I leave for a weekend - to go to Geek.Kon 2011 and get my geek on, no less! - and come back to find out that this Purge thing has gone way out of hand. And there's a boycott, and everything!
And I go and start looking into what happened, and I see that TiMT is gone, and I think, "OK, he was kind of a shit-stirrer, whatever." And then I see Adept2U is gone, and I think, "Wait a minute, I just started reading him! He was good!" And then I look a little further and see all of the really, really good people on this site who got ratings privileges revoked. And then I start thinking about how many of them just so happen to be Black, and/or female. And then I read Robinswing's diary, and about a half-dozen others, about the boycott, and their legitimate reasons for it. And even though I'm a White guy... it pisses me off, on their behalf, that the banhammer fell unequally on the people at the bottom.
So this is my last diary, and I won't be commenting for awhile. I'm not even saying how long. I'm not GBCWing because I don't like to burn bridges, but this is a TTFN. More on my thoughts over the fold.
OK, everyone knows I'm a socialist. Most people also know I'm an evangelical Christian. I think my reputation on this site has largely been a half-way decent one. I've put my foot in it once or twice, but I've tried to make it clear that I give a shit about people, their concerns, their issues. I try to be socially conscious and racially/culturally sensitive. I at least try to be aware that I am carrying around the backpack of white privilege, and that I need to unpack that fucker.
I'm also a critic of the Obama administration. I've been fairly up-front about that, and I haven't liked the ways in which dissent has been shouted down around here - the legitimate, serious dissent, not the ban-worthy attention-whoring. So, like I said, when The Purge started, I was kind of glad to see the shit-stirrers heading out the door. People on both sides of the debate who were more often loudly attention-seeking assholes than productive diarists/commentators.
But this has really gone too far. Instead of just ending the flamewars, Kos - intentionally or not - silenced the Black voice on this community, and a good chunk of the female voice. Robinswing's excellent piece on SistahSpeak nails it for me. This is wrong. It's illiberal, it's not even close to "progressive." The Purge flies in the face of racial equality, social justice... fuck, it's pretty much against all of the good ideas we're supposed to have around here. But that's not surprising, because the Purge was created, and fed, by the culture of this place.
The culture of DailyKos, as I've observed it, is incredibly clique-y, and it's full of narcissists who like to hear themselves talk. It's also hugely White and predominantly male. Basically, it's full of a lot of old White guys who get butthurt when people challenge their carefully crafted opinions. I know people like this, being a young White guy. I can smell their bullshit, and it's all over this site. I've tried, in the past, to plead for some common decency around here, but it hasn't worked. I've realized now why: this really isn't a liberal site, or a progressive one. It's a Democratic establishment site, and it's run and organized by people who are working to become a part of that establishment. The fact that this particular crisis centered around defending criticism of the President, defending dissent, is not because dissent is patriotic. It's not about free speech. It's because these people, who are working to get jobs as pundits, in think-tanks, on the radio and the teevee, are the ones who are currently dissenting, and they don't want anyone to fuck up their chance at success by pointing out the flaws in their criticism. I don't think "DailyKos hates Black people," or anything like that. I just think that dissent is the flavor of the day, and African-Americans are the ones who don't like the flavor. The culture of the site, then, which is clique-y, White, and male, reinforced the idea that the out-group had to go, and that out-group was the Black posters, especially the female ones.
And that is pretty disgusting. Just because I am a dissenter to the Administration's policies doesn't mean I agree with this - because this has nothing to do with dissent, it has to do with the big guys tossing out the little guys, on a site where we should know better. But we don't.
So I'm a socialist. I'm not a Big-D Democrat. I haven't been for at least four or five years, if I ever was. And Socialism says that solidarity is a core value. Solidarity with the oppressed. Solidarity with racial minorities. Solidarity with the poor. I've found it interesting that the heavy hand of the BanHammer also threatened Socialists along with the Black folk - interesting but not surprising that on a "liberal" site we would try to crush true, third-party dissent from Democratic policy. Only Big-D Democratic criticism allowed here, thank you very much - that kind of criticism is safe and doesn't actually endanger the two-party status quo that works so well for the establishment. So I'm more inclined to find common cause with the oppressed group around here, even though I have disagreed with them politically, than with the oppressors with whom I have, in the past, agreed.
Down with authoritarianism. Down with racism - even "inadvertent" racism, which is just code for structural racism. Down with the silence. Up with dissent. Up with feminism. Up with equality - for everyone. Up with fighting the power, in all the ways that we have to, to make a better world.
I'm going to try finding a better place. A place where critics of the Administration and people who think "this is a BFD!" can get along better. A place where the lines between Black and White aren't black and white. A place where it's more important to treat each other like human beings than to be right or wrong. A place where we can stand in solidarity for the causes of ending injustice, ending racism, and ending inequality. A place where we can figure out where all of our mutual hopes intersect, instead of looking for the places where our disagreements lie. I don't know that such a place really exists, but I know one thing:
It ain't here.
Solidarity Forever.