> “Imagine calling yourselves the ‘master race’ but forgetting to secure your own website — maybe try mastering to host WordPress before world domination,” Root wrote.
It's ironic that supremacists tend to be the worst examples of humanity.
I think most of them suffer from deeply rooted insecurity. Like, consider: you're BAD at stuff. You know, in your heart of hearts, that you're the bottom of the barrel.
You can accept that, or you can get swept up into an ideology that says "the subgroup I'm in is better than all the other subgroups", and then, WOW! You're automatically better than most other people without having to do anything!
There was a TED Talk some years back from a guy who was part of it, talking about how he ended up in it and got out. He was a lost kid who didn’t know where his life was going, and someone took advantage of that and gave him a place to belong. It doesn’t sound much different than the playbook of most cults and even many religions.
It's also terrifying. Look at the average competence their group displays on a daily basis, and now consider how far they've been able to get just with this level of knowledge and curiosity. Far-rightists rule the world and are continuing to become ever more powerful. Now imagine what happens if among their masses appears an actually scarily intelligent figure. If they're already able to exert so much power, that intelligent figure would probably be able to make us all suffer for the rest of our lives.
Certain views on human "races" are incompatible with intelligence. A highly intelligent individual may instrumentalize useful idiots through emotional and conspiratorial agitation, but they wouldn't be honestly convinced by these narratives themself. Not these days, there is too much scientific evidence to the contrary. The far right mob is easy to rule, if you can free yourself of empathy, dignity and honor. The people in power are not true believers, they are psychopathic opportunists.
To us Europeans White supremacists are like AlQaeda/Isis supporters in the middle of US declaring a legal right to fund a party which supports nuking Wall Street and Silicon Valley because they are 'inferior infidels'.
Interrupting communications it's a serious crime in Europe too, with either high fines or straight prison time, but ethically I feel nothing for the webmaster. The same if someone deleted the social network profiles (and the whole infra) of narco armies in Mexico.
Honestly, to me the only thing that differentiates Western white supremacists and similar fascist-adjacent groups from Middle Eastern extreme fundamentalists is that the latter had enough power to exercise total control over entire nations, shaping them to their whims. But this is just an outcome of circumstance, if the far-rightists are allowed to reshape a country to their liking (which we are increasingly allowing to happen) the results wouldn't be so different.
I'm definitely curious why so many people simultaneously hold the viewpoints where the second group has it coming for them and rightfully deserve to be bulldozed out of existence, but the first should be treated with understanding and compassion.
The first years of Francoism Spain were just the Catholic Sharia but with the Bible. Even under Democracy women weren't allowed to open a bank account until 1978 (3 years after Franco's death).
Have you ever been curious about what the life could been under MAGA's with the Christianism raised with full powers? Read about the first years of that regime, from 1939 to 1953.
Replace Catholicism with Evangelism or any major American Christian branch and that's pretty much the same.
Oh, and the economic collapse. That would be a thing, too. When the scientists are fed with bullshit and flee away your whole economy collapses.
Isn’t this illegal and a wrong thing to do. Just because you don’t agree with ideology, you can’t just go ahead and destroy actual IP .
I’d think if the sites are based in the US and the owners decided to take action, they could force this activist to be extradited and face punishment.
The pseudonymous hacker [...] deleted the servers of WhiteDate, WhiteChild, and WhiteDeal in real time at the end of a talk at the annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany.
As of this writing, WhiteDate, which Hoffmann described as a “Tinder for Nazis”; WhiteChild, a site that claimed to match white supremacists’ sperm and egg donors; and WhiteDeal, a sort-of Taskrabbit-esque labor marketplace for racists, are all offline.
Root, Hoffmann, and Fuchs claim to have identified the real identity of the websites’ administrator as a woman from Germany.
There's likely a hacking crime of some nature here, but it's reasonably certain a German website administrator could face charges for running a Nazi aligned and themed website in Germany.
> I’d think if the sites are based in the US and the owners decided to take action, they could force this activist to be extradited and face punishment.
US based content owners have had mixed success forcing hackers to be extradited and face punishment in the US.
Many ransomware gangs are still operating, Anna's Archive is still up, ThePirateBay continues to defy Hollywood.
Sure, some hackers are caught and dragged through courts. Many are not. Enough to make your statement questionable.
The site, and the extended media presence are full of hardcore racist statements not protected under the German constitution, not considered legal expressions of free speech here. If you have seen the talk, you'd know the site/owner has been investigated by the German inland intelligence agency (Verfassungsschutz), but due to incompetence they only got the wrong person fired... In fact, the "Q&A" intro to the deletion bit, references the executive's inaction.
