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You cannot use the existence of bad actors to hand-wave away the need for good or proper behavior. There are people who will never see socialism in a good light or give it a fair hearing, that doesn't absolve any good-faith socialist from being truthful and honest in their argumentation.
So if someone is accused of believing in something, they are duty bound to be open and forthcoming about what their political beliefs actually are, regardless of how flimsy the evidence presented that they believe in it?
Hard not to see this as just a more elaborate form of "have you stopped beating your wife?" If you hear IH jokingly stating that his birthday is 4/20 and your brain immediately goes to "Hitler's birthday" and not "dude weed lmao", I'm going to assume you see the face of Jesus Christ in the last piece of toast you ate too.
Check out how uncharitable one can be:
Back in the real world, I didn't look at your username and think "wow, this guy supports lowering the age of consent". Nor would any reasonable person acting in good faith. I thought "hehe, the guy with the blue cock lol". But if you're setting up a societal standard of "if you're accused of believing in something, you can't just stay silent - you have to immediately be forthcoming about what you really believe, even if the evidence presented is flimsy and weak", that's just incentivising bad actors to look for flimsy evidence with which to smear anyone they dislike, and you are duty-bound to respond to my (ironic) accusations above. Given Brandolini's law, smearing your enemies like this and interpreting their remaining silent as an admission of guilt amounts to a sort of interpersonal lawfare, functionally equivalent to SLAPP lawsuits: if you can't get someone you hate to stop expressing their opinions altogether, forcing them to waste hours and hours of their time laboriously refuting bullshit accusations made in bad faith is the next best thing.
Perhaps "good" is a bit much, I'll stand back from that claim. But I do think it would be useful for him to actually clarify, now that it's a subject of discussion.
If he doesn't, then so be it. But he'd avoid quite a bit of headache if he at least stated it was all humor. Then we can have a more rational conversation in his defense. Until then, we're just left fumbling in the dark.
Wow, haha, that is a crazy coincidence. Genuinely, I didn't pick the numbers with any mind for his girlfriend, I was actually just 16 at the time and had read the Watchmen comic.
In any case, the point I'm getting at is that bad actors will do what they want, but there can be obligations or good ideas which one should obey regardless. I have no doubt that a statement would do nothing for his accusers, in the same way that you could just dismiss the defense I gave above as obviously a pro-ephebophile person trying to hide their stance. But rational discussion would probably be aided by such a statement regardless.
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Oh Jesus, what an unfortunate set of numbers to append to your username.
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There's nothing bad or improper about what he did, or didn't do, regarding the sharing of his political beliefs. And I can use the existence of bad faith actors to point out that these demands for transparency are dishonest. This is like demanding people be honest when responding to Nazis asking if there are Jews in your basement.
Also, if a commie wants to make funny videos with an occasional "eat the rich" meme thrown in, he should be able to do so, without being forced to go through bizarre struggle sessions.
It is nothing like this. The appropriate analogy would be someone accusing you of hiding Jews in your basement under Nazi Germany. You should probably issue a denial regardless of what those people say.
The question is precisely if he is or isn't a commie, in this case. Which you can certainly be, but if you're not, it would probably be better to clarify once this level of scrutiny arrives.
I will back down from "good/proper behavior" to "useful behavior", though.
Fair, I'll take that bit of constructive criticism.
Allow me to rephrase then - if a person is making funny videos on the internet, with occasional jokes about eating the rich / gulags / etc., I don't think the question should be if he's a commie, or not.
Well, I can't tell you what's useful to you, so fair enough.
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