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Are racism and hate speech permitted on Similar Worlds?

A post was recently made referring to Russians as "barbarians," adding that Russian tennis players who are playing at Wimbledon are "contaminating" it. These players are all neutral, and most of them live outside of Russia. Some of them have dual citizenships and live in Kazakhstan, Spain, Italy, USA and other countries, but the user responsible for this hatred and racism still objects to them playing at Wimbledon.

This has led me to question whether racism and hate speech are permitted on this website? Is it acceptable or encouraged to say vile things about a nationality or ethnic group? Or is it only acceptable or encouraged when the nationality or ethnic group is Russian?

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helenS · 36-40, F

Russians, of course, are no "barbarians". Who could possibly insult innocent Russians in such an outrageous way??

Picture postcards from Ukraine

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strictdadhusbandanduncleinpa · 41-45, M

@Diotrephes Where were the concentration camps in the deep south? There weren't any bozo.

newjaninev2 · 56-60, F

@emiliya In order to bring about the triumph of evil, it is necessary only that good men do nothing.

Mass media, global Internet, global personal communication. In the years ahead the russians will try to expunge their shame by making the same excuses we heard 80 years ago, but there's one excuse they will not be able to use... they cannot say they did not know.

By the way, is someone who holds dual nationality of 'mixed race'? If I change my nationality am I therefore a different race?

Here's a reality check for you: there is no genetic basis to the concept of 'race'.
The sole purpose of talking about 'race' is to allow those using the word to mask their true motives. ?

What are yours, I wonder?

emiliya · 22-25, F

@newjaninev2 Why should innocent Russians feel the need to "expunge their shame?" Why don't you expunge yours? You should be ashamed of your hatred and discriminatory views.

I have heard that people in the West believe our elections are undemocratic. If true, the natural consequence is that we are unable to do anything about Putin; we cannot remove him from power, and we cannot protest without being arrested and put in prison. What makes you so special, good woman who is doing nothing? I suggest that, given you care about Ukraine so much, you go there and fight. Why not? Why are you sitting there doing nothing while they struggle, fight, and die? You advocate war from the comfort of your home, remote from the conflict, yet you do nothing to help them. Your age is no excuse. Do you enjoy being a hateful, lazy hypocrite? It seems you like to think you know it all. You take your "good man" quote elsewhere; it is hypocritical garbage.

Do you believe the election this year was democratic?

By the way, is someone who holds dual nationality of 'mixed race'? If I change my nationality am I therefore a different race?

Are you still trying to justify your hatred of Russians?

Here's a reality check for you: there is no genetic basis to the concept of 'race'. The sole purpose of talking about 'race' is to allow those using the word to mask their true motives. ?
What are yours, I wonder?

This isn't going to work, racist. We all know what racism means, and why this term is used. It is used when someone expresses hate to a racial or ethnic group. It can also incorporate national group. Russians are an east Slavic Caucasian group, although a sizeable number have Asian heritage as well. You believe that all Russians are "barbarians" who "contaminate" all places outside of Russia, and that makes you a racist.

MarkPaul · 26-30, M

Take things with a grain of salt and regulate your own feelings. Being nice is encouraged, but if every statement needs a disclaimer, a trigger warning, or a censor, there can't be much of a public forum. Of course, outright hate and threats posing is not permitted, but calling out a nation-state like Russia for its warmongering dictatorship is in bounds.

If the athletes you claim are pure and innocent are representing Russia they should not be allowed to participate no matter where they reside because Russia should not be represented. That's not racism or hate; that's common sense.

Be brave instead of allowing your feelings to get so hurt, so fast, and so frequently.

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newjaninev2 · 56-60, F

@emiliya

Russians are very good at tennis

and they are russians...

Liudmila Samsonova... not representing Italy
Daria Kasatkina... not representing Spain
Victoria Azarenka... not representing USA
Mirra Andreea... not representing France
Daniil Medvedev... not representing France

emiliya · 22-25, F

@newjaninev2 They are tennis players who are representing the country of their birth. As you have been told, they have declared their neutrality. If there are issues with them being able to represent other countries, it is not their fault. They are not in the Russian army; they do not support the war and have in several cases spoken out against the war; they reside in other countries, and they have nothing to do with Putin.

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SumKindaMunster · 51-55, M

I saw that post. That person was utterly indoctrinated by the Slava Ukrani propaganda movement by the West and NATO.

She lives in New Zealand but clearly fears and hates Russians perhaps due to her acceptance of said propaganda campaign.

However, I'd just like to note that you clearly created this account to call out and shame this person.

Perhaps you have some personal history here and you are hiding behind a new account to obscure your bad behavior regarding this poster and her post.

Finally, I'd like to point out SW is US based and the US doesn't have hate speech laws.

