This week, we’re going take a look at some of the Valuable Conversation™ happening on Reddit as a result of the site’s commitment to hate speech. Heads up: this blog operates with a giant trigger warning on top, and that goes double this week.



Now, here at ORS we focus a lot on racism because of the specific threat posed by white nationalists manipulating the site for their own ends. But make no mistake: if the average Redditor had his way, women, children, trans folks, pretty much anyone who isn’t a cisgendered, heterosexual white man would be firmly subjugated under his heel right alongside people of color, with no right to complain about any of it. (As you will see, free speech is really only for one very specific group of people, and heaven forbid any of us who don’t fall into that category say anything they don’t want to hear.) So this week, we let it all hang out.



Moreover, as part of our ongoing commitment to showing just how poorly “quarantine” is working, we will be pulling all of this week’s content from unquarantined subreddits. Advertisers beware: Valuable Conversation™ cannot be contained, and it could not care less about its impact on your brand.

Our first examples come from the openly, unabashedly white nationalist subreddit /r/WhiteRights. Apparently, when Steve Huffman said that there were “communities [on Reddit] whose purpose is reprehensible,” he didn’t mean this one, devoted entirely to the idea that the West should be purged of people of color. ಠ_ಠ

Below, the lovely denizens of WhiteRights discuss a video that is obviously not for children in a post titled “Jews pollute the minds of children with new cartoon starring a tranny as the lead character. Tranny is voiced by Julie Rei Goldstein. You cannot make this shit up.”

A lot going on here: anti-Semitism, transmisogyny, and ableism on top of the racist assumption that white characters should form the majority of any cast. We also have TWO calls to action, for anyone who thinks I’m exaggerating the frequency with which users in hate subreddits get radicalized and want to DO SOMETHING besides just talk. (I wasn’t even searching for it!) Talk that leads to real world action - that’s Valuable Conversation™ indeed!

Next, we have more evidence that racists aren’t good at critically evaluating sources or being…not disgusting. The thread is titled “Black Slavery Wasn’t As Bad As You Were Taught,” and it links to a blog post asserting that slavery wasn’t that bad because African-American slaves were supposedly taller than whites at the time (which we know to be FACT, because these statistics come from sources like auction notices and slave manifests, and no one would EVER exaggerate things like the physical stature of the people they’re putting up for sale in the hopes of earning more money) and because slave narratives sometimes paint a rosy picture of the institution (because the few slaves whose masters taught them how to read and write, in defiance of the law in many cases, are totally representative of the entire class of enslaved people, even the ones who were maimed or killed for attempting literacy).

What happens when these superior Aryan intellects are confronted by someone who disagrees with them?

They skipped right over the indignant demands to prove the assertion and went straight for dead blacks and Jews! #icanteven

Other highlights from yesterday’s activity in this sub include “10% of Norwegian Women Have Been Raped By Muslim Invaders, Half Before They were 18″(62% upvoted, even though commenters reluctantly admit that that figure in the linked blog post is bullshit) and a couple of comments on “5 Legitimate Reasons I ‘Hate’ Black ‘People’,” a blog post wherein the author claims he hates black people because we’re the only ones who try to acquire stuff by any means necessary, say stupid stuff, act “menacing,” riot, or lie.

Aren’t you glad you can just click “Random” and be transported to this delightful place?