Hacker Cinema
Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski
2018 · Film · documentary · 104 min
Directed by Irek Dobrowolski
Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.
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2 comments on Hacker News
Yes, I should have said the "analogous" Chinese, Islamic, or African-American content, e.g. like the sibling suggests with Zionist content.
The thread this spawned reminds me of why I don't usually chime in on these issues. But what many replies are missing is that Facebook says they already ban "white supremacist" content under existing rules. They don't need a special rule for that. Just like they don't need a special rule for terrorist content that's violent.
But they ARE adding a special rule for "white nationalism", for the reasons given in the post.
I'm not saying they are wrong. I'm just saying that you can't really use the argument "they can go set up their own servers" to justify it, as the grandparent did.
I suspect that there's simply a LOT of white nationalist content, and it has a practical damaging effect, but nationalist content of other kinds isn't that widespread or damaging, and they want to allow it for free speech reasons (and probably because they aren't qualified to make fine judgements about various nationalist movements). That seems reasonable.
Anyway, Facebook gives the "right" reason for the ban (a value judgement), while the parent comment was pushing a reason that's besides the point, IMO. It felt like a "backward rationalization". But yeah it's more of a nitpick, so I regret spawning this thread, which became very political :-/
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Even so, let me throw something else onto the pile. A few days ago I watched this documentary on Netflix:
Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski
https://www.netflix.com/title/80109551
It's too complex to summarize, but it's about a very talented sculptor who was also a Polish nationalist (for a significant period). It came out in December and was produced by Leo DiCaprio, because his father was a friend of the artist in LA.
I googled for reviews afterward, and this was one of the best summaries that I found:
https://www.counter-currents.com/2019/01/a-patriot-without-a-country/
Only after reading the whole article did I realize that it's from a white nationalist site (if you read "about this site", it's very clear).
The long and short of it is that it's a subtle issue, but most people seem to view it in black and white. If Facebook banned this content, it would be a mistake IMO (although I don't use facebook). But their decision might be the right thing overall. They have a hard job, and people like the parent were trying to apply some strict principle to it, when in reality there's no such thing.
To save others a search: Stanisław Szukalski
"Zermatism, Szukalski's concept of world history, postulated that all human culture derived from post-deluge Easter Island and that in all human languages one can find traces of the original, ancient mother-tongue of mankind. In his view, humanity was locked in an eternal struggle with the Sons of Yeti ("Yetinsyny"), the offspring of Yeti and humans, who had enslaved humanity from time immemorial."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Szukalski
Apparently there's a Netflix documentary (Dec 2018) about him called, Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski.