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Federal officers deploy gas to disperse crowds of protesters near the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., July 20, 2020.

Jonathan Levinson / OPB

After more than 50 days of nightly protests against racism and police violence, demonstrators in Portland are intimately familiar with the immediate effects of tear gas: blurry eyes, burning skin, choking, coughing, crying, retching.

But some protesters believe the gas is doing more than causing red eyes and seething skin. OPB interviewed 26 protesters, ranging in age from 17 to 43, who said they believe regular exposure to tear gas has caused irregularities within their menstrual cycle.

Related: 60+ days of tear gas leaves behind 'a stew of pollutants'

The experiences range. Some protesters reported getting their period multiple times in a single month. Others reported debilitating cramps at least one that ended in a hospital visit and blood clots the size of half a fist. Trans protesters who had stopped menstruating since taking testosterone said they have seen their cycles restart.

There are two common threads between the experiences of the 26 protesters: All said what they were experiencing was abnormal for their bodies. And all believed the tear gas, which law enforcement has been using against demonstrators for two months, was at fault.

Related: 60-plus days of tear gas leaves lingering questions about environmental impacts

There has been little scientific research into whether tear gas can affect a persons hormones and experts warn against extrapolating a solid medical conclusion from anecdotal evidence. But while the science remains thin, the troubling stories have mounted as the release of the chemical has become a near-nightly occurrence.

Lindsey Smith, a 26-year-old preschool teacher who has been live-tweeting the protests since mid-June, said shes noticed a pattern: If she inhales a significant amount of gas in the night, shell have her period the next morning. She said this has happened at least three times in two months even though the hormonal birth control shes on makes it so shes only supposed to menstruate four times a year.

On July 12, after another night that saw federal officers blanket the crowd with tear gas, Smith tweeted to ask if anyone else was menstruating after being exposed to the gas. She received nearly 30 responses from protesters with their accounts of irregular periods: cramping within hours of exposure, periods that stretched for nearly a month, or arrived weeks early.

She was also met with some trolls.

When I posted that, there were a lot of alt-right people screenshot-ing it and reposting it and a lot of them are saying, Good, I hope after this youre sterile, she said. That was the first time that the thought occurred to me: I dont know what this is going to do. And I dont think anyone really knows long-term.

Within the small body of research that does exist on tear gas, the question of what effect it could have on a persons reproductive health, if any, has been left unanswered.

Sven Eric Jordt, an associate professor at the Duke University School of Medicine who has extensively studied tear gas agents, said its possible the gas impacts hormones. He pointed to a 2010 study that showed burning the agent in CS gas, a common type of tear gas, could generate chemicals potentially toxic enough to affect hormonal homeostasis. Researchers in Chile raised concerns tear gas might cause miscarriages in 2011, leading the government to temporarily ban its use. In Bahrain, Physicians for Human Rights documented accounts of pregnancy loss among civilians gassed during anti-government protests.

But no one can say with certainty if theres a link.

Theres really no data on this. Its entirely possible that some of these chemicals that if you inhale them at high levels can have effects, Jordt said. But its really hard to say.

Intense stress could be another culprit. Rising levels of cortisol, the bodys primary stress hormone, are known to upend normal menstrual cycles, And the policing tactics common among local and federal officers including tear gas, impact munitions, and flash bangs could all be fairly described as cortisol-inducing. Not to mention the new unusual rituals that could potentially alter someones usual menstrual cycle: bedtimes pushed to the early morning, a diet of snacks and energy drinks, nightly sprints away from gas and police.

But some protesters in Portland are convinced that stress alone cant explain their experiences.

While many nights are traumatic, protesters are not breathing lungfuls of the chemical every single evening. And some report its only in the aftermath of these hazy nights, during which theyve inhaled for minutes without a mask, that they notice the irregularities.

Alissa Azar, 29, has been protesting downtown at least five nights a week since the demonstrations began. She said shes been caught in the thick of a cloud of gas six times. On two of these occasions, her period started immediately after. The other four times, it started within a few days.

Obviously were experiencing a significant amount of stress right now physically, mentally, emotionally. It would be naive to believe that doesnt have an effect. However, I definitely think theres a correlation between menstruation and tear gas, she said. The timing has been too spot-on.

She said the periods are different than what she expects. Each one lasts for four or five days. The cramps are more like the contractions she had when she gave birth, inducing nausea and severe back pain. A dozen other protesters interviewed had similar accounts of cramps that felt like sharp rocks being cradled in their stomachs.

Were not paranoid. This isnt a coincidence. Somethings going on, Azar said. Within 15 minutes of a gas attack, myself and others will have to take a break from how bad the cramps are.

For some, the experience goes beyond physical pain. Five transgender individuals taking testosterone, which typically stops menstruation after a matter of months, told OPB theyd seen their cramps and bleeding return after attending demonstrations.

These protesters say these unexpected periods were accompanied by a sense of gender dysphoria, the clinical term for the discomfort and distress people feel when their bodies dont align with their gender.

