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A Letter to the Ravelry Community
Ravelry is an online knitting and crochet community, a tremendous resource of knowledge and expertise, and the go-to place for its millions of members all over the world for both selling and buying, online knitting, and crochet patterns. It probably won’t come as a surprise to you that politics, when they infect the site, list heavily to port.
But Ravelry has just put itself at the very top of my [expletive] list. I know several members here also belong to Ravelry, and I’d like your help in getting the word out (if you agree with me). Members can contact the site here. I’ve also sent an email to info – at – ravelry – dot – com, which is an address I’ve used in the past, although I can’t be sure it’s still live. Given my Ravelry user name (which has been the same for years), I’m not expecting a chummy response. Still, I have shelves full of knitting books, a huge stash of yarn, and lots of other things to do. I expect I’ll survive.
Published in GeneralDear Ravelry:
I have just read the following announcement on the home page of Ravelry:
“We are banning support of Donald Trump and his administration on Ravelry.
This includes support in the form of forum posts, projects, patterns, profiles, and all other content. Note that your project data will never be deleted. We will never delete your Ravelry project data for any reason and if a project needs to be removed from the site, we will make sure that you have access to your data. If you are permanently banned from Ravelry, you will still be able to access any patterns that you purchased. Also, we will make sure that you receive a copy of your data.”We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy.”
This is disgraceful.
Ravelry is perfectly within its rights to require that its members remove overtly political messages from their patterns, comments and projects. To say that NO political messages of any kind, in support of any candidate (Trump, Biden, Weld, Obama, Sanders, Clinton . . . ) are permitted or supported on the site. You could go further, and say that no overt support of any social or political agenda of any kind is permitted. You could say that no patterns, comments or projects projecting any sort of racist or bigoted, or divisive points of view are allowed on the site. And if Ravelry would like to criticize Donald Trump, the politician, as someone it does not care to support, it may do that too. And whether or not I agreed with your stance, I’d respect it.
But Ravelry has crossed the line. To state unambiguously that Donald Trump’s supporters are all white supremacists is a disgusting and libelous falsehood. That is the statement that Ravelry has no business making. My personal political opinions don’t and shouldn’t, matter to you. I don’t put them on Ravelry, and no-one else should either. (I’m not even an American Citizen so I can’t even vote.) But if this policy isn’t reversed, I’ll be cancelling my Ravelry membership. I don’t go to Ravelry for the politics, and I won’t be staying around for the insults.
I’m not going to support or participate in an organization that disrespects and calumniates tens of millions of people, a few of whom are my friends, and who I know perfectly well are not white supremacists, or any sort of bigots, in this way.
Your entirely inappropriate, disgusting, libelous, false statement, needs to be expunged from Ravelry’s site. Immediately if not sooner.
I’m looking forward to your response, which I hope will be that you have re-written your policy in a fair and non-partisan way that doesn’t egregiously insult a considerable proportion of your membership, good people who have done nothing to deserve it, who are not in the least racist, who don’t have a white supremacist bone in their bodies, and who, along with you, condemn bigotry in all its forms, but who nevertheless happen to support a politician you don’t approve of, for reasons you can’t be bothered to understand. You are the bigots here. You are the ones maligning millions of innocents, for the despicable actions of a few. You are the ones who should be ashamed. And yes, I’ll say it, because as a foreigner, perhaps I expect more from the citizens of this great country than they sometimes expect of themselves: You are unAmerican.
Please correct this egregious overreach, and do it swiftly. The personal opinions of your members are none of your business, and you should respect that. I only wish I didn’t know your own opinions now, or the contempt that you have for a large proportion of your membership, and the lengths to which you’re willing to go to make that contempt known publicly.
I hope you can summon the common sense and intestinal fortitude to right this appalling wrong.
You should be ashamed of yourselves.
RightWingKnitJob, TKGA member and Ravelry member (for now)
Over on Boardgamegeek the policy is “We’ll ban who we want to for whatever reasons we decide, ignoring our own stated policies in the process.” They admit upfront that they won’t be fair. They will be as discriminatory as they wish.
