Leonardo Dicaprio Cheers

First Amendment is a beautiful two-edged sword.

The only person imgflip wants to let rot is you.

Epstein didn't commit suicide.

Lol!

I think he is probably either just a chaos muppet trying his best to pit Left vs. Right, or he actually believes this stuff

And we should probably just ignore him, but... then there's that whole collecting upvotes and hitting the front page of "politics" thing

Clearly his bloodthirsty attitudes are approved of in some way by a lot of the crowd here and we have to talk about that

Really he and all of his alts should just be banned. "But free speech!" Yeah, well: ImgFlip has its own free speech rights too and doesn't owe this guy a platform. He's ruining the experience for the rest of us.

in fact,i am convinced of this fact.

it is one of my small joys in life.
face-f**king Nazis.

over the years neo-nazis have become quite adept at dog whistling,and co-opting charged rhetorical verbiage to appeal to that partisan lizard brain we all have,flavors may vary according to ones own predilections.

so I am not too surprised some of his memes get attention.
it's not like he is plastering his memes with the Nazi flag.
but I do my best to leave my little "calling card" on the memes I do root out are his.
just to signal who they are voting for.

partisan echo chambers are a breeding ground for static ideologies,and a false sense of self-righteous morality.
which is why when these people venture out into the REAL world,they crumble into a glob of shrieking temper tantrums.some may not understand that this pile of vitriolic indignation has simply never experienced any form of pushback.

hard to refine our ideologies if we do not test them against opposing perspectives.

Thank you, enoch. This is a much simpler explanation than the one offered by conservatives that purgey is a "left-winger posing as a right-winger."

I am lobbying to get him banned here: imgflip.com/i/3jwwft

This has gone way beyond the "free speech vs. hate speech" debate. These are just death threats. Free speech doesn't require us to tolerate that when it has the net effect of suppressing speech for everyone.

the only way to de-radicalize someone is to have the opportunity to drag those radical,and dangerous,rhetoricians that work tirelessly to corrupt our discourse,out in to the light of day...

where we can deconstruct,ridicule and mock relentlessly.
I am under no illusions that I would change purgey's twisted,and racist,ideologies.
but rather the people who may have thought,for a moment,that purgey was promoting "reasonable" ideas,and are watching from the sidelines.
it is those people we need to reach.

and the only way to do that is by keeping purgey out in the open.
if he goes underground,he takes people with him,and they will sit and fester in their own fetid ideologies with zero pushback.

and,in my opinion,is a far more dangerous threat.

just my .02

It's a tough debate. You have some good points.

To me, the danger is that permitting stuff like this radicalizes others and normalizes these ideas for the rest. If it's not possible to de-radicalize purgey, then allowing him here only introduces the threat of him radicalizing others.

Yes, I would almost always rather have "hate speech" discussed in the open and ridiculed rather than banned. But when it gets to the point of literal death threats, I don't think there's any value to be had there, and I don't think we have to tolerate it anymore.

Let's be real: most people don't come down to the comments like this, and they aren't going to see us talking about these issues. They're going to just look at it, possibly upvote, and keep scrolling. To them, it's just one more meme out of dozens in the politics stream (much of it also attacking Democrats), and that just normalizes it.

What if purgey is already on these toxic neo-Nazi forums, as he probably is? Pushing him back there won't really change anything. It will just help protect ImgFlip for the rest of us.

which makes people even MORE vulnerable to coersive,flowery rhetoric that appeals to our most base impulses.

does deplatforming someone achieve these goals?
well,yes...it kinda does.
but here is another problem that it creates.
the very same logic behind your proposal can be hi-jacked,and then deployed to attack and deplatform an opposing perspective.

just look at how mike cernivich adopted that tactic to have james gunn fired from guardians of the galaxy.he used the very same tactics you are suggesting to get a man fired.

this is propaganda 101.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”

― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good

so let's say you are successful,and purgey is banned from imgflip.
what did you actually achieve?
you purged purgey from one website.one.
so while you created a safer space on imgflip,you really have not done anything about purgeys consistent,and constant messaging.he will just find another venue to proselytize.

you effectually have done nothing,but created a singular safe space,and not dealt with the real issue.which is radical fascism.
and it only serves to create a more effective echo chamber.

I see it manifest on so many websites that used to be diverse,but are now just partisan havens.

it is dangerous.
my opinion,of course.

How old are you actually tho -- 12? 15 max?

Kylie...he's a troll. Commenting on his memes helps them in their rise to the top of the board, so you're helping that process along. Try not to put that on others when most of the comments here are you and Enoch chatting. Also, you're fairly new, but Purge as been around for awhile and has Alternate accounts that can be used for upvoting. If you pay attention, you can watch these things get upvoted quickly. Other's have tracked this, so I'm not going to get into it. Maybe ask Octavia. He a Vag do a better job at it than I. All you can really do is call out that BS when you see it. I never really know who Purge is at any given time, so if you ever see me going over the top with my comments, it's probably because it's a dickhead that needs it. Except for Manhattan. He and I go back a little ways and I just enjoy roasting him on occasion. Please resist the urge to generalize the rest of us when all the facts are unknown. We don't like him either, but banning hasn't and will not work. It's too easy to just set up another account and begin again.

I could comment on these memes all day, but they would still languish in obscurity, if not for all the upvotes some of them get from people who agree with all or part of the message they convey.

Hmmm... Does he really have that many accounts to upvote with? Why would he do it for some memes and not others?

As for banning him and all his alts, I get there are good arguments both ways on this. I may just troll him back from now on. But: Even if he's "just a troll," we shouldn't let this get normalized.

Whether he and all his alts are banned or not, an actual human moderator looked at these and hit the "approve" button, and that's the part I really don't understand.

It's like I said, one can upvote his memes all day with alt accounts and members of his circle jerk of friends. Only trolls and insecure people do this, but it's a thing, and it's not limited to one political persuasion. Moderators catch the worst ones, but they're people who have jobs, and don't necessarily have time to get detail oriented on every meme submitted.