A debate about MAL's unusually positive stance on Neo-Nazis; thread will be closed if flaming occurs

Buzz201

Buzz201

Mad Scientist
cudwieser said:
That is true what you're saying, but I wasn't saying those who liked cute or vivid avatars were wolves in sheeps clothing. There is an eronious assumption of late that if you have this avatar, you must be this, which is unfortunate and wrong, but not without merit. There are wolves in sheeps clothing out there which has fuelled the assumption and it seems any fair recognition anybody gets is falling away from a norm (not always good recognition, just sometimes :)).
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I guess it depends. I've yet to come across a neo-Nazi on a anime discussion group on Facebook. (I'm assuming neo-Nazis are the wolves to which we are referring here.)

I would say I'd seen more people with questionably regressive views on AUKN. The amount of people that thought MAL were being treated unfairly during that whole Nazi debacle was bizarre.
 
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Rui said:
This is the first I have heard of this (unless my memory is worse than I thought). Truly peculiar stuff.

R
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I think it was an anitwitter thing. A bunch of people left MAL for Kitsu (formally Hummingbird).

Some posters on the AUKN Discord were apparently convinced that there's a way of editing an article to remove lines about Nazis sucking and adding a positive portrayal of Nazis that isn't pro-Nazi (or at the very least Nazi condoning)...
 
Buzz201 said:
I think it was an anitwitter thing. A bunch of people left MAL for Kitsu (formally Hummingbird).

Some posters on the AUKN Discord were apparently convinced that there's a way of editing an article to remove lines about Nazis sucking and adding a positive portrayal of Nazis that isn't pro-Nazi (or at the very least Nazi condoning)...
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They needn't be pro-Nazi or anti-Nazi. Nazi-neutral is what they were aiming for.
 
Jaysgba said:
Really, MAL isn't the place to either make them look good or look bad. The article should never have been posted to begin with; it only served to make people overreact.
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I'm sorry what. It was a joke article about nazis in anime. It was editorially in line with MAL's lists and articles. There was absolutely nothing out of line about the article until Neo-Nazis found it. When did hating Nazis become unacceptable? They literally killed Jewish people, black people, gay people, and disabled people. This is not a group worthy of equal consideration and I cannot even believe I had to type this.

There is bugger all excuse for editing the article, except for Nazis or those that condone them, and I have no time for that.
 
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Jaysgba said:
Really, MAL isn't the place to either make them look good or look bad. The article should never have been posted to begin with; it only served to make people overreact.
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But criticising Nazis I dont believe is political its historical. Them adding a "Non Typical Nazi" to the article was weird.
 
I'm also offended that the editor added grammatical errors to the article which weren't there in the first place just to purge the original writer's words of all of their intended meaning. But seriously, I'm 100% with Buzz on this. MAL way overstepped all common sense and credibility by letting this go live.

R
 
Rui said:
I'm also offended that the editor added grammatical errors to the article which weren't there in the first place just to purge the original writer's words of all of their intended meaning. But seriously, I'm 100% with Buzz on this. MAL way overstepped all common sense and credibility by letting this go live.

R
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Buzz didn't say it shouldn't have gone live. He said they shouldn't have edited it. It was edited after it went live.
 
Jaysgba said:
Buzz didn't say it shouldn't have gone live. He said they shouldn't have edited it. It was edited after it went live.
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You've yet to explain why the article should have gone live?

"People would overreact." -- Why should we care about the opinion of Nazis? Let them go cry themselves back to Breitbart or something.
 
Buzz201 said:
You've yet to explain why the article should have gone live?

"People would overreact." -- Why should we care about the opinion of Nazis? Let them go cry themselves back to Breitbart or something.
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People are still overreacting, the nazis are irrelevant. The only issue was that MAL edited someone's article without consent, and they've since said they'll get written consent before editing anyone's article in future. Problem solved, no need for further discussion.
 
So you think the subject matter and how close to this persons heart the issue was doesn't matter? I doubt this author would have gave written consent so therefore they should revert the article.
 
Jaysgba said:
People are still overreacting, the nazis are irrelevant. The only issue was that MAL edited someone's article without consent, and they've since said they'll get written consent before editing anyone's article in future. Problem solved, no need for further discussion.
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No. The Nazis are not irrelevant. The issue is only partly that they edited the article without consent.

The issue is primarily that they completely changed the tone and intent of the article in a manner that at best condoned neo-Nazism. If you read the AnimeFeminist article, the conduct of MAL's editors very heavily implies the article was edited because it was anti-Nazi. I don't understand how the pro-Nazi element is irrelevant.
 
