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

I think my general stance on this whole thing is probably in line with @Jaysgba. I don't support what they're doing in terms of editing articles without consent and adding in questionable content all that, but MAL is a service I use daily, so I don't really want to stop using a service I get a lot out of because of some drama.
 
IncendiaryLemon said:
I think my general stance on this whole thing is probably in line with @Jaysgba. I don't support what they're doing in terms of editing articles without consent and adding in questionable content all that, but MAL is a service I use daily, so I don't really want to stop using a service I get a lot out of because of some drama.
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You could literally import your data straight into Anime Planet or Kitsu from MAL, if that's your concern...
 
This is largely why people need to stand by their beliefs if they feel strongly. If the fandom is split into active Nazis (presumably a tiny minority despite the noise they make), Nazi-haters and then a majority of people who don't understand why they should care, the people who are actively against the negative elements need to make their feelings clear and leave. Some of the apathetic crowd will start to follow naturally when they realise the site has lost some of its important contributors and followers, even if they don't connect with the underlying issues (i.e. that supporting oppressive politics doesn't mix well with a site about light cross-cultural entertainment).

I'm not Jewish myself (for the sake of this particular example), but I take support for Nazis as a personal insult nonetheless because I'm a human and Nazis want to oppress other humans who are doing nothing more harmful than existing. Keeping certain parties out is the entire reason I even go out and vote in the real world.

R
 
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The original article was to political comparing trump supporters to the Nazis is a bit ignorant and childish, but I don't see why they changed the original title, who are they actually going to offend most Nazis are dead or in prison
 
Jaysgba said:
Like voting matters. Ha!
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I genuinely find it hard to work out whether you're actually trolling or just stupid.

You think the goddamn Illuminati wanted Trump for President or businesses wanted Brexit? If voting didn't matter, the world would probably a lot less messed up than it is right now. (And equally, it would have probably been more messed up during the "good period".)
 
Rui said:
Please do let me know when you find a way to turn randomly-directed cynicism into a positive force for change. It would be way easier than ticking a piece of paper and putting it in the post.

R
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Not voting is a difficult choice sometimes. I wanted to vote in the EU referendum, but had to decide not to.
 
As great as the aimless verbal sparring designed to try to bait people is, I'm just going to lock this thread unless anyone else has anything to add on the original topic. Brexit stuff can go in the existing (and already contentious) Brexit threads. I'm correct in thinking there's nothing else to add in support of protecting the rights of Neo-Nazi anime fans, right? Think we have the other side covered already.

R
 
I don't really have any more to add other than Rui's comments above - If a site is producing content you don't like, simply stop patronising that site because you're never going to (and shouldn't be able to, imho) stop people from having and stating views you find offensive. I'd rather these people made themselves known so they can be taken to task or avoided than the alternative, which is actively restricting or lobbying to restrict people's freedom of speech. MAL is a privately run site just like AUKN - The owners can decide what content they want to allow and what content they don't.

I think in a larger context, the changing attitude towards the Nazis and their crimes was inevitable. I mean, is anybody really offended by admiration for the Roman Empire any more, despite all the horrific war crimes, slavery and public torture they got up to? No, because it's so far out of living memory no-one feels personally affected by it. As time marches on, the same thing is going to happen with the Nazis. That's just the way humanity's view of history evolves whether people like it or not.

On a personal note, while the mantra of terrible events is usually "never forget" I often wonder if it would be better if we did forget, at least that way the future of humanity wouldn't be so stymied by the old grudges, prejudices and unnecessary guilt and victim complexes of the descendants of people on both the giving and receiving ends of oppression and suffering but who were in no way personally involved.
 
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I'm inclined to agree with the notion that the original article probably shouldn't have been approved as it was, but then I think almost all of those articles are trash anyway, which is why I don't read them.

Move to another site over something like this? Hell no. If it was MAL actively promoting neo-naziism then maybe. But it isn't. Something happening that shouldn't have happened* to a trash article in a worthless section of the site, resulting in it being exactly the same level of awful as it was beforehand. So what?

Anyway, perhaps my view is out of date but I remember when Hummingbird was mostly a place for people who had been banned from MAL, which is how it started and how I still perceive it. Not a fan of the site's layout either (including the new one). And Anime-Planet's database system is broken enough as to make MAL's look great. Also neither of them have light novels.

*and by this I'm 90% referring to the rewriting of the article without the author's permission.
 
ayase said:
I don't really have any more to add other than Rui's comments above - If a site is producing content you don't like, simply stop patronising that site because you're never going to (and shouldn't be able to, imho) stop people from having and stating views you find offensive. I'd rather these people made themselves known so they can be taken to task or avoided than the alternative, which is actively restricting or lobbying to restrict people's freedom of speech. MAL is a privately run site just like AUKN - The owners can decide what content they want to allow and what content they don't.

I think in a larger context, the changing attitude towards the Nazis and their crimes was inevitable. I mean, is anybody really offended by admiration for the Roman Empire any more, despite all the horrific war crimes, slavery and public torture they got up to? No, because it's so far out of living memory no-one feels personally affected by it. As time marches on, the same thing is going to happen with the Nazis. That's just the way humanity's view of history evolves whether people like it or not.

