Not allowed to use the NRA as an example of a political organization with membership?

Question

I've received the strangest warning from a moderator.

This is the last warning: Please stop putting the NRA into this post. Its completely out of context and serves no purpose but to frame them as guilty by association. I really don't want to have to lock this post.

It looks like they since deleted this comment, but they haven't explained or apologized for it so the situation remains unclear.

For context, it was being used as an example of a political organization with clearly defined membership. This is the most-up-to-date version of the sentence.

Unlike the Ku Klux Klan (a white-supremacist organization in the US) or the NRA, antifa doesn't have a central organization or membership.

(Though granted, I would probably also add the non-acronym version for that organization also, if not for the threat against using it in my post.)

I don't see any reason the NRA should receive special protect against being used as an example. What about organization like Democrat, Republican, or Libertarian? Are those off-limits too? What's going on here?

For context, some people mistook (and got abusive over) an earlier version of the sentence as calling the NRA a white supremacist organization, but that doesn't seem relevant to this sentence.

Answer 1

You need to be more careful with balance. There are a wide variety of 'formal' political organizations, from all sides of the political spectrum: the NRA, the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, the US Chamber of Commerce, American Crossroads, Democracy Matters, the College Republicans, etc. There are also a large number of organized groups that have a political aspect, like the KKK, various militia groups, trade unions, certain religions congregations, feminist groups, some groups organized to promote and support the LGBTQ community... Of all of these groups, however, the KKK has a particularly bad name; you can poison almost anything by associating it with the KKK, because of the KKK's long, self-admitted history of racial oppression and violence.

Reductio ad Klannum is almost as bad (in the US) as reductio ad Hitlerum. You should avoid both.

There are only three ways to clean up this particular problem:

1. Drop any reference to the KKK as more trouble than it's worth: stick to the NRA and a couple of other organizations from across the spectrum
2. Contextualize the KKK by noting it as an extremist group separate from more mainstream groups like the NRA, in order to avoid poisoning the argument
3. Find some equally problematic group on the left to offset the KKK. There hasn't been one of those that I'm aware of since maybe the '70s — and never one so violent or highly organized — but maybe you can make do.

The way you've phrased it does seem like an example of poisoning the well, even to someone (like me) who does not have a particularly high opinion of the NRA. You don't want to write that way.

Answer 2

What appears to have happened is primarily that some people misinterpreted the post as saying "white supremacist organizations, such as: the Ku Klan and the NRA." In my opinion, it's an fairly easy misinterpretation to make: it's precisely what I thought the post was trying to say, until I read the respondent's explanation. Since, by their own admission, they are not implying that the NRA is a white-supremacist organization, I think an easy solution would be to change the form of the sentence to eliminate ambiguity.

"Unlike groups such as the NRA or white-supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan..."

Or

"Unlike gun advocacy groups (/interest groups/lobbying groups/whatever you want to say) like the NRA or white-supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan..."

This should be a straightforward solution that will satisfy anyone. Some people might still believe the poster is trying to insult the NRA by association, so perhaps they could also include an example of a group that they consider to be positive but more organized, in addition to the ones they already included. E.g., Black Lives Matter is a slogan, but the Movement for Black Lives could be an example of such. Or, if the OP does not consider them positive, they could include [insert group here].

I am bit surprised that a moderator would say that it was unacceptable to include the NRA as an example, such that the poster should be prevented from doing so. Even with an answer that outright stated that the NRA was a white-supremacist group, I would think the proper response for those who disagreed with it would be to downvote it, not to alter it, particularly with the inherent multiplicity of uses of the term. For some people, the fact that the NRA is relatively uninterested in defending the rights of gun owners of color, and that they have employed racialized terminology to justify their positions, would make them complicit in maintaining the higher status of white Americans, and they would thus characterize them as white supremacists. Others, clearly, might find that usage inaccurate or misleading, and might downvote the answer on those grounds.

But in any case, there are many posts that contain much more inaccurate implications, in my opinion, such as posts arguing for associations between the Nazi party and socialism. Those posts have usually been met with downvotes, and I think that—not alteration or deletion—is the appropriate response to tendentious or misleading answers.

