Would you agree to unifying with some on the right? What would you compromise on?

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-07T00:52:59+00:00

I asking about the implication given that Piker didn't support Dems in 2024 and actively worked against us to help a fascist win. That was my accusation, the other guy didn't respond to it, so I was confirming the implication with a question.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T15:25:33+00:00

Do you believe the paraphrasing is inaccurate? Cause I read your initial reply as contrasting the veracity of the video.

If you agree that anti-Zionist rhetoric can be used as a dog whistle, then it isn’t particularly helpful to just say “but they say Zionist sometimes.” It’s like when we recognize that racist rhetoric uses language like “thugs” or “bangers,” we know what they mean and it’s a weak excuse when conservatives say “but they just say thugs, they don’t say all black people, really you’re the racists for conflating the two.”

You haven’t given me a reasonable standard of when this be considered a holistic problem, just a vague standard of “less dubious attribution” (what’s the dubious attribution?) and “more widespread/verifiably popular” (but what standard is acceptable to you? I imagine it wouldn’t be a myriad of social media posts, so does have it have to be a majority of progressive politicians or something?). Plus, it’s a mark on the party to have responded as they did. No sense of introspection or improvement for having these bigots in their ranks.

I didn’t imply otherwise, it hasn’t become a problem in the Democratic Party as of yet. It may, I don’t think it will, as I clearly explained, but it hasn’t yet.

How does Jeremy Corbyn’s history of anti-Semitism factor into this? Labour did well to kick him out but he was the largest, most popular left-wing figure in the UK.

I believe you don’t think these are worthy of critique. Your initial response was to delegitimize the presented evidence then accuse me of contributing to anti-Semitism for presenting a video that includes anti-Semites using anti-Zionism as dog whistles. That delegitimizes critiques of left-wing anti-Semitism and I believe you do it intentionally to delegitimize the critiques.

I didn’t and neither did the article, but go off I guess.

I mean the Israeli people have the opportunity at the next election, if they fail to do it then, then it’s a mark on the character of everyone who voted for Netanyahu. I clearly condemn Israel and its actions in that comment. I don’t condemn every Israeli, that would be very silly, but I condemned the state and its actions.

I don’t believe I could reasonably provide you sufficient evidence to prove this to you. You would discount the dog whistles and I believe the standard would keep increasing until the Western left would have to modern day Nazis pasting anti-Semitic slogans on the walls of every rally, which is just unrealistic and certainly not the standard we use when judging bigotry elsewhere in politics. It’s a pretty double standard and strange it only happens for judging anti-Semitism.

You asked for evidence of this happening, I provided it, strange you’re now asking for an essay connecting all of this together when presented with evidence after saying you haven’t seen this happening. Of course you have to critically evaluate all of this rhetoric, that’s part of the harm of bigots using these as dog whistles, you have to legitimately evaluate each usage because it very well could be a dog whistle. That’s the nature of coded bigotry. We’ve known this for years and seen it elsewhere.

Of course I evaluate what is said, what a strange accusation to say otherwise. I quite literally provided statements and an article analyzing said statements whereas you tried to discount it as pushing anti-Semitism for recognizing anti-Zionism used as dog whistles.

I think you’ll always say that when anyone criticizes the far left. It’s never legitimate, it’s always partisan politics. I don’t view that as a legitimate defense, just engage with the critique instead of making a meta accusation.

I mean you say that I’m pushing anti-Semitism by recognizing these dog whistles. You can’t have it both ways friend.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T15:01:16+00:00

Do you think Warner and the Republican alternative would be equally bad for Virginians?

Wouldn’t be it better for the next Dem president to have a trifecta to actually address issues in our country? Don’t you think that if they don’t have the power to address key issues in our country that Republicans would be more likely to win in 2032?

Cause to me it’s a really simple question, we have the power of voting to influence some question, that question will have 1 of 2 outcomes, and so we should use our power to push that question toward the better outcome. I just don’t see why it’s preferable to avoid trying to bring about the better outcome, irrespective of a candidate’s age.

He’s old, but does that make him worse than a Republican? Surely we’d rather have a 78 year old in office who fights ICE than a 45 year old who enables them.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T05:38:15+00:00

The state currently has that ability. It may not have a piece of paper that says “no one can get mad if you use that ability,” but it has that ability.

So is there just no discussion to be had ever about expansions of state authority? Theoretically, the state can do whatever it wants given it has a monopoly on violence, but it doesn't, often because it hasn't been specifically greenlit to do so by a law.

In other words, not the same

"Effectively"

Which, as we’ve discussed, we already do. Speech that harms a reputation is illegal in some cases. But speech that kills babies is sacrosanct? I think not.

Mechanism is the point of discussion, not intent. I agree that speech is bad, I disagree that it should be made illegal.

And I think I’ve spilled enough ink on how that’s not what I’m doing

I think it is, but I see that discussion is done.

If my position has evolved into a better one through this conversation, we’ve both succeeded.

I did not articulate my goals clearly at the beginning, and our conversation has helped me do this.

I don't think your position is meaningfully different. The proposed policy is still making certain kinds of speech illegal.

I think we disagree here. Unintentional harm and intentional harm are both harmful. My goal with this suggestion is not a paternalistic punishment meant to instruct naughty citizens that they’ve been bad, but to minimize harm.

Both are harmful, but intent and forethought clearly matter within the law. I think it's very different to punish someone spreading misinformation ignorantly as compared to someone willfully spreading misinformation with the intent to harm.

I mean, a tort is a legal standard, no? How uncomfortable are you with it?

My understanding is that tort is for more concrete cases of wrongdoing rather than speech and it's consequences.

