I'm a long time user of nationstates and I wouldn't go that far. I've yet to see any genuine recruitment for white power groups (Though you'd be welcome to link me to any instances). And I think the examples of regions which you gave aren't really serious. Most of it's just roleplaying, I think they just have a bit too much time on their hands and I doubt most of them take it seriously.

You say "Freedom of speech doesn't mean tolerating hate",,,

...and I'm afraid I disagree. Freedom of speech means just that, it means people are free to say whatever they like, and hold whatever views they like. Just because you or I don't agree with those views that doesn't mean that they don't have the right to hold them and articulate them. We have the right to counter those views and articulate our own, and they do not have the right to use those views as an excuse to discriminate against or hurt people.

I don't hate many things, but I value the right to hate those things that I do hate - when you say that 'hate should not be tolerated', are you saying that I should not be allowed to hate the British Government or our corrupt political system? Are you saying that I'm not allowed to hate McDonalds and Esso? What if McDonalds or Esso was an Israeli company - would I be allowed to hate it then? This becomes the tip of the slippery slope.

History has demonstrated that it is far better to let dissidents of any school articulate their views openly. This way, they are openly countered in a public debate, rather than forced into an underground illicit world where they remain unscrutinised and breed like fire. Complete freedom of speech is for the long-term good of pretty much everyone except true fascists.

unfortuantely you have failed to distinguish between the actions of real life Fascists and those sad individuals that use the game for role play. Nationstates has been around for many years, and the fascist regions have played a prominent role from the start, i challenge you to find ANY evidence of recruitment in the REAL WORLD...i doubt you could even find a tenous correlation between the history of the game and increased fascist activity.

I only post this for those who dont play NS, for those that do, we are all pretty confident this is just reactionary bollocks..

On another note there is presently a pertracted war on NS between the left and the fash, if you really want to help, create a nation and join a fash bashing region (MT ARMY) and go and invade fash regions- that is a far more pro-active NO PLATFORM policy then just whining to the maker (who clearly has no problem with the presence of fash nations, as otherwise he wouldnt have written the code for them..)

Kind regards,

SL

"Why not enter the game as a civil liberties activist and start talking about banning peoples right to organize?"

other related (thought crimes):
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/321022.html

That's some interesting logic there P. But it smells a bit too much like straight up white privilege. It's always funny to hear how whenever a white person is told that we have to confront fascism as the danger it really is, when they don't want to, they always claim "freedom of speech." I think if you were a person of colour say, or a Jew, or a Muslim, or a homosexual, you might not be so quick to say that allowing Nazis to post to a website that you moderate constitutes a violation of their freedom of speech.

No one is forcing you, or Max Barry, to allow Neo-Nazis to post hate on the site.

The moderators, and by extension Mr. Barry, whose name the site is registered to, are completely within their rights to edit the content of their site however they see fit.

Would you claim that Jewish website hosts and moderators violate the freedom of speech of anti-Semites who want to post on their sites? Or perhaps Islamic human rights organizations should allow equal access to their forums to members of the BNP? That would be really free speech, wouldn't it?

C'mon. What are you hiding?

I find it rather disturbing actually, that when a very legitimate concern is raised over Neo-Nazi hate groups using a website, owned and registered to a prominent author with a movie about to be made from one of his books, that the people voicing those concerns are treated as children, as though they should "do something constructive" by creating nations and playing in the stupid game.

This is absolutely not a game. Why haven't you realized that? Perhaps you've never been jumped by Nazis, maybe you've never been the target of racism, sexism or homophobic slurs. Perhaps that is why you are so patronizing when it comes to the concerns of others.

What right do you have to lecture? Your site is being used by racists.

Want the proof? Here it is. More is on being researched, rest assured and it goes well beyond this silly online game. But then, you probably already know that, don't you.

People on this site and others (I use the plural loosely...for all anyone knows it is one or two moderators of the site) have been saying, so what if players are allowed to post things like:

"Anti gay and Pro life. Hey everyone! I'm BBBAAACCCCCKKKKKK!!! ha ha ha ha! You sad gay people are pathetic! Your morals are as strong as your ability to ban me!!!! HAAAAAAAAAAA Suckers...."

and...