Its definitely a back and forth feeling. Im still pretty early in my transition, and Ive waited a really long time to be able to do this, said Lester Lou Wrecksie, a nonbinary transmasculine person who has been taking testosterone since September.

Wrecksie, 43, said on most nights they stay in the back of protests, largely out of the way of gas. But on June 21, they got knocked down and ended up getting caught in the chemical for longer than usual. Two days later, Wrecksie said their cycle returned for the first time in half a year.

Its unsettling to be like, I can go out into the air with chemicals and have it basically undo part of what Im trying to do for myself, they said.

A few protesters said they were concerned enough with the period irregularities that they scheduled a call with the local Planned Parenthood. Paula Bednarek, the medical director for Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette, said clinicians had not noticed an uptick in patients reporting unusual menstruation since the protests began.

But enough reports linking period irregularities and tear gas have cropped up nationwide in the last few months that another branch of Planned Parenthood has taken note. An epidemiologist with Planned Parenthood North Central States, which supports reproductive health in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, crafted a research proposal after putting out a call for reports from protesters whod spontaneously menstruated after being tear-gassed. A handful of online outlets have also done write-ups this summer questioning a possible connection between the chemical and periods.

Dr. Rohini Haar, a medical expert for Physician for Human Rights, said while these experiences should be acknowledged, she believed there is danger in overreporting a potential link without the hard scientific evidence to back it up.

Haar, an expert in crowd control weapons who has studied the health consequences of tear gas up close among Palestinian refugees, said shed only started hearing these anecdotal reports of tear gas affecting menstruation a few weeks ago. She worried these new accounts could genderize protests and lead to a narrative that protesting is only safe for people without ovaries.

This may be an issue, but its certainly not enough of an issue to intimidate people away from protesting especially women, she said. Its not the situation where you should tell your teenager, This definitely injures your reproductive tract, you are not allowed to go. There is no evidence to say that.

Dr. Jordt said he thought it would be worth trying to find out. He suggested a local or state health department in Oregon should initiate a study, taking health data from protesters and residents and following up with them over the long term.

Jordt estimates there are currently five or six of these sorts of studies that look at long-term effects of tear gas on people who have been exposed repeatedly, most coming from the Middle East during the Arab Spring. But he said governments in these countries often hampered the efforts of the doctors leading these studies, making it difficult to follow up with civilians over long periods of time.

One of the most comprehensive studies within the United States was conducted on recruits for the U.S. Army in 2014. Researchers found recruits exposed to CS gas as part of a training exercise were at a higher risk for developing respiratory illnesses, including influenza, pneumonia and bronchitis.

They were exposed to the gas just once.

Jordt pointed to two reasons why learning the long-term health effects of repeated exposure to tear gas has yet to become a top concern of health experts in the United States: The first is that its rarely used at the levels the country has seen this summer. While its been used en masse on protesters before in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, during the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, during the Vietnam War protests in the 60s and 70s he said the chemical hasnt been pervasive enough to become a top priority among health experts.

Nor is it top of the list for law enforcement agencies. Jordt said theres a strong belief among law enforcement that teargas is their safest option for controlling crowds. He suspects they will not be the ones leading the charge for a deeper study.

The lack of concrete studies has left some protesters feeling like guinea pigs, scouring Google for answers on whats happening to their bodies with no satisfying results.

We dont know the long term effects of this, said Elisa Blackman, 24, who said she got her period five times between June 2 and July 5. She tried to search for an explanation, but the hits she got on the internet focused on effects you could expect in the minutes after being gassed, not weeks or years.

Its like theyre testing it on us.

View post:
'It's like they're testing it on us': Portland protesters say tear gas has caused irregularities with their periods - OPB News

I recently spoke with Darby about what White nationalism looks like in the Trump era, how America's perception of Whiteness is undergoing a slow but necessary change, and why it's crucial to pay attention to backlash dynamics amid a season of racial reckoning.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

There are so many ways to grapple with White nationalism. What motivated you to approach the issue from the angle of women's involvement in the movement?

I was very curious to dig into where White women fit into the far right. I started from the point of: Where are the women? Once I started looking for them, they weren't terribly hard to find. They were right there on the internet.

Had you thought about White nationalism in a focused way before the 2016 election?

I think that I was aware of it maybe more than the average person, just because I grew up in the South. My family's been in the South for a really long time. There was a Ku Klux Klan rally pretty regularly in the town next door to where I grew up. So White nationalism was something I was aware of.

But it wasn't something I'd spent a lot of time thinking too hard about -- other than worrying about it, I guess. 2016 really was the catalyst for me.

Did your thinking on Whiteness change as you worked on your book?

I'm really glad that you feel that way about the book. One of the things I feel was most illuminating to me in working on this project was how I hadn't necessarily considered my own Whiteness. As you said, in America, culturally, we tend to treat it as the default against which everything else is compared, and that itself is a measure of power.