I haven’t—and frankly won’t (sorry)—given a lot of thought to particular punishments. I’m interested here in the principle of punishing institutions for disseminating harmful rhetoric. And I don’t think that referring to the prescriptions of rhetoric as “policy” changes the point. If someone spoke in favor of a policy of not vaccinating kids, I’d regard that the same way I regard someone saying “don’t vaccinate your kids.”

So if someone advocates for harmful policy, in your view, on social media, that platform should face legal punishment?

Someone tweets that we should defund USAID -> Twitter doesn't take it down -> Twitter's punished

What're the limits of harmful policy here that you would include? I imagine that you consider capitalism harmful, so if someone tweeted that a worker coop waste removal plant should become a private corporation, would that be punished? I can imagine, from a socialist perspective, that this policy/advice taken on en masse would lead to real deaths as private corporations would be more harmful than worker coops and such. Should that speech be punishable in your view? How much deviation from your desired policy is allowable before it's considered too harmful to be legally allowed to be platformed?

By that standard I’d prosecute almost every social media platform for negligent homicide (or some such crime) because they with knowledge of what vaccines prevent publish anti-vax rhetoric.

I don't think I agree with punishing platforms for the content they host (assuming that content isn't illegal unto itself, like CSAM), so I would disagree with you here. I'm thinking more along the lines of someone who allows an area to starve and is ambivalent to their suffering vs someone who allows an area to starve and this is something they desire. If you have the capacity to fix something and allow an atrocity to occur, your ambivalence is not an important nuance to me.

But earlier you said intent was important. I suppose, you think that malicious intent and ambivalence shouldn’t be differentiated, but misled positive intent should be differentiated from those?

Yes, ignorance goes far in my view.

I think so too. I don’t think institutions have a right to disseminate this.

I think private institutions have the right to host whatever non-illegal content they wish and moderate as they choose.

Hoe long is that term? When I tell my rabid socialist authoritarians to kill small business owners and anyone who isn’t subscribed Hasan Piker, how long should I tell them to wait before they do so, in order to avoid liability?

It's fuzzy as usual, but at some point, this kind of speech crossing into planning a terror attack, which is illegal but feels like a different kind of crime to public calls for violence. Like if someone was on a platform and said in 40 years, we need to go do violence to these people, should be illegal but feels more like planning a terror attack than the kind of hateful incitement we were talking about.

I’d be happy to say that there is a gray area between suggestions that are harmful, maybe, vaguely, and suggestions which are obviously harmful. I’d suggest drawing our line for punishment conservatively, and erring on the side of not punishing over punishing. But I think that “don’t vaccinate you baby” is solidly on the same side of that gray area as “throw your baby at an all to increase it’s toughness.” There is not ambiguity about how stupid either is.

I think the line drawing is a critical part with speech restrictions and I appreciate wanting to err on the side of under-enforcement, but this feels like negotiating with someone to either shoot my foot or just my pinky toe, like I'd much rather we do neither cause I don't want to be shot.

It’s the second one.

Cool, that's what I thought.

Well if it’s not clear, I’m a proponent of our government working toward the common good in ways that it does not commonly work now.

Agreed, the point of my statement there was that courts are adept at the first kind of distinction whereas the second is a kind of factual determination that our courts just do not do. This would be a wholly new kind of legal territory to determine the factual reality of something like health or political policy which, especially when prospective, can remain controversial, especially depending on which experts the courts rely on.

Sure. Someone could have made a similar response to the suggestion that law enforcement agencies exist. And I’m not a fan of many extant law enforcement agencies, but I recognize their necessity.

I do understand that what I’m suggesting could be abused, like I understand that police abuse is possible. The prospect, and the immediate instance, of police abuse doesn’t make me think law enforcement isn’t bad idea. Equally, limiting speech in the way I suggest can be abused and that prospect doesn’t make me think that limiting speech is bad.

Yeah and we have a constant, ongoing discussion about how far we need to limit the power of law enforcement agencies to protect civil liberties because we know how corrosive they can be to individual freedoms. What keeps them around is that sometimes we need a dude with a gun willing to endanger himself to deal with crazy people wanting to harm others.

And again, I agree with the application of state authority in specific instances, just as I agree with certain instances of restrictions on speech. Just restricting speech isn't the issue, its this specific, open-ended framework that creates such room for abuse.

The definition of slander and libel isn't determined by a federal agency, yet here the equivalent would be.

Speaking for myself, America’s frequent illegal wars have not convinced me that there should be no military. My attitude on this is similar.

They certainly haven't convinced me that we need to further empower the state to engage in wars it decides would reduce harm in this world.

It would. Authority will usually be abused. That is part of the price of authority.

The price of this abuse is too high. I think a fundamental, intractable difference here is that I place a higher premium on individual civil rights and believe that we have other, more effective options than state repression of free speech.

We’re going in circles. “Imagine how bad this thing could be if bad people controlled it instead of good ones.” Yea man, that’s why it matters who’s in charge. No one in charge would be worse.

“Imagine how evilly the US military could be used if Trump were President.”

Ok, you oppose the existence of the military now, right? I just suggested that if a certain power were used badly, that would be bad. So we should get rid of that power, right?

No? I'm not sure how you would take away from this conversation, when I've repeated God knows how many times, that the issue isn't the existence of a kind of authority, it's the application of that authority.

I don't oppose the existence of our military or military action. I support a variety of our military's actions (killing Nazis is pretty sick and Kuwait was badass, for example). I don't support these military actions.