And given that these decisions rest with a raging leftist creep, you can guess what the result has been since Donald Trump was elected: multiple bannings of conservatives; the most obnoxious and insulting leftists treated with kid gloves.
Speaking for myself, I’m *much* less sympathetic to the complaints of minorities than I used to be, even when they may be justified. I’m not even really listening to them anymore.
I don’t know if it’s that I’m less sympathetic, but I know that I don’t assume that complaints have any legitimacy anymore.
I do find myself assuming that I am hated by minorities because of my skin color. It is undeniable that the left has whipped up anti-white sentiment, and there is no constraint on it.
As many have noted, what you are seeing (or hearing is it’s “people screaming”) is projection. The screamers are projecting onto Trump and Trump supporters the screamers’ own intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and desire for totalitarian fascism. White “liberals” or leftists are very racist, as demonstrated by their insistence that “persons of color” are incapable of speaking for themselves, of making decisions for themselves, or doing pretty much anything without the benevolent assistance of the superior white liberals.
Taking a challenger seriously makes others take him seriously. Trump should ignore or laugh at these losers until the Dems decide who their best loser is.
Rereading 1984 is a helluva drug. Orwell talks about thoughtcrime and people avoiding it by avoiding thinking about things that might be objectionable to the government.
Our fence-sitters may just decide to get off the fence by opting out entirely.
What is OK, versus what I suspect will not be OK (don’t expect to get a response):
Good luck with that. I suspect you will be singled out as a troublemaker and probably banned. That’s how these sorts of petty tyrants respond when faced with the inconvenient truths about their actions.
Oh, I do hope so. My Ravelry moniker has been “rightwingknitjob” for years. I’m waiting for someone to fixate on that (I also own the .com domain).
It’s a big number. It has been reported Ravelry says they have hundreds of thousands visiting the site monthly and over 100,000 twitter followers. They also say they are the #3 craft site worldwide. Yesterday, while on their site I found information on more than 240 affiliated craft merchants in the United States, and, there are over 360 entities listed for the United Kingdom.
I think Ravelry’s comment about the government of the United States (the President and his Administration) and it’s related banning of same is an act of sedition.
Thanks for sharing RightWingKnitJob, this may well be my fav post of the year; definitely one of biggest smiles all month
When I dreamed up that name, I thought it was kind of humorous and clever. Light-hearted and witty, one may say.
I expect a considerable number of Ravelry members find it triggering and offensive. Oh well.
Good response thread here.
Read through the whole thread, though. This particular Tweeter often levels this criticism of conservatives, and I think it’s valid: “State power is the only kind of power conservatives have taught their people how to understand and build. This is a major failure of the conservative movement.”
Mollie linked to this Tweet-thread commentary today.
It’s good. It’s important.
https://twitter.com/less_tx/status/1143168089976188928
Every part of the internet is being weaponized to help Democrats win in 2020 and beyond. Something has to be done now. Bring on the lawsuits.
I checked in over at Boardgamegeek — which is a huge international community of board gamers — and they’re praising Ravelry’s decision and hoping it comes to Boardgamegeek. Had I not been banned for doubleplus ungood thinking, I would have posted “it already has.”
Yes.
My response to “you just can’t sell your MAGA hat pattern there” would be “why on earth not?” Especially in light of the vulgarity of much of what else is out there.
The sentence on the home page has been changed to read: “Support for the Trump administration is unambiguously support for white supremacy.”
That is what Ravelry thinks of every Trump supporter in the country: You’re a white supremacist. That’s what they think of every Trump supporter who’s a member of Ravelry. You’re a white supremacist.
Really, after that, who cares if they let you post MAGA hat patterns or not? Reducing it to those terms is massively missing the point.
I hope Mollie isn’t fooled and keeps her eye on the ball.
I think the point of that tweet-thread is the weaponizing. As explained, the only political content that will be seen on this huge site with tens of thousand of people will pro-Democrat/anti-Trump. Ravelry will have created a perfectly homogenous echo chamber.
