Does the rhetoric on DU pass the non-violent, non-vitriolic smell test?

[L. Coyote]

Frankly, I'm appalled by what I'm reading here today!

Just saying, it is past time to clean it up people. TAKE THE PLEDGE:

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment reminds us all that “violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in our democracy.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40981503/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/

[yourout]

1. I have been browsing off and on all day and have not yet seen anything....

even remotely condoning violence.

[Supersedeas]

8. me neither....i support the militant rhetoric of peaceniks and treehuggers has touched a nerve

And the touch nerve of a RW hack is equivalent to an Arizona massacre, I guess.

[Skink]

2. It's a little immature sometimes.

[oneshooter]

3. Not in the Guns area!! n/t

[MineralMan]

4. Advocating illegal violence on DU gets your message deleted right

quick-like. That kind of stuff isn't tolerated here.

Now, violence is sometimes celebrated on parts of DU, but only legal violence.

[leftstreet]

5. I use aggressive rhetoric against the Ruling Class. I'm not going to stop

They've been waging an all out class war against us

They kill us with unemployment, poverty wages, lack of healthcare, toxic chemicals, shit food, bad drugs, their wars for profit...

Fuck em

[readmoreoften]

10. +1

[TBF]

25. +2 nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

28. +3

[L. Coyote]

6. Would the person(s) who unrecommended this thread please identify themselves?

Like that's gonna happen :rofl:

[AlabamaLibrul]

12. I did, because I think that rhetoric on DU very much passes the non-violence non-vitriolic

smell test.

[emulatorloo]

15. Lots of vitriol here, but violence will get a DU'er banned

[Iggo]

14. .

:hi:

[EOTE]

22. It wasn't me.

There, now I've got my unrec in.

Another extremely poor attempt to connect our side with their's. Get it through your head, we're (and by we're, I don't necessarily mean 'you') nothing like them.

[JoePhilly]

35. I have yet to unrec, but will if you can't post specific examples very soon.

[Hannah Bell]

36. i did, because you imply that du-ers post violent rhetoric.

i've seen nothing akin to the near-overt endorsements of violence from people like limbaugh.

[L. Coyote]

39. Hate speech is violence.

[muriel_volestrangler]

45. What definition of 'hate speech' are you using there?

Saying "you should hate Sarah Palin because ..." and then listing the reasons to hate her is not 'violence'.

[Hannah Bell]

52. lol. "hate speech" like "fuck the banksters"? right.

[muriel_volestrangler]

44. I've unrecced it, because violence or threats of violence, and vitriol, are very different things

No, there are no threats of violence on DU. They are explicitly against the rules, and I have not seen any today even before any deletions. You link to Olbermann, as if his piece is also about 'vitriol'; but it's not. Nothing in it about vitriol, or name-calling, or insults. It is not aimed at the behaviour on DU.

You've got this wrong. Yes, there's plenty of vitriol on DU. But that's fundamentally different. Look at the US legal treatment; speech is protected, but threats of violence are not.

You need to think and look before you start laughing at DUers. You're making a fool of yourself with how wrong you are.

[CJCRANE]

7. That's just more false equivalency...

that somehow a private moderated messageboard with a small readership is equivalent to pundits on major news channels and mainstream politicians...it doesn't wash.

[Gormy Cuss]

20. Thanks. Saved me from posting the same observation.

For that matter, Freepers and their hateful rhetoric don't matter in this issue either.

Elected officials and affiliated staff, candidates, and big media pundits are the set for comparison. Trying to include anyone beyond that is grasping at straws.

[get the red out]

9. I don't understand?

Calling out the right for their dog whistles promoting violence as a political solution is appalling? I really haven't seen anyone on DU call for violence. A lot of liberals are angry that any kind of Republican lie or hate filled screed goes unchallenged while Democrats seem to be forced to give into the right on everything. I am angry about that, but anger doesn't mean violence. We have the right to be angry.

[SDuderstadt]

23. Great username...

I wish that I had thought of that...very clever.

[jillan]

11. I haven't seen anything violent posted at DU... maybe I am missing something.

[emulatorloo]

13. We don't do violence, but we certainly do Demonization

against Democrats as well as Republicans.

The only violent stuff I remember was people suggesting Cheney should be waterboarded. But that was because Cheney claimed it wasn't torture, so it was more of rhetorical flourish than anything else.

[Luminous Animal]

16. I've seen no threats of violence expressed by DUers in response to this tragedy.

Thus, unrec.

[MattBaggins]

17. Vitriol we see here and there

But where is the call for violence on DU? Could you point it out so we could alert the mods and have it removed?

[DainBramaged]

18. Just say NO to mind control and the appease the Right police

you have got to be fucking kidding me.....and make us a target with your bullshit pledge,, how stupid is this it's what the Reich wing wants...

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hannah Bell]

21. please link to said rhetoric. i imagine you can't.

[JoePhilly]

32. +10000000000000000000

I asked the same question before seeing your similar request.

Won't be holding my breath.

[affrayer]

24. Just One Thing

Can you name one time people stopped shooting at you because you refused to shoot back?

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. Point to posts calling for the violent overthrow of the US Government

I dare you.

You got ten years to go for it.

Point to the posts calling for the actual murder of a RIGHT WING talker or leader.

I dare you.