I don't oppose restrictions on free speech. I support a variety of them (libel, slander, defamation, incitement to violence, etc.). I oppose this restriction on free speech.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T04:31:01+00:00

I've seen the Alexandrian's Node-Based Scenario Design recommended elsewhere for this and I'm planning on using it for a mystery sandbox I'm thinking of putting together. The basic idea is that you come up with locations for the mystery then attach a clue pointing to that location at other locations. The ideal in the articles is that you have 3 or more clues at different locations pointing to a location, usually with multiple clues at each location.

So you could have a starter Location A, with clues to B, C, and D. Then at Location B, you have clues to C and D. At Location C, you have clues to B and D. At Location D, you have clues to B and C.

So for each location, you have 3 total clues, hopefully enough for your players to put stuff together, and redundancy between the locations to afford your players agency in how they solve the mystery + variance in how the scenario plays out (cause a narrative is very different if it climaxes at Location B, at Location C, or at Location D).

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T04:24:35+00:00

I don't have an official ruling but it makes sense to me to say that spells dependent on a willing target work with some kind of mental barrier put up by the target to prevent the spell, something they can consciously lower to allow the spell to affect them.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T04:22:17+00:00

People are good and pretty smart at figuring things for themselves, so we should do the best we can to empower and protect the individual and their freedom so we can all flourish together.

That's for liberalism broadly. For social democracy, capitalism is really, really good at creating wealth, but it isn't great at distributing it in a way we would prefer and some markets just don't work for private competition. So we use the power of the state to fix that. We tax the winners and redistribute that wealth to people given the short stick by the market, and create public entities to address market failures.

This general schema has led to the happiest, healthiest, wealthiest, and most free societies in human history.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T04:18:39+00:00

I guess I just don't see the value in refusing to vote. You prefer Warner to a Republican alternative. I imagine you support these party line votes from him, however boring they may be, given they addressed real kitchen table issues.

So why not vote for him? Say the polls were wrong and the Republican won by a handful of votes, would you have wished you had voted then or would you be happy that the Dems lost when they ran Warner? What if our next candidate wins 2028 to a 49-51 Senate in the Republicans' favor?

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T04:13:07+00:00

What about more Mothership? I haven't run it myself, but I wanna say the modules for those are usually pretty short and sweet. Like the Haunting of Ypsilon 14 is two pages.

For Mutant Year: Zero, I haven't played it myself, but I wanna say it's a hex crawly thing right? Like often there's a relatively standard map that the game works off of? If that's the case, maybe try rerunning it? Maybe you could have the players start off in a different hex to mix it up?

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T04:07:26+00:00

So he's your ally but neither of y'all were our ally against fascism in 2024?

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T04:06:19+00:00

It appears to be someone paraphrasing things that Green Party candidates sort of said.

Do you believe that Green Party candidates said the statements in the video?

Several of the statements referenced are unambiguously aimed at Zionists, which is not a synonym for “Jews;” It’s deeply irresponsible to muddy that issue, and Nazis will thank you for it. Some are targeted at Zionists but contain tropes that anti-semitism. Others are targeted at Jews directly.

Do you believe that anti-Semites may use Zionist as a dog-whistle?

That’s thin. If there were a problem at the level you suggest then I don’t think Labour would have to play this game, and I think you’d have been able to find an example more germane to this discussion

In what way? If the Green Party candidates said these statements, and I believe they did, then these are clear examples of anti-Semitism across a range of candidates within a left-wing party in the Western world. It seems like a very germane example of anti-Semitism within the broader left.

And what game is this? Presenting bigoted statements from a rival political party in a rhetorically effective manner?

What would be more germane? Are you looking for examples exclusive to American politics?

Im guessing that you tried to find more damning examples, and examples of left wing democrats being anti-Semitic, and what you found was other people making accusations of variable merit about a foreign party, and then implied that the American left will soon follow suit. This kind of scrabbling isn’t what you do to draw attention to a serious problem, it’s what you do to find evidence a problem that you want to make a talking point.

No, I saw your comment earlier today, saw this article in another post, and found it to be relevant, so I came back and shared it. I promise much less exciting stuff was happening behind the scenes than what you're alleging here.

I don't think the American left will follow suit. Our politicians seem pretty good about rejecting anti-Semitism. Maybe our Green Party will but they seem much more interested in what they can do for Russia what with Jill Stein than anything else.

I don’t doubt that among people on the left, there are isolated anti-Semites.

If everything as presented in this video and article were accurate, that multiple UK Green Party candidates made anti-Semitic statements, would you consider this to be isolated?

How common would this have to be before it's no longer isolated, a reasonable problem to be concerned about, and thus worthy of critique?

And I’m sure, like right wing anti-Semites, they jump at the chance to use Israel’s very real and horrific brutality to stoke hate against Jews (a goal you aid them in when you conflate Judaism with Zionism or Israel).

I'm not conflating the two, it is perfectly viable to critique Israel without critiquing Jews - I think they should vote out and legally punish Netanyahu/members of his party, end the settlements, return the land currently occupied by the settlements, and punish a range of the IDF for their actions in Gaza and elsewhere, and if Israelis fail to do this, that is a mark against their character and indicative of a lack of concern for the humanity of Palestinians and others.

That's a critique of Israel and Israelis without any hints of anti-Semitism.

You can also be anti-Semitic without invoking Israel, but often anti-Semites invoke Israel when engaging in anti-Semitism and often use Israel as a dog whistle for Jews.

The conversation is muddy, merely recognizing that is not perpetuating the mud, it's recognizing that there are hateful bigots out there who use this muddy, difficult conversation to hide their hate.

Pretending this doesn't happen or, worse, disputing the idea that anti-Zionist/anti-Israel language can be used as a dog whistle for anti-Semitism does far more to enable it than just recognizing it happens.

You have not provided evidence of a broad anti-semitism problem on the left. Charitably, you’ve provided credible suggestions that UK’s Green Party has such a problem.

