The culture wars came to my university this week when "It's okay to be white" posters appeared around campus. Although my colleagues and I are all pretty strongly opposed to this kind of thing (we defaced them or tore them down), the posters did generate debate among us about what tactics to adopt against the far-right, as well as about whether there was a valid point somewhere in the message.
So does this kind of poster campaign serve a positive purpose, or is it just mindless trolling and/or a recruitment tool for far-right groups?
I'm not very good at this Reddit intersub tactics stuff, but something about this post smells to me of a trollish fishing expedition for those who wish this motte ill.
If you are not a fisher-troll, then I apologise for the slur. If you are one then I say: Well done! You've got six logical respectful stragiht-faced responses and counting.
No I'm not a troll. I've not really spent a whole lot of time reading this sub (what I did read seemed pretty reasonable) but I posted this here because it really is culture war material. What surprises me about the responses so far is that most people understand these posters as saying something innocent about accepting skin colour, rather than being meme weapons in a culture war.
Oh no, everyone understands they are meme weapons. We just also understand that the overreaction to them is an essential part of the meme warfare. The whole point is to get people like you tearing down obviously true, inoffensive statements.
If the poster was an "obviously true, inoffensive statement" then far-right trolls would probably not waste half a night putting them up all over campus.
The far-right statement isn't: "It's okay to be white" , it is you tearing it down.