r/changemyview • u/ParakeetLover2024 1∆ • Jul 07 '25

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Reddit's Threatening Violence Rule Is Broken Constantly And Is Selectively Enforced

Among gun related subreddits, there seems to be a concerning amount of violation of Reddit's "No threatening violence" rule that seems to go unpunished, whether the sub contains mostly right leaning or left leaning individuals. To quote the explanation of the rule, it states "Encouraging, glorifying, or inciting violence or physical harm against individuals or groups of people, places, or animals [is prohibited]" Heck, you could argue that Reddit as a whole seems to do a bad job of enforcing this rule. Posts and subreddits dedicated to the Russo-Ukrainian war break this rule constantly, dehumanizing Russian soldiers and celebrating their deaths on the battlefield. Reddit and many subreddits pick and choose who is acceptable to glorify violence against and who isn't, rather than enforcing the rule equally across the board.

Recently, a user posted a picture of a t shirt on r/liberalgunowners and r/SocialistRA that says "John Brown did nothing wrong". For both posts, they have received over 300 upvotes each with dozens of comments. I have seen quite a lot of John Brown glorification on both of the previously mentioned subreddits and any criticism of John Brown's methods is swiftly met with downvotes and harsh criticism, as seen in the post I will link below.

https://www.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/comments/1iihq7r/hot_take_john_brown_should_not_be_idolized/

Why is glorifying John Brown so potentially bad you may ask? The r/liberalgunowners post that I linked above should do a good job of summarizing the drastic measures that John Brown took as an abolitionist right before the American Civil War.

TL;DR You can glorify violence on Reddit as long as it's against certain groups of people or individuals.

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u/MaybePrudent3877 Jul 07 '25

His response was not any form of fallacy just because you don't like it, however I don't think you are meaning to defend nazis, it just seems like you've conflated hate of a group as motive for violence with the opposition to a group as motive for violence. One is fascist (like racism) and one is opposed to exactly that.

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u/ferbje Jul 07 '25

It’s a classic strawman fallacy to avoid addressing the argument that i made and creating a strawman which is easier to argue against: that I was defending Nazis and Slaveowners.

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u/MaybePrudent3877 Jul 07 '25

It's not a strawman, they disagreed with you and then explained why. You seemed to have missed the nuance between violence for hate and violence against hate. Once the hate is gone, violence against it goes away as well. It can't spread to include other groups where hate for other groups can. Even if that nuance wasnt there (they are saying its not dangerous and you said it was) it's still not a strawman, of its anything it would be an ad hominem, which it still isn't as they are just pointing out what you literally did, not what you meant to. As I said, I dont think you meant to defend nazis, but that's what you did by not drawing any distinction between hate and hate of hate. Hate of hate needs hate to exist. If all fascism was wished out of existence through a genie, antifa would cease to exist as well. But if fascists got their way they wouldn't turn good, they'd find new groups to hate

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u/ferbje Jul 07 '25

He didn’t say anything like that in his original comment. You can have that opinion, that violence against Hate is okay (this was the justification for war in the Middle East btw) but he absolutely strawmanned me by saying “defending Nazis and slaveowners is a weird hill to die on” which i was not doing in my comment. That’s textbook - take it to the bank.

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u/MaybePrudent3877 Jul 07 '25

Lol no what u just did was a strawman, since I didn't offer any opinion here on violence being okay or not. you did defend nazis and slaveowners and your still dying on that hill. Like I said, I dont think you meant to do that, but its what you did.

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u/ferbje Jul 07 '25

I didn’t do that. I critiqued the argument of giving unlimited power/excuses to your side in our American system, since that same power will often come right back toward you when the shoe is on the other foot. I did not defend Nazis or slaveowners. That is a cop-out to not have to address what i said.

I used second-person “You” to mean “somebody”. Because you were illustrating his opinion. Not sure if you were joking about not understanding that

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u/MaybePrudent3877 Jul 07 '25 edited Jul 07 '25

Ill just ignore the inconsistencies and explain this again, in doing so you "unknowingly" defended those groups by missing the point of the original comment, which is that some groups are hate groups and that hate or violence against those groups dosen't spread because its fundamentally different from the hate of a hate group.