To The Administration Team

To the Administration Team of The North Pacific,

Fascism is an ideology which innately encourages violence against humans for characteristics of which they cannot control. It is a dangerous ideology with a foundation in intolerance that is mutually incompatible with our community. It goes further than just NationStates and targets those behind the screen.

TNP has a large community with people from all over the world and all walks of life with a diverse range of ethnicities, gender identities, and sexual orientations. Many of us would suffer should fascists have their way—people like us have suffered from fascism.

Members of our community are vulnerable whether that is being discriminated against due to characteristics we cannot control to having many younger individuals in our region. TNP is not a place for those who follow an ideology which upholds violence as a positive. The internet is commonly used by fascists to maliciously target minorities or to recruit others into following their problematic ideology.

TNP should not be a place which harbours those that would cause harm to members due to factors we cannot control.

We entrust the offsite security of our community to the Administration Team to take action and prevent the politicization of our safety as people. The Administration Team is able to be more flexible; operate outside the rigidity of laws and the game we play; and better differentiate between those who genuinely proclaim to hold to fascism and those who are roleplaying and do not genuinely hold those beliefs. It is for these reasons that the administration must take steps to safeguard us from a dangerous ideology. In recent years, the community has grown stronger in taking action against fascists abroad and we need the help of the administrative team to help protect people from fascism at home.

We plead with the administration team to take action to prevent any known fascists from accessing our off-site communication platforms and ensure that our community is protected by banning them.

We sign this petition not as citizens but as the players behind the screen in this game that seek to have our community protected.

We, the undersigned,

Praetor
Pallaith
Whatermelons
Prydania
Lady Raven Wing
Boston Castle
Arc
The Cascadian Bioregion
Dyl
TlomzKrano
Fregerson
MadJack
Bobberino
Sarah
Nimarya
Rom
Sil Dorsett
Peeps
East Isles
Elegarth
Cretox State
Morover
DGES
Westinor
Comfed
Lord Lore
Gorundu
Syrixia
9003
Robespierre
Bluie
Kastonvia
Tringapore
Venicea
Owenstacey
Cormac
QuietDad
Greater Ale Permars
A27M Cromwell (NBU)
Koopa
Katuda
Marcus Antonius
SoulCrusher
Gladio

We encourage members of the community to post below if they wish to join this petition.

I wish to join & sign this petition.

Tringapore:

I wish to join & sign this petition.

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Thanks for joining. Added.

I'd like to join this petition if non-citizen residents are allowed.

Cormac:

I'd like to join this petition if non-citizen residents are allowed.

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Considering I’m on this list, that’s just gonna be up to Prae.

You can add my name to the petition

I would also like to sign this petition.

This has been seen and we will respond to it.

Thank you to all who have signed on.

Eluvatar:

This has been seen and we will respond to it.

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Thanks for letting us know. Would you be able to provide an estimate of when we can expect a response by?

Praetor:

Would you be able to provide an estimate of when we can expect a response by?

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I would guess within a week but that's just it - a guess.

I would like to sign this petition, if ordinary TNP citizens are allowed to do so.

If ya'll are still accepting, I'll put my name down

I would like to sign this petition.

Please add me to this petition! Thank you!

Thanks for the approximate response time Elu.

All added. Ordinary citizens (or just residents) are certainly welcome (and encouraged) to sign.

Count me in.

I would also like to sign the petition

I don't think the admin team should ban "any known fascists."

First, I don't think it should be up to the admin team to decide who is a fascist and who isn't. It is actually a pretty tough thing to define and enforce consistently. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what fascism is, but I would still struggle to define it in a way that I would be comfortable with the admins putting it into the forum rules.

That's part of the reason that I think forum rules ought to be based on actions, not beliefs - it's a lot easier to tell when a ban on a certain action or behavior, such as spamming, has been violated. Either they spammed, or they didn't spam. But with a belief or an ideology, it's a lot harder to tell. Suppose someone posts "I'm a fascist." I think absent any other evidence, that's probably not actionable, even under a fascist ban. But then suppose someone replies and says, "Are you for real? Do you even know what fascism is?" They reply "Yes, I am well-informed as to what fascism is, and I firmly hold that belief in RL." Now is it actionable? They're probably just some 13-year-old edgelord looking for attention, but how can you tell for sure? The fact is that even when someone goes a LOT further than that, and starts spouting racist shit, or glorifying RL fascist groups, you still can't actually tell if they believe it or if they're just trolling to make people upset or hurt. That's why such trolling is banned: because it doesn't matter whether they believe it or not, the problem is that they're upsetting and hurting people.