Some information disclosure is also evidently in the public interest. For example the AfD representatives found are additional evidence for anti-constitutional sentiments within the AfD. This is highly relevant for a possible party prohibition process (which has an extremely high legal threshold).
After all, the website security was hilariously bad. (I suspect the members' IQ scores may have been largely self-diagnosed...)
From what I've gathered the publicized data has been somewhat anonymized. The victims of this hack should be rather happy the original data got nuked.
Also good luck extraditing the activist. It's pretty clear the pink power ranger on stage is a borrowed body, and/or, I presume, the voice heard is AI or borrowed recording, as well. OpSec seems alright. But you know, these days, the president of the United States may personally order the NSA and navy seals to snatch the Martha Root off the streets to uphold the holy rule of law and freedom of speech/expression...
So it seems obvious you only care about certain laws some of the time.... So we can dismiss your outrage over the "law" as performative to get what you want. And also draw many conclusion on your character based on what you want... Interesting.
Short of seeing successful left-leaning targets of hacktivism go unpunished, or hacktivism actually being punished across the board, there’s no inconsistency.
Besides, a light sentence on conviction could be conferred with the balance of the consequences relying on the wide and complete dissemination of the hacktivist’s identity.
These power fantasies seem to be all you got going in your life. How often have you written/said "given the Maduro treatment" in the last 48h? Still feeling it?
Pro-tip from Germany: Don't make enemies in South America.
Hacker culture is all about unquestionably accepting every law and declining to fight one of the most objectively evil ideologies conceived because of a desire to kneel at the altar of intellectual property, don't you know?
It's probably illegal. It's not wrong though. I'm not generally a fan of vigilante justice, but with the rise of fascism lately it's better to act sooner than later.
I saw the article title and somehow I predicted the top most voted response on Hacker News without even clicking on the comments - someone having sympathy for the poor poor white supremacist.
I would not bet on a US jury being willing to convict for this, especially not one empaneled by a DC/NYC federal court. A mistrial would be far more likely. (Jury nullification has entered the chat.)
It was basically a site that was scamming nazis. I think the admin was from Germany, but another source said that it was connected to an enterprise based in France, but I cannot find the info anymore. Perhaps it was wrong.
I thought it was commonly understood that most people have racial biases, unconscious or conscious; that's the premise of most equitable programs. I am just aware of mine. I am not saying that's a good thing or making any claims about any kind of people.
I was making the point that people with racial biases are common, usually harmless, and we probably shouldn't call for their blanket execution.
I think it is strange to say that admitting I have biases is a bannable offense.
It will make more sense if you consider the context in which you're posting: a large, anonymous internet forum which is prone to bursting into flames when provoked on divisive topics.
Even if we take the most charitable interpretation of what you posted—say, something like: honest exploration of racial prejudice within ourselves—the tiny text blobs that we have to communicate with here are not a genre that can handle casual detonations like "I just don't like black people very much". That would require a much stronger and more secure container than this sort of internet forum can provide, not to mention safety and confidentiality that don't exist here. Comments like what you posted are simply going to blow up a thread like this into an even more violent conflict than it already is, and that's not something we're ok with.
As I said, that's under the most charitable interpretation, which I don't personally find to be the likeliest. Your GP comment included plenty of other things that support a less savory reading.
Also, this pseudo-debate about who should or should not be "executed" is puerile and obviously off-topic on this site, but I'm not singling you out for that, since plenty of other users were contributing to it.
I disagree with your framing about not wanting a civil war.
At this point it's between the fascists taking over unopposed and them maybe losing this civil war. I'd rather take the chance than give up without a fight.
I agree with the framing of "rather you than me", fwiw.
That's a bit of an arbitrary constraint, given that Nazism is widely understood to be a particular brand of fascism.
Wikipedia does a descent job, if you're really wondering how it might be done using different words. Given your odd challenge, I suspect you might not really care, though.
In case I'm wrong, here are, for your convenience, but also for others who might stumble across this nasty thread:
I asked because his other replies in this topic imply to me that his definition of Nazi is much more broad than the literal definition, and would result in a lot more executions than just of the people who adhere to a Nazi ideology as strictly defined by Wikipedia.
That's a good point. Goes to show how quickly things get arbitrary once you start chopping off heads in the name of ideas. It's disturbing how quickly people get their axes ready, even just from their behind their keyboards. I'm used to it from other places, but it's sad to see this here.
I wish there'd be some sort of dream-like simulation for people to experience the consequences of their ideas: "Congratulations, your policy killed millions of people and fed them to the pigs. Due to the sloppy definition, and a blind spot on your behalf, this includes yourself. Then there was a war and your family is now dead. Would you like to try again?"
