The Nazi Flashbang Moment

About a week ago, we had a rather nasty new experience. We are admins in a middle-sized furry community on Telegram, and we had a new member join, one whose biography mentioned they "supports the AfD" - the reaction that the group's admins had, however, was far from unanimous, and made me realize that there is such as a thing as an "Ideology flashbang effect".

For those not in the know, the AfD is Germany's far-right party, with some rather nasty program points especially when it comes to same-sex marriage, LGBTQ+, and such. And with our community being a rather large percentage LGBTQ and similar, one mod took the quick decision to immediatley kick this member.

The Nazi Bar

This sort of defensive behaviour is commonly described by the "Nazi Bar Problem", and I agree with it. Right-Wingers sneak in by first seeming innocuous and moderate about their ideas, will try to get their hooks in, and then slowly build up from there. Fending off these initial "probing" people prevents more from coming around later, not to mention it keeps the people of the community itself safer, especially those whose existence would be targeted by the AfD program.

Four out of seven moderators approved this kick, with two withholding. One, however, started getting making some level of drama, saying that "We didn't let the person talk!", and we "banned them just because of their political stance". All arguments in favour of being more moderate, more accepting and more "drama-free" in the community.

These are surface-level correct things to note, but they do not have to apply to private communities. When you run a Community, you get to set the rules. And the Paradox Of Tolerance is a bitch, because you have to intentionally limit your tolerance to those within the social contract that also practice tolerance, else the intolerant have the unfair advantage of your own tolerance. The AfD has broken, and intends to further break, aspects of the social contract.

All this to say: Feel free to kick nazis. Healthy debate is incredibly important, but safe spaces even more so, especially as the political climate is worsening. Stay polite, stay civil, face the enemy with words when possible, but also feel free to keep your home safe, and don't give in to the Paradox Of Tolerance.

Ideological Flashbangs

However... This is not what happened in that group. In fact, what did happen is that this one moderator kept talking, pushing their tolerant and "moderate" approach... And they got through with it. Other moderators grew more silent on the matter, and the owner ended up conceding to the loud one, sending an apology and invitation to the kicked person. The eventual balance was found to be a blanket-ban of any and all "politics, religion, etc.", as you can see here:

It was only in the aftermath of this, while talking to the moderator that had performed the kick, that I realized that it was not just me who was dissatisfied with this outcome - at least three moderators in the group didn't like this conceding, but had not spoken up (much) during the debate. And now that the heat had cooled down, the decision had also been made.

What has happened there is something I would call an "Ideological Flashbang". The very fact that this one moderator spoke up so suddenly, so strongly, with an unexpected opinion, was enough to stun the other moderators - me included! - into loosing our bearings and loosing track of what the group as a whole was. Because we were stunned, we did not speak up, and because we did not see others speak up, so we collectively ended up thinking we were in the minority with our complaints, which was absolutely not the case. The moderator gained an unexpected amount of say simply by shocking the others enough. We're now regrouping, figuring out who actually is on what side, and what to do next.

I think this is something that can happen // is happening a lot, in lots of little groups, unseen but persistent, aiding in the degradation of safe spaces where people driven by anger can more easily out-shout people driven by care. These places are slowly torn down by a small handful of loud people whose extremism is normalized, targeting a small handful of people whose existence is extremized, and the larger rest of people unable to tell the difference.

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.""

• Isaac Asimov

What I find most annoying is that we never ran a community poll. All of this discussion was only handled between a few moderators, in a group of over 700 people. A public poll would've just given us a more objective measure of what the group wants, and that never happened because decisions were made so hastily due to the heat of the moment nature of all this.

Be very careful of such flashbang moments as politics continue to sharpen. Don't take for granted that your spaces remain safe and comfortable - make sure to maintain and heal them yourselves! For us, this all came out of left field and led to a precedent that I will be very cautious about repeating... And it's also quite exhausting, to deal with the aftermath of all this.

Talking to them

Funnily enough - We did actually talk to the person in question a bit, and the experience was... Odd. This was the first time talking to someone of that... Political inclination, and so I used the "I am indecisive, could you help me" tactic to get them to explain, rather than to upfront say "Hey, I disagree, prove why you think that". I think tactics like that help in getting the other person to voluntarily talk, which might lead to them reflecting on things better...?

But after running through it a - I'm not convinced. The person in question is themselves a bisexual queer furry and, for example, explained that they are voting for the AfD - the party that actively wants to get rid of same-sex marriage again - because... Migrants are homophobic? Oh, and they admitted they would have voted for Trump, someone I will nowadays freely compare to literally being modern-day Hitler but with an AI eunoch attached.

By the way, here's a fun fact: 99.8% of German citizens were not considered to have commit a violent crime. For migrants, this number is 99.4%. Now, technically you can say that migrants have double the number of incidents, but ... The absolute percentages are still small, and this effect might come purely from the fact that migrants often end up in poorer living conditions due to e.g. how they are integrated into society. Source is here (but in German, sorry). Do we want to condem and judge 99.4% because of the troublesome 0.6%?

They also wanted to be able to ... Complain about politicians? I don't know about you, but Germany ranks as one of the more free-speech positive countries, and I think we're doing pretty good here...?

Around this time we also talked to a different pro-AfD furry we had bumped into a few weeks earlier - out of a similar interest in making them think about their own arguments a bit. This furry definitely was further along the "pipeline", because even just lightly grazing the topic made them blurt out a rather lengthy wall of text out of... Essentially nowhere?

Talking to them was ... More interesting, because we almost didn't need to bring any arguments against their own thesis. They brought out confusing bangers such as "The AfD doesn't care who you go into bed with", immediately followed by "We should enforce the classical family image of father, mother, kids, because birth rates in Germany are low" ((something that has much more to do with inflation and cost-of-living issues making it simply not viable for many to have kids)). They also want to "ban puberty blockers" - a thing that helps trans kids have more time deciding about what they want before anything more permanent needs to be done - because they want to "reduce the amount of self-mutilation". And finally - all they really want is for the over-representation of LGBTQ+ characters in video games to please stop :P

Especially the last part is really rather funny to me because games are heavily driven by economic incentives, meaning game companies will try to do what is most popular and sells well, so ... That actually is a moderately good indicator of what the general population wants? But uh, sure.

The funniest thing happened after we brought up some polite counter-arguments to what they said, formulated in the "I'm not sure, I found number XXX which doesn't like up with what you said, do you maybe have better numbers for your argument to explain?" bait. Because... They just immediately said "Oh I wasn't trying to convince you of anything, haha", and immediately dropped any and all of the arguments without providing further backing evidence.

"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

These arguments are always surface level, they always sound kinda sensible, until you go and write a blog post about them and, in reflection, realize just how stupid they really are. And they will try to lay down a ton of stuff onto you so you just swallow it, but the moment you bring numbers and sources to the table ... Suddenly things go oddly quiet and they swap to other topics...?

So, have a list of good Anti-Nazi sources ((to be updated, maybe!)):

• https://www.volksverpetzer.de/
• https://afdnee.de/

Conclusions

Shit is going down, right now, in a lot of areas. I ... Wish it weren't so. But, things are happening, and we gotta keep our places, our homes and families and friends, safe.

Stay vigilant out there. We do think that violent protest does indeed just lead to more extremism on both sides of the debate, but at the same time always feel free to call out bullshit and keep your own spaces clean and safe and free. It does mean something. Every little act of kindness and empathy and care, every Nazi punched, every tear shed and every brushstroke on the canvas build up our side of the story, our side of history, and pave the road to a better future. I won't lie - I don't know if that future will come soon. But it will come.

After reading this, I recommend watching Exurb1a's video dealing with... These feelings. Optimistic nihilism. Things going to shit. It helps, trust me.

Addendum

Do not listen to those that preach "let's just keep it no politics". Hobbies can be political. Someone's very existence can be political. The very act of saying "no politics" can erase who or how someone is. It's not a safe middle ground. It's a treacherous path that can be abused.

What happens when transsexuality becomes political. Or homosexuality. Do we stop talking about that, too?

Do not stop talking politics. Keep the fight up. Someone's very life - your own - could one day become a political issue.

What the Nazi Bar Story doesn't mention

With a bit of time thinking about all of this, there's one thing that I realized... The Nazi Bar story, when you first read it, sounds like it's all this organized movement. A clever, intriguing plan that is designed to chip away at you.

But that's not the case. In fact, I ... Don't think there is any plan here, at all.

The first person that introduces the initial nazi friend... They might be normal. Friendly, even. Just a bit ... Blind, to politics. They genuinely mean no harm, they simply don't see what their friend is doing and don't understand why you are upset at it.

The friend they introduce might be pretty normal, too. A little more involved in the party but perhaps in an innocuous way, for some small reason. They're a bit more malicious, but... More in that intentionally-ignorant, "The leopards won't eat my face" way.

And now they will introduce someone that you really don't want in your group - but if you then speak out, now the first two friends will be upset and push back. And it's painful, because you might still be good friends with the first one, and they ... Might still just not get it.

It's... Not a plan. It just happens. It's a slow gradient of extremism that is a natural emergent property of social ties. And the problem is that it compresses the opposing, left-wing//progressive gradients - it pushes and pushes on how far you will let it go before you speak up, and depending on how far they pushed and how you react they can then say "AHA! So you are the extreme one here!".

We let up the pressure, we all began to tolerate more - maybe tolerate a bit too much. They managed to normalize their hate so that resistance against the hate is no longer normal. They took the paradox of tolerance and flipped it on its head, weaponized it by saying "Youuu can't resiiist meee, you can't resiistt mee - because then you'd be the bad one".

Not because our views are extreme. But because they pushed and compressed the space we have enough that we simply have to react like this to carve out space for ourselves.

Better to start carving early, while we have our space.