On a personal note, while the mantra of terrible events is usually "never forget" I often wonder if it would be better if we did forget, at least that way the future of humanity wouldn't be so stymied by the old grudges, prejudices and unnecessary guilt and victim complexes of the descendants of people on both the giving and receiving ends of oppression and suffering but who were in no way personally involved.
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Just add my two cents. I read the article and frankly I see little more than a site being too PC for it's own good. I'm not about to throw it under the bus as every public forum will inevitably try to walk increasingly finer lines to be everyones friend, but that inevitably put's them in everyones crosshairs. For the original article I see little reason for it to be banned or rewritten inspite any vitriol on the authors part, however I also find it churlish and frankly naive. More over the fallout from it I find equally churlish and naive. Free speech isn't a right, it is a must for all concerned. Deny an opposing view and you deny EVERY TRUTH. You may not like, agree and ultimely support nazism, but how on earth do you know what nazism is without it being allowed to show itself. Just because it's painful and scary and to some, hateful doesn't mean you censor it. Quite the opposite in fact, you bloody expose it.

IMO the original artical should stand, MAL were wrong to edit and censor and those getting their knickers in a twist had best walk away or do their homework before getting mad. Personally Nazism means little to me simply because I've more important things to worry about, like a job, a house and what our government is doing to take those away.
 
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The thing about oppression is that people not being oppressed have a bad habit of thinking it's someone else's problem to deal with until their time comes around. That's their right, but the people actively being oppressed don't necessarily see it the same way and dismissing their concerns leads to resentment. To use a topical example, a lot of anime fans make ignorantly sexist or homophobic remarks on a regular basis. They're kids and they don't understand the issues; women getting upset about the same old sexist garbage over and over just seem touchy and unreasonable when they speak out in exasperation, hence the huge anti-feminist cult running rampant in response to an imagined threat from a bunch of people who originally just wanted to be equals before their message was drowned out by assumptions and hysteria.

I don't think Nazism needs a platform because it's already had one of the biggest platforms of the last century, at the cost of countless human lives. We all know what it was about, unless the education system in this country has fallen farther than I thought. If the MAL team want to promote it they should be writing their own bally articles about that and not insidiously editing those written by other people to pervert their meaning.

At the end of the day though, ayase is right in that MAL technically had the right to edit the article, even if it was wrongminded to do so and cost them their relationship with this writer. And in doing so they came out as a site which valued protecting the feelings of some hypothetical Neo-Nazis over doing what most compassionate people would view as 'right'. Fans who use them need to reconcile that fact for themselves and take action in accordance with their own moral compass. Those who don't care can go ahead and keep using it. Those who do can judge those who don't see it as a problem and move on to a site with a more suitable community.

I have no idea what this writer's direct connection to the atrocities in Europe might be, but I do know that there are still people alive today who were directly impacted by the rise of Nazism before (and plenty more who have been impacted by other nationalistic, racist or generally oppressive political regimes elsewhere in the world). To me, that's the difference between joking about the Roman Empire and Nazis. Nazis (and indeed the British Empire and black slavery) are still issues which affect displaced people and families whose lives have been directly affected by the fallout, whereas anyone still sore about the Romans is playing the victim card a little too hard. You still get people making crude slavery taunts about black people in the US today, so the lingering oppression isn't one-sided. I think it's too soon to treat this stuff as free entertainment. There's still a lot of tidying up to do. Once it's been done and the threat of nationalists shutting out other people for daring to be born with the wrong preferences or skin colour has faded further into the past, by all means make fun of it. I'm just sad that utopian future isn't ever going to come along until long after I'm dead.

R
 
But they're not promoting Nazism. Nor are they joking about it. If the post-edited article had been the original one then you would in no way have seen it as pro-Nazi.

It's only because it was edited from an article that was so flagrantly anti-Nazi (and I'm not saying that being anti-Nazi is a bad thing) that you have any issue with it.

Basically all that MAL did was turn an opinionated piece (yes, it is still opinionated even when the opinion is so strongly backed up by facts as to be right) into a non-opinionated one. If you (can bear the pain to) look through the articles on there, you'll note that very, very few of them are opinionated about anything that's not specifically anime related. Such a change is thus in no way pro-Nazi or trying to oppress those with anti-Nazi views. It's just making it more consistant with the general content of the articles.
 
That's a fair point, @kuuderes_shadow - personally I can't overlook the context and the stupid-sounding lead-in text which divorces the original intent from the article. It has damaged my opinion of the site.

To be honest the writer is overqualified for MAL fluff in the first place. He clearly does a lot of research (I clicked through to his Jew article while looking around, expecting a train wreck, and thought it was uncommonly interesting for this kind of piece). He's better off without them, and hopefully those who left the site for others can bring them up to meet the requirements of the ones left behind.

R
 
kuuderes_shadow said:
But they're not promoting Nazism. Nor are they joking about it. If the post-edited article had been the original one then you would in no way have seen it as pro-Nazi.

It's only because it was edited from an article that was so flagrantly anti-Nazi (and I'm not saying that being anti-Nazi is a bad thing) that you have any issue with it.

Basically all that MAL did was turn an opinionated piece (yes, it is still opinionated even when the opinion is so strongly backed up by facts as to be right) into a non-opinionated one. If you (can bear the pain to) look through the articles on there, you'll note that very, very few of them are opinionated about anything that's not specifically anime related. Such a change is thus in no way pro-Nazi or trying to oppress those with anti-Nazi views. It's just making it more consistant with the general content of the articles.
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Aside from the Donald Trump line, which is maybe pushing it (though I'd personally argue the objective nature of the statement means it just stops short of crossing the line) it was in keeping with the style and tone of that type of article on MAL.

There was no particular reason for that large an edit, unless you took particular issue with its criticism of Nazis. If you took exception to the Trump line, you could have just removed that one line. For an edit so substantiative, you'd have to be upset at the article's portrayal of Nazism or be willing to listen to people upset at its portrayal of Nazism. Personally, I want no part in that, but you're welcome to form your own conclusions.
 
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