Sorry for not-so-politely wondering what was behind your question. It's a fraught topic.
I would recommend just saying "white supremacist" instead of "Nazi", because precision in words matters. As the sibling comment pointed out, they are not equivalent terms. Nazis are usually white supremacists, but not the reverse.
I noticed my use of "indiscriminately" was problematic and I edited my previous post to remove it before I saw your reply. I'd hoped I could fix the ambivalence quickly, before someone misunderstood. I was too late; my apologies.
What I meant to say: indiscriminately murdering people after an ideological lithmus test. Or for their beliefs. For their ethnicity. Stuff like that. You know, not entirely unlike what the Nazis did.
> The ends matter. The means do not.
We disagree here; but even if we take this to be correct, you are wrong about what the ends are. "No nazis around" is in itself only a means, and not an end. The end is what we want to accomplish by "purging the nazis", or what we do end up accomplishing instead.
Their abhorrent ideology does not merely exist in an ideological space. It is abhorrent precisely because of the consequences it leads to: the rule of violence, the establishment of a system for wholesale "purging" of whole groups of people (and lots of other bad things, but we're discussing these ones). That is what we want to avoid.
You may think that you can simply "kill all the Nazis and feed them to the pigs" to avoid this. Even if you think that's a reasonable course of action, have you thought about how this would work?
In order to accomplish it, you will have to put into place a system that catches all potential Nazis, precisely determines their ideology - judge people not by their actual actions, but what is believed are their thoughts, some of which are now a capital crime. Which are the ones, by the way? Where is the line? Who is going to decide this correctly? Even if you can, or are willing to accept some false positives (your "no benefit of doubt"): you will then have to kill all these people and feed them to the pigs. Such an effort is going to require state power and some serious organisation, and likely more than one "pig farm", let's call it that.
Does this remind you of aything in history? There's plenty to choose from, humanity seems quite adept at pulling off such things, whenever instability propels a group to power that hates another group very much. But I believe the prime example, that comes closest to what you envision, happened in Europe in the last century.
For the admittedly noble goal of countering nazis and their destructive doings, you're willing to slaughter, and keep slaughtering, permit me this summary word for "kill and feed to the pigs", everyone who is deemed to be a Nazi. In such a situation, if I were you, I'd avoid things that might get me mistaken for one. You don't want to become a Robespierre!
Take a good look at yourself and what you are endorsing, where you're invariably going to end up. The ends do matter.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. While we still disagree, I understand your hesitation.
When I think of this, I think not of Robespierre, but of Tito, who managed to liberate his own country from the Nazis and keep the reactionaries (of which there are many in the region!) at bay through state repression.
Of course, it all fell apart once he died and the subsequent weakening of repressions created an opening for the reactionaries to return.
However, while Tito ruled Yugoslavia he created the country with the strongest passport in the world (the only one that could travel to both Cold War blocks!), free education, an economy centered around worker-owned coops and liberal freedoms unseen in other Socialist nations.
It's not without reason Yugonostalgia is still a strong force in the Balkans. [0]
I believe freedom needs to be protected from those willing to harm it - aggressively so. We cannot stand by idly while those that wish to harm us set their machinations in place - we need to stomp them out before they do it to us.
No one is saying dont fight nazis. We're saying dont do nazi-things and justify it by saying im fighting nazis.
Because when you beat them, you're going to take your new nazi-powers and ideals and use them against non-nazi's. It's only ever worked that way and you convincing yourself youre the exception is the first step.
What "new nazi-powers" do you believe were asserted here?
Do you believe this is the first time that anyone has taken down a website through hacktivism, or that "the nazis" have never done anything of the sort?
What "not nazi-things" specifically do you suggest would be effective for fighting nazis?
You'll probably say "simply debate them on the merits" but that doesn't work.
And it's odd how in this argument the slippery slope is only ever a danger when people fight nazis, and never when people allow nazis to gain power and proliferate.
Historically white supremacism has led to a LOT of deaths - not only the Nazi atrocities, but also all the lynchings performed by the KKK, the Tulsa race massacre etc. I don't agree with any kind of nationalism, but I also don't think that those other types of supremacism are anywhere near as dangerous.
Look you shouldn’t have to justify why white supremacy is bad to some one. Do yourself a favour and avoid people and places where you find yourself having to do that regularly.
The nature of white supremacism is that it will spread until it finds you. A lot of people went to war and died because you can't just sit by and ignore it and there is no reasoning with it.
I wouldn't be against a dating website that was for specific ethnic groups, but then "white supremacist" isn't an ethnic group but a murderous philosophy based in hate and idiocy.
You do realize they are being called "white supremacist" based on wanting to date only whites? Whites can't even walk away from diversity without being accused of murder..