Another reason that behavior-based policies are the way to go is that past behavior is usually a good indicator of future behavior, especially when it seems to be part of a pattern. But beliefs and ideology, especially among young people, can change dramatically, and sometimes suddenly. You try on a belief system for a little while, and see how it fits. Sometimes you keep it, or parts of it, and other times you reject it and move on. Sometimes you say things that you think you believe, and then find out they mean something different than you thought.

So let's suppose someone gets banned from the forum because, on another region's off-site community, they've posted something like

I think my country would be better if we had a strong dictator to show everyone what it means to be a man. We're getting too weak, and I don't trust my society to elect strong leaders anymore.

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They defend this position throughout the thread. That sounds pretty fascist, yet stops just short of outright bigotry. So the admin team has to talk about whether it's fascist enough, and decide ultimately, yes, it's against the policy, and this person has to go. Then they protest and try to appeal, saying "Look, that was six months ago, and I don't believe that anymore. I was going through kind of a weird mental phase, but ultimately some folks in [some other region] brought me around. I would never say something like that now." Well now what are the admins supposed to do? They might still be a fascist, and just saying whatever it takes to get unbanned. Or they might be truly reformed, and the ban was a mistake. There's no way to tell for sure, so you can't know if you've enforced your own rules correctly.

I agree in spirit with this petition, in that I think that bonified fascists usually bring with them a lot of bannable shit, including but not limited to hate speech, promoting violence, threatening people, harassing people based on their race, harassing people based on their sexual orientation, harassing people based on their disability, harassing people based on their gender identity, harassing people based on their nationality, you get the picture. And of course we want all of NationStates to know that such crap is not allowed here. We also don't want to be naïve to the fact that proponents of fascism are unique among all ideological groups in their strong tendency to do all of those things and more. But it's not as simple as "ban any known fascists".

I think it would be better for the admin team to collaborate with the community to 1) identify the problem behaviors fascists tend to have; 2) Evaluate the rules we have against those behaviors, strengthen them where necessary and create new rules against anything we've missed, and then; 3) put a finer point on all of them, collect them all together into one place and title it our anti-fascism policy. For instance, a zero-tolerance policy on hate speech, promoting violence, or identity-based harassment might be a good step to take, if that's not already the rule. We can also prohibit recruiting others to do the same. I think the team should also seriously consider pre-emptively banning fascists with a proven track record of doing those things, as they do with sexual predators. There is plenty of room for the admins to clarify that the problematic behavior that fascists bring is not tolerated, and will get them banned. That does not require the admin team to assess what someone believes in their heart, but only what they do to put others in danger or make them feel unwelcome or uncomfortable. In other words, be a pig all you want, but one oink and you're outta here. It takes more work to craft that kind of policy, but it would result in something that is more enforceable, more clear to the community, and more fair all around.

As a disclaimer, I'd like to say that while I am an "admin emeritus" I am pretty firmly retired from the admin team, and have not participated in any admin discussions on this topic. I was invited to share my opinions with them, but I decided instead to post here.

I generally agree with what COE has to say. Behavior-based OOC admin policy is what I have advocated all along, as opposed to blanket bans and vague, ill-defined IC policy. While I think there's discussion to be had about what the admin team should consider actionable (for example, I agree that harassment should definitely be included, but feel hate speech should not), I think COE presents a fair compromise that represents enforceable policy.

"hate speech shouldn't be actionable" fucking hell Fiji read the room.

And no, there is no compromise here. Either admin gets with the program or we start to have conversations about forcing them to or moving forums.

Crushing Our Enemies:

I don't think the admin team should ban "any known fascists."

First, I don't think it should be up to the admin team to decide who is a fascist and who isn't. It is actually a pretty tough thing to define and enforce consistently. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what fascism is, but I would still struggle to define it in a way that I would be comfortable with the admins putting it into the forum rules.

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I feel that the point you're making is largely moot here. This petition is not a complete blueprint for the exact rules the admin team should institute or how they should enforce them. Should they agree with the principle of the petition, the admins will need to create their own procedures on how to execute this principle. I don't think this statement suggests at all that the admin team will need to go out of their way to actually determine whether someone is a fascist or not, as opposed to simply judging someone's actions against defined rules. After all, the only way for us to identify a fascist in this environment is through their actions. Known fascists are only known because they have exhibited fascist behaviour.

As for identifying specific fascist behaviour, I don't think that's too difficult either. Just saying "I'm a fascist" probably shouldn't get anyone banned without any further information, but real fascists will go beyond that to elaborate on their beliefs. At that point, they will likely move to praise or promotion of fascism or fascist leaders, which should rightfully be banned, even if it's not outright hate speech, promoting violence, or harassment. Anything beyond that likely already falls foul of existing rules.

