There are plenty of people who are interested in socialism, but if they show up to a socialist org and get called a cracker they’ll leave. It’s an insult.
We aren’t a fucking org. No one is joining an org to come in and start swinging minute 1 about how akshually Stalin was Hitler unless they are joining an org that holds that stance to begin with. If someone does join an ML org and do that, they get what they fucking deserve.
But we are not an org, and them coming into some thread to take shots does not represent remotely the same opportunity to us that a new member does to an organizer.
I didn’t say we’re an org, and I didn’t say this asshole shouldn’t have been banned.
I said allowing race-based insults, even those directed at white people, is extremely online behavior. You can see this because it’s not tolerated in person.
It’s not tolerated in person with an org member. If you’re at a counterprotest or whatever and a PoC comrade calls a fascist on the other side of the line a cracker, there typically won’t be a disciplinary hearing over it. Your comment is useless equivocating because it completely obscures the variety of different group dynamics that appear in person. It’s not as though “cracker” was first said to a white person over AOL in the 90s.
Cracker is used on here all the time; it’s not exclusively directed at reactionaries. And of course one of the big problems with race-based insults (or insults based on any other group characteristic) is that even if the intent is only to insult someone deserving of insult, comrades who are also in the group hear it, too.
