fascists, toys and censorship

[Flint Jones <flint@mobtown.org>]

[: hacktivism :]

Well... I'm going to try and avoid the typical leftist infighting and
just get to the fundamental issue in regards to this list.

The campaign to get Yahoo.com to close down their fascist clubs versus 
the campaign to get Etoys.com to stop their law suit on Etoy.com.

Yahoo.com is a service provider, much like a local ISP, a telephone
company, or Network Solutions (that provides Domain Name Information).
Some anti-fascists put a great deal of effort in getting Yahoo to close
down their fascist clubs, pointing out that the existence conflicted
Yahoo's own guidelines.  A similar successful campaign was held to try
and keep out fascists from usenet news groups.  Anyway, where usenet
campaign appealed to the rough democracy of Usenet,  the Yahoo campaign
was an appeal to a corporate power and ownership.   Yahoo owns
itself and can do whatever the hell it likes.  Its interesting 
to note that at the same time this was happening, Yahoo
discontinued carrying an ad for a union drive.  The anti-fascists were the
agressors here, trying to build a popular campaign to pressure a service
provider into stop offering what is a free service because of political
content.

The Etoy War is a much different situation.  Here, a corporation was
pressuring a service provider (Network Solutions) to stop offering a paid
service because confusion with a political group might hurt their profit
margin.  Etoys was willing to use the courts against Etoy as well.  People
came to Etoy's aid in a variety of ways, including Denial of Service
attacks that certainly muddles the waters about who/what is doing the
censoring.   However, probably the most successful actions was also
creating a popular campaign to pressure Etoys to stop their legal
attacks on Etoy.

So, both situations share common traits, popular campaigns, capitalist
ownerships, service provision, political content... ideologically... the
anti-fascists and the supporters of Etoy are pretty similar in their
world view.  Network Solutions, Yahoo and Etoys are corps so they think 
like the profit driven monstrosities they are.  And fascists are fascists.

So why the difference of opinion between Tall Paul and Chuck0?

I guess its how you define censorship, and how you look at its
implementation.  Paul wanted a popular campaign to influence corporate
power to shutout the fascists.  Chuck0 wanted a popular campaign to
influence corporate power, to stop using their power and stop their
attacks on a political art group.  

Corporations respond to their bottom line... if Yahoo thought that the
popular campaign would cause them to loose advertising (but apparently some advertising is "better" than others
since Yahoo was willing to pull the union ad for fear of loosing
other advertisers).  RTMark went directly after Etoys bottom line as their
mode of attack.

Anti-fascists can be censors.  An opposition to fascism alone hardly
makes one virtuous.  Stalin opposed fascism too, from time to time, that
didn't make him any less of a butcher or censor. Being anti-fascist does
not say what you are for!  Some anti-fascists accept censorship as an
effective tool against fascism, others do not.

Anarchists, have to often take a more principled approach.  There
objection must be to censorship itself as an oppression, seperate from
who is being censored by whom. Censorship itself is an oppressive act.

DoS attacks are hardly serious attacks on censorship like these legal
manuevers on service providers.  Soon, the media will stop covering DoS
and it will then even loose that value.  I wonder if the E-hippies and EDT
will continue such tactics when the media becomes disinterested.   If
they want to be effective, I hope they will... otherwise they will just 
annoy their opponents but remain ineffective.

And to the would be censoring anti-fascists.  You have a long , tough
road.  Try and shut the fascists out of rec.music.white.power or
clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/kkk and they will just spring up elsewhere.   If
you have the money like Anti-Defamation League (that has its own
copyright/trademark attacks on anyone else who uses the phrase "ADL")
you can buy up naughty domain names... like corporations that try and buy
up foocorpsucks.  And all this is completely ineffective, as the
information will get out, it will find a way.

If there ideas that we find so repugnant or repulsive that we can not bare
them to be known by others... instead of protecting them through
censorship, we need to help people develop the critical reasoning and
that will cause others to reject those ideas that we have. Are arguments
must be better than those of fascists and capitalits, otherwise our only
tool would be limited to a refusal to interact (boycott, work stoppage,
etc... which only work when we convince a large number of people to work 
anyway) or coercion.  

personally.... I'd like to see people start thinking about how they can
apply hacktivism to their jobs... a far more revolutionary idea than pings
of death or lawsuits.

Solid,
	Flint



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