Deliberate harm

[lalouve]

This entry comes out of the ongoing RaceFail09, but is not directly connected - I don't want to say inspired by, since 'inspirational' seems a deeply incorrect term, but perhaps 'triggered by' would be appropriate

Comments

[bibliofile]

You said it!

[lalouve]

It surprises me that people can be deliberately nasty and not feel, well, embarrassed and ashamed about it.

[moondancerdrake]

I always found the small yappy dogs far more scary than the big loud ones, harder to pin down *wink*

[lalouve]

And much more likely to bite and to be badly trained... vouf! ;)

[forthwritten]

Oh, yes. There is nothing noble in these deliberate acts. It's not just a game - can we use our internet sleuthing skills to find out this person's identity? Placing anti-racist activists' real names and identities online is placing them in danger.

[lalouve]

And the danger seems not to worry the outers at all. They would appear to be much too caught up in their own cleverness.

[vanaofthevalar]

(To the contrary, I think the danger the outers are putting the user in is what the outers are actually after. Getting off on it.)

[lalouve]

I thought they were mostly getting off on their own perceived brilliance. However, you may be right about the fear and endagerment being attractive to them, in which case, really ew.

[browngirl]

Well and truly said.

[lalouve]

Thank you. I'm clearly a bleeding-heart liberal who thinks people should be nice, even when conducting a class war... ;)

[eregyrn]

I've been reading a lot about all of this, and let me be clear: I'm angry as hell about what those two have done, and also angry at many of the other things that have been coming from what I think of as the Fail Side. So this is just me theorizing, trying to understand for myself how they CAN be doing these things; trying to figure out, IS it deliberate harm? Or what

[lalouve]

I see your point, and would only like to argue a mostly practical point. Firstly, I don't think harm has to be malicious to be deliberate: the soldier rarely has anything personal against the opposite side, and may well kill wihtout any malice at all. The harm is still dleiberate and intentional. I agree that they're very likely not seeing themselves as malicious, but I would say they know they're doing harm - even if they might disagree with others on how much harm - they are arguing justification

[eregyrn]

*nods* I do agree with everything you say here.

It DOES make me nuts that these people have decided that THEY are the ones with the authority to cast themselves as The Internet Police of SFF... and that apparently there is no other entity with any power to say to them (in a way that sticks), "no, that is not your job; don't do it; you've only fucked it up; here's some consequences that you will recognize, that will actually affect you". They're vigilantes in a milieu without a justice system, and you know, they are NOT the goddamn Batman.

(Oh, wait; Batman uses a pseud AND a mask. I guess they wouldn't like comparison to him, either. Although, my invoking of the character is meant to be shorthand for a whole bunch of issues surrounding the heroification of vigilantism, and hoe problematic it can be.)

[lalouve]

Don't get me started on vigilantism - it's a subject on which I'm opinionated, hypocritical, and a general mess ;)

I do so wish that someone could get through to them. Doesn't seem to be happening - though at least one of them took his LJ and went home, for the umpteenth time in history...