Gorundu:

I feel that the point you're making is largely moot here. This petition is not a complete blueprint for the exact rules the admin team should institute or how they should enforce them. Should they agree with the principle of the petition, the admins will need to create their own procedures on how to execute this principle. I don't think this statement suggests at all that the admin team will need to go out of their way to actually determine whether someone is a fascist or not, as opposed to simply judging someone's actions against defined rules. After all, the only way for us to identify a fascist in this environment is through their actions. Known fascists are only known because they have exhibited fascist behaviour.

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If you compare this part of your response to Madjack's, I think you might find that not all signers of this petition are on the same page about what should be banned, and what the admins are expected to do if they were to accede to it. I can imagine that probably makes it difficult for the team to take any course of action without risking pissing a bunch of people off. And when some are throwing around extreme ideas like moving forums if this petition is not agreed to, this will result in an inevitable clusterfuck if the petitioners don't all have a clear idea of what is being asked for.

I don't think that the folks who started this petition want the admins to create a set a behavior-based enforceable policies. I think they want the admin team to ban Whole India, and premptively ban anyone who identifies as a fascist or is perceived (i.e. "known") to be fascist, regardless of their behavior. I could be wrong, but this is the sense I'm getting from the various threads on this topic.

I'm glad to see you post this, because I think the two of us agree on most points, and with the large number of signatures on this petition, I was starting to worry that the entire community was ready to burn this place down if the admins didn't take the most extreme position available to them.

This is actually why I think it's very important for the admin team to engage the community in helping to craft antifascist rules, and discuss how they should be interpreted. Clearly, many are dissatisfied with the current rules and enforcement, but this petition is not specific about what needs to change. So if a change in admin policy is going to satisfy the community, they're going to need help from the community to craft enforceable standards that go far enough to make TNP a place where people can feel safe.

I hope that most of the petitioners realize that it's more complicated than "ban all fascists." You seem to, but others definitely don't.

Protecting our community members and ensuring that the community is safe and welcoming is a core responsibility of the administration team. We would like to thank Praetor, the signatories of this petition, and everyone that feels strongly about this issue, for bringing it to us. The administration team has no interest in allowing our community to devolve into one where abuse and hate are tolerated, nor one where extremists are permitted to prey on impressionable players and spread their noxious ideologies.

In any healthy, vibrant community there will be differences of opinion. Not every community is a place to express those differences; one could not fault the moderators of a forum dedicated to gardening, for example, if they decided to prohibit even mild political debates simply to avoid headaches. But in a game and a community such as ours, one which attracts politically-minded players, it is both natural and expected that members of the community will explore, test, and refine their beliefs in many different avenues — including issue-answering, roleplay, engagement with regional governments, and discussions and debates with other players. As administrators, we firmly believe that as long as people are treating one another with respect and are not doing or advocating harm, the best response to a bad idea is a robust debate.

What that means is that we are not going to issue a blanket ban on simply holding any particular ideology or belief system. Even setting aside the difficulty of defining an ideology in a precise enough way to keep out exactly the undesirables intended while not accidentally hitting innocent bystanders, banning people based on their beliefs and not on their actions goes against every reasonable principle of administration and community management, and puts an unacceptable onus on the moderators to determine not just what someone has done, but what they think. It would also have a chilling effect on public debate and discussion, as participants might reasonably have concerns that taking an unpopular position might lead to being labeled as a member of that banned ideology.

However, we acknowledge and agree with the signers of this petition that many of the behaviors that fascists and other extremists engage in are absolutely unacceptable — on- or off-line, on this forum or any other. Without nailing down precise definitions or making an exhaustive list (more on that in a moment), hate speech, recruiting new members to an extremist cause, advocating or defending genocide, and threatening violence (or encouraging others to engage in the same) are all well past the limits of what we are willing to tolerate.

The North Pacific does not currently have a written standard of behavior for its community. This is not to say that we have had no expectations for how members of our community behave. Rather, that these expectations are implied by our terms of service and held in the minds of admins and moderators, which has on occasion resulted in misunderstandings, inconsistencies, and an inability to act quickly. To some extent this is growing pains, as we have evolved from a community focused on NationStates politics to one that now includes much more discussion and debate of real-world issues. But as forum administrators we should have addressed this sooner, and we take responsibility for any frustration and loss of trust that have resulted from our failure to do so. It is clear that such a situation is not sustainable. Residents both need and deserve a comprehensive set of community guidelines, so that everyone is on the same page about how we expect members of our community to behave, and what will and will not be tolerated. We also know that we, the administration team, do not have all the answers here: we must collaborate with the community on drafting these guidelines.

