[CS:S ALL/CS:GO ZM] Protest a punishment: Soldout

[Soldout]

Gamemode [CS:S ALL/CS:GO ZM]

Ingame name Soldout

SteamID STEAM_0:1:28188075

Ban/Gag reason racism

Desired outcome Lift my punishment

Statement of grounds
Hi! I made a WW2 reference and I got gagged for racism. Not sure why exactly, as I haven't said anything racist, so I'd be grateful if this is lifted. Cheers!

 

[Dhoudz]

Hi Souldout,

i was the one gagging you.

You did not make a WW2 reference you said "lol that's very 1940's german like rule enforcement".
You are right you did not say anything racist, but called me (i assume it was directed to me) a racist/nazi with that "reference".

I dont take this lightly and you not even realising what is wrong about this worries me even more.

 

[Soldout]

Hi Dhoudz.

Thank you for your reply.

I am sorry I offended you!! I definitely did not in any way imply that you're racism. The Nazi's were infamous for rule enforcement - not just racism - as I assume you know.

Moreover, the idea of rule enforcement being 'nazi' is actually quite a common thing to say where I am from and I have heard it in other countries. The concept of race is nothing to do with it. You could very much as easily say that practically any reference to infamous totalitarian regimes is "racist" which would seem a bit silly as the whole point of making the reference is to imply, jokingly, that unnecessarily high levels of rule enforcement is bad - which is true by definition. By responding in the way you did - considering such a reference as racist - what you have done is actually protect the historic legacy of the nazis from referential cultural criticism. So if anything, what you have done is bad and actually quite unhelpful to maintaining a continuous, critical and accurate memory of them.

Finally, it is essential to point out that the Nazis were an ostensibly German movement and so no reference to Germany in this way is inappropriate. This is because, as you are undoubtedly aware, the Nazi party was overwhelmingly comprised of people considered to be of the 'Germanic race'. Given the decade was mentioned in my comment, it is therefore contemporaneous and accurate. Regardless, taking that personally in any way would be obscene since no one here is a 1940s German, unless I have very much mistaken. Further, the legacy and cultural impact of the Nazis and WW2 is not owned by the German people, or indeed any singular grouping. It is owned by humanity and references to it and any part of it is an entirely free matter, unless you are advocating it which is of course illegal.

I hope you agree and that this can now be cleared up. I'd be grateful if you can now remove my gag and refrain from using your admin powers to needlessly enforce your personal feelings concerning references to WW2.

Cheers!

Soldout

 

[Dhoudz]

Hi Soldout,

I do not agree with you and I will not discuss history with you.

You compared me (and the other 2 admins online) with the nazis.
So basically you called us nazis, which is racist and completely disrespectful.

If you compare us with them, you cant just pick out the things you mean afterwards.
You intended to provoke and insult, otherwise you just could have called us strict.

I dont think you understood it yet, so I will not ungag you, unless SA/HA says otherwise.

 

[Lotus]

Honestly, I think a one-week gag with no warning for this is perhaps a tad overkill,

however...

You've gotta understand that when you come into a server and your response to admins enforcing the rules is that the server is over-administrated, and then you compare that administration to the nazis... I'm not really sure what you expect? Should you have perhaps gotten a warning, yeah I'll give you that, personally I would've given a warning, but I've been thinking it over for a couple of days now and I don't see what dhoudz did as something so wrong that it needs to be reversed. Your response is very fixated on the idea that the punishment is for "racism" and what you said wasn't racist. That's just not really relevant to why you were actually punished. Could it say something different, or perhaps even be more descriptive of the situation, sure, but again I'm not really sure why you think it's ok to make the comparison you did.

 

[Soldout]

Right so you guys are not at all focused on running the game, but instead enforcing some idea of language police and to protect people from light jokes that are neither ad hominem nor even indirectly personal? That's quite pathetic to be honest.

 

[Soldout]

To be clear, I have raised the issue of homophobia on this forum before. People using the chat feed to go on ideological hateful campaigns, and they are rarely noticed or gagged. And I am gagged for using the term "nazi" which is a cultural reference that belongs to everyone in the world? Are you really all so sensitive and unable to manage a chat feed that you can't see how stupid it is to gag someone for literally nothing while you let homophobia let rip on the server. Are the admins homophobic? Please explain this contradictory approach.

And yes, I am personally very offended that I have been punished for "racism" for a nazi reference which is not only totally inappropriate, as explained above, but also very difficult for me to accept given my kind are those that were literally rounded up in the concentration camps.

So what the actual hell is wrong with you all???? You let homophobia loose onthe server all the time and then punish people for making meaningless references to the most evil people ever?

 

[Soldout]

This is meant to be a fun server on an silly old game, with a nice fun little community. Instead, it seems to be getting more and more like the admins want to ban everything, gag everyone (with no consistency) and treat people like children. It's really kind of sad.

 

[Dhoudz]

I am going to give you one last reply, since Lotus already cleared things out.

First, no we are not homophobic and if we see it, we punish it as well. You are free to make a demo/screenshot and report it, if no admin is online.
Second, other people doing wrong things does not allow you to do wrong things as well.

Third, You do not compare or call someone a nazi unless they are one. "You scream, hitler screamed, you are like hitler", this is not how it works.
And thinking this is a "light jokes" just shows me, that you either dont know, forgot or dont care about the other things they did back then, to think we are like them.

I am a bit shocked and concerned, that you do not even seem to accept the slightest bit, that you might have made a mistake or said something bad.

"This is meant to be a fun server on an silly old game, with a nice fun little community."
Me (and i think all admins) also want to have fun and do not want be insulted.

