Stack Overflow forbids criticizing the character of genocidal political leaders like Xi Jinping

[cirosantilli]

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/361486/can-i-say-on-my-profile-that-i-find-that-an-ex-president-of-a-country-or-other

Overview of events: https://cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/#stack-overflow-forbids-criticizing-the-character-of-genocidal-political-leaders-like-xi-jinping

Wumaos, please report me.

[cirosantilli]

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/286082/does-the-be-nice-policy-require-se-users-to-be-nice-to-people-who-are-not-se-u/361497#361497 was deleted by https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/135565/journeyman-geek from Singapore

The current rule enforcement is that you can't criticize a politician's character

Here's a specific enforcement case: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/361486/can-i-say-on-my-profile-that-i-find-that-an-ex-president-of-a-country-or-other where the sentence:

I think president X is disgusting as a person

was censored from my profile.

Then I asked if it was allowed to criticize/make fun of a politician who has committed genocide at: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/361493 (archive in case of deletion):

If a politician has committed genocide, can I say on my profile they look like Winnie-the-Pooh to insult them because they hate that?"

But for some reason no one replied it was closed as off-topic (not a duplicate of this one), so the answer is "I don't know".

I can say that I had been doing that for several years previously, and no one ever complained.

But since that was closed as off topic, and this is a superset, unless someone actually has the guts to answer my question directly, it implies in my mind that Stack Exchange believes that the genocide part is irrelevant (because this becomes the dominating question), and therefore you can't criticize the character of a genocidal politician, i.e. you can't say:

I think Hitler is disgusting as a person

(supposing being dead does not matter for the ruling, but the example could be replaced by other living genocidal politicians of course)

I guess we'll find out for sure when I start posting the anti-genocidal case again on my profile.

I am strongly against that interpretation of the rules

• voting for someone comes down to huge extent deciding if you like their character.

  Yes, you may take several evidences in consideration to make that judgement (and most people won't even do that, just look at their face/party and go for it), but in the end, you decide the character and vote.

  Not being able to share this conclusion, whatever you base it on, is a fundamental limitation of freedom of political speech.

  This easily degrades into: "I like candidate X's character and I dislike candidate Y's character", because candidate Y would be very hurt.

• it is impossible to set the line between character and facts. If we block character judgement, we basically have to block the facts that imply that judgement as well. Facts can be of course specifically selected to imply that desired conclusion as is done daily in media.

• genocides are often carried out by dictators, who were not even elected by popular vote, and therefore being able to criticize them is fundamental to help their people rise up and avoid further genocide. A president/dictator is the symbol of the entire system.

• if you censor your politics, the people from dictatorships who support the censoring of their politics will come and say: "Look the US censors politics, they are just like us! Their criticisms of our political system are all lies!"

[cirosantilli]

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/361493/if-a-politician-has-committed-genocide-can-i-say-on-my-profile-they-look-like-w archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20210227034430/https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/361493/if-a-politician-has-committed-genocide-can-i-say-on-my-profile-they-look-like-w was deleted by three delete voters:

• https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/215590/polygeo (Australia)
• https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/135565/journeyman-geek (Singapore). Site admin at the time, which implies that his deletion cannot be undeleted. TODO are they born in Singapore? If yes they might also be pro Xi Jinping, which is a clear conflict of interest with freedom of speech.
• https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/140890/martijn-pieters (UK)

Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20210227034430/https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/361493/if-a-politician-has-committed-genocide-can-i-say-on-my-profile-they-look-like-w

If a politician has committed genocide, can I say on my profile they look like Winnie-the-Pooh to insult them because they hate that?

At https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/361486/can-i-say-on-my-profile-that-i-find-that-an-ex-president-of-a-country-or-other it was confirmed that it is not allowed to insult the feeble feelings of presidents in general.

So now I want to ask a more specific subcase.

Suppose that hypothetical President X has carried out genocide, and that this has been officially recognized by other countries.

It is also known that President X really hates to be compared to Winnie-the-Pooh, because President X wants to look really really tough and all powerful, and Winnie-the-Pooh is the opposite of that, so it really really deeply harms his feelings.

Suppose as well that this image has been used widely on the Internet to criticize President X, and so that comparison is a well known criticism of president X, and therefore, by extension of the genocide.

The image is also widely censored in President X's country.

In that case, can I post such a comparison on my profile page as a way to oppose the genocide? Or do you think it would be too much for President X to handle?

Note: although this is written in funny terms, I am dead serious about it

Although the situation sound sounds ridiculous, it is a very specific real world example that has concretely happened (the world is ridiculous).

And I had posted this image for a very long time on my profile for the case of the genocidal president, and no one took it down.

But 3 months after criticizing a non-genocidal person, it was taken down, so I want to make sure that if I can use that image or not in the future for the genocidal subcase to avoid breaking the rules again and being suspended.

I don't think this is a duplicate of that question because it covers a much more specific subcase of them being genocidal.

Also I promise I won't many any more posts on this area in the near future, I really want to know what people think.

Ironic self answer

You can't, you should only criticize them on a perfectly neutral and factual manner, without making fun of them

The genocidal president would be very sad if you criticized them personally, which would be very very mean: they might even cry!

You can only say "they did genocide", because that won't hurt their feelings at all.

Being compared to Winnie-the-Pooh is a much more serious thing, and not nice at all.

[cirosantilli]