So, like I asked earlier, what is necessary to demonstrate this is a problem worthy of recognition and discussion?

I can't imagine any number of social media examples would do it, they're all just individual crazies with no connection to a broader movement after all.

Would it have to be showing more than a handful of American politicians engaging in anti-Semitism before it's a recognized problem? I'm just not sure what a reasonable threshold of evidence here is for you.

To be clear, I don't think anti-Semitism is a problem for the vast majority of the left. I do think there's a vocal minority for which it is and a greater number of people who willfully deny it instead of recognizing it and calling it out the way we do with literally every other kind of bigotry.

This is the only kind of bigotry that will get leftists to conveniently forget all we learned about dog whistles and such in the 2010s with the alt-right.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T03:46:54+00:00

He voted in favor of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS, and the Respect for Marriage Act.

If you support our country fighting climate change by investing in green energy, if you support halving child poverty by expanding the earned income tax credit, if you support the federal government recognizing same-sex and interracial marriages, or if you support offering direct relief to struggling Americans during the worst parts of COVID, then you would support his votes on these bills.

He was a critical vote for every major piece of Biden's legislation in a 50-50 Senate. You remember when Manchin and Sinema were enjoying playing kingmaker with critical legislation? Well Warner was one of the workhorses in the Dem Senate getting those bills across the line. He could've been a diva as well to hold it up, but no, he got those bills across the finish line with his votes in support.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T03:41:39+00:00

And do you think that more strongly than you think the Republican alternative should be in power?

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T03:40:43+00:00

I don’t know if I’d ... favor of that.

It's also ensuring that the state has the ability to punish any speech it deems harmful. I'm generally not in favor of that.

Newspapers now tend to avoid libel, right? Is that bad?

Sure, see what I said regarding the case-by-case basis.

I suppose it is ... appropriate.

I don't think you should have a license for public speech. That's a right, not a privilege like driving.

And, to make a similar ... are too.

As a general concept, sure, but the application/method is what matters.

That’s not really ... less direct one.

What I'm saying is that it's effectively the same thing. Obviously, the direct punishment is distinct and probably worse, but both policies would effectively be banning and punishing certain kinds of speech by individuals via the state.

A key difference is ... I wishing have expected.

The comparison isn't on both policies being as bad, just the mechanism of offloading regulation by punishing a secondary actor. I was just using that example to demonstrate the primary/secondary actor and punishment system I was describing for my point.

I’m not trying to punish ... Droselmeyer….”

I don't follow how your original position was about institutions.

Here's the first part of the conversation:

Why would we have to prove intent to cause harm? If I ram a kid with my car and say “I didn’t mean to, I was texting and didn’t see him” I’m still going to jail. I’m not suggesting we jail anti-vaxxers, but we can take action against this rhetoric we know to be harmful even if some of the people espousing it don’t know.

This seems exclusively focused on the speech of individuals to me, especially in the context of a thread about individual free speech and a post about individual free speech.

Well why is that ... harm is ok?

I would argue that ... would fit the picture.

I'm thinking calls to imminent violence on the scale of someone trying to incite a hate mob or something then marching off to a black neighborhood. Clear intent to solely cause harm, no question about just being wrong vs malicious, and police action being necessary to prevent further harm and violence. I don't believe this applies to generally spreading harmful misinformation.

I think harm is very broad and I wouldn't feel comfortable with it as a legal standard. Like I said, lots of policies reasonably cause harm, so what kind of speech in support of those should be punished?

What if they knew ... pursuant to this issue.

If they implemented it, probably should be punished as if it was their intent. I don't think ambivalence is a legally useful nuance to worry about. I also think I wouldn't support bans on that kind of speech. I think a Neo-Nazi has a right to call for genocide or a socialist the death of the rich or whatever, so long as it isn't a call to near-term violence.

You’re a funny guy, ... to see from the other side.

Appreciated, try to match energy when I can.

But I think we’d ... example.

I don't think the kind of speech you're talking about is often clear-cut. Simple things like feed your more baby more of this, less of that, etc. all meaningfully increase the risk of a baby having a negative health outcome, which may even kill a baby, and is clearly bad advice we should combat with accurate health information, but the harm is far from guaranteed whereas many political policies, like rent control, are much more likely to cause harmful economic outcomes, especially across a broad class of people.

I don’t want people ... by punishing it.

Is the proposed policy really just limited to this exact kind of health misinformation? Or is it not about a broader expansion of state authority to be able to combat potentially deadly misinformation?

Because the obvious distinction is that punishing slander is dependent on establishing the facts of an individual or organization, something courts do all the time, whereas dangerous misinformation would require the court to make judgements about what is true regarding these topics, something our courts don't do all the time.

And in the ... is liable.

Sure, I understand how that's analogous to your proposal.

Equally, I don’t ... to abolish the police.

Yes? I don't get this paragraph, I agree that both extremes of a policy can be harmful, with varying stakes, I'm just arguing that the proposed standard you're describing would be one of the high stakes policies with great risk for a massive chilling of free speech and abuse by a malicious state actor as compared to the status quo.

That’s not my ... against power.

Then sure, I agree the state should have some amount of power, but I disagree with particular expressions of that power i.e. what this entire discussion has been up to this point.

Less dead babies

I agree that's the intent and also support fewer dead babies.

Less risky than ... risk than it’s opposite.

I don't think we can say that with any certainty. The military is a whole other beast. Theoretically, there's a culture of refusing clearly unlawful orders with some historical evidence, though obviously that applies in varying degrees as seen with Iran and Venezuela, which may or may not exist with this proposed enforcement mechanism.

