as guilty.

DarkTraveller777 -

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.

I also see a strategy behind calling them "actual, literal Nazis," which they actually, literally aren't (using the actual and literal definitions of all of those words). "Nazi" is one of the absolutely worst things you can call anybody. It is so completely toxic that it can significantly undermine someone just by casual reference. You don't even have to "be" a (neo-)Nazi; you can be discredited for "defending Nazis" or even "not sufficiently condemning Nazis." This is a very powerful and threatening kind of rhetoric. If you can establish that X Group are "actual, literal Nazis" then you can start to leverage that to make other kinds of arguments, like "Bannon supports Nazis" or "Trump won't condemn Nazis" - I mean, these are not hypothetical cases, this is the rhetoric already being used out there. And in this case, we have a guy seemingly fired for pointing this out as sinister.

"If you show up in Nazi regalia you automatically lose any moral ground in the argument you are trying to make." - Yeah, I agree with this 100% and I think the vast majority of Americans also agree with this, which is why these people are not dangerous as a political movement, although white supremacists are obviously extremely dangerous in terms of committing acts of terror.

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.

 Galas wrote:
Good part from Reaper, not because this was a left or right thing, but because you can't have your high end employees making comments like this.

QTF and because somehow after thousands of times of this happening people keep making this basic mistake.

In a war of words and symbols and gestures, terminology and iconography are self-evidently crucial. You have to ask yourself, why would someone present themselves as something that Americans overwhelmingly find so offensive as to be automatically discrediting? I think many of the white supremacists are not thinking too hard about it; they are just being themselves. I think their leadership, however, knows that attention is what matters in a media-driven culture and that being ugly and vile is the equivalent of volume. (Westburo Baptists proved this over and over.)

The argument over whether X-ism is worse than Y-ism is a meaningless dead end, as far as I can tell.

 LordofHats wrote:
QTF and because somehow after thousands of times of this happening people keep making this basic mistake.

At the very least, don't fill in your place of employment on social media. This is rarely a good idea imo.

Well, when he says he's not necessarily a Nazi because he disapproves of Antifa he's not wrong, per say.

Then again, I'm pretty sure that Nazi is a contraction of National-Sozialist, so when he says nationalism isn't inextricably tied to nazism, he's wrong. Then again, National socialist, so technically, y'know, left. And fascist.
It's almost as if politcal spectrums, definitions and allegiances shift based on things that have happened and changes in society/culture.

I've never heard of AntiFa until now. What is it?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this.
I'm pretty sure I despise both extremes of the political spectrum (because extremes), so I don't want to get suckered into defending either side.
I'm also sure that what happened last weekend is all kinds of fethed up, and in this case, trying to to deflect blame from the extreme right to the extreme left is just pants-on-head backwards.

Bran Dawri wrote:
I've never heard of AntiFa until now. What is it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)

It's the left hand side of our required "both sides are equally baaaaaad" bs appeal to moderation fallacy, which has been working pretty well for us recently.

 Ouze wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
QTF and because somehow after thousands of times of this happening people keep making this basic mistake.

At the very least, don't fill in your place of employment on social media. This is rarely a good idea imo.

I solve this problem by not being on social media. I have no Twitter, no FaceBook, no MySpace. I don't have time for the endless spue of social excrement where the only good thing is an occasional fresh meme and I can find those on Imgur without having to engage in the gak.

I find Facebook to be a good way of keeping in touch with my family, but I have to admit not only do I not have a twitter account, I fail to even see the appeal.

 Ouze wrote:


It's the left hand side of our required "both sides are equally baaaaaad" bs appeal to moderation fallacy, which has been working pretty well for us recently.

...

So, anti-fascism fascists. Weird. Apparently irony is lost on a lot of people these days...

Edit: Back to cooking topics for me, I think. This kind of stuff is too depressing.

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.

Bran Dawri wrote:
Well, when he says he's not necessarily a Nazi because he disapproves of Antifa he's not wrong, per say.

Then again, I'm pretty sure that Nazi is a contraction of National-Sozialist, so when he says nationalism isn't inextricably tied to nazism, he's wrong. Then again, National socialist, so technically, y'know, left. And fascist.
It's almost as if politcal spectrums, definitions and allegiances shift based on things that have happened and changes in society/culture.

I've never heard of AntiFa until now. What is it?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this.
I'm pretty sure I despise both extremes of the political spectrum (because extremes), so I don't want to get suckered into defending either side.
I'm also sure that what happened last weekend is all kinds of fethed up, and in this case, trying to to deflect blame from the extreme right to the extreme left is just pants-on-head backwards.

Nazism is socialist in the same way the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a Democratic Republic, i.e. not at all. They picked up the "socialist" part because it was hip and trendy at the time. The party's socialists were the first to get exterminated.