So my suggestion is to block this person, or confront her directly and not make it some sort of phony moral thing where you involve the admins and community here for a personal beef.

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TheOneyouwerewarnedabout · 46-50, MVIP

redredred · M

I just want the killing to stop. Zelenskyy is, at best, a tiny bit better than Putin but to the average Ukrainian it can’t matter much which of these two is in charge.

Get a neutral party, Japan,Peru, Canada or somebody to organize peace talks and stop shooting.

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Kwek00 · 41-45, M

@emiliya So, Russia comes in, takes your stuff. It actively teaches it's citizens, that Ukraine doesn't really excist. Ukraine according to Russia, belongs to Russia because they have rewritten history. When Trump speaks about history and wants to introduce a "pro-American curriculum that celebrates the "truth"", well... Russia is already putting their pro-Russian curriculum into practise. You say that it believes in "peacefull sollutions", what does that mean exactly? It means accepting their distorted version of reality, meaning that Ukraine needs to loose their stuff. And those are people you believe you can make "peacefull solutions"? Who are you kidding, you don't even understand the mindset that these people are in.

His sollution to problem, is the same as yours, delusional. You refuse to accept what you are dealing with, and you believe that you can negotiate with a guy that only believes in power. That's a fatal flaw.

emiliya · 22-25, F

@Kwek00 You don't know anything about Russia. None of this is taught or practiced there, and your commentary is a joke.

Kwek00 · 41-45, M

@emiliya

The notion that Ukraine is not a country, but a historical part of Russia, appears to be deeply ingrained in the minds of Russian leadership. Competing interpretations of history have turned into a key ingredient of the deepening dispute between Russia and the West and a subject that Putin in particular appears to feel unusually passionate about. In this article, Dr Björn Alexander Düben explores the question, is it historically accurate to claim that Ukraine has never truly been a nation or state in its own right??

For more than twenty years, Vladislav Surkov was a known quantity in Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin. Dubbed the ‘Grey Cardinal’ and the Kremlin’s main ideologist, Surkov is commonly regarded as the mastermind of Putin’s Ukraine policy which plunged Moscow into open conflict with the West. By late February 2020, however, he had apparently fallen from grace and was unexpectedly sacked from his position as personal advisor to the president. [...] True to form, within days of his dismissal he stirred up fresh controversy by publicly questioning the existence of Ukrainian statehood. In an interview published on 26 February, Surkov stated that “there is no Ukraine. There is Ukrainian-ness. That is, a specific disorder of the mind. An astonishing enthusiasm for ethnography, driven to the extreme.” Surkov went on to claim that Ukraine is “a muddle instead of a state. […] But there is no nation. There is only a brochure, ‘The Self-Styled Ukraine’, but there is no Ukraine.”

“Ukraine is not even a state”

Surkov is not the first Russian official to make such a claim. The notion that Ukraine is not a country in its own right, but a historical part of Russia, appears to be deeply ingrained in the minds of many in the Russian leadership. Already long before the Ukraine crisis, at an April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Vladimir Putin reportedly claimed that “Ukraine is not even a state! What is Ukraine? A part of its territory is [in] Eastern Europe, but a[nother] part, a considerable one, was a gift from us!” In his March 18, 2014 speech marking the annexation of Crimea, Putin declared that Russians and Ukrainians “are one people. Kiev is the mother of Russian cities. Ancient Rus’ is our common source and we cannot live without each other.” Since then, Putin has repeated similar claims on many occasions. As recently as February 2020, he once again stated in an interview that Ukrainians and Russians “are one and the same people”, and he insinuated that Ukrainian national identity had emerged as a product of foreign interference. Similarly, Russia’s then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told a perplexed apparatchik in April 2016 that there has been “no state” in Ukraine, neither before nor after the 2014 crisis.

[...]

SOURCE: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2020/07/01/there-is-no-ukraine-fact-checking-the-kremlins-version-of-ukrainian-history/

If you want... I can give you more sources.
I also advice you to look into Alexander Dugin and his 4th political theory, who also advocates for neo-Eurasianism and pushes for Russian Imperialism. Putin is just one of those leaders that are pretty close to almost full out Fascistic, it's not even a hyperbole if you start figuring out how schools are now pushing militairism in the classrooms and just teaching a romantic myth about how great Russia is, devoided of all it's short commings. And how they have the right to reclaim their lost territories.

But you just keep pretending that everything is normal... in Russia. Where journalists and dissidents randomly fall out of windows, get poisoned by radioactive material, shot on the street or get imprisoned and just die in their cells.

DeWayfarer · 61-69, M

FYI Russians are Caucasians! Look up where the Caucasus mountain range is!

That's their race including all of Europe!

I have no love for China in the Olympics. Yet have no problem with other Asians, like Japan, going!