"Do you think hearing some guy calling me a Fu*king nazi will make me "change" my ways? HELL NO! So get the hell out of here you god damn communist poor fu**ers!"

and...

"We must strive for a world which holds none but the master race, and the preservation of the Aryan Race is priority, as it is endangered by other "impure" peoples. SIEG HEIL!"

on Max Barry's Nationstates.net gamesite. It's all part of the game, right?

And so what if they have user names and mottos like:

The Kingdom of Odhinnia "Der Sieg Wird Unser Sein - The Victory Will Be Ours"
The Everlasting Reich of 88 State "White makes might!"
The Dominion of Right Wing Facism "Unser Ehere Heisst Treue- Our Honor is Loyalty"
The Dictatorship of NSDAP Third Reich "Gleichheit, Freiheit, und Einigkeit"
The Dictatorship of The Neo-Nazi Party "Preserving the White Race at any cost!"
The Dictatorship of The Sadistic Skinhead "Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid"
The Empire of SS Vlaanderen "Unsere Ehre Heisst Treue"
The StormTroopers of 88th Reich "Hail Blood & Honour!"
The Republic of Nationalsozialismus "Arbeit macht frei"
The Federation of Tausendjahriges Reich "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"
The Confederacy of National Alliance "Agitate - demonstrate - propagate - educate - organise!"
The Empire of Ku Klux Klan Guard "White Pride World Wide!"

That doesn't mean that Max Barry is actually letting REAL Nazis on the site.
These are just some kids, right?

Well, apparently, according to the information under the region named Aryan Nations:

World Factbook Entry: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." (hint: 14 Words...as in 14/88)
"Our pride is in the superiority of our beloved white European heritage, and the enemy (the Jew, the brown, the black and the yellow) will someday fall to the prophecy of our Führer and we will, as nature intended, reign supreme. 14/88, Sieg Heil!!
Alliances- WAR, Fatherland-We are currently not accepting any new members who aren't already active in other pro-white forums and websites.-"

WHOA! HOLD ON THERE! Did that player just say: "We are currently not accepting any new members who aren't already active in other pro-white forums and websites."??? WELL, I'LL BE DAMNED!

REAL Nazis are using Nationstates.net to organize! With a name like ARYAN NATIONS, who would've thought?

Certainly not Max Barry or the moderators of his website, according to them.

By the way, here are some of the logos and images being used by players on www.nationstates.net, followed by a collection of images of recognized symbols of hate groups. See how many you can match!

Ouch! All this doublespeak hurts me brain.

According to you, people should forfeit their right to free speech by:

1) not lodging complaints against this gaming site and other sites which cater to Nazi hate speech, in order to:

2) defend our right of free speech to protest things like gaming and message board sites, or Nazis...

Cramps. My brain is in cramps with this.

Tell me your logic is not the future of this world?
Give me some hope, man! For the love of God!

Is 'No Pasaran' one of those Commie Fascists who gagged and shot the International Brigade Volunteers who felt they had to go to find the truth about Barcelona for themselves, as deserters?

It is quite possible to see on British television, so called anti fascists behaving so much like fascists that when the BNP give them the Hitler Salute it seems like a greeting of recognition. A salutation!

The item should not be hidden, but if at all possible, the address should be removed. The rest should stay as a warning of anti-fascists becoming fascists and hiding behind pseudonames and bringing them into disrepute.

Noam Chomsky once wrote something about free speech which was used in a preface to a book by some French author who was a holocaust denier. It became quite controversial when people, usually who wanted to discredit Chomsky for there own reasons, failed to realize that he was not himself a holocaust denier, which borders on lunacy, but was only making a statement about free speech.

"If you believe in freedom of speech you have to believe in freedom of speech precisely for those who you despise. Otherwise you don't believe in freedom of speech." was something like what he said about that.

It goes back to what Thomas Jefferson was on about, and Madison when he wrote the bill of rights in the U.S. Well, you know, they spent about 50 years thinking about this kind of stuff.