To that end, we will be convening a team of admins and members of the community to work on developing such a set of community guidelines. This group will focus not just on naming and defining dangerous behaviors associated with fascism — though that will certainly be an important component of its work. It will also be responsible for identifying and evaluating other areas of impermissible behavior, such as flaming and harassment, and determining our community standards in those areas as well. All of this will include rules for what is acceptable behavior within The North Pacific as well as what is unacceptable even if it occurs outside the region and its associated offsite properties.

We have approached several individuals about participating in this group, all of whom are free to speak publicly about their participation or lack thereof. Anybody who is interested in nominating themselves or another community member to the group may do so by posting one of the following submissions in this subforum. Submissions will be visible only to the poster and the admin team - not to other members of the forum.

Signed:

I like this response. Admin is basically saying, "We hear you, we're doing this, and we're doing this RIGHT." Good luck to all the committee members, and thank you to the admin team for your willingness to work with the community!

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Eluvatar:

We have approached several individuals about participating in this group, all of whom are free to speak publicly about their participation...

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So I was approached to participate in this. It's still a new thing, I can't comment on much of anything aside from my own thoughts. So I'll start there.
My above post saw me quoting Fiji. I edited to say "never mind" because it was a repetition of what I said in the RA on the matter. If anyone cares that much about what those thoughts of mine are, check that thread out.

As to the topic at hand...
I signed the petition because I believe fascism (of which Nazism falls under, for those pedants who try to argue a distinction) is unique among political ideologies in that it calls for the deliberate marginalization, if not murder, of people deemed "subhuman." People try to insist that it and communism are equally deplorable, but that's not really accurate. I'm no communist, and I'm not out to defend communist regimes that have killed millions of people, but on an ideological level communism is about wealth redistribution and a reorganization of who runs the economy. One can be a communist and not believe in gulags, political purges, and state oppression. There are entire schools of communist ideology opposed to Stalinism and Maoism.
Fascism, on the other hand, has racial supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia baked in. You can be a moral communist. You cannot be a moral fascist. In my estimation.

This is why I've long felt that rules that promote free speech and tolerate fascism and the behaviour they bring are, at the best, naive. They assume fascism is like anything else political when it is, in fact, uniquely dangerous. This has led to many a frustration with forum mods and admins, not just here, but elsewhere who tolerate it in the name of openness. I've certainly felt that here. Not just as a TNP member/citizen, but as a RP mod who's had to weed out IRL fascists from people who take RP too far. And trying to balance that with TNP's community standards as a whole.

I'm trying to put forward my thoughts on the manner because I understand how someone who might of signed this petition could see the Admin response and go "you're dragging your feet, you're refusing to take action," because in a lot of ways this seems black and white. Just ban fascism.
And what I am saying is that I'm someone who believes that fascism shouldn't be given any benefit of the doubt. And I'm well known, here in TNP and elsewhere, for that position. And TNP's Admins extended me an invitation to partake in this process. They didn't have to do that, but they did. It shows me that they're willing to listen to people who see this as a pressing issue and want action.

I can't promise people what form this initiative will take, but I'm honoured I was asked to take part. And I'll certainly be raising many of the concerns that have come from this.

Admin could've done the right thing and banned fascists, and they haven't done it, instead hiding behind this community guidelines bollocks.

What happens, admin, if your CG volunteers all suggest banning fascism? Will you be making a new CG group to advise on the first one?

Or will you be coming up with a new excuse to allow fascists into TNP?

While I understand the guidelines are important, at the end of the day admins said

What that means is that we are not going to issue a blanket ban on simply holding any particular ideology or belief system.

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So regardless of what the guidelines say, if someone comes along and says "hi I'm fascists" but doesn't break any rules, they can stay.

I'm uncomfortable with that. A nice facsist running among us to spread cookies and hate?

Prydania:

People try to insist that it and communism are equally deplorable, but that's not really accurate. I'm no communist, and I'm not out to defend communist regimes that have killed millions of people, but on an ideological level communism is about wealth redistribution and a reorganization of who runs the economy. One can be a communist and not believe in gulags, political purges, and state oppression. There are entire schools of communist ideology opposed to Stalinism and Maoism.
Fascism, on the other hand, has racial supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia baked in. You can be a moral communist. You cannot be a moral fascist. In my estimation.

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I know that you understand what the meaning of those terms are because of your professional training, but my problem with terms like "fascist" and "communist" is that with the polarisation of politics all over the world, a lot of people now dole out the labels like they are free candy. People on the extreme left side of the spectrum will readily label someone as "fascist" if that someone will disagree with them on a certain viewpoint; it can be said the same on the extreme right (but they use the term "communist"). Some of these terms even change depending on the time period or who you ask (cue in the variety of communist movements saying that theirs is the true communism and all the others are fake).