It's interesting to me that we, as a country, haven't really had a meaningful reckoning with what Whiteness is, what it means, and how the far right, especially, is positioned to capitalize on Whiteness as an identity in a way that's incredibly toxic.

I obviously dig into the extreme end of White identity in my book. But everything exists on a spectrum. White nationalists are essentially saying that there's no problem with Whiteness being at the top of the hierarchy, that there's no problem with preserving White supremacy, if we think of White supremacy not just as a belief but also as a system of institutions and structures and even as a way of talking about history.

Conversations about Whiteness that are measured and fact-based are important. But you can't divorce them from an understanding of what the extreme end of the spectrum is.

What was the most surprising thing you learned from your reporting?

Whenever I talk with friends and family about the book, I keep coming back to the fact that you don't have to feel deep hatred to be a part of the hate movement. Often, hatred is secondary, even tertiary. It's something that can be learned over time by being a part of the space.

Think of hate more as a social bond, as a currency between people. I think that there's this misapprehension that if people get involved in the hate movement, they must have a particularly deep-seated disdain for people who aren't like them. But actually, they can get involved in the space -- whether we're talking about an organized group or, especially in the digital age, online networks -- for reasons that are actually really mundane and really familiar to pretty much anybody. They're looking for a way to understand the world that helps them have a narrative for their own lives. They might be looking for camaraderie. They might be looking for power. They might be looking for a way to have a voice, a way to have a platform.

The rhetoric of hate -- and then certainly the violence of hate in some cases, for some people -- that comes later. And it's a way of reinforcing a place in a community. It was very instructive for me to see hate like that, because if you think of hate as a kind of poison or as something that's just curdling in someone, that's not a terribly constructive way to think about hate as a social phenomenon.

Something else that was surprising to me was how little the rhetoric of the far right has changed over time, specifically in the post-Civil War era, because before the Civil War, it was pretty clear where the country stood in terms of hierarchy. Whether you're talking about the Ku Klux Klan or various neo-Confederate groups or Aryan Nations or the alt-right, the consistency in messaging over time is really striking. The rhetoric has been about how the White race is under threat, how the real racism is against White people, how White people are the true and rightful Americans and their way of life must be protected.

That stood out to me because there are people today who run White nationalist social media platforms and try to say: Well, I'm not in the Klan. Or: I'm not a neo-Nazi. And, OK, fine, but you're a part of the same ecosystem, and your rhetoric is remarkably similar.

That reminds me of how your book unpacks how even people who are progressive can gradually make their way to White nationalism.

The book is structured around three women. The first woman is by most people's standards the most extreme, in terms of the things she's done in her life and what she believed (before she disavowed White nationalism). But then I try to move through women who might be more familiar to people, because, again, there's a spectrum of people -- from the most unusual people you've ever heard of to people you could've gone to college with.

There are lots of people who go to this space because they're seekers. America is full of people who are seeking. I think that it's frightening to realize that some people can find their way to a surprising end.

What's also important here is that White nationalism isn't some totally alien environment. It's just making explicit things that are already coded and veiled -- maybe not even code and veiled, frankly -- in mainstream cultural and political conversations. People in the hate movement are explicit. They're very overt about what they believe. But they're drawing from a communal well, essentially. So it's not as though people who were more progressive or apolitical or whatever go to a totally new thing. White nationalism is building on something that's already very present in American life. Which goes back to your earlier point about why it's so important to have these conversations about race: We shouldn't disassociate White nationalism from the greater American experience.

Right. Schlafly was the object of sexism and misogyny. But everybody has a choice. To make the choice to run what was ultimately an exclusionary movement isn't a choice that had to be made.

It's possible to acknowledge that somebody can be the object of a negative cultural force and also be at the forefront of a negative cultural force. A lot of the time, we're not very good at recognizing that reality.

Since the police killing of George Floyd in May, has your thinking on what you want your book to accomplish -- how you want it to fit into conversations about race -- changed at all?

I've been very excited and heartened by what's been happening, with this very public resurgence of protests and demands. I think that it's incredible.

I spend time on parts of the internet that I don't recommend other people spend time on, but that's very much been the rhetoric: See, we told you that they'd come for White people. See, we told you that they actually hate White people. See, we told you that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization. All these things that are -- to me and I assume to you -- untrue, but they exist in echo chambers. I think that it's very important not to lose sight of the fact that there will be people who find something in these spaces to believe in.

See the article here:
Finding the women of the White nationalist movement - CNN

Local residents show support for a Confederate soldier statue on the grounds of the City of Virginia Beach Municipal Center in Virginia during a rally calling for the statues removal on Aug. 24, 2017.Alex Wong/Getty Images This article is part of the Free Speech Project, a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech.