Nothing much about doublethink here. I didn't mean to do anyones head in.

Let's talk about today then and who's changing all kinds of different laws about free speech. Sorry, this is where the double think goes into overdrive. But it's not me doing it...honestly! Blame Kentroversy for indoctrinating me with his propaganda if you like. Or just call me paranoid. I just saw a connection here, whether it was intended or not.

[specificly]
Globalists Seek To Sanitize Internet

The globalist methodology is to lower the hammer upon an individual or group who is despised by the general population, which elicits the “we didn’t need their viewpoint, anyway” response. However, such people do not realize that what is being set up is legal precedence, so while thought-crime laws of today are brought against someone who might be seen as despicable by the mass population, tomorrow, these same laws can be used against anyone else -- all because legal precedence has been established. Today, while these thought-crime laws can be exercised against so-called ‘terrorists,’ tomorrow, they can and will be used against you or I.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/321022.html

as always,
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

I totally agree: freedom of speech for all, including my enemy.

Anyone who is scared of words and ideas is standing on shaky ground.

Bill, first of all a point of Newspeak grammar before we proceed. Orwell had the word doublespeak in the Newspeak dictionary, but not doublethink. Doublespeak was to say the opposite of the intended meaning, such "Ministry of Truth" for Ministry of Propaganda. In Newspeak, if doublethink existed as a word, it would mean "to think the opposite of the intended meaning," which was a hole in Orwell's totalitarian grammar then, because to doublethink something would then be to doubt it. (I say this mainly because I am a great fan of Orwell's work. My favourite is Homage to Catalonia, which brings me to my second point...)

Iiyan, do you know what Orwell was called when he questioned and campaigned against Stalin? He was called a Nazi and a fascist. All because he broke ranks with the hallowed views of his day of the left. To the left of the 1930's, Stalinism was sacred. Few questioned it or saw it as the authoritarian monstrosity it was. So you call me a Commie Fascist because I criticize a gaming website for giving free hosting space to Neo-Nazi groups?

That is just inverted logic: if someone opposes something, accuse them of being what they oppose. That's the logic of COINTELPRO, of authoritarianism. That is the real destroyer of freedom to say or express yourself. That destroys debate because it's only aim is to marginalize the subject of the accusation, not to look at the facts as they are.

And while we are on the subject of freedom of speech, Bill, then under your principles I should have the same right as anyone else to voice my opinion. I possess the right to email Max Barry and the moderators of that site and let my opinion be known that I think it is disgusting, wrong, irresponsible and patently offensive that they allow Neo-Nazi groups to post messages to their site and to recruit members using their forums when they very practically can do something about it. That would be my right. And it would also be my right to publicly air those criticisms in the hope that others will also recognize this and voice their opinions to Max Barry or to the moderators to do something about it...

However, you seem to lecture me with the objective of silencing me. You say that I must not think the way I am thinking, that I must tolerate fascists, because if I oppose fascists that I become a fascist myself. And you wrap it all up in the veil of protecting freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech does mean giving racists a forum to spread their ideas. There is no obligation in any way to aid someone to voice an opinion if it is one you disagree with. My criticism is not that Nazis are Nazis and that they should be silenced out of hand, my criticism is that www.Nationstates.net facilitates the spread of their perverse and racist ideas. Nazis still have every right to gather on their own and spout hate. That is the benefit of a free society. But it is an ugly, perverse society, one with no priorities, that argues that to preserve freedom of speech, we must promote and encourage the very worst and lowest bigotry, racism and hatred. That is a suicidal post-modern pathology.

All ideas are not equally valid; some are absolute rubbish. An idea that promotes bigotry and glorifies genocide is not one that should be encouraged by society.

So yes, absolutely, www.Nationstates.net has every right to what it will with its website and forums and the online content of its site. But if the moderators refuse to confront the disgusting and twisted views displayed by users of that site, then they have to accept the consequences. In this case, the consequence is being publicly outed as people who refuse to confront or do anything to stop the spread of racism and bigotry on the internet.

Max Barry, as the registrant of that site, will also have to accept the fact that he will be asked again and again why a website registered in his name allows Neo-Nazis and white supremacists to operate unmoderated forums where they are able to recruit new members from a pool of avid adolescent gamers. He might hear this question from parents, from community groups, from educators who found that during a classroom exercize one of their students accessed a white power forum on Nationstates.net...and all this could be a real problem to him.

It is simply not in his best interests to continue with this fence-walking.

..I normally tend to stand shoulder to shoulder with Magoo (that'll get PsyOps scribbling straight away) but I have to disagree with him on this one.

"Anyone who is scared of words and ideas is standing on shaky ground."

Words and ideas are powerful beasts. Even when wrong, when capable of forensic analysis and argument, they can carry a message which people believe, act on, absorb. Look at the success these nuts in the BNP have, even when so much of their racist claptrap is so clearly rubbish.

A true freedom of speech - to say anything - takes us too close to the American model, where people can effectively preach racial hatred with impunity, attracting to them those vulnerable to such arguments or incapable of realising them for what they are. We need to protect individuals and groups for vexatious, unfounded attacks.

We, as a society, need some stops and checks. It is said, although I suspect it is something of a myth, that Hitler and Goebbels said that they could only have been stopped at the very beginning - once things had got going it was all too late. The question is what form the stops and checks should take.

So is this how to use doublespeak in advertising and marketing in a market usually so resistant to advertising?

no pasarans wrote:

"Freedom of speech for everyone, even me...
14.08.2005 17:46


Bill, first of all a point of Newspeak grammar before we proceed. [b]Orwell had the word doublespeak in the Newspeak dictionary, but not doublethink. Doublespeak was to say the opposite of the intended meaning, such "Ministry of Truth" for Ministry of Propaganda. In Newspeak, if doublethink existed as a word, it would mean "to think the opposite of the intended meaning," which was a hole in Orwell's totalitarian grammar then, because to doublethink something would then be to doubt it. (I say this mainly because I am a great fan of Orwell's work."


The irony is delicious. Doublespeak is NEVER used in 1984, whereas the word he says does not exist, doublethink, IS, and is used extensively. You'd have to wonder how accurate the rest of no pasaran's information is.

 http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html, specifically, the definition of doublethink.

**doublespeak - It is important to note that [b]this term does not appear anywhere within Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.[/b] I mention it here only due to its similarity to other Newspeak terms such as doublethink, duckspeak, Newspeak, and Oldspeak. And even though it appears that the term was not actually created by Orwell himself, it does carry a very Orwellian meaning of "Deliberately ambiguous or evasive language; any language that pretends to communicate but actually does not."**

doublethink - Reality Control. The power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accept both of them. An excellent example of doublethink in modern society is the war on drugs. If you ask people their opinion on alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, most people would agree that it was a complete failure. People agree that it only caused more crime, it made gangsters rich, it corrupted politicians, and most importantly ... it didn't keep people from drinking.

Yet, we have almost the exact same situation today with war on drugs, yet most people think that our modern prohibition is a good idea ... and more than that, they believe that anybody that thinks that the war on drugs isn't a good idea must be completely out of their minds. In order for a person to be effective at doublethink, they must master the art of crimestop.

This word has made its way into the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

dou•ble•think ('d&-b&l-"thi[ng]k), noun, Date: 1949 : a simultaneous belief in two contradictory ideas.


Here is how Winston Smith described doublethink in the novel:

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.'

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak#Newspeak_words
Do we see doublespeak there? No. Doublethink? Yes.