Does that make me a racist? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Third point. And as much I dislike it. Name calling isn't considered hate speech.

By Roman standards I'm a barbarian! My parents where born in what was considered Gaul!

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DeWayfarer · 61-69, M

@emiliya I'm not narcissistic. In fact this site hid your reply because of the language. And didn't notify me!

They are punishing you!

The definition you gave is the legal definition. Which is wishy washy. They joined the two definitions because they refuse to make a distinction.

In no way in archeology is a race a ethnicity!

emiliya · 22-25, F

@DeWayfarer It is a definition that is widely accepted and not limited. Why don't you stop making foolish comments?

Why have you raised the subject of archaeology? Do you think there is a difference between someone from Syria or Lebanon between someone from France or Belgium? We know that ethnic groups exist because of what we see. People have different skin tones, different facial features, different types of hair, and different body types. This can all be tested in their blood and saliva. A skeleton in archaeology reveals nothing compared to what we see and what we can test in a living body. Caucasians are very diverse as they include Middle Easterners and North Africans, but that is not going to be very visible to an archaeologist when they are long dead.

DeWayfarer · 61-69, M

@emiliya I specifically did not say biologically because biology doesn't involve culture at all! Which ethnicity does.

That is the difference between the two! There are many cultures in each race. Race is the bigger group! Hense RACISM!

You are insisting there is no difference by that definition, when there distinctly is a difference. Racism is not ethnicity!

Heck there are many ethnic cultures even each country! You named a few yourself. Where a race crosses many countries, even continents.

ALL OF EUROPE AND BEYOND even into Russia and Ukraine is Caucasian!

I mentioned above that my mother side is likely from Ukraine! That still makes me 100% Caucasian!

That is my race!

To insult my race is to insult all Caucasians! That is racism.

Yet my culture on my mother's side is gypsy! A conglomerate of cultures! There is no such thing as gypsy ethnicity because of the conglomerate of cultures. Yet even my mother was gypsy because she traveled throughout all of Europe!

This is why Hitler never was considered a racist against gypsies! Despite him slaughtering them worse than Jews! Jews were considered better than gypsies by Hitler. Often gypsies were shot on the spot! Not even taken into prison camps!

The only thing worse than a jew by Hitler WAS GYPSIES!

Why do I know this? Because my great grandfather on my father's side was mistaken for a gypsy and shot on the spot by the Germans in Czechoslovakia! He was Czech! My father went to prison camp though. As a political prisoner!

Racism is absolutely not ethnicity! My family's story on both sides is the reason why!

Your racist definition doesn't include Gypsies! They traveled Everywhere, including Russia itself!

My grandmother on my mother's side was born in Ukraine. My mother was born in Romania, my oldest half sister was born there as well. My next oldest half sister was born in Germany, my half brother was born in Czechoslovakia, my two younger half sisters were born and died in Hungary!

All this was during and before WWII! I state this to prove my mother was gypsy.

The whole family traveled EVERYWHERE! Yet the Germans tortured my mother with experimental operations. Because she was Gypsy! She escaped them. Don't ask me how. Definitely not on her own.

Yet she showed me the scar herself, over her left kidney! I wasn't supposed to be born because of that operation. Her kidney was still roving!

Why wasn't this prosecuted after WWII? Because it wasn't considered racism! Genocide of gypsies wasn't RACIST!

Yet genocide of the Jewish people was racist!

Alababy · 36-40, F

they are jealous of Russians.

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pdxlinux · 41-45, M

@Alababy BINGO

Therealsteve · 31-35, M

I'm British, and I've been called a "scone scoffing sod" and told "run back to your queen...oh wait, she dead!"

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helenS · 36-40, F

@Therealsteve The Tatra Mountains must be amazing!

Therealsteve · 31-35, M

@helenS I've still got to go! So far I've visited a couple of castles. I've only been here a few weeks and waiting to start my job to earn trip money.

newjaninev2 · 56-60, F

@MissyChrissy I see your generation finally rejecting the shame that Germans carried for 80 years, and that's excellent.

BohemianBoo · M

It's against the TOS, but the mods don't usually do anything. I take it upon myself to roast the racists here.

Jackaloftheazuresand · 26-30, M

not technically so feel free to report them. They won't be banned though

Jake966 · 56-60, M

Hate speech is apparently welcome here because if you have different views of someone else, they can call you all kinds of names in order to try and prove their point

pdxlinux · 41-45, M

i think that you nailed it and it also applies to the united states in general. yes, defamation of a group if it is european or russian is not only permissible, it is encouraged as justice.

ElwoodBlues · M

Your best bet is to report anything you consider "hate speech." That's what the flag in the upper right is for.

emiliya · 22-25, F

@ElwoodBlues Maybe I did. I can also make a post about it.