I think that action-based standards (based on what the individual did/say in the forum) is the minimum/basic of the standards. Now I think that if we, as a community, believe that we should go for a standard higher than that, we should be establishing a clear standard that is not based on labels or terms that people define or interpret differently. If the standard is unclear or vague, it is open for abuse.

Sarah:

A nice facsist running among us to spread cookies and hate?

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Spreading hate is an action.

I personally think the hyperfocus on fascism somewhat misses the point. Racism, homophobia, misogyny, ableism - yes, these are generally components of a fascist's worldview, but they are also not exactly uncommon among society as a whole. I don't think anybody here thinks it would be okay if our approach was to ban self-identified fascists but not ban someone who identified as not-a-fascist but promoted RL eugenics or started slinging racial slurs. It doesn't matter what's in your inner heart; these things aren't cool regardless of who says them.

I personally think it's significant that none of the admins - all of whom have been playing NS for years and some for over fifteen years - feel confident that we could adequately define fascism in a way that ensures a ban does exactly what the people (which people?) want. You want someone to be banned if they say "I'm a fascist", but Gorundu does not - clearly there is no answer that will satisfy everybody. Heck, there are plenty of people (myself included) who think Trump was, if not a full-blown fascist, at least very close to being one. Does that mean that anyone who voted for him should be banned from TNP for supporting fascism? Or do we first put it up for majority vote, to see if TNP more broadly shares my view? (Of course, both stating you're a fascist and voting for trump IRL are actions, so the task force can absolutely consider if either or both of them are worthy of a ban - the point is that once you drill down to specifics, more and more disagreement will arise. We fully expect there to be robust debate about what makes it into the final draft.)

If it seems easy to ban fascism to anyone, it's because they're not putting enough work into the exercise of how do we actually implement that? I think identifying those harmful things that frequently come along when somebody is a fascist and banning those is the only path that addresses the actual risks and harms facing the community and its members while not opening the door to mob justice.

Here's how you implement it: announce a ban on fascists in TNP. Ban Whole India for being a fascist and for saying as much. Ban anyone who joins TNP who has unironically said "I am a fascist".

It's really quite simple and the fact that admin refuses to do this continues to concern and bemuse many of us. TNP is going to start bleeding active and contributing people, all because admin - most of whom aren't active or contributing themselves - can't do the bare minimum to keep our community safe.

I agree with MJ here.

The issue of fascists being allowed to exist in TNP is not a new one. I've encountered it before. The only difference this time is that the public has noticed it, likely because this particular fascist is well known and somehow gained citizenship. I've had to tell people from other major regions, while serving on the Executive Council, that we weren't able to ban known, open, and toxic fascists on our RMB because they hadn't "broken the rules yet." It's not a good look for us, and it's the one thing that has made me come close to leaving TNP for good.

And, Prydania is also correct. You can't be a moral fascist. In fact, knowingly permitting openly fascist individuals to infringe on our community, isn't protecting the fascist's rights, it is violating the rights of our citizens. The entire premise that a fascist who hasn't "broken the rules" yet is harmless, is false. Fascists view us as subhuman. They would advocate for our deaths. They revel in the atrocities of Nazis. By allowing these fascists to stay, for however long, you're telling those who have or would suffer at the hands of fascists that their safety and dignity as human beings is less important.

I'd also like to note that nobody is advocating for people to be banned without any evidence. In the case of Whole India, there is plenty of evidence, most of which is recent even. All I want is an admin team that is willing to act when presented with evidence - not that much to ask, in my opinion. It should be what an administration team does when presented with credible evidence, not bend over backwards and talk about how it is unreasonable to blanket ban an entire idealogy. Quite frankly I'm incredibly dissapointed but in all honesty not surprised by this underwhelming response. Lastly, how am I supposed to trust that anyone that gets appointed to the moderation team actually make a difference, when the existing members are failing to act on known community threats? Simply adding new members to the team and calling it good would be providing them a canoe and telling to take it upstream without giving them a paddle to accomplish this task.

Nimarya:

I agree with MJ here.

The issue of fascists being allowed to exist in TNP is not a new one. I've encountered it before. The only difference this time is that the public has noticed it, likely because this particular fascist is well known and somehow gained citizenship. I've had to tell people from other major regions, while serving on the Executive Council, that we weren't able to ban known, open, and toxic fascists on our RMB because they hadn't "broken the rules yet." It's not a good look for us, and it's the one thing that has made me come close to leaving TNP for good.