Ravelry is just one thread (see what I did there?) in a vast tapestry of mind control.
That’s what’s being done incrementally by all the tech companies. They started with the obvious targets (e.g., Alex Jones) as a trial balloon to see how people would react. And our conservative commentariat said “Eh, he’s a nutter, so no big deal.” And then the incrementalism started. And the punditocracy doesn’t care, because it’s not their ox being gored. It’s just some people they’d never invite to Georgetown Cocktail Parties anyway.
So now we’re getting ideological conformity. Sure, some pro-Trump stuff will slip through the cracks, but the main message that will be getting into the heads of anyone using the internet is Orange Man Bad. (And NeverTrump grifters will happily pass that message along, working for the enemy like the useful idiots they are.)
Lawsuits should have started long ago. It may already be too late. Conservatives need to organize and overwhelm the enemy. We suck at organizing. The left has mastered it.
Still unambiguously defamatory and actionable.
The litigant does not need to be a member of the Ravelry community. The statement accuses all Trump supporters – black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian as well as white – of supporting white supremacy. Being perceived as supporting white supremacy hurts an individual’s employment and reputation.
Think I’m about to get [expletive]canned over there. The Eye of Sauron is upon me, and my offensive comments have come to the attention of the “moderators,” lol. (I am sure most of you can imagine how that prospect alarms, nay, terrifies me.)
They are reduced to speculating about whether or not I’m a sock puppet, and sneering because I haven’t participated in the forums in the past. (Been too busy spending money and buying patterns from their vendors. Because I didn’t realize that the right sort of politics, ideological conformity, or past participation was a prerequisite to having an opinion now).
Oh well. Life goes on.
Just get all the screenshots.
This particular firm seems a good place to start the counteroffensive, as it is small enough to tackle without a federal government level legal team. I’m not at all sure how good the case is, but the lawfare campaign has to start somewhere.
I agree with your sentiment, but courts have to draw the “standing” gate a bit narrower than that in order to avoid the world taking the world to court. The people who have the best case are current venders whose reputations and business are threatened. Gather a few up and talk lifetime earnings, as well as family and social costs of such stigma.
To beat the grass for such plaintiffs, the usual talking heads on Fox, Fox Business, and One America News should have a prominent attorney on who practices this kind of law. The lead attorney in the Covington kids case would be ideal. Ask him to comment generally, remark that he came to the aid of school children, and run his website with general contact information at the bottom of the screen, or point to a legal aid website of his choosing. I’m guessing that should stay inside the professional ethics lines.
Maybe they could just suspend you for a month. It is your first offense after all.
I think it’s up and out over there, from what I can see.
Actually, it’s like deja vu all over again. I’ve been insulted and called so many names I might as well re-up with @skipsul, @midge, and company. I’d forgotten how much I missed it.
The only pretty safe bet is that no-one on Ravelry is suddenly going to accuse me of having indecorous thoughts about, or improper designs upon, zir person.
So, there’s that.
History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme.
What if there is actually a large proportion of Ravelry members who are conservatives, but they are just not as vocal as the woke crowd?
What I see happening is that the left is arranging things so that they have less and less exposure to conservative opinion, especially since many Trump supporters keep their opinions to themselves. Then, if Donald Trump is re-elected, the left will be convinced the election was rigged because they don’t realize how many conservatives there really are.
This is by far the most rational and detailed examination of this I’ve seen so far. Most of the coverage of this has been by non-knitters, and it’s been pretty lame. This is good, and accurate in terms of what I know, so I expect the whole thing is spot on:
https://www.thepostmillennial.com/ravelry-unravels-knitting-community-bans-trump-supporters-and-white-supremacy/
Wouldn’t surprise me. I would have considered knitting to be more balanced politically but that appears not to be the case.
I thought it was common knowledge that deep inside every knitter is a Madame Defarge waiting to be awakened. You gotta keep an eye on these ladies!