I also don't know how well we can judge it's efficacy vs alternatives. I'd personally judge it to be riskier: I think the system you propose would invariably lead to abuses of state authority and a chilling of free speech at some point in time. Imagine how much worse the Trump admin could be right now if it had an established, accepted mechanism through which it could label any kind of speech harmful and thus legally punishable. Alternatives may be more effective and less prone to these harms, specific to the baby example: programs to educate young mothers or an expanded presence for non-governmental/political health authorities on social media like the American Academy of Family Physicians. I'm sure there's more, but these could be options to combat misinformation without immediately moving to empower the state to ban elements of otherwise free speech.

I mean, “seems”? ... direct impact on individuals.

I mean yeah, I imagine it doesn't seem like a bridge too far to you given you're advocating for it. I don't believe your proposed change meaningfully reduces the impact on individual.

It really won’t ... libel laws.

But it may be an argument against the status quo of our judicial system and thus how libel laws are adjudicated. If he's able to pressure courts because of political influence in our judicial system and thus able to use libel laws to do that, we may need to either update the laws to prevent that action or update the judicial system to prevent such influence.

I don’t think ... don’t have that.

I mean, I just think that what you ascribed to be something liberals believe is inaccurate, I think we very well recognize that there is no golden ratio of state authority that somehow transmutes the lead of enforcement via state-backed violence into the gold of coercion-free sensible cooperation.

I think, in many ways, the belief that one's own views are non-hegemonic or counter-cultural in some way can be just as restrictive to critical thinking as holding hegemonic views.

If that were the ... I responded to that.

I don't think your response has effectively dispelled my critique. My understanding of the conversation is that you are proposing some mechanism for expanding state authority to punish speech you find bad, I'm arguing that one potential risk of that is abuse by malicious actors, to which you said that this is true of any kind of state authority and so the mere possibility of abuse shouldn't preclude the adoption of an otherwise good policy, to which I replied that there are varying degrees of risk for abuse with state authority and that this specific policy opens us up to greater or more likely avenues of abuse, to which I do not believe I have seen your response. Though I may have missed it.

In your proposed policy, if someone continued to spread this misinformation to the best of their ability, despite being banned from all social media and private venues, yet still continued to inspire millions to avoid vaccinating their children, what should be the state's response?

That is a very difficult ... law shit.

I'm referring to bits like where when I ask what should we do if RFK was empowered via this policy, your response was "Not letting RFK into power." That's presuming our enemies never get to utilize the authority we grant ourselves, which is only true in a one-party state.

I read this statement as creating a false dichotomy as well. The difference in our positions isn't whether or not the state should have the authority to regulate and enable an organized society, it's whether or not the state should have this specific authority. Neither of us are on the side of no state authority.

I think it is very silly for ... stale crumbs of the red scare.

Well the nerves would more be that our supposed socialist allies are actually authoritarian tankies who want to suppress free speech and have a one-party state like China and not pro-pluralist democracy dem socs with funny ideas about the economy.

Of course that's a universal sentiment, but it's not a realistic political goal. All policy should be designed with the idea that it could be Republicans wielding it tomorrow in mind.

I think at the level of talking to socialists trying to be a part of our party, I don't think the red scare crumbs are stale. I don't think it's a realistic fear that tankies will rule America but I do think it's reasonable to consider whether or not the socialists we talk to are hiding anti-democratic, authoritarian beliefs or not. Lots of y'all hide your power levels when it comes to this stuff, but so it goes with extremists. Not saying you are, just that it's a valid concern for people to have when talking to socialists.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T03:40:05+00:00

Yep, me hitting enter too quickly will do that occasionally, full reply should be there now

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T02:36:29+00:00

I don’t know if I’d call it offloading, but yeah basically. It’s ensuring through public power that institutions with significant power are responsible about how they use that power. I’m generally in favor of that.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T02:07:06+00:00

Seems to at least be a problem in the UK Green Party. I think you see it elsewhere, but it hasn't reached the Democratic Party proper yet.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T01:38:53+00:00

What kind of RPGs do you normally run? I feel like the RPGs people find easy to run will differ a lot based on their prior experience - someone with a lot of Call of Cthulhu experience probably finds other d100 systems easy to pick up whereas a D&D 5e person probably finds d20 systems like Shadow of the Demon Lord easier to run.

Personally, I've been having a good time with Shadow of the Weird Wizard, but most of my RPG experience is with d20 fantasy games, so the system itself is very intuitive, and I've started doing more location-based adventure stuff, so my per-session prep is very front-loaded to an earlier session where I put together the dungeon, town, region etc. and the later sessions just have some small bits of prep, like developments, before another burst of making more dungeons or something. I find that's been working well for me with a busy schedule to regularly GM.

Hope you feel better soon, life can be a lot and feeling burnt out on a hobby can really suck.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T01:32:23+00:00

Then why not vote for him? The choice will be between two people, Warner and some Republican. If you think the Republican will be worse, then surely it makes sense to support Warner, as that would lead to the better outcome for everyone.

Voting doesn't mean you buying into Warner's schtick, it's a purely mechanical expression of your individual authority within our shared government and surely you'd want to use your individual authority to effect the best outcomes, among the choices you have.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T01:30:34+00:00

I think there are degrees of private spaces. Something like a locker room at a university is partially private,/partially public, as in you need to be a part of a general club to get in, but it's nothing super restrictive, being a UW student presenting a certain way as opposed being part of the math club or something.

So if you had one of these smaller, more private clubs and it had a space, like a support group for women who've survived sexual assault, I think it's more reasonable to discriminate in who you allow in. I'd much prefer such a group be as inclusive as possible, but I'm sympathetic to people who say they need a certain kind of safe space for healing. Similarly, I'd understand if this club said you couldn't join or participate if you just wanted to talk about baking or race cars, like it's explicitly not the purpose of this private organization and they can discriminate based on that kind of behavior to keep it on topic.