And, Prydania is also correct. You can't be a moral fascist. In fact, knowingly permitting openly fascist individuals to infringe on our community, isn't protecting the fascist's rights, it is violating the rights of our citizens. The entire premise that a fascist who hasn't "broken the rules" yet is harmless, is false. Fascists view us as subhuman. They would advocate for our deaths. They revel in the atrocities of Nazis. By allowing these fascists to stay, for however long, you're telling those who have or would suffer at the hands of fascists that their safety and dignity as human beings is less important.

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"Toxic" is a word that gets thrown around a lot at the moment, and I have found it to be one whose meaning is difficult to pin down. It seems to depend a lot on the speaker and the context, and not everything that gets called toxic is actually something that merits a ban. So I don't really know what you mean when you say they were "being toxic" on the RMB. I'm also not clear on whether the behavior you are referencing was or should have been handled by game administration as opposed to forum administration. What I can say is that the admin team has encountered situations where no single action taken by an individual was a violation of any rules, but in aggregate they were being divisive, inflammatory, and were driving people away. In such circumstances we have stepped in and will continue to do so. Context will drive the severity and rapidity of that response - someone trying to skirt under the line of explicit racial slurs gets a much, much faster banhammer than two people constantly sniping at one another over a disagreement in the RA.

As to your second paragraph, whether someone can be a moral fascist genuinely depends on how you define fascism. If you define fascists as those who revel in Nazi atrocities and advocate for the deaths of whole groups of people, then yes, you're right - you cannot be moral and hold those viewpoints, and you cannot hold those viewpoints and be a member of this community. But that's not the majority definition of fascism - I'm not sure that there is a majority definition, even among experts in the field. The Wikipedia page alone starts by saying, "What constitutes a definition of fascism and fascist governments has been a complicated and highly disputed subject" and goes on to list fourteen definitions from different scholars (as well as two by fascists and a handful by marxists). The very first definition, from Umberto Eco, itself lists fourteen broad properties around any of which a fascist system can develop. Some of them (e.g., Machismo) are more inherently existentially harmful to our community than others (e.g., The Cult of Tradition).

I am seeing fear from a lot of people that when we say we won't ban an ideology and that a debate is the best way to respond to a bad idea, what that means in practice is that we will allow people to calmly and civilly assert that (minority group) is subhuman and should be exterminated. This is not the case. There is no way to advocate such beliefs without harming members of our community, and so there will be no way to do so that will be allowed. What we are leaving open is space to discuss and debate what might be considered the economic or political structures that are generally endorsed as part of fascist ideology, and allowing for the possibility that someone might identify as a fascist because they support a particularly authoritarian or totalitarian system of government without adopting or advocating the hateful social elements. Is it ignorant to identify that way? Sure, probably. But ignorance decoupled from malice can be addressed.

Rom:

I'd also like to note that nobody is advocating for people to be banned without any evidence. In the case of Whole India, there is plenty of evidence, most of which is recent even. All I want is an admin team that is willing to act when presented with evidence - not that much to ask, in my opinion. It should be what an administration team does when presented with credible evidence, not bend over backwards and talk about how it is unreasonable to blanket ban an entire idealogy. Quite frankly I'm incredibly dissapointed but in all honesty not surprised by this underwhelming response. Lastly, how am I supposed to trust that anyone that gets appointed to the moderation team actually make a difference, when the existing members are failing to act on known community threats? Simply adding new members to the team and calling it good would be providing them a canoe and telling to take it upstream without giving them a paddle to accomplish this task.

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I am not going to comment on Whole India, because neither this thread nor our response is about any specific individual - at least, I hope it's not! I would hate to think that the passion and thought people have brought to this topic (here and in other avenues) are really just about getting one particular individual banned, nor that if we did so they would suddenly not care if we didn't address the danger more broadly.

But on the general question of admin action, we do investigate all reports that are brought to us. Those investigations frequently take longer than people would like, for a number of reasons, which include our own schedules, the need to validate any evidence we are given, and, often, the need to get clarification or additional information on various aspects (which naturally depends on the availability of other parties). We have been badly burned before by not sufficiently questioning a source we believed to be reliable, and dealt with the fallout of that for a long time. Outside of extraordinary circumstances, we must investigate before responding. I understand that it is not very satisfying to file a report and not know what is happening behind the scenes, and I empathize with the frustration on that front.

I am not sure where the idea of appointing new people to the moderation team came from - I may have missed it if it was raised in another post. If you are referring to the group that will be drafting the community guidelines, the members of that team will not be added as moderators or admins, were not chosen for their ability or desire to perform that role, and will not be tasked with enforcing the rules unless they are separately added as moderators at a later time. The question is really whether you believe that the existing mods and admins will in fact enforce the code of conduct that we have both said we need and picked a group to create. I don't think there's much more I can say that will sway your answer to that question for or against.