This both sides do it bullshit is a RIGHT WING TALKING POINT. By the way, that is exactly what Rush was saying this morning. Pointing to the crazee at DU... and Koss. I dare you to show me the crazee, just as I am still waiting for rush to play the tapes of Left Wing elimitianionist rhetoric.

So go on, you got ten years of archives. do prove me wrong PLEASE!

[Pathwalker]

29. Don't hold your breath. Looks like a hit and run post. Only comment

so far was to dare an unreccer to admit it. There's a lot of this bullshit being posted now.

[DainBramaged]

38. And there were some who outright accused DU of murderous lynch mob behaviour

but their posts were quickly deleted, along with the deafening replies.

[RZM]

42. I don't think it happens that often

but it does happen. It's a little disingenuous to frame it the way you do, since there is no way for regular users to see deleted posts. I don't know how often posts appear that break the rules against advocating violence, though I imagine the mods and admins do.

I did see a post a few weeks ago in which a DUer openly endorsed terrorist attacks against specific entities on ideological grounds. I don't want to get any more specific than that for fear of THIS post being deleted. Needless to say the post disappeared pretty quickly, though I have noted that the same poster has been active on recent threads regarding the Tuscon shooting. I'd like to call them out, but that's against the rules of course ;)

I would guess this is part of the point of aggressive modding and a zero-tolerance policy - the mods don't want anyone to know the extent of pro-violence sentiment here, because even the tiniest amount is too much.

[kestrel91316]

27. Doesn't matter. We ain't pundits, and we ain't elected officials.

We have opinions and express them.

[rustydog]

37. It does matter though. it matters HOW you express your opinions

The expression can be done in a civil, intelligent dialogue pointing out differences, or it can be vitriolic where name-calling, hints of violence and implied threats are made to stir up like-minded persons.

It is difficult to clean a poisoned pool, but it can be done.

[Ghost in the Machine]

48. You expect a mouthbreathing knuckledragger to understand "civil, intelligent dialogue"??

Sometimes the only thing they understand and respond to is a good right hook to the jaw. It's like fighting fire with fire. "civil, intelligent dialogue" isn't in their vocabulary, let alone their nature. You might as well be talking to a wall.

[Waiting For Everyman]

30. Unrec - you're being hyperbolic too... is yours somehow better?

"Appalling"? Really? I didn't see anything that rises to the level of "appalling" me. Not even close.

[JoePhilly]

31. Be specific ... post the offensive posts. Particularly the "violent" ones.

[DainBramaged]

33. Are you doing this to draw the attention of the Right wing media whores?

I wonder???

[damntexdem]

34. B.s. It passes the non-violence test.

Linking that with vitriol is nonsense.

[Whisp]

40. you are appalled are you?

Phfffft!
I feel no shame in calling Repugs pieces of pukeshit and that scumsucking Palin is a belly crawling spawn of dumbass evil.

[Name removed]

41. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ljm2002]

43. It's funny...

...Malkin et al want to equate posts at DU with statements made by right wing commentators like Limbaugh, Coulter, and herself, and by right wing candidates and office holders like Sarah Palin.

If they want to call out DU, then the obvious place to compare us with is Free Republic.

I dare the media to make an honest comparison of the two sites, with a percentage of vitriol vs. overall post volume.

I have no doubt, whatsoever, who would come up as the more vitriolic *and violent* of the two sites. But I cannot bring myself to go over there to confirm.

[DeadEyeDyck]

46. if anything

I have witnessed a lot of agressiveness between disagreeing members and it has gotten so heated that we are very lucky that DU wasn't happening in a ball room.

[Hugabear]

47. How many threats of violence have you seen posted here on DU lately?

Can you provide links to threads containing threats of violence against the right?

[TheKentuckian]

49. I unrecced you for extreme intellectual dishonesty

First, you conflate violence with vitriol which is absurd on the face and second you got nothing on violence. It is at super duper non-existent minus the right wingers calling for wars and and the death penalty and and of course the occasional picture of the guillotines in response to almost exclusively very broad systemic failure not focused on political parties and never an individual that I recall.

You're off on a 110% false equivalence bullshit. Its an easy way to punch/silence the hippies while pretending to be "adult" but few if any are going to buy it. Of course you may just be a namby pamby nanny stater and that is just how you roll. In this case screw off on general principle, I don't do authoritarians regardless of where you are coming from and you guys scare me no less than brown shirts or whatever else.

Anyone else let me know if you like and we can drill down on the mentality so I can feel ya a little better.

[Warren Stupidity]

50. Not buying into the equivalence bullshit at all. Thanks. Nt.

[IsItJustMe]

51. I'll be honest with you, this OP is just silly.

Appalled!!! Really?

This must be the only place you ever go to read posts because if you got out there on the intertubes and read what some of the RW'ers are saying, you would think this place is Paradise.

I was on yahoo yesterday and a RW'er was telling the joke that there must of not have been anything in Gifford's head (She is stupid), because the bullet passed all the way through it and made no sound. That post had a huge number of recommends on it.

I have seen nothing in comparison like that here on DU. I repeat, nothing that even approaches some of the RW rhetoric that I have read.

Seriously, I am not writing this post to be harsh, but to tell you that your perspective is out of wack.

[ScreamingMeemie]

53. I'm sorry but the worst things I've seen posted on here are posts

among DUers. The nastiest we are is to each other. Same as it ever was. :hi: