Wikibara’s allegations
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Re: Numetal/Retromux
I may not have used the right command to reply.?we will see when I post.
I play on retro a little bit, but I am not very active as life is busy. I get along fine with the staff there, but I am not close friends with them.
The game has its problems. There are pros and cons to playing there. It isn’t perfect by any means.
I am Jewish with close connections to Israel. I have been open about such and my character is openly Jewish as well.
My family and myself have been experiencing increasing antisemitism in our lives.
While mush community has some issues I very much appreciate that my interactions with the mush community have been safe from antisemitism, including my interactions with retro and with the staff of retro.
I understand that just because I have not experienced antisemitism doesn’t mean others have not.
That being said, I didn’t like what I understood to be a passive aggressive and bad faith implied allegation of antisemitism in the thread.
First of all it trivializes real antisemitism. Second it is a horrible thing so it better be true or at least have some real evidence imo. It also if believed could scare people away from retro and pokes at the antisemitism free safe place that retro and other games have been. It also doesn’t make the Jewish people look great to say this dishonestly and can actually increase antisemitism. It can also discourage people from reporting when it really happens or believing people when they report.
I understand he claimed the implied allegation was an accident and said he isn’t going to waste his time pondering if his ban and the antisemitic comment were linked, but unless I missed it I didn’t hear an apology to retro staff. I don’t really believe it was accident so much as a passive aggressive poking to see if people will be more on his side or think maybe staff banned him out of racism.
In addition he still said not going to waste my time pondering the link, which to me read like was still
Implying there could be a link.Anyways, I was ready to believe staff was too hard on him and character generation was ridiculous until I read the casually dropped and maybe maybe just maybe but I won’t say it directly or provide any evidence staff is antisemitic.
With all the real dangerous scary antisemitism going on to use it flippantly as a card to pull in petty mush issue about character generation is lame.
I realize this is beating a dead horse, I been stewing on this I read his posts and finally got the nerve to comment.
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I don’t know who any of the people in this involved are. Not the staff, not the accused, not the accuser, not this poster I’m replying to now, nor what events transpired.
@voiceinthevoid said in Antisemitism allegedly:
It also doesn’t make the Jewish people look great to say this dishonestly and can actually increase antisemitism.
But this sentence reads incredibly suspicious to me.
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I just don’t like with all the current rising antisemitism someone making the accusation in bad faith. He did not bring any evidence whatsoever and even later when people dug into such said his allegation was an accident. An accident he didn’t appear to apologize for and still left some of the implication hanging.
This is a difficult topic and maybe going beyond the scope of this board, but a common antisemitic belief being spread around social media right now “Jews always pull the victim card”. It is line that has been directed at me several times since October the 7th especially when I talked about antisemitic violence. Often while claiming racial violence towards Jews is not real. I feel making an accusation in bad faith right now is bad timing and may feed into this energy.
That being said I think most people here can and will separate one person being a jerk from an entire people.
I was not sure about going into this much detail about exactly why his comment upset me which is maybe why the sentence was unclear. I hope this posts clarifies part of the reason for me being unsettled by the implied allegation.
There is more to this though. I worry that too many flippant vague “accidental” accusations can be like crying wolf and increase the difficulty of reporting if staff or players on a game are really being antisemitic. It could encourage antisemitics to
Join game thinking maybe staff will support them and could keep good players away.He also implied very off hand as if it was a small trivial part of his larger complaint of difficult character generation when if it was real imo it would be the primary issue.
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Let us reframe that sentence into the following contexts:
“It also doesn’t make women look great to throw around false rape allegations, and can actually increase misogyny.”
“It also doesn’t make black people look great to play the race-card, and can actually increase white supremacy.”
I can’t be certain that you are who you say you are, and I will state plainly that I feel no compulsion to take at face value a post by a day-old account that, seemingly, created the account and posted solely for the purpose of discrediting an allegation of antisemitism.
But I will say that I take issue with this framing, that lying Jews cause antisemitism. Antisemites cause antisemitism. This sentence is either internalised racism, or dishonest in authorial intent.
Maybe it also really was an honest mistake to have created a whole new thread, and the intention was to reply directly to the comments in context. But I really wish this board didn’t now have a whole thread titled “Antisemitism Allegedly” about how, allegedly, allegations of antisemitism cannot be trusted. Did this need to be a topic here?
Maybe Wikibara really is a liar, I don’t know, I don’t know him from Adam. Maybe this is an attempt to discredit a game unfairly, I don’t know, I’ve never played it.
But this thread sets me on edge. If you’re being honest about why you made it, then hopefully you can understand why some people taking an interest in this topic might be on edge.
Because I have receipts I will gladly post of Actual Nazis in this hobby privately admitting in their crusty little Actual Nazi discord servers that they enjoy making false flag posts in the MU* community meant to stir up shit of this nature.
If your intentions are honest, then I really am sorry for what you and your family are going through.
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I didn’t mean to make a new thread. I’m
A known player and not hiding. -
I also don’t know the context beyond this thread and I’m going to take the thread as it reads. However, I’m going to drop my opinion. You don’t have to agree, but I feel the need to state it.
We don’t apologize for racism or anything in that vein.
The person who read the statement as antisemitic does not then go back and apologize when it was said ‘as an accident’. We don’t do that. Something was said. It might have been taken out of context, but something was said.
What we do is the person who said it learns not to say that again. We realize they are not racist (for this reason). We understand that knowledge was gained on how to speak and handle situations going forward.
We, again, do not apologize for pointing something out even if it was said accidentally. Just like we don’t apologize when someone gets offended when the speaker was “only joking”. It’s a boundary and we respect that. It doesn’t mean the speaker is the evil, but it does mean e need to reflect on the power of our words (both good and bad) and we move forward in understanding.
Asking for an apology or thinking that one should be made does not sit well with me and so I’m just giving my opinion on what I’ve read on this thread.
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@Kestrel said in Antisemitism allegedly:
Maybe it also really was an honest mistake to have created a whole new thread, and the intention was to reply directly to the comments in context. But I really wish this board didn’t now have a whole thread titled “Antisemitism Allegedly” about how, allegedly, allegations of antisemitism cannot be trusted. Did this need to be a topic here?
It’s possible to rename threads. V, I’d consider it. Person to person, player to player. Not mod voice.
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Your post has upset me and is partly why it took me so long to respond. It is difficult topic and beyond the scope here.
I believe there are racists in this hobby. We been given no reason to believe retro staff are among them. Even Wiki admitted there is no reason to believe they are among them.
You don’t need to believe me. It is what it is. It can be hard to know online who people really are so while the doubts are ouch, I can empathize with them.
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@Tez
Sure I absolutely meant to reply and replied wrong. I would be fine with the posts being moved if they can be. -
Sorry I can’t find the command to change the title.
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Wiki said he got an antisemitic dm from an unknown user and suggested it could be from retro staff. He did I believe admit there was nothing connecting the dm to retro beyond timing.
Retro staff as far as I know said nothing racist to him even accidentally. While they could apologize and maybe did that someone did that, I don’t believe they should apologize as if they did a wrong.
I don’t believe they should be held accountable for the actions of an unknown user who has no known association with them.
Things like this is partly why the allegation is concerning as well meaning people may go but staff should apologize. Also it is partly on me as my wording was unclear and continued with the information from the other thread. I really made this worse by speaking up and apologize myself especially to retro staff as now it is spiraling.
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I would say that it’s less about the allegations of antisemitism in general and more about allegations that turn out to be untrue. A lot of (very abusive, shitty) people can point to allegations proven false as evidence of no wrong-doing in the future, which can create a more dangerous space – this was my argument against Wikibara’s inclusion of the link between their application being denied and antisemitism in their original post.
When I worked in in-patient court-mandated substance abuse recovery, there was a white supremacist guy who told me tales about how he would get fabrications of abuse, which could easily be proven false to create a protective shell. “I don’t abuse my partner, she said I abused her and everyone found out it was bullshit”, which then gave him free rein to kind of abuse whomever. After all, people are lying to discredit his character. I stopped being interested in correctional psych after that, if I’m being honest. Moral injury and all.
According to my (very uninformed, very amateur) research, this is apparently called a “silver bullet” in the legal field.