Earlier this month, a meme was shared in the Facebook group Save Southern Heritage that featured the portraits of two men: the Prophet Mohammed on the left and Robert E. Lee on the right, their chins tilting toward each other. [Mohammed] owned many slaves. Robert E. Lee was against slavery, the caption reads. So why are we tearing down statues instead of mosques? That post, which received 248 likes, is still up, despite the suggestion of real-world violence (and its use of Mohammeds image). But a comment, rambling about Arabs and Jews running this mess as a little joke, was removed within hours. Whether it was Facebooks algorithms, or content moderators, or one of the groups eight admins, a decision was made that one had to go while the other could stay. One slipped through the porous free speech filter; the other did not.

In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, demands for Facebook to address hate speech have escalated, coinciding with a nationwide movement to remove Confederate statues and flags from cities, states, and institutions long imbued with Confederate symbolism. More than 1,100 companies and organizations have pulled ads from Facebook for at least the month of July as part of the #StopHateforProfit advertiser boycott. At the same time, Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia has ordered the removal of the statue of Lee that famously towers over Monument Avenue in Richmond, Mississippi decided to drop the cross of the Confederate battle flag from its state flag, and NASCAR banned the flag from its races.

These movements, intertwined and mutually reinforcing, pose a particular threat to those who consider themselves present-day Confederates. From their perspective, Facebook has become more essential than ever to amplifying their message at a critical moment in historyjust as Facebook has shown a new willingness to police their speech.

Facebook has recently deplatformed hundreds of groups that express overtly violent, white supremacist beliefs, such as those associated with the Boogaloo movement. But the platform has yet to settle on a consistent approach to a more difficultand more commonquestion: how far to go in policing groups that the platform doesnt consider hate groups, but that nonetheless often attract hateful content. This gray area contains hundreds, perhaps thousands, of neo-Confederate groups that are thriving on the platform. Individual posts containing hate speech are sometimes flagged and removed, but as a whole, these groups have so far remained relatively unscathed amid Facebooks heightened moderation, continuing to churn out thousands of posts a day in support of the Lost Cause. By insisting they promote heritage not hate, theyre able to skirt the boundaries of content moderation, even as their ideology rests on a reverence for the Confederacy and the antebellum South. Their complicated position on Facebook gets to the heart of the problems inherent to content moderation itself. It is a slow, often arbitrary process, driven not by clear understandings of what hate speech and hate groups are, but by haphazard flagging, a reliance on self-policing, and confusion over the kind of space Facebook or its critics want to create.

Since Facebook users exist in echo chambers, its easy to miss how widespread Confederate heritage communities are if your Facebook friends arent sympathetic to their cause. Many such groups, both public and private, have existed since the mid-2010s, but a spate of new groups appeared this summer. Some local varieties have just hundreds of members, while other national groups, such as Confederate Citizens, have nearly 100,000 members. Not only are these groups extensive, but they also serve as content factories. Groups such as In Defense of the Confederacy, Dixie Cotton Confederates, and Save Southern Heritage see hundreds of posts each day, which circulate rapidly around other groups, pages, and news feeds. At heart, these groups share some common features: the casting of Lee as a benevolent, misunderstood figure despite his documented defense of slavery in the U.S.; the efforts to preserve and build Confederate iconography; the indignation at the toppling of statues; and therhetorical?call to arms.

Many of these groups spend a lot of time thinking about hateful speech. Just take a look at their self-policing and content policies: Its not uncommon for a group to explicitly forbid hate speech, racist content, and bullying. Nor is it rare for moderators to post and repost these rules in a groups main discussion. Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University known for her work on extremist communities on Facebook, told me that this dynamic is particular to Confederate groups. A public-facing Facebook presence is important to the Confederate agenda of, for instance, getting the Lost Cause narrative in childrens textbooks. At the same time, they also attract this sort of hateful element, and so they know they need to clamp down on that or it will look bad, Squire said. I guess my question is always: If people didnt talk like that on your page, you probably wouldnt have to write that rule, right?

Moderators and group members are vigilant in part because theyre aware some of the content they attract (and many would like to espouse) wont fall within Facebooks policies. I fully respect the First Amendment. But the Wizard of Facebook doesnt. I dont want to get kicked off Facebook or have my growing page taken down because of racist words, posted a moderator of Confederate Defenders, a public group, a few years ago. That same moderator wrote earlier this month, with greater urgency, With all the censorship going around, I dont want to lose my page. PLEASE BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR LANGUAGE.

For many Confederates, that censorship is a worthwhile trade-off. If Im willing to self-censor myself and my organization, I can reach a reasonable number of people with my message and I can do it every day, Kirk Lyons, an admin of Save Southern Heritage, told me. He also runs the Facebook page for the Southern Legal Resource Center, an organization he co-founded that has been called the legal arm of the neo-Confederate movement. Lyons identifies as an unreconstructed Southerner, but the Southern Poverty Law Center considers him a white supremacist lawyer. (Lyons denies this and maintains that the SPLCs article on him contains many inaccuracies.) Lyons sees Facebook as a sort of necessary evil to getting his message out. Its worth putting up with all of Mark [Zuckerberg]s nonsense because its so much easier than it was in the email age or the letter and postage stamp age, he said. If hes careful, he explained, his individual posts can reach hundreds of thousands of people, such as a recent image of a Confederate flaghis Confederate flagflown over NASCARs race at Talladega.