Kwek00 · 41-45, M

@ElwoodBlues Sometimes SW Does something about it, and sometimes SW just uses the block option for you without telling you about it.

Matt85 · 36-40, M

Andrew is black so I dont think so.

Fentonisfree · 51-55, MVIP

I think it’s important to support Ukraine, that being said lot of Russians, don’t support Putin,
Can you imagine Farage getting in to power in the UK?

Reform are an extreme right wing party similar to Nazi Germany.
I would never support them but what if they were the government scary isn’t it?

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Fentonisfree · 51-55, MVIP

@emiliya https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/reform-candidates-nigel-farage-election-clacton-b1167353.html

emiliya · 22-25, F

@Fentonisfree The article features this comment from Nigel Farage: "In some cases one or two people let us down and we let them go."

If Nigel Farage believes that Reform are "let down" by unfortunate comments, and sees it fit to remove those who say them, how is his party similar to the Nazi Party? The Nazi Party or a party similar to the Nazi Party would embrace such members.

You need to think about this critically.

Fentonisfree · 51-55, MVIP

@emiliya [media=https://youtu.be/z_aVqQ_ru0U]

4meAndyou · F

This is a very free website. I suggest you block the person who posted something offensive to you.

NoThanksLeon · M

Selective hate speech and racism, yes.

MissyChrissy · 18-21, F

Neither, Miss.
Its never acceptable.

MissyChrissy · 18-21, F

@newjaninev2 Thank you very much Ma'am. But guys like this british hater prefer to remind us on the shame our forefathers are responsible for, so that the hate never ends.

MissyChrissy · 18-21, F

@newjaninev2 Btw, Ma'am, I messaged you twice a while ago but you never answered. Maybe they went to the requests folder?
Please lets chat in private. I will prove my identity and explain anything.

Sidewinder · 36-40, M

Hate, as a concept in and of itself is a vast area, as there are so many things, and concepts that one can hate.

I however have an intense hatred of unfairness, inequality and double standards.

smiler2012 · 56-60

@emiliya 🤔sadly siomilar worlds has a core of vindictive people and politics seems too fuel there hatred

SumKindaMunster · 51-55, M

@emiliya @newjaninev2

Glad you too were able to hash it out instead of making it an admin or community problem.

Thevy29 · 41-45, M

No. You can report the post for it. Them if they keep doing it or block them if you want.

Adstar · 56-60, M

If you cannot handle what someone here says then the easy solution is to block them..

Nitedoc · 51-55, M

I got a warning from admin. once for telling someone to speak American.

CountScrofula · 41-45, M

No but it has to be reported and the admins have to decide it counts.

WalterHoeReally · M

That post is being adressed by the SW Team

ViciDraco · 36-40, M

Not really permitted. I don't like painting all Russians that way.

I do agree it is valid to exclude them from international peacetime activities. But the barbarians are the people in the Kremlin, not the everyday citizen of Russia. And the person calling all Russians as barbarians is engaging in hate speech.

Passions over the aggressive invasion of Ukraine are high, and that emotional outrage has people willing to look the other way. It's terrible, but history is full of this same behavior.

KeysToMyBeemer · 36-40, M

Meh. Victory to Russia 🇷🇺😁

This message was deleted by its author.

LandOfOz · 61-69, M

NO NOT PERMITTED

V00doo

Yes

ImperialAerosolKidFromEP · 46-50, M

But it's not racist when we do it!

pancakeslam · 41-45, M

mostly

LordShadowfire · 46-50, M

They aren't supposed to be. If somebody is posting that kind of trash, and reporting it doesn't help, open up a help ticket.

swirlie · 31-35, F

The short answer to your question is 'no', the Terms of Service of this website prohibit racist comments and other hate speech.

NativePortlander1970 ·

It's not permitted one bit, it must have been someone I blocked.

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specman · 51-55, M

@KeysToMyBeemer do you think Russia is in the right too?

emiliya · 22-25, F

@specman Declared a war criminal? Putin has been convicted of nothing. It is an allegation, and that is all.

"Russia is committing war crimes"

Where is your evidence?

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emiliya · 22-25, F

@Thewhazzupdude When did the Russian tennis players at Wimbledon engage in any of the above? Most of them no longer reside in Russia, and they do not support Putin.

Ukraine also bombs civilians.

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Diotrephes · 70-79, M

@MarmeeMarch There's nothing like being a real commie.

This message was deleted by its author.

specman · 51-55, M

@MarmeeMarch That’s pretty strong language there!

You must be a Russian that lives in Russia.
What’s your take on Russia illegally annexing parts of Ukraine? Or the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine? Or their whining over Ukraine striking back on Russian territory? I mean come on it’s okay for you to invade but the country you invaded is not allowed to strike back on your soil? How about the many times Russia harassed or crashed the USA drones in international airspace unprovoked?

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