While visiting an online forum I ran across an instance of power abuse in which a moderator banned an individual for thought crimes.
I do not believe removing “politically incorrect†thinkers from any group improves it. In a healthy society all manner of discussion must be protected. While all opinions are not equally valid, all opinions should be protected by those who wield power. It must be left up to the individuals within a group to decide the validity of an opinion, and then they on their own must decide to adopt it or reject it – the leaders must create an environment where this is possible.
The removal of the national socialist individual did not improve the group but only weakened it by furthering a big problem in the hardcore punk community which is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. During this process, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking.
A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. This process may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance.
A solution to this problem is to promote an environment where no thought or idea is taboo.
Why is being a racist a bannable offense? How does the group improve by banning people of different opinions? He wasn’t disrupting the group by spamming, making threats or trolling, he simply had a thought crime, and his thoughts were different than those acceptable by your standard of how people should think.
I want to again re-iterate that wise or just leaders do not decide what thoughts the group is “ready to hear†– and especially do not eliminate people who have “controversial†or “politically incorrect†ideas. The concept of any functional group is one which is free to evolve in the consideration of all ideas, even when those ideas are antagonistic to the group’s common ideals.