How sincere the language opposing hate speech comes across varies from group to group, user to user, which is fitting for a movement known for its broad ideological spectrum. Some say that their beliefs are compatible with an outright rejection of racism or even disrespectful content; they may believe they can revere Dixie on their own terms, irrespective of the racial violence its rooted in. Along these lines, the least incendiaryand the most moderatedgroups tend to focus on Confederate soldiers and their descendants, as well as historical documents.

On the more extreme end of the spectrum, groups affiliated with the League of the South are known for openly discussing white supremacist beliefs. (For this reason, Facebook actually deplatforms them: A few weeks ago, for instance, Facebook took down one such group based in North Carolina, though a new group replaced it within a day.) Group discussions often bear out the disparities among Confederates approach to hate speech. In screenshots Squire sent me from a private Confederate monument protection group in her county, a number of members expressed anger at seeing a fellow Confederate hold up a sign at a rally on July 11 that read, NO FREE COLORED TVS TODAYpresumably a racist dog whistle. I dont care how you look at this, but to me this is racist period, said one user. People state over and over we are for history and heritage yet make signs like this. Some reiterated this isnt what they stand for, some didnt understand what the big fuss was about, and others were more focused on the signs potential to give fuel to detractors and the liberal media.

But that sort of pushback is dwarfed at times by the amount of hateful speech that persists. Group members often post about landing themselves in Facebook jail for a reason. Even in the public groups, its not unusual to see racial slurs, some of which arent later removed. Last month, for example, a member of Save Southern Heritage used the N-word to refer to people destroying and looting. Im impressed you werent banned for that word on FB, another member replied. I agree with every word though. More common than racial slurs, however, are calls to violencesometimes specific, sometimes more vague. In a group called Save the Confederacy and restore our Confederate heritage flags up, a post on a Black Lives Matter demonstration prompted a few users to say that drivers should run protesters over and take out as many as possible. In Dales Confederate Group, which is now private, a user commented this month that the best thing to do with Democratic cities is to bomb them.

All the examples mentioned here, aside from Squires, come from public groups. Private groups are strict about admittance: Virtually all require you to answer questions about your commitment to the Confederacy, your opinion on the real cause of the Civil War, and what the Confederate flag means to you upon your request to join. Given the content thats visible in public groups, its safe to assume that more borderline-to-outright-hateful speech thrives in these self-contained spaces. One of the eternal problems with Facebook is that if this stuff goes on in a private group, the only way to report the content is to join the group, find the content, and report it. Each report takes 10 clicks. Its putting a lot of work on a user, said Squire. And in private Confederacy groups, those users may not be inclined to do any of that work.

A recent civil rights audit of Facebook, carried out by independent civil rights experts and lawyers over the course of two years, criticized the platform for prioritizing free speech over nondiscrimination. The auditors concluded, among other things, that Facebook needs to be more proactive about identifying and removing extremist and white nationalist content. I dont know if Mark appreciates that hateful speech has harmful results, and that Facebook groups have real-world consequences, Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, told the New York Times after the civil rights report was released.

Those real-world consequences are worth considering. Before Facebook restricted public access to its application programming interface, or API, in 2018, Squire used Facebooks data to systematically study about 700,000 users across 2,000 hate groups and 10 different ideologies. Of these groups, the Confederates were the least likely to cross over with other ideologies: About 85 percent of them belonged only to Confederate groups. There are two stories here. The first is that Confederate groups are relatively contained and self-sustaining, and that their members dont dabble much in other, more violent ideologies. From that perspective, their threat consists mostly of the speech within their groups. The second story is about the other 15 percent of Confederates who cross over into militia, white nationalist, alt-right, and anti-immigrant groups. The prime example of the dangers of that crossover is the Unite the Right rally in 2017. Although the rally was ostensibly held to protect the Lee monument in Charlottesville, Virginia, it became a gathering for hate groups across the far-right, including neo-Nazis and Klansmen, that left at least 33 injured and one counterprotester dead.

Its not controversial to say that neo-Nazi or Boogaloo groups should go, but its less clear what a mainstream platform should do with heritage not hate groupsgroups that, as the SPLC puts it, in their effort to gloss over the legacy of slavery in the South strengthen the appeal of Lost Cause mythology, opening the door for violent incidents. Even the SPLC, which refers to neo-Confederacy as a whole as a revisionist branch of American white nationalism, doesnt consider a number of Confederate heritage groups, such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans, to be hate groups.

When I asked Squiresomeone whos outspoken about her activism and who provides data on far-right extremists to the SPLC and antifa activistswhether she believes Facebook should allow these groups to operate on its platform, she pointed to the fact that their speech isnt illegal. And more than that, she said, their beliefs are not fringe down here in the South. She mentioned that state representatives in her state of North Carolina have ties to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gave $2.5 million last year to that organization after protesters toppled a statue of a Confederate soldier on campus in 2018. Were fighting it, obviously, but its a very long and uphill battle, Squire continued. And I think Facebook has to bridge both of those realities.

As people continue to call for more robust definitions of hate speech online, it may be helpful to remember that sometimes what we want from Facebook is misaligned with how the platform operates. Facebook can be dangerous not just for its content, but for its lack of public data; for how its (private) algorithms work; for the ways it amplifies certain voices and can lead to deeper polarization and, in some cases, radicalization. Theres a reason researchers are always going on about the dire need for transparency. Outside of calling for Facebook to police its most extreme content, its worth asking what we can reasonably expect from a private company that operates in its own interest.

Sometimes what we want from Facebook is misaligned with how the platformoperates.

After Facebook released the findings of the civil rights audit, the Verges Casey Newton succinctly summed up the problem in his newsletter: The company could implement all of the auditors suggestions and nearly every dilemma would still come down to the decision of one person overseeing the communications of 1.73 billion people each day. The same could be said of the majority of #StopHateforProfits 10 recommendations for Facebook, which demand changes such as further audits, a C-suite civil rights executive, and heightened content and group moderation. This campaign is not calling for Facebook to adopt a new business model, spin off its acquisitions, or end all algorithmic promotion of groups, wrote Newton. Nor is it calling for an overhaul of Facebooks approach to transparency. Yet these sorts of changes may in fact be necessary to addressing the root of Facebooks speech and radicalization problems.

The complexities of Confederate discourse on the platform ultimately show that singling out hate speech as the primary target of public outrage at Facebook is, in part, a distractiona Sisyphean endeavor that has a tendency to obscure more serious issues. Such a focus leaves us with the classic censorship vs. free speech dichotomy, which inevitably leads to some people demanding a return to the First Amendment, and others retorting that the Constitution doesnt pertain to private sites, ad infinitum. What borderline speech can force us to do is to move beyond the terms of that debate, to update the conversation (and call to action) to reflect the platform as it operates today.

But what a better conversationlet alone moderation frameworkwould actually look like is unclear. Newton writes that the best hope for addressing Facebooks role in accelerating and promoting hate speech, misinformation, and extremist views comes not from the campaign or the audit, but from Congress, which has the potential to question the companys underlying dynamics and staggering size. And thats certainly one avenue for change, especially with Zuckerberg testifying before the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee on Wednesday. But informed government regulation often relies on citizen engagement, and in the case of Facebooks speech problems, users must grapple not only with the flashiest and most extreme bits of Facebooks content, but also with the shades of speech that exist just below that, and the mechanisms that allow that speech to flourish.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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Confederate Groups Are Thriving on Facebook. What Does That Mean for the Platform? - Slate

Every so often in Britain,eugenicsis accused of making a comeback. Recently, the Black Lives Matter movement has drawn attention to the harmful lasting impact of Britains colonialist figures, shocking those who assumed that white supremacy had been left firmly in the past.

But for those campaigning against the legacy ofeugenicsin higher education, these revelations about the roots of racism were not as surprising. From their perspective, eugenicist views never really disappearedthey had just found a safe havenin somepartsof British universities.

British universities have strong historical ties witheugenics. Sir Francis Galton, a prolific Victorian scientist known to be one of the pioneers ofeugenics, set up a lab at University College London in 1904 and endowed the institution with his personal collection of work, along with funding for the countrys first Chair ofEugenics(the post was renamed, in the sixties, to Professor of Human Genetics.) Until it was finally renamed after Black Lives Matter protests, students at UCL still attended lectureson bio-medical genetic issuesat the Galton Lecture theatre.

In 2018, it was revealed thatasecreteugenicsconference, the London Conference of Intelligence, had been held in a UCL lecture theatre.The event hosted white supremacist academics closely associated with the American alt-right, wrote the London Student.

A UCL internal report on the conference, since made public, show the conference had been attended by fringe academics to policy-interested individuals.In a press statement, UCL said The conferences were booked and paid for as an external event and without our officials being told of the details. They were therefore not approved or endorsed by UCL. The university reassured that they were committed to vigorously combatting racism and sexism in all forms, but also stated that they had a legal obligation to protect free speech on campus, within the law.

The scandal brought attention to UCLs history, and the university launched an inquiry into the history ofeugenicsat the institution. But just before the universitys report was publishedto the public, nine membersof the 16-strong inquiry team refused to sign it, and even argued that the inquiry did not go far enough in a separate set of recommendations. An anonymous member of the committee said: the big issue is not how a member of staff booked a room, but why someone with his views was a member of staff at all.