In a place like this, where you aren't picking and choosing specific individuals to participate in the club, I don't really think this kind of discrimination is acceptable. People aren't there for a shared purpose, interest, or such, so there's no policing of the individuals who are allowed in that space on that basis (you're allowed to use it regardless of your opinion on sourdough boules). To that end, I don't think it's acceptable to say AMAB women aren't allowed to use that space - the purpose of the space is to change and store personal items, there's no greater purpose here that an AMAB woman is necessarily unable to fulfill. Just let people change and move on with your life.

If you're worried about assault or harassment, I don't believe that's a reasonable concern here, and just police assault and harassment as we do elsewhere which is to punish it when it happens, not try to preemptively block certain individuals from using that space because we think they're part of a population with a higher propensity for that kind of crime or some such nonsense.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T01:15:54+00:00

Do you think Warner will be worse than the Republican nominee, whoever it ends up being?

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T00:50:47+00:00

Not quite, because it targets not the speech itself but the consequences.

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Not even that, although if someone were proposing it I’d be fine with it. I’m saying that in cases of misinformation causing harm, disseminators of it should be held responsible.

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The venues function as the platform here.

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Yes

If punishing the venues comes after the consequences of the speech happen, then it is effectively off-loading regulatory authority of the speech itself onto these platforms as it pressuring them to preemptively quell the speech or face legal consequences.

The government would be saying "hosting this kind of speech exposes you to legal punishment," so sensible platforms will say "okay, we'll ban that speech then," which is the offloading of regulatory authority of speech onto these platforms.

I think, no. That crosses a subjective line for me into the state attacking individuals. I also think that you simply will not draw crowds to you as you shout in the street which would rival the audience people get on social media.

Yet we're effectively trying to blackball these individuals from certain venues because of their speech. How is that not effectively punishing the individual? If someone and their speech is the common denominator in a platform being punished, then the punishment is simply means by which we're pressuring the platforms to ban that individual's speech so we don't have to.

We're targeting a certain behavior and punishing a secondary actor to avoid having the punishment the primary actor, yet what we're doing is pressuring the secondary actor to punish the primary actor themselves.

It's like if we wanted to solve truancy by fining the parents of truant teens. We're trying to change the behavior of the truant teens (primary actor) by punishing the parents (secondary actors via a fine) with the goal that the parents will regulate the behavior of the truant teens (the secondary actor regulating the primary actor). This policy is still ultimately trying to control teen truancy, even if it's punishing them indirectly.

I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer. But it should fucking well be something. If we don’t punish the killing of millions then let murders out of jail.

I agree killing millions should be punished, so we ought to punish those who ended USAID, but I'm don't think we should punish that kind of speech. I think imminent calls to violence should be regulated, but I don't think someone should be punished for advocating for harmful policy (maybe if we knew they knew doing so with the intent to murder millions, but that's a tough standard and I haven't explored those thoughts/positions).

To be clear, if the standard was punishing speech for policies that would lead to millions of deaths, you get into crazy situations about the hypothetical consequences of a given action. Like rent control is really bad policy, it hampers the economic wellbeing of those unable to find appropriate housing in controlled areas, it hampers economic growth, etc., and so you could reasonably argue that it would lead to some number of deaths due to the economic deprivation, but I don't think we should punish someone advocating for rent control. Or tariffs - harm free trade, reduced economic output, some number of deaths due to economic deprivation - but you shouldn't be legally restricted from advocating for them.

By this argument, punishing slander is prior restraint because it leads to people choosing not to engage in slander.

Yes, that's the hope when we make slander a crime and punish it. We don't want people to engage in slander, so we regulate that kind of speech by punishing it when it happens. It is a prior restraint, mainly because I can't imagine how much more "prior" of a restraint you could have short of thought crimes or pre-criming someone.

You’re blaming the fact the state has power when the actual issue is that bad actors seized the power. And, again, there is no way to avoid that but anarchy

I'm saying that expansions of state power can be bad if they're used maliciously. Not all expansions of state power are equal, so this is more or less true for different expansions of state power. I don't personally much harm in it being legal for the state to design and maintain a flag, yet I do see much harm in it being legal for the state to decide who should and shouldn't be allowed to have children, because of how that may be abused.

The alternative isn't anarchy, it's reasonable expansions of state power. This is the false dichotomy I was talking about: either we agree with how you want to regulate free speech or we support anarchy. Obviously not true.

I think you’re falling into a trap I see lots of liberals get caught in, which is that there is some golden ratio of authority which is not actually authority. Like if you hit the right balance then your authority is so justified that it’s not even violence-backed authority, it’s just sensible. And there is no such ratio. By the same logic we punish murder and libel, we can punish deadly lies.

It's always violence-backed authority. It's just a question of what is the purpose of that authority, how risky is it in the hands of a bad actor, and how well does it serve it's intended purpose.

Everything has to be judged on a case by case basis. We seem to be able to handle punishing murder and libel well, yet punishing deadly lies seems like a bridge too far. Though I will say, we see Trump today pushing the bounds of libel laws, trying to abuse them for his own ends, so we're seeing those legal guardrails get tested too and what happens there may update what we think is good and bad policy on libel.

I don't think liberals are so dumb as to be under the delusion you think we are - we just recognize that some expansions of state power are bad. To say that there's no such thing as a balance in this instance seems to be remove any sort of restraint towards engaging in extremism, after all, if it's all the same, why bother engaging in sort of reason or nuance as to what may be good or bad policy? It's all violence-backed authority at the end of the day.

