Collective sigh of relief at FD

I'm almost afraid to post this, but given that I posted about it a few times at the outset it's only fair to follow up: the CHRC complaint against Free Dominion has been withdrawn.

I'm not sure how these things work, but my guess is that in the time that's elapsed since the site owners received the complaint there's been plenty of back-and-forth between them and the CHRC. Without taking any sides here (sometimes it's necessary to state the obvious), I would venture that this is probably what should have gone down before the complaint was issued in the first place. Rather than immediately firing off a formal complaint that seems to come out of nowhere, which in my view is almost Kafkaesque, some preliminary dialogue would have saved everyone involved a lot of grief.

In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see if there were any lessons learned from this little exercise in aggravation. We'll know the answer to that question if Whatcott starts posting there again.

FD's CHRC woes - is anybody happy?

Like a lot of people, I've been watching with interest Free Dominion's situation with the Human Rights Commission complaint that was laid against it, and one poster specifically. My initial response was that it was a steaming crock of bullshit -- freedom of expression trumps all else, and if someone found something objectionable (it's a smorgasbord, ha!), surely it could be handled without government interference.

The nature and source of the offending post made me grudgingly concede that in this particular case the complaint might not be quite the steaming load I'd originally thought. Even I can admit that there are limits to what we have to accept in the interest free speech, and it's possible, especially in light of the recent increase in anti-Muslim bigotry, that this crossed the line. (Although I still maintain that even if I was filing a complaint, which I personally wouldn't have, I wouldn't have done it without any preliminary dialogue with the site owners.)

Some FD posters aren't helping: publishing the complainant's personal information serves no purpose other than to incite some whacko to make contact, or at the very least, make the board look like the drooling, bullying mouthbreathers they're accused of being. Dragging up the offending thread and keeping it bumped up for awhile wasn't too bright either. This is the kind of stuff that I can't help laughing at. But it's kind of a horrified, "what are you doing!?" laugh. I don't want them to lose this thing, but sometimes they seem intent on doing so.

Site owner Connie Wilkins was on the Coren radio show yesterday and impressed me as sounding very reasonable... until the question about Bill Whatcott, the source of the complaint, came up -- then there was a momentary stumble into the gutter of homophobia. Again, it was another one of those "Oh shit, what are you doing!?" moments.

None of this makes me particularly happy. Popcorn in hand, I'm watching how this plays out, as I think anyone wary of hate speech laws should be. But I'm certainly not cheering for FD's downfall -- quite the opposite, I'd be appalled if the site were shut down. We need more voices out there, not less. (And I don't want to lose a rich mine of conservative comedy gold.) I hope FD wins this and learns something from it ("don't let extremists hijack your site" maybe?), and from what I've seen many of us on the leftish side feel the same way.

And yet I find this on one of the "SoCon Blogs":

"The cackle of the Left is almost deafening."

Where the fuck does that come from? What cackle? I don't think anyone finds this situation particularly funny. It baffles me that right-wing blogs and FD itself go on about how gleefully happy "the left" is about FD's troubles. Other than a couple of isolated snarky comments, I've seen nothing but support for FD -- some of it given grudgingly, but support nonetheless. Even on Babble the general consensus is that they hope FD will win this. And yet the right seems totally clueless about all the support coming from this side of the aisle. That's what's so frustrating about them, their knee-jerk response that wherever they're at, the left must be 180 degrees away. Things aren't always that black and white.

Of course there's the possibility that the reason they can't conceive of us being supportive of them is because if the situation were turned on its head, they wouldn't be supportive of us. Sadly, I think that's probably closer to the truth.

Free Dominion HR complaint

Many will be saying "What the hell took so long!?" now that a Human Rights complaint for Hate Speech has been filed against Free Dominion. Apparently someone saw some thread on FD that they deemed as hateful, took it to the Government and now the wheels are in motion for I guess a fine(?) against the site's owners. Ooooh nooo. Big mistake.

I think it's a load, and I might add one that makes liberals look like the friggin Thought Police the right-wingers accuse us of being. As chock fulla nuts as FD is, what in the world is someone expecting to see when they go there: a bunch of people posting "Kumbaya" verses? Of course not, they're wingnuts and FD is their message board, so anyone going there can expect to see the usual wingnuttery, which unfortunately may be tinged with racism, homophobia, and misogyny. I'm not saying it's good, but it's their site and that's the way they roll, so forewarned is forearmed. I've been known to screencap a couple of FD posts that I found offensive or idiotic and post about them here, but complain to the government? Not a chance, that's out of line and really, quite uneccessary.

This reminds me of last month's dust-up over a fly-buzzed pile of racist excrement RightGirl posted on her blog -- yes, it was reprehensible, but on her blog it's her right to say what she pleases. Other bloggers can show their displeasure (or not) by de-linking or, in RG's case, asking the Canadian Embassy to stop linking to another site she runs. Surely we can police ourselves.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to be concerned about hate speech. But it's an imperfect world, and there will always be a minority of people spewing varying thicknesses of bile; the FD-ers of the world are the least of them. Forcing them underground would only divide people further and make the real haters that much harder to isolate. And while silencing hateful comments might seem like a good thing at first blush, isn't it better to know who's making them? The leveling of something as serious as a hate speech complaint against a site like FD (where nobody says anything you won't find on most hard-right blogs) only trivializes truly, dangerously, actionably hateful speech.

So as I write this I'm shocked and awed to say I'm on Freak Dom's side on this particular issue. I hope they emerge unscathed and continue on as a place where nutty conservatives can go to play (and lefties can go to be, in turns, entertained and offended, by wingnuttery at its finest).