Eluvatar:

Anybody who is interested in nominating themselves or another community member to the group may do so by posting one of the following submissions in this subforum. Submissions will be visible only to the poster and the admin team - not to other members of the forum.

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We will be starting this process soon, and I don't imagine we will have much time for any submissions made after tomorrow.

SillyString:

the economic or political structures that are generally endorsed as part of fascist ideology

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Are you willing to ban people who say I- as a Jewish person- should be dispossessed of my income and possessions? That's your economic structure of fascism. Are you willing to come down on someone saying something akin to that?
You can't separate fascism's policies towards they consider subhuman from the "rest" of the ideology because the "rest" is still informed by that policy.

SillyString:

If you define fascists as those who revel in Nazi atrocities and advocate for the deaths of whole groups of people, then yes, you're right - you cannot be moral and hold those viewpoints, and you cannot hold those viewpoints and be a member of this community. But that's not the majority definition of fascism - I'm not sure that there is a majority definition, even among experts in the field. The Wikipedia page alone starts by saying, "What constitutes a definition of fascism and fascist governments has been a complicated and highly disputed subject" and goes on to list fourteen definitions from different scholars (as well as two by fascists and a handful by marxists). The very first definition, from Umberto Eco, itself lists fourteen broad properties around any of which a fascist system can develop. Some of them (e.g., Machismo) are more inherently existentially harmful to our community than others (e.g., The Cult of Tradition).

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You're both right and wrong here. Academically you're right, there is no universal definition of fascism. And I've personally dealt with a few self-described fascists as a RP mod here who identify as fascists but not the "harmful social elements." The thing they use to justify their ideologies is the fact that pre-Nazi Italian fascism was not inherently racist. It was about political and economic control. A dictatorship, contempt for democracy, but not racist. There's a problem with that though...

The Italian Racial Laws of 1938 incorporated Nazi racial policies into Italian Fascist ideology. So people who try to hold up Mussolini/Italy as an example as non-racist fascism are simply incorrect.

What that has to do with the matter at hand is that these days the distinctions between Nazism and Fascism are minuscule to non-existent. Yes, academics are still debating about fascism's definitions historically. Practically-speaking all modern day expressions of fascism have inherited Mussolini's 1938 capitulation and are openly racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, homophobic and transphobic. You simply cannot find an openly fascist political group today that is not openly calling for the suppression, expulsion, or murder of those deemed subhuman.

Prydania:

Are you willing to ban people who say I- as a Jewish person- should be dispossessed of my income and possessions? That's your economic structure of fascism. Are you willing to come down on someone saying something akin to that?
You can't separate fascism's policies towards they consider subhuman from the "rest" of the ideology because the "rest" is still informed by that policy.

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I can't speak for the admin team (meaning that I haven't asked anyone else what they think, and not that the answer is no), but I would certainly view someone saying either that you specifically or that Jewish people in general should be dispossessed as a form of hate speech (for lack of a better and more specific word at the top of my brain). It is not a topic about which reasonable people can disagree nor one which can or should be debated on any TNP properties.

Prydania:

You're both right and wrong here. Academically you're right, there is no universal definition of fascism. And I've personally dealt with a few self-described fascists as a RP mod here who identify as fascists but not the "harmful social elements." The thing they use to justify their ideologies is the fact that pre-Nazi Italian fascism was not inherently racist. It was about political and economic control. A dictatorship, contempt for democracy, but not racist. There's a problem with that though...

The Italian Racial Laws of 1938 incorporated Nazi racial policies into Italian Fascist ideology. So people who try to hold up Mussolini/Italy as an example as non-racist fascism are simply incorrect.

What that has to do with the matter at hand is that these days the distinctions between Nazism and Fascism are minuscule to non-existent. Yes, academics are still debating about fascism's definitions historically. Practically-speaking all modern day expressions of fascism have inherited Mussolini's 1938 capitulation and are openly racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, homophobic and transphobic. You simply cannot find an openly fascist political group today that is not openly calling for the suppression, expulsion, or murder of those deemed subhuman.

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Yup, I agree with you on that one, and I for one would be in favor of taking a pretty hard line on association with problematic RL groups - explicitly fascist or otherwise, though of course I would expect disagreement over where the line is drawn on just how problematic counts. (Edit: Not specifically disagreement between you and me - just disagreement in general.)

I also agree with you about the racial elements of Italian fascism, and arguments otherwise strike me as akin to arguing that the American civil war was not about slavery despite extensive documentation to the contrary. Wishful thinking and an aversion to confronting history at best. What I'm not convinced of is that such arguments about those things ought to be banned. Even when they don't convince the person positing the wrong idea (which I guess is probably pretty often), I do think there are lots of people who are fuzzy enough on the historical details that they might not really know what is true, and if they observe a debate where evidence is laid out, can be persuaded.

I think there's also something to be said for using RP to explore, hm, the necessity of that racist history? By which I mean that I think it can be true that fascism has always gone hand-in-hand with racism and it can also be true that it didn't have to do so, it's just that some people suck and a lot of history sucks and the way fascism arose it was linked with racist beliefs at the same time and because of how things played out it has gotten more and more entrenched with the worst kind of bigotry as time has passed... but that through RP, someone can kind of delve into what a fascist system might look like if it really was decoupled from hate, if that's even possible. Maybe it's better to describe that sort of thing as more generically totalitarian or authoritarian RP and not fascist and set it aside from this discussion, but definitions can be... blurry.

We may be straying a little bit from the broader point and I hate to derail the thread but I would be happy to continue this via PM if you would like! There are definitely elements to what you're asking that are appropriate for discussing the community guidelines, as well, if you'd like to bring them up in that setting - defining the line of what's up for debate and what isn't is absolutely going to be a part of drafting.

I wanna thank @SillyString for her response. I may have been a bit heated when I wrote the post she quoted, and I'm unsure if that came through. I apologize for that. So I want to thank her for the comprehensive reply.

Onto a specific part of that...

SillyString:

I think there's also something to be said for using RP to explore, hm, the necessity of that racist history? By which I mean that I think it can be true that fascism has always gone hand-in-hand with racism and it can also be true that it didn't have to do so, it's just that some people suck and a lot of history sucks and the way fascism arose it was linked with racist beliefs at the same time and because of how things played out it has gotten more and more entrenched with the worst kind of bigotry as time has passed... but that through RP, someone can kind of delve into what a fascist system might look like if it really was decoupled from hate, if that's even possible. Maybe it's better to describe that sort of thing as more generically totalitarian or authoritarian RP and not fascist and set it aside from this discussion, but definitions can be... blurry.

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Fascism is something we've had to deal with for as long as I've been a RP moderator. Longer even, as I remember Ninhundland being an issue before I joined the RP mod team.

It's a complicated situation. At one point our position was "RP fascism is ok, real life fascism isn't."
So you could RP a fascist government but if you started saying crap like "gas the Jews" or "kill the degenerates" then you'd get a vacation from the RP server.

The problem we ran into was two-fold. The first was people abusing our standards to just introduce flags and emblems that used Nazi symbolism without RP context and the second was that people used their nations as covers for abhorrent real life political views.
You might ask how we could tell...the answer is they weren't very good at what they were obviously trying to do.
It got so bad that even RMB RP mods were referring to Strangereal as "a fascist swamp."

Our solution was a harder line version of our previous approach. We didn't feel comfortable banning RP fascism, as a good writer could use it to tell some very compelling stories.
So we retained the "RP fascism is fine, OOC fascism isn't" but implemented some higher standards.
The first was that no real life fascist regime's emblems could be used.
Prydania itself has had two fascist periods in its history, but I've taken great care to avoid using symbolism associated with RL fascist or Nazi movements. It's a standard held across TNP RP settings.

Secondly we put in higher standards for stories that deal with genocide, oppression, marginalization, forced population relocation, etc... You can RP these things in TNP RP, but if you're doing it just to be edgy, or just to use bad RP to cover for RL racist ideology then you're going to have a bad time.

All of this is to give examples of how we've handled this issue in the RP section of the community and to illustrate that your example is something that would be wholly welcome in RP.
If someone wished to tell that story they could.

I think we are generally of the same mind, then - what you are describing sounds extremely reasonable to me, and I am 100% on board with banning fascist imagery, the glorification of fascist and nazi history, and advocacy of genocide etc.

This is a difficult but necessary topic to wrestle with and I don't blame you one bit for getting heated (though I actually did not notice so no apology necessary!). It is absolutely true that the balance we are trying to strike sounds a heck of a lot like excuses used to not ban hateful views or protect communities, and to allow "debates" about whether various marginalized groups are real or should be allowed to exist. I completely understand why folks were (and probably still are) wary of our attempt to draw a line between belief and behavior, and why some of the phrasing in our response didn't land for some people in quite the way we meant. That's part of why I felt it was important to continue to respond myself to this thread, as an admin but not speaking for the entire team, to give some additional clarification where it will help.

I find the petition to be easier said than done.

Which, is, of course, why people are signing on with much enthusiasm. It's someone else's problem to fix, they can just look like the very smart and very superior party by declaring it a problem, without, you know, coming up with a viable solution.