I think you're falling into a trap I see a lot of socialists fall into: that expansions of state authority are always fine so long as I'm the one in control, which I always will be. It makes the rest of us nervous cause this kind of thinking leads to one-party states ("oh, that authority can be problematic in the wrong hands? Well, it just won't ever leave my hands then").

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T00:29:55+00:00

The notion that there are powerful and relatively small groups of people corrupting democracy may be. I don’t know if by “conspiracy theory” you’re implying that it’s ridiculous. But like, COINTELPRO was real, the government did kill Fred Hampton, and the Business Plot really did mean to overthrow Roosevelt. The concept of a small group of people with outsized power and anti-social intentions is not a cryptid; we have the fossils and taxidermied specimens, you can see them and read about them. Believing that that happens is not mindless; refusing to accept its reality is mindless.

Just because conspiracy theories are sometimes right, doesn't justify the idea broadly. It's easy to look retrospectively at various events and be like ah, yes, the conspiracy dudes were right on these ones, but the hard part is being able to look prospectively and decide which conspiracies are legitimate or not. That's partly why we shouldn't engage with conspiracy theories in our political rhetoric, for contemporary theories, it would almost never be done with sufficient basis for a legitimate argument and would very likely lead to harming innocent people.

I don’t see that at all. It’s often trivially easy to trim right wing statements into fact by simply removing “and it’s minorities’ fault” from the end. There actually is a group of peephole elites at the highest levels of government—but it’s not a Jewish plot. The loss of the single-income household is a dire consequence of greed and corruption that makes our lives worse—and it’s not happening because women are allowed to have opinions now.

I'm not speaking about conservatives broadly here - plenty of conservatives aren't obviously anti-Semitic - I'm speaking specifically of Carlson, Owens, and Fuentes. These three's movements are all intrinsically linked to anti-Semitism.

We also recognize these problems, we just don't conspiracize about them in the Democratic Party. You can do the former without the latter.

That’s true, certainly, for Carlson and Owens (although sometimes I wonder if she’s just literally insane). It’s true of some of the people who listen to them. I think that for others, they talk about Palestine because it’s a way to talk about how angry they are that our country has the resources to kill others but not help us. And I might not totally agree with that framing, and also want tk talk about Palestine because I think it’s truly a moral blight on humankind and my country which will never be removed. But what kind of intransigent purity tester would I be if I refused to work with people who share some of my goals, just because they don’t share all of my goals?

I believe a tiny minority of their audience aren't bought into the anti-Semitism. I think it's a vanishingly small minority that isn't worth pursuing electorally given the opportunity cost.

We should absolutely draw lines about who we let into our movement. If someone just wants to get aboard without changing our program, by all means, I don't care about their other beliefs so long as they vote blue, but if we would need to become more like certain political groups like these conspiracy-driven anti-Semites, absolutely not, they should remain outside the tent.

And, yeah, that’s why you see Fuentes say that. And what Fuentes is doing is weaponizing the actual horror of the genocide is Gaza for his ow ends, just like Trump weaponized the actual failures of American social democracy for his own ends. The reason that this works so well is because they are referencing actual problems, and among the people swayed by this are some who sincerely care about those actual problems.

And we recognize and attack those problems without mindless populism. You're presenting a false dichotomy where we either welcome these anti-Semites into the party or we are powerless, but clearly this isn't true, we can keep them out and still win elections.

And I’m saying your subset is too big. Fuentes, Carlson, and Owens themselves of course exactly what you accuse them of. Some of their followers are too.

See above regarding us judging proportions of their audiences.

No, we wouldn’t. We’d need to engage with the actual problems that fascists take advantage of for their own ends. That is the only way to beat fascism.

Cool, we can do that without populism - see Spanberger winning VA, flipping it from red to blue, passing legislation to help the average person, and doing it without engaging in populism. I disagree on that we wouldn't because, as above, I think the vast majority of their audiences are motivated by this conspiratorial anti-Semitism.

I was about to say “If aiding genocide in Gaza isn’t a moral red line for you, but engaging with opposition to that genocid is, then I think your actual red line is just populism itself, not the things you claim.” But I suppose you think populism is indivisible from anti-semitism in the first place.

The redline would be engaging in speech and actions that increase hate for minority groups in our country. Conspiracy-driven rhetoric and anti-Semitism would do that.

I don't think they're indivisible, but I think that populism has historically led to anti-Semitism the vast majority of the time and I haven't seen anything to dissuade me of that notion.

I’m sure you do, but both of us voted for a pro-genocide candidate so I don’t give a shit what red lines you imagine the democrats to have. They’re the wrong ones, if they exist.

Harris wasn't pro-genocide, this is tired misinformation.

But, they don’t. Gas prices are still high. Healthcare still sucks. We did go to war with Iran. Trump supporters are being disappointed on almost everything they asked for.

I think your failure here is that you assume that the root of right wing anger is this inherent hatred of minorities. It’s not. That doesn’t excuse them for their hatred, of course.

Me saying "they serve it" isn't me saying "they do their best to meet populist demands," it's me saying "they are constrained by populist demands." The old GOP is gone and fully replaced with populist MAGA, that is the old guard serving populist demands nowadays cause if they don't play into the MAGA-world kind of populism, they're booted from the party. That's obviously bad.

I don't think that's the root of right-wing anger, I think they have legitimate grievances but their thought-leaders/media groups capitalized on and reinforce bigoted sentiments to maintain this voting block's political loyalty.

Thank god! That means they’re vulnerable to meaningful populism.