The Rwandan genocide, Holodomor, invasion of Nanjing, Mao's massacres, Gaza right now none of which are remotely related to W.Superacists yet just as brutal if not more. Humans have been fighting and killing each other forever it's in our nature. We can't be biased if we want to rise above our own nature.
We can't convice any WS if we single out the attrocities of "their group" while ignoring others. That's why they don't even care anymore. They see the hypocrisy. They're told they can't have an ethnostate while being forced to pay for and protect another group's ethnostate which is engaged in genocide as we speak.
The USA has no left, I can’t say I blame them because I don’t know what they could do, but honestly that a bunch of people are justifying the kidnapping of the President and First Lady of a foreign nation, by a confirmed peado rapist makes me accept the United States for what it is a rogue empire.
Edit:
I find it insane that American imperialists don’t realise that at some point in this might makes right world people won’t be bound to them, if countries are forced to choose between various authoritarian regimes what is it that makes the United States stand out from the rest of them? At least during the Cold War the semblance of freedom was required to win an ideological war. In a world where all pretence of the United States being a more responsible hegemony and free place is dropped for its allies as well what makes these people think people will tow the line?
The fact that the Biden administration spent years trying to gaslight every one about how important winning the Ukraine war was for global stability and the rules based international order, just to stick their thumbs up their asses when their dictator pulls shit like this is beyond me.
Their country is in a constitutional crisis and most people are just shrugging.
> gaslight every one about how important winning the Ukraine war was for global stability and the rules based international order
For someone who used the preceding paragraph to position themselves against imperialism and authoritarian regimes, that is a very strange statement to make. Ukraine was the one responsible for ringing the alarm bells. If the US deemed Ukraine's total military victory as being beneficial to them, they could've made that happen single-handedly and in very short order, no "gaslighting" required. Instead they chose the endless war-of-attrition + appeasement approach and sent some aid while posturing and making promises. They were terrified of "escalation" and ended up not doing anything. The countries that cared about the war didn't have a lot to send, and the countries that had a lot to send didn't care about the war that much. Now the side that's not scared of escalation is using all that military might to airlift heads of state of sovereign nations.
> just to stick their thumbs up their asses when their dictator pulls shit like this is beyond me
Is that Biden admin in the room with us right now? The Americans gave the current administration a blank cheque to do anything they want, the not-far-right party's federal role right now had been reduced to looking angry/concerned in hopes that maybe a future election could let them have some power. Unless you seriously expected Biden et al. to storm the White House and coup their current administration, they can't really do anything anymore - and every day, their odds get slimmer as the entire country is being reshaped around them.
First of all Biden is just as bad as Trump to me I’ll never forget Tony Blinken crying about kids dead in Ukraine then standing there stony faced saying there was no genocide in Gaza. The Democrats are just the friendly face of Imperalism, under Trump you get to see that same violence just this time it’s turned inwards as well. I hate both of those parties the world would be a better place if we got rid of both of them.
Here is a fun folk song for you:
The Ukraine war is an imperialist war two competing bourgeoises one backed by the west the other backed by Russia are fighting over who can plunder Ukraine. There was no side worth supporting there. Also being afraid of escalation against a nuclear armed state is perfectly reasonable. A full out war with Russia that could go nuclear isn’t off the table. The western media likes to pretend their wars are about human rights and national sovereignty it’s not and the west couldn’t give a damn about either of those things, see Gaza and Venezuala. Venezuala wasn’t always as authoritarian as it became under Maduro it got worse and worse as the United States increased its efforts to topple the regime with sanctions and funding the opposition you know the normal regime change shit the United States pulls everywhere.
I dont support Russia. lol the Biden admin shot its self in the foot so many times first by refusing to pick up the phone to stop a genocide then Biden chose to run even though he was way to old. Kamala also refused to say anything about Gaza it lost her the election. I worked for those assholes for free fuck them, and any one who still sits around defending the United States as if it’s some beacon of democracy is a joke. That shitty government has me on a watch list for the crime of calling out the band of criminals and fascists that run that country.
The war could of been prevented Ukraine was offered a deal where they could of been neutral and kept their freedom Borris Johnson was sent my Victoria Neuland to scuttle that deal. Americans love war and they love boosting their military industrial complex just check how well their stocks have been doing recently. They were panicking when Afghanistan ended they needed a new conflict. Nobody in the US government gives a shit about the lives of the innocent civilians that they kill as long as it furthers their psychotic ends. I focus my ire on the United States mainly because they’re the country that is meant to hold up the international order, they’ve shown time and time again that they’ll ignore it.
It's ironic that supremacists tend to be the worst examples of humanity.
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