 

[Soldout]

Why are you so insulted at a joke about being a nazi? It makes no sense why you take this so personally. As I said above, it is quite normal to say someone 'is behaving like a nazi' as a lighthearted joke.

Do you deny the right of people to use such terminology freely, given the word is itself not ad hominem? For example, if I said "you're behaving like a confederate" (referring to the US Civil War) would that be an offense too? Or what if I said that you're behaving like a Cavalier (the royalists of the English Civil War), who lost and were fundamentalists. Would you find that offensive too and want to gag that person? What is it about being called a 'nazi' that makes you feel that you have some sort of special protection? You do not. WW2 legacy does not belong to you. The evil of the war does not belong to you. References about the war are not a form of communication that you have some sort of logical or inherent right to police.

You haven't cleared anything up - all you have done is try to argue that calling someone a 'nazi' is so unbelievably offensive that they should be gagged without actually explaining your position in any sort of depth of level of meaning. The reality is that you're wrong and that you're not even bothering to try to prove your position to yourself or me. You clearly do not care for logical reasoning. It is intellectually lazy and disappointing.

 

[Soldout]

It is people like you two who would happily and lazily allow the world to become totalitarian because you're so pre-occupied with trying to "not be offended" and using shallow logic in the analysis of open discourse and the application of civil rights, that the norm to gag people for making references to real things. You should both be ashamed of yourselves. You've let me down and yourselves down, and are small contributors to a worldwide problem of feeble minded millennials who are unable to enter a conversation or deal with a tricky subject without getting 'upset'.

 

[Soldout]

"Third, You do not compare or call someone a nazi unless they are one." Where is this a written rule? I didn't realize that freedom to speech had this sub-clause? Ooooooh right - what you have done is imagine it out of thin air because you didn't like what I said. Remind you of anyone from history?

 

[Dhoudz]

You actually gonna make me response once more, because you make things so much more complicated then they are.

Why are you so insulted at a joke about being a nazi?

I considered this an insult, because it simply is. I will always see this as an insult and never take it as a joke.
If you joke about this with your friends in rl, do so. But we do not tolerate it on our servers.

Do it again, you will be gagged again.

 

[Soldout]

I believe that is what is known as circular reasoning. X is Y because X is Y.

Please can you elaborate? I do not deny that someone such as yourself may consider a lighthearted reference to the nazis as insulting, because insult and offence are spectra. Most things lie on it somewhere. What you continue to fail to do is explain why this particular matter should be considered an offense to the point of being gagged. Many insults are traded on the server chat - both between non admin players and between admins and non-admins.

Please can you explain why you have used your admin gag powers in response to this particular example? You say that you do not tolerate references to the nazis on it the server - where is this rule written? If it has not been written, then you need to answer this question.

Finally, it is completely wrong of you to think that it is inappropriate to joke about the nazis. Have you heard of the film 'Jo Jo Rabbit'? Or the countless other spoofs of the nazis? Would you ban any mention of Jo Jo Rabbit? If not, then you need explain why it is that you in particular cannot be called a nazi.

I think for anyone reading these exchanges, including you and I, that this is ultimately boiling down to a single and simple conclusion: you abused your powers to gag people because you felt unreasonably sensitive about a reference to the main protagonists of World War 2, the legacy of which is owned by all of humanity, not just you. Above all, you decided to say that I was "racist" which you have still not apologised for.

I think it is quite clear that you need to apologise.

 

[Soldout]

I think I also need to remind you that I didn't even mention the Nazis directly. I said: "lol that's very 1940's german like rule enforcement".

Also - did you warn me? No.

Please apologise.

 

[Dhoudz]

Again I do not see, why you make it so political and philosophical.
I do not forbid you to talk about it or make jokes about them (although we do not want to discuss politics in chat).

I took what you said as an heavy insult and admin disrespect. To be called or be compared to the nazis is one of the worst things you can do in my opinion.
i will never take it as a joke and i dont understand how you can think it would be a joke or funny.

We do not warn for racism or heavy insults and this is what i considered it.
I never called you a racist, your choice of words towards us was. And i wont apologise for that.

As Lotus said, my reaction was to harsh and I will remember it next time. I even would have reduced your gag,
but since you dont even seem to understand the slightest bit, that you dont call people nazis for fun, I did not.

(Btw i had kind of the same discussion with a player who called me "hitler" for fun here)

 

[Soldout]

"I never called you a racist, your choice of words towards us was."

How on earth is jokingly referring to the nazis 'racist'? Why can't you clarify this? Do you even know what racism is?

 

[Soldout]

You have no idea what racism is, my friend. Your petty understanding of the concept and your defiance here just demonstrates a deep ignorance.

 

[Soldout]

The rules:

1. No insulting/flaming other players! Respect other players!
2. No racism/porn sprays!
3. Obey and respect admins! They are right! If you think you've been wronged then feel free to complain!
4. No cheating/bug exploiting/macroing!
5. No advertising other websites/servers!

Please can you explain which rule I broke by saying only the following and nothing else in response to some rather fearsome rule enforcement: "lol that's very 1940's german like rule enforcement".

 

[Dhoudz]

1 and 3 (and partly 2, but since you dont see it, i will leave this out):

I took what you said as an heavy insult and admin disrespect.

some rather fearsome rule enforcement

Are you serious? I banned 2 teamkillers for destroying the barricade of others repeatedly after ignoring several warnings.
And you equate it with that of a racist regime who committed horrible unimaginable crimes.

Once more, Lotus already said my judgement was over the top and i will follow that instruction in the future.

But in my opinion what you said is one of the worst things someone said to me yet.
And dont come to me with "dont be so lighthearted". I havent gagged and just warned players who called me a lot of insults (idiot, bitch, retard and so on).