Science 2.0 refuses to remove Nazi eugenics blog posts
Science communicators, if you’ve ever written for Science 2.0 or the newly acquired ScienceBlogs (they are now part of the Science 2.0 family), your post will now run alongside an article titled “One Thing Hitler Got Wrong.”
Edit, 8:15 MT, 10 July 2018: Science 2.0 has removed “One Thing Hitler Got Wrong”. “Single Jew beats Anti-Semitic Right 10–0: Beau Ti Fa Ken Ful” is still up.
Edit, 11:09 AM MT, 21 Dec 2018: Science 2.0 has removed both the articles listed above, but the author remains active on the site, posting articles such as “A Racist On The Jews: Let The Donald Trump!” and “Conspiracy Or Self-Deception, Higher Apes At Crossroad Facing World War III”, both of which are replete with anti-semitic sentiment. One article linked in the second “Jews and Aspergian Racists Dancing Around the Oven” has already been removed.
The post is reprehensible, somehow even worse than its title (links to Science 2.0 are no-follow links to avoid giving them traffic). And while I hadn’t ever followed Science 2.0 closely, it was enough of an aggregator three years ago for me to published an April Fool’s article with them. At that time, I talked with the founder of the site, Hank Campbell via e-mail as part of this process. My collaborator and I wrote the article, Campbell published it, and even for a joke there was a reasonable amount of coordination between the site and ourselves. Clearly, something had gone wrong here.
Except that it hadn’t. When I emailed Campbell to let him know that somewhere his quality control had slipped and a literal actual Nazi who wanted to give Hitler tips on the Final Solution was published on his site, I received this response (Campbell’s words are in italics, author’s are pull-quoted):
He seems to have written just the opposite of what you are seeing.
“Again, if you, as I suspect many in Western(ized) parts, dislike my not agreeing with Hitler here, or my encouraging of science education, or if you think that intermarrying people of different races is wrong and what Hitler perhaps did was better, you are welcome to tell me, and if you are more enlightened than me, maybe I take it all back.”
Does it not read like he addressed those strawmen to knock them down. or am I really misreading it?
In other words, Campbell apparently believes this indefensible writing is a good faith attempt at some sort of discussion around science. He does not consider the the post pseudoscience (which would violate his terms of service), and, as both articles are still up as of this writing, with one of them still on the front page, Campbell clearly considers it content worth sharing. His bloggers may beg to differ.
He suggested via email that the problem may lie in my comprehension of the author’s work and so he helpfully pointed me to another article, written by the same man. This article, which, according to Hank is “obviously not anti-Semitic to anyone who read it” includes the phrase “Here is the cleverly deceiving, bastardly baby-Jesus-eating way in which that darn kike is doing these things to ’em poor Goys”, a quote from the Charlottesville “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell, and the authors enthusiasm for the way “Such small collaborations of Goys being guided and supported by Jews have done more to shift the Overton window and make some important, widely denied science known than I was able in my whole life as a scientist and writer.”
There is no argument to be had here. These posts are to be condemned, not refuted. Science 2.0 is a platform, and as such has the power to remove hate speech and its proponents. However, Science 2.0, which shares content with a million readers, has decided that this is the content they wish to share. If you have ever written for Science 2.0, or ever written for ScienceBlogs, newly acquired by Science 2.0, you may want to request that your posts be removed from the site. You can do so by sending an email directly to Campbell at hank@science20.com or to writing@scienceblogs.com. Otherwise, it appears that your writing will appear alongside racist, anti-semitic, eugenic propaganda from this point on.