 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=660

Here, it's easily Googled:  http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=doublethink+in+1984&btnG=Google+Search

And an article explaining he never used it.
 http://www.orwelltoday.com/dblspkthennow.shtml


Please. Search the text. It's available here:  http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
Your search term was found in the following:

# 1984 - Chapter 2
ngsoc. the sacred principles of ingsoc. newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past. he felt a
# 1984 - Chapter 3
'reality control', they called it: in newspeak, 'doublethink'. 'stand easy!' barked the ins
# 1984 - Chapter 5
es. syme, too-in some more complex way, involving doublethink, syme swallowed it. was he, then, alon
# 1984 - Chapter 7
ix. but simultaneously, true to the principles of doublethink, the party taught that the proles were
# 1984 - Chapter 5
ver he began to talk of the principles of ingsoc, doublethink, the mutability of the past, and the d
# 1984 - Chapter 9
ern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized
# 1984 - Chapter 2
d o'brien. winston's heart sank. that was doublethink. he had a feeling of deadly helplessne
# 1984 - Chapter 3
maticians are unequal to that? have you forgotten doublethink?' winston shrank back upon the
# 1984 - Chapter 1
fetched up with a bump against the newspeak word doublethink. for the first time the magnitude of w
# 1984 - Summary Pt. 1 Chp. 2
iary addressing that unknown age �from the age of doublethink, from the age of solitude, of big brot
# 1984 - Summary Pt. 1 Chp. 3
s the present controls the past.� this was where �doublethink� came into play, minds were trained to
# 1984 - Summary Pt. 1 Chp. 5
language to express rebellious thoughts in. even doublethink slogans like �freedom is slavery� will
# 1984 - Summary Pt. 2 Chp. 9
n records and so could be altered at will through doublethink.while reading winston had the stra
# 1984 - Summary Pt. 3 Chp. 2
al fallacies. he combines the relentless logic of doublethink and the administration of pain till wi

But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

oh, well that proves it! if it's ironic, it must be true.

doublethink is newspeak, doublespeak is not...

i guess that proves nazis were never using the site to organize!

no pasarn, that commie fascist, at it again misquoting orwell.
lucky thing all those nazi images, forum posts and links to WP sites never existed. glad they stopped using the site too. now no one has anything to worry about.

phew! close call. i'll be able to sleep tonight knowing a clever quirk of fiction stopped nazi organizing dead in its tracks. guess i don't have to lift a finger.

There quite a few games in Playstation2 where you can impersonate a nazi officer and fight against the Americans and even the British in Second World War, so what?
You are talking bullshit, by playing a game in which you can impersonate a nazi is not actually racist, it is called, "a game".

Er..freedom of speech does mean tolerating 'hate groups', holocaust deniers, Born Again Chrisitans, Zionists, people who 'hate' the rich etc. It's elementary stuff. The notion that the state ought to intervent to decide on official truth is essentially fascist.

"Interestingly enough, Jennifer Government itself is a good example of viral marketing that you, yourself took part in. The author also set up the "NationStates" web-based game, which was a very effective marketing tool for that book. I certainly wouldn't have heard of the book otherwise."
 http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2003/09/06/dear_sysconcom_advertisers


That was in 2003. Interestingly in 2005 we await the film release of that book.


comments from same "PLEASE POST WIDELY" article

 http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/08/94598_comment.php#94796
Indymedia is a powerful platform for providing a voice for minority groups and oppressed people. It can be easily exploited by people just who want to sell products.

Whatever the intentions the author of this article claims, this whole discussion has become an example of how Viral Marketing works. Its intentions are clear and follow the golden rules of advertising.

Rule No. 1 - It Starts With the Product
Rule No. 2 - See Rule No. 1

Perhaps a golden rule of indymedia should be

Rule No 1 - Articles that provide links to commercial websites will be removed.


Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing

Example of removed advertising content
 http://scotland.indymedia.org/newswire/hidden/index.php?limit_start=40
Vote Now! World Stupidity Awards Nominees are in
27 Jun 2005
by Moron

[email to your friends!!!]
Once companies like SYS-CON develop a 'succesful formula' they will use it again and again and again.

A lot of people are throwing around the word censorship, and whether you want to call it that is a matter of semantics, but it should be noted that the author of the article is not forcing Max Barry by law to regulate what is displayed on HIS website, but rather appealing to a sense of decency that hateful language in such a large quantity should not be tolerated.

I am the owner of this Nation on Nationstates........... AND I AM NOT BREAKING THE RULES....... Also I created the Odhinnian flag and it is MY Property........ I wish it to be removed IMMEDIATELY.

Erikr Haakon