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Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 11, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I don't think Richard Spencer is very significant. Yes, he has 70k-ish followers. But I don't think that alone means much - some may be fake, some may be hate-reading, or just wondering what he's going to say next. If you flip through his most recent dozen or so tweets, engagement is pretty low - replies and retweets mostly in the single digits and likes in the low double digits.

I agree that panicking about them taking over anything is foolish. I disagree that banning them is good policy. Fundamentally, actual Nazism is stupid and annoying. Why ban them unless you think their arguments are extremely persuasive? They're not. Banning them just gives them a persecution complex and makes people think they are cool and dangerous - their ideas must be really great, or they wouldn't bother silencing them! Wanna rebel from the system? Wave a Nazi flag, it's what the system really hates! Instead, give them all the rope they need to show everyone exactly how stupid and annoying they are. That's what we do here, and it works. We have some posters writing Nazi-adjacent ideas. You can read the threads, it's pretty clear that they aren't convincing anyone that their ideas are good. The only thing I would ban or block somehow is aggressive abuse of random users.