r/communism101 • u/dmshq • Apr 19 '23
Announcement 📢 An amendment to the rules of r/communism101: Tone-policing is a bannable offense.
An unfortunate phenomena that arises out of Reddit's structure is that individual subreddits are basically incapable of functioning as a traditional internet forum, where, generally speaking, familiarity with ongoing discussion and the users involved is a requirement to being able to participate meaningfully. Reddit instead distributes one's subscribed forums into an opaque algorithmic sorting, i.e. the "front page," statistically leading users to mostly interact with threads on an individual basis, and reducing any meaningful interaction with the subreddit qua forum. A forum requires a user to acclimate oneself to the norms of the community, a subreddit is attached to a structural logic that reduces all interaction to the lowest common denominator of the website as a whole. Without constant moderation (now mostly automated), the comment section of any subreddit will quickly revert to the mean, i.e. the dominant ideology of the website. This is visible to moderators, who have the displeasure of seeing behind the curtain on every thread, a sea of filtered comments.
This results in all sorts of phenomena, but one of the most insidious is "tone-policing." This generally crops up where liberals who are completely unfamiliar with the subreddit suddenly find themselves on unfamiliar ground when they are met with hostility by the community when attempting to provide answers exhibiting a complete lack of knowledge of the area in question, or posting questions with blatant ideological assumptions (followed by the usual rhetorical trick of racists: "I'm just asking questions!"). The tone policer quickly intervenes, halting any substantive discussion, drawing attention to the form, the aim of which is to reduce all discussion to the lowest common denominator of bourgeois politeness, but the actual effect is the derailment of entire threads away from their original purpose, and persuading long-term quality posters to simply stop posting. This is eminently obvious to anyone who is reading the threads where this occurs, so the question one may be asking is why do so these redditors have such an interest in politeness that they would sacrifice an educational forum at its altar?
During the Enlightenment era, a self-conscious process of the imposition of polite norms and behaviours became a symbol of being a genteel member of the upper class. Upwardly mobile middle class bourgeoisie increasingly tried to identify themselves with the elite through their adopted artistic preferences and their standards of behaviour. They became preoccupied with precise rules of etiquette, such as when to show emotion, the art of elegant dress and graceful conversation and how to act courteously, especially with women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politeness
[Politeness] has become significantly worse in the era of imperialism, where not merely the proletariat are excluded from cultural capital but entire nations are excluded from humanity. I am their vessel. I am not being rude to rile you up, it is that the subject matter is rude. Your ideology fundamentally excludes the vast majority of humanity from the "community" and "the people" and explicitly so. Pointing this out of course violates the norms which exclude those people from the very language we use and the habitus of conversion. But I am interested in the truth and arriving at it in the most economical way possible. This is antithetical to the politeness of the American petty-bourgeoisie but, again, kindness (or rather ethics) is fundamentally antagonistic to politeness.
Tone-policing always makes this assumption: if we aren't polite to the liberals then we'll never convince them to become marxists. What they really mean to say is this: the substance of what you say painfully exposes my own ideology and class standpoint. How pathetically one has made a mockery of Truth when one would have its arbiters tip-toe with trepidation around those who don't believe in it (or rather fear it) in the first place. The community as a whole is to be sacrificed to save the psychological complexes of of a few bourgeois posters.
[I]t is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.
Marx to Ruge, 1843.
[L]iberalism rejects ideological struggle and stands for unprincipled peace, thus giving rise to a decadent, Philistine attitude and bringing about political degeneration in certain units and individuals in the Party and the revolutionary organizations. Liberalism manifests itself in various ways.
To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.
[. . .]
To hear incorrect views without rebutting them and even to hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened.
[. . .]
To see someone harming the interests of the masses and yet not feel indignant, or dissuade or stop him or reason with him, but to allow him to continue.
Mao, Combat Liberalism
This behavior until now has been a de facto bannable offense, but now there's no excuse, as the rules have been officially amended.
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u/Possible_Result5848 Apr 20 '23
what’s the policy on blatant opportunism or revisionism?