Popular Forum RPG.Net Bans Posts Supporting President Trump
John F. Trent
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Popular RPG forum, RPG.Net, announced a site wide ban on posts supporting President Donald Trump and his administration.
In a lengthy post (Archive link: http://archive.is/nWrKv), the moderation team notes their “decision as close to unanimous as [it will] ever get.” They state the decision was made in order to “stay true to [their] values.” They go on to state “We will not pretend that evil isn’t evil, or that it becomes a legitimate difference of political opinion if you put a suit and tie on it.” They go on to describe President Trump and his administration as a “hate groups.” They also insinuate he and his administration are white supremacists.
They go on to outline six policy points:
“1. We are banning support of the administration of President Trump. You can still post on RPG.net even if you do in fact support the administration — you just can’t talk about it here.
2. We are absolutely not endorsing the Democrats nor are we banning all Republicans.
3. We are certainly not banning conservative politics, or anything on the spectrum of reasonable political viewpoints. We assert that hate groups and intolerance are categorically different from other types of political positions, and that confusing the two legitimizes bigotry and hatred.
4. We are not going to have a purge — we will not be banning people for past support. Though if your profile picture is yourself in a MAGA hat, this might be a good time to change it.
5. We will not permit witch-hunts, progressive loyalty-testing, or attempting to bait another into admitting support for President Trump in order to get them banned. The mod staff will deal harshly with attempts to weaponize this policy.
6. It is not open season on conservatives, and revenge fantasies against Trump and Trump supporters are still against the rules.”
Their policy points are an absolute joke. They state they aren’t going to do witch hunts, but tell people to change their profile pictures if they are wearing MAGA hats. Why would people need to change their profile pictures if they aren’t going to start witch hunts against people who support President Donald Trump?
They also try to state they won’t be targeting Republicans and conservatives, but have openly banned support for the duly elected Republican administration. That sure sounds like targeting of conservatives and Republicans. They actively banned support for them!
As to how they justify these points they put together a list of 12 points of extremely left talking points. In fact, a number of their policy citations are outright false. They indicate he’s hostile to the idea of free press. In fact, Trump spoke to the Daily Caller indicating the exact opposite, “I’d rather have CNN’s voice, as fake news as it is, I’d rather have the CNN voice.”
Interestingly enough it doesn’t even look like they read one of the articles they cite. They try to use it to state that Trump threatens violence, but if you actually read the article in The Independent he explains, “It’s not a question of like or dislike, it’s a question that they will overturn everything that we’ve done and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently. There is violence. When you look at Antifa, these are violent people.” Antifa violence is well documented.
In another turn, most of the points they take issue with are merely opinions about President Trump’s immigration policy, his promotion of nationalism, and his blunt rhetoric. They also insinuate he’s anti-semitic because he uses the term globalist despite his daughter and his son-in-law and his grandkids being Jewish.
This move by RPG.net is not unprecedented. CBR banned all discussion about Richard C. Meyer’s Jawbreakers – Lost Souls graphic novels. They made a similar statement explaining their reasons stating, “the viewpoints involved are abhorrent, the behaviours sickening and the general attitude a detriment to civil discourse; in short, they give comic book fandom a bad name.”
We’ve also seen numerous big technology companies deplatform individuals and entire websites because of opinions they disagree with. Most famously Alex Jones and InfoWars was deplatformed from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more. Twitter alternative, Gab, has recently been deplatformed from PayPal and is now facing issues with their server provider. Popular pro-life website LifeSiteNews noted they are also coming under attack via their server provider. And Vox Day’s Arkhaven Comics’ IndieGoGo for Alt-Hero: Q was suddenly removed.
These websites and forums appear to all be moving in the same direction to deplatform people and companies whose views they disagree with.
What do you think about this recent move by RPG.net? Do you think this trend will continue where big tech companies will continue to deplatform ideas they disagree with?
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