Uh, that's semantics. The 'edit' went live. I don't care about the exact timeline of when it went live versus when it was edited as that part is irrelevant, but I will clarify anyway.

MAL way overstepped all common sense and credibility by letting this edited version go live.
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Happy now?

The points in question seem pretty clear cut.
  • They didn't tell the writer that the article was a problem and give him a choice over whether to submit it.
  • They surreptitiously edited the original article so heavily that the writer was understandably ashamed to have it attached to his name.
  • The editor should be straight up fired. They don't know how to edit. Or how to use English, apparently.
  • The oversimplification of Nazis from shameful war criminals to comedic Saturday morning cartoon villains is celebrated in the amended foreword. It's problematic because when something transitions from being a representation of a reviled and broken manmade disaster to just being 'hur hur evil', the next step is for ignorant people to start parodying, emulating and normalising them. In the lead text they're compared with zombies, fictitious monsters with no capacity for thought who eat people. Nazis, however, are real and still exist out there. I don't really want to see 'Nazi LARP' groups running around big cities chasing people down for fun. It's not appropriate.
  • I'm embarrassed by the existing correlation between extreme racists and anime fans in general.
  • This 'Nazi-neutral' agenda implicitly supports that correlation by refusing to condemn something which should be condemned in order to prevent Neo-Nazi readers being triggered by seeing unsupportive messages on an anime site. I do think that asking people to (say) punch a Nazi is unhelpful, but I also don't think that free speech should extend to the point where protecting one group's right to attempt to deny another group's basic human right to exist is considered a valid use of anyone's time or effort.
  • Ultimately, I don't mind Stroheim in JJBA because in the context of the show, he's one person within an evil regime and the series has a lot of deeply questionable people in it in general. Japan's historical ties with the war are complicated and obviously with the proper context (or in an actual historical series with many characters of all shades) you can explore issues like this without glorifying the fundamental issues with frothing nationalistic murderers. Without that context, including him makes it seem like 'good Nazis' are a thing. They are not a thing. There is nothing heroic about Nazism itself.
  • The article wasn't written to be about series which happened to include Nazis in the first place. The entire theme was changed to turn a mildly contentious, dumb-sounding fluff article into a 'balanced' normalisation of Nazism to avoid offending a group the MAL staff know are important to their site.
  • We can't stop Nazis being Nazis (oh, to be king of the world!), but I think that people who are against Nazism should be allowed to say that what it represents is evil without it being softened in secret for someone else's private agenda.
R
 
Buzz201 said:
No. The Nazis are not irrelevant. The issue is only partly that they edited the article without consent.

The issue is primarily that they completely changed the tone and intent of the article in a manner that at best condoned neo-Nazism. If you read the AnimeFeminist article, the conduct of MAL's editors very heavily implies the article was edited because it was anti-Nazi. I don't understand how the pro-Nazi element is irrelevant.
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I don't read AnimeFeminist, because I find their output to be, at best, offensive.

If MAL did want pro-Nazi content on MAL, modifying content on their site to fall in line with that is entirely up to them, I'm not petty enough to stop using a useful site because of something so stupid. The only issue is that they didn't get permission from the author to change the article and thus his intent. And, again, they've made it clear that in future they'll require written consent from authors before changing their work so the matter is resolved.
 
Rui said:
but I think that people who are against Nazism should be allowed to say that what it represents is evil without it being softened in secret for someone else's private agenda.
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I agree, but MAL's featured articles section is not the appropriate place for people to say that. Whoever it was that allowed the initial version from the author to go live should have rejected it before that point.
 
If I can remember the login to my neglected MAL account I shall be deleting it, and I shall certainly not be visiting in future. Simply standing by and passively supporting a site with a pro-Nazi agenda to increase their ad revenue and viewing stats isn't something I can do now it's been brought to my attention.

R
 
Jaysgba said:
If MAL did want pro-Nazi content on MAL, modifying content on their site to fall in line with that is entirely up to them, I'm not petty enough to stop using a useful site because of something so stupid. The only issue is that they didn't get permission from the author to change the article and thus his intent. And, again, they've made it clear that in future they'll require written consent from authors before changing their work so the matter is resolved.
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Something silly? Normalising Nazis is not silly. Half of the posters in this bloody thread would have been killed by the Nazis...

The only way this is OK is you completely disengage your brain and moral compass. And that's before you factor in Rui's concerns about the unfortunate correlation between animeism and nazism.
 
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