OC by @GlacialTurtle@lemmy.ml

Today in Lutris discord which I happen to lurk occasionally, I saw some lovely people were commenting in the offtopic channel about how they support Ethan Kleins lawsuit against Youtubers who criticised him, GamerGate bs, defending streamer sex pests and some other stuff. One person offhandedly mentions how they get their information from Asmongold.

If you’re not very online, Asmongold is a reactionary streamer who at one point declared he thinks Palestinians should be genocided because of their “inferior culture”. Ethan Klein is a somewhat well known youtuber/podcaster who has also spent the last year or so having a very public meltdown over Israel and his own fundamentally contradictory set of positions he’s tried to triangulate between.

Seeing this, I made a brief comment about Asmongolds stance mentioned above and why anyone would listen to him. I got racist responses claiming “Palestinians have been kicked out of every culture they’ve been in” and deflecting to “Look at Egypts border”.

Called out the racism and genocide apologia, the only person who was warned was me for not being civil. I replied “racism and genocide apologia is not civil”, referred to the fact the Lutris logo on discord has an LGBTQ flag, and was called a nutcase and banned.

tl:dr Lutris discord moderation is OK with racism and genocide, but you’re a “nutcase” if you call a spade a spade.

  • db2@lemmy.worldEnglish
    939·
    2 days ago

    Spade is a racist term for black people, my dude. That phrase is racist af.

    • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      211·
      2 days ago

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_spade_a_spade

      The phrase predates the use of the word “spade” as an ethnic slur against African Americans (and others of African descent), which was not recorded until 1928.

      The ultimate source of this idiom is a phrase in Plutarch’s Apophthegmata Laconica: τὴν σκάφην σκάφην λέγοντας (tēn skaphēn skaphēn legontas). The word σκαφη (skaphe) means “basin or trough”. Lucian De Hist. Conscr. (41) has τὰ σύκα σύκα, τὴν σκάφην δὲ σκάφην ὀνομάσων (ta suka suka, tēn skaphēn de skaphēn onomasōn), “calling a fig a fig, and a trough a trough”.

    • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      222·
      2 days ago

      That phrase has nothing to do with racism and predates “spade” being used as a slur. Homophones exist and context is important.

    • Nora (She/Her)@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      91·
      2 days ago

      I’ve never heard that before, and doing some very light research, it does seem like “Spade” is a slur from the 1920s. At the same time however, the phrase “Calling a spade a spade.” is a “modern” (1500’s) adaption of an ancient Greek phrase.

      The easy solution here is to just re-adapt it so it doesn’t use a racist term. To keep the theming of shovels of course, the easiest answer is “Calling a shovel a shovel.”

      Thanks for the info, always good to learn a new thing or two :)

      • seralth@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        20 hours ago

        But a shovel isn’t a spade and a spade isn’t a shovel! They are different tools!