Answer 3

Short answer: there is unlikely to be any specific rule against using the NRA as an example of a political organization, and the problem isn't even about the NRA as such; it is simply that it is an organization on one side of the culture war, and part of your post was misinterpreted as an attack against it.

Long answer: you've inadvertently painted yourself into a corner, simply by mentioning the NRA and the KKK in the same sentence. The reaction you've gotten to this no doubt feels neither fair nor logical - unfair in that (in an ideal world) it should be perfectly obvious that you were not intending to malign the NRA, but that it was simply one of the two examples of political organizations that came to mind. And it is true that what you wrote does not logically imply an accusation against the NRA.

Unfortunately, what you wrote is superficially very similar to what someone might write if they really were attempting to associate the NRA with white supremacy in the minds of the readers, and the NRA is an organization on one side of an extremely vicious culture war in the United States, which really does get attacked in this sort of underhanded way on a regular basis. This means that NRA supporters - whether actual members or just those on the same side of the culture war - are naturally hypersensitive to anything that even might be such an attack. (The rationalist community calls this "pattern-matching".)

(You should also read The Illusion of Transparency.)

Even more unfortunately, it isn't uncommon for a culture-war belligerent to "play innocent" when called on this sort of attack, so once someone has decided you're the enemy, there's no way for you to convince them otherwise. Anything you do will just be taken as further evidence of your perfidy. (And yes, sadly, the culture war really does seem to have gotten that bad.)

I'm hesitant to suggest any way to move forwards at this point. You may be better off cutting your losses, so to speak, and leaving the answer as it is; while it may not be as good as it could be, it is still a good answer.

If you think the NRA is a better example than the KKK, perhaps you could remove the KKK from the post and use the NRA and some non-threatening left-wing organization instead; but under the circumstances I'd recommend against doing so without an explicit OK from one of the moderators.

If you don't want to leave the answer the way it is, a better option might be to dump both the KKK and the NRA and try to think of another two examples. Just make sure that the chosen examples won't be objectionable if people think that you're comparing them to one another. Because they will.

Answer 4

In this thread, you painted the NRA as a white-supremacist organization.

Your wording:

Unlike white-supremacist organization the Ku Klux Klan or the National Rifle Association, antifa...

You claim it was not intentional - but you also refused to make edits to your post for clarity and actively rejected all other suggested edits to accomplish the same result.

These edits did not alter the purpose or result of your writing - instead they simply clarified your writing.

You then got into a dispute with members in the comments about your post, making it very clear your intention was to paint the NRA as a white-supremacist organization.

Your choice of words, and refusal to amend them to make it clear you were only referring to the KKK as a white-supremacist organization is what led to this warning and moderator edit of your post.

Because of this, you were warned. Please let this issue rest now and move on.

Answer 5

Unlike the Ku Klux Klan (a white-supremacist organization in the US) or the NRA, antifa doesn't have a central organization or membership.

The point you were trying to make was that Antifa does not have a central organization or membership. Putting in a reference to the NRA, let alone the KKK, was never needed at all. The question was not about either of those organizations and it distorts the type of organization each is by associating them with each other.

All you had to say was that Antifa does not have a central organization or a formal membership without any reference to any other organization. Adding the KKK or the NRA (or for that matter FIFA or AAA) does not help. References supporting your assertion that Antifa has no central organization or membership wold have been far more useful.

Note that the current version of that question reads :

Unlike white-supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, for example, antifa doesn't have a central organization or membership.

This is exceptionally bad wording as it can now be read as if both KKK and Antifa are white supremacist organizations. The OP did not make that edit, but it's awful and I see no reason for any reference to any other group to be there at all.

Answer 6

Well, adding inaccurate and irrelevant political opinion is likely to get edited. If you then change it to still make an association without explicitly saying your inaccurate and irrelevant political opinion, that's likely to get edited, too.

It's disingenuous to present "the most-up-to-date version of the sentence" when it hides what you were originally claiming, which was that the NRA is a white supremacist organization. Changing it and then pretending that you don't mean to associate the NRA with white supremacy is also disingenuous.