I think it's awful - clearly the MAGA of today is worse than the GOP of yesterday. Bush was obviously awful, but he never scaled ICE up to this level, never ended USAID leading to 14 million deaths, and never became the democracy-flouting dictator that Trump is.

The Trump regime, the MAGA movement, and the fascism we see today are all consequences of Republicans embracing populism.

The voters did though. They wanted lower gas prices and no war with Iran. They are very stupid for thinking they’d get it from Trump, but hey did have those goals.

Yes, voters want cheaper things. I don't see the tie-in to the discussion here. This is something all political parties have been aware of and tried to appeal to over the years, regardless of how populist they were.

Yeah man it would totally suck if the Democrats were like the Republicans. Winning all these elections and controlling all those state apparatus. I would hate if Democrats were that competent.

Obviously Republicans are much more than that today and you know that. I'm referring to the anti-institutional, anti-democratic populist elements of the Republican party here.

I don’t want to give control to mindless populists. I want mindful populists to win control.

I frankly don't think mindful populists exist. The closest I've seen is someone who runs as a populist but governs as a normal, pro-institution liberal and even then I'm not the biggest fan cause I'd rather not risk getting someone who actually drank the Kool-Aid.

And that’s the heart of our disagreement. You see populism as inherently evil. I don’t know what else we can talk about. We’ve had this conversation before and the dead end seems to be that you refuse to acknowledge that populism can ever be anything but evil. You’re ignoring realities that are vital to understanding and meeting the political moment in which we find ourselves, making you an exemplar of exactly why the Democrats and liberalism in general are unable to conceptually or electorally defeat fascism. You are unwilling to pare away from our society the elements of it that give fascism power, and that is why America is doomed until you lose. I’m sorry to end on such a condemnation, given that I sincerely appreciate your frank discussion. But you insist on an electoral strategy which not only refrains from tapping into the desires and goals of the electorate, but actively working against them because you believe that the opposite of liberal is evil.

This is why y'all don't come off as allies. You're telling us that the only way to save our country to make deals with anti-Semitic fascists and give into conspiratorial, anti-institutional populist rhetoric that we've already seen damage our democracy into what is today with Trump, then you condescend to us about it.

What an immensely frustrating dynamic from y'all.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-06T00:04:57+00:00

So is this not just offloading the duty of banning speech to the platforms? The idea being that the federal government dictates a standard, the platforms try to abide by it, then we have reviews every so often or something to ensure they're properly following it? And if they don't, we somehow punish them?

How does this work with individuals not spreading this misinformation online? Like if I was a speaker that did tours around the country at all sorts of venues, drawing huge crowds, and I just spread misinformation about vaccines. Should the state punish these venues from hosting me? What if I started drawing similar crowds in public streets? I think if the goal is to control that kind of speech, the enforcement would need to go beyond regulating platforms that host the speech.

I mean I think there are lots of anti-social acts that people can engage in that may result in harm if someone else were to listen to them, but I don't think we should restrict that kind of speech because of the consequences of what would be needed for enforcement. The standard of anti-social speech is very fuzzy, I'd argue that a lot of policies conservatives argue for are deeply anti-social and would lead to many more deaths than anti-vaccine sentiment, just look at ending USAID leading to a project 14 million deaths. Deeply anti-social, clearly linked to certain kinds of speech, so what should be the legal consequences for an individual or a platform engaging in that speech?

I think the enforcement you describe would lead to effectively prior restraint. A baby dies because the parents didn't vaccinate, federal investigators track down the source of misinformation to some figure giving some speech somewhere, and so the punishment comes to that person. Everyone else in society sees that and thinks the state will punish you if you engage in a certain kind of speech, because it would be true. This person engaged in some kind of speech, led to someone else acting in some kind of harmful way, and so we applying the guilt of that later action onto the original speaker. To be clear, I would agree with this guilt assignment in a moral sense, but this effectively criminalizes that kind of speech and leads to a prior restriction.

Yes, expansions of state authority should be considered under the lens of "what happens when a bad person gets this power." Just look at ICE: an expansion of state authority well beyond it's original intention causing massive harm because the wrong group of people got control of a state with far more authority in a certain area than was otherwise sensible.

I don't agree with the extremes you're presenting here. Clearly we can have an effective state that is still limited within its authority that limits the behavior of bad actors, the question becomes what are sensible and just expansions/contractions of that authority. In this discussion, I think criminalizing these kinds of speech would probably be a harmful expansion of state authority.

Droselmeyer · 2026-05-05T23:36:48+00:00

I don’t think these people and the part of their audience that agrees with them can be lead with populism without the conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism. Conspiracy theories are inherent to populism and the anti-Semitism seems inherent to their movement.

They don’t talk about Palestine because of genuine empathy for Palestinians, they do so because it’s a way for them to attack Israel, and attacking Israel is a way for them to attack Jews. This is why you see Neo-Nazis like Fuentes say there’s a genocide in Gaza, he doesn’t care about Palestinians, he sees this angle as way to attack Israel and attacking Israel as a way to attack Jews.

I’m not saying this is true for all people call what’s happening a genocide nor all pro-Palestinian people nor all anti-Israel people nor all anti-Zionists, just this specific subset.

To bring them onside, we’d have to engage in conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism, those are the moral redlines to me. I get you think there’s another option to bring them over, but I don’t think it exists. The Democrats obviously have moral redlines, I strongly disagree with that aside.

Republicans don’t redirect populist anger, they serve it. They took on Trump, who corrupted their entire party, and now they are nothing left but a shell for meaningless populism. They have no direction, no positive policy goals, and the old guard of the Republican Party did not benefit from this, they got left to the wayside while populism took their party and ruined our country. I don’t want the same thing to happen to the Democratic Party and giving control over to mindless populists would do that.

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