***

But its not just about one man, or one university.After the Second World War, academics from Cambridge, Oxford and Glasgow were also part of the EugenicsEducation Society, a popular 20thcentury group thatat timescampaigned for sterilisation and marriage restrictions.Universities still memorialise the legacies of famous scientists who made important discoveries but also expressed viewsthat have attracted controversy such asFrancis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA, andRonald Fisher, a pioneer of modern day statistics.

The home ofeugenicshasnearlyalways been in universities, says David King, director of an independent watchdog organisation Human Genetics Alert. Someacademics tend to believe that all knowledge is good, even if eugenic ideas influence the research, he says:universities are a protected space for these kind of views. Political power has always operated in Britain this way, quietly and below the democratic radar, through conversations between privileged elites, often academics.

However, others disagree. Steve Jones, who was head of UCLs genetics department and former president of the Galton Institute, says that the historical ties these institutions have witheugenicsare discussed openly and extensively. In some ways, the horrors of theeugenicsmovement are what has made biologists cautious about what they are willing to do today says Jones. In the old days those involved knew almost nothing, and were willing to do almost anything; while today we know far more but are much less confident about how we use that information.

Jones argues that there is a crucial difference betweentheperspectives of medical researchers now, compared to those in the era of Galton. Eugenicists set out to change the fate of future generations, whatever the cruelties that might be visited on the people of the day. In contrast, modern genetics tries, although it sometimes fails, to improve the prospects of those alive today Jones says.

But if genetics today hasonly tenuous links toeugenics, why are people worried? A subsection ofresearch, which looks for genetic explanations for complex traits such as intelligence, mental health or personality, has recently gained traction. This field, called sociogenomics,could pave the wayfor a new era of genetic engineering and social stigma. Since the 1960s, dubious journals such asMankind Quarterlyhave been the homes of articles that appear togive backing toscientific racism, classism and ableism.

But now even more respected institutions are dabbling in it. Work linking a persons genetic code to their intelligence, income and educational attainment has been produced by researchers across UK universities, includingKings College London,University of Edinburgh, andGoldsmiths. These studies,one of whichlinks 7-year old childrens test scores with their DNA, would arguably not be out of place at the London Conference of Intelligence. Even the most prestigious academic journals, such asNature Communications, have published studies linking income with genetics. These studies have been cited in reports inMankind Quarterlyto support arguments that Muslimimmigrants have lower IQs than white western Europeans.

Authors from these studies say resultscould helpminimize social disparities in health and well-being, or they could lead toevidence-based, biologically-informededucation policy. But how can linking genes with how much you earn lead tolessinequality? And how would finding tiny unchangeable differences in the DNA of schoolchildren lead to better educational for all, when the biggest drivers of educational achievement are factors like having a safe home, and a comfortableupbringing?

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The global rise of alt-right populism is to blame for the resurgence ineugenicsresearch, says Professor David Colquhoun, who has worked at UCL for over 40 years. The alt-right give credence to eugenic ideas, and use pseudoscientific genetic theories to support them, he explains. This is documented in scientist Angelina Sainis bookSuperior: The Return of Race Science, where she describes how racists insistently search for biological evidence that they are more special than everyone else. If skin colour cant explain racial inequality, then maybe the structure of our bodies and brains will. If not anatomy, then genes. When this one, too, throws up nothing of value, theyll move onto the next thing, she writes.

Ben van der Merwe is the investigative journalist whodrew attention tothe London Conference of Intelligence at UCL. He believes that universities have beentoo willing to provide a home for these people too. You have a minority of people who are basically cranks, and these individuals (qualified scientists and amateur bloggers) have managed to position themselves as part of the current moral panic over free speech on campus he says. Universities dont appreciate thateugenicsis not a culture war issue over the right to offend.

Universities are further heavily incentivised to hide their history ofeugenics, because many profit from legacy funding from these figures, says a UCL SU Disabled Students Officer, who prefers to remain anonymous. The legacy ofeugenicsseems to pervade inuniversity policies today, which are hostile to students with disabilities and other marginalised groups, they say. Black alumni at UCL have spoken about feeling they were forced out [of the university], and I have no doubt this happens to other groups historically targeted byeugenics. Universities in this country were built from the work of people with many harmful attitudes, says the SU Officer. Students are blocked from finding out about their institutions histories by a lack of accessible information, and an attitude that everything has been fixed now. But it hasnt.

Profit motives and prejudiced policy are not the only factors leading to a culture where eugenicsresearchseems to thrive.Criticising UCLs handling of theeugenicsinquiry, Joe Cain, professor of history of science at UCL,wrote: Excessive deference to managers is one factor. Excessive amounts of discretionary money is another. Crafty people who know how to work the system is a third. Complacent, homogenous, and soft oversight is a fourth.

What should universities do next?UCL have taken important steps, including considering new names for their buildings named after eugenicists, and plan to fund new scholarships to study racism.

David King, who says he has experienced threats and intimidation for speaking up, believes a more extreme approach is needed, in UCL and other centres. He wants places like the Galton Institute to be shut down, and funding for research into genes and intelligence to be removed.

Big science projects cost a lot of money and do not take place unless they are funded King says. There is never enough money to fund all the research that scientists want to do. Science gets stopped every day. So the real question is which science do we want? And who gets to control it?

The rest is here:
The secret history of Britain's universities and eugenics - Prospect

Bill Maher, the longtime political satirist and host of HBOs Real Time, harbors an Ahab-like obsession with cancel culturethe theory that prominent politically incorrect (to borrow his catchphrase) folks are being pushed out of their jobs by bad-faith online mobs.

This likely stems from the time when, six days after the 9/11 attacks, Maher eventually had his show Politically Incorrect canceled by Sinclair after calling the terrorists involved not cowardly for staying in the airplane when it hits the building, a statement that had come on the heels of Maher comparing his dogs to retarded children. In a matter of months, however, he was given a brand-new show by HBO, which hes hosted for the last 17 years.

And, like many of the rich, privileged, highly influential signatories of Harpers infamous cancel culture letterfrom Malcolm Gladwell and Fareed Zakaria, who have committed multiples acts of plagiarism yet have not seen their opportunities slip, to J.K. Rowling, an anti-trans billionaire and bestselling authorMaher is a living example that cancel culture is overblown.

On his HBO show, Maher has said the N-word; regularly defended powerful men accused of sexual harassment; yukked it up with the alt-right; made discriminatory statements against Muslims; pushed anti-vaxx nonsense; and suggested that everyone should want to get COVID-19. He has yet to be so much as censured by HBO (at least publicly) for his behavior.

And so, on Friday night, Maher welcomed Bari Weiss and Thomas Chatterton Williams, the two people who have dined out the most on the Harpers letter, to discuss cancel culture.

As a guy who did a show called Politically Incorrect and another called Real Time, thank you, because we need a pushback on cancel culture, said Maher, adding, What strikes me about it is the pushback is coming from liberals, and almost anyone who signed this letter is a liberal! (The bulk of the letters signatories are more libertarian than liberal.)

Chatterton Williams, who was not able to provide a single solid example of someone whos been truly canceled during a recent interview with The New Yorkers Isaac Chotiner, spoke of the overall climate of censoriousness and applauded the letters international coverage; meanwhile, Weiss referred to it as a warning cry from inside these institutions, this growing culture of illiberalism, which is different from criticism. She added, It is about punishmentit is about taking away their job.

Lets unpack this a bit. Chatterton Williams is a prominent author and writer who has for some reason penned two memoirs before the age of 40 and contributes to The New York Times Magazine. Weiss recently wrote a book and was an opinion writer at The New York Times. These people have massive platforms. Furthermore, Weiss recent resignation from The New York Times, which shes painted as her being canceled by a major institution, was by all accounts a coordinated PR effort conducted by Weiss and the writer Andrew Sullivan who had been plotting to launch a new venture for people who presumably wont criticize them as much.

Weiss went on to draw a false equivalence between those on the right who worship Trump as a deity who can do nothing wrong and those on the left where to be anything less than defund the police or abolish the police makes you a hereticthe latter of course not even being true, since the majority of those on the left, including Democratic nominee Joe Biden, dont support defunding or abolishing the police. Im also not sure how the blind worship of a fascistic ruler is on the same level as believing in defund the police, or to support the reallocation of some police funds elsewhere, though it sounds like Weiss does not understand that defund the police does not actually mean taking away all the polices money.

Im not sure how the blind worship of a fascistic ruler is somehow on the same level as believing in defund the police, or to support the reallocation of some police funds elsewhere.

Maher agreed wholeheartedly with Weiss (whom he called hip) and Chatterton Williams, opining, For those who think that this is just, again, celebrities whining or elites or something, there was a survey recently and 62 percent of peoplesay theyre afraid to share what they truly believe.

Heres the thing: this letter was mostly celebrities whining. And that study Maher cited was conducted by the Cato Institutea right-wing organization founded by Charles Koch.

The reality is that speech has never been more Democratic, and platforms like Twitter, that the Weiss and Chatterton Williams of the world decry as unfair, have given voice to countless underrepresented groups, from Black Lives Matter to the Arab Spring. Sure, there are some cancellations happening in media and academia but they arent of these politically incorrect writers with gigantic platforms who are paid large sums of money to share their politically incorrect opinions and at no risk of cancellation. Theyre of people like Norman Finkelstein, who was driven out of academia and denied tenure for criticizing Israelthe very same crime that drove Weiss to campaign to get Arab professors fired during her college heyday.

Plus, with all the real problems going on in the world150,000-plus dead from the novel coronavirus, unidentified federal agents kidnapping protesters on the streets, police brutality against Black bodies, Trump threatening to postpone the electionwhy is Maher dedicating the majority of his program to this crap?

Originally posted here:
Bill Maher, Who Said the N-Word on TV, Decries 'Cancel Culture' - The Daily Beast