> And I have since then always arrived to the conclusion that Facebook cannot interpret irony, satire, sarcasm and reflection.

Sarcasm has to be the least effective possible way to communicate anything, anywhere. You are absolutely begging to be misinterpreted or misunderstood, either legitimately or even deliberately. And you can't really defend yourself because 'it was sarcasm' won't cut it as a defence with many people - it sounds like 'it was a prank bro'.

Why would anyone choose to communicate about a complex issue this way?

> I posted "All lives matter, arbeit macht frei."

This seems positively suicidal - I can't imagine what good you thought could come of this!

Do you think essays like "A Modest Proposal" are likely to be misunderstood?

I've literally seen people use the term 'modest proposal' in a non-satirical way missing the point. Also see how Jean Carroll has been described as a misandrist when she invoked the same phrase.

And also see the difficulty that the 'abolish the police' movement have gotten into explaining that they don't literally mean abolish, especially since some of them do literally mean that, so you get really stuck trying to explain you were trying to make a point, but yes those other people other there who used exactly the same words as you did mean it literally but that wasn't quite what you meant you were using it for terseness... etc. Why give yourself this problem?

Seems a really bad tool to try to use for anything. Be straightforward with your communication. Don't give people an opening to attack you for no other reason than trying to be whimsical in your writing.

... some people do really support abolishing the police. And those people are also likely to go and protest. Sure, the bigger moderate masses picked up the slogan, but it started with that radical message.

Plus on a realpolitik level it doesn't really matter what the slogan is. Really. See how tha ACA was turned into Obamacare and death panels. Yes, independents initially might be confused, yes a dumb slogan doesn't help, but fundamentally if the political and social will is there, the slogan does not really matter.

And some people called Noam Chomsky a holocaust denier because some nutjob put an essay of Chomsky's in his book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair

Just because a few people are too dense to understand context doesn't mean we should restructure what we allow in society to accomodate them.

Comedians do shows, they have a persona, an act, and they do their bits embedded into a context. If someone just randomly shouts Nazi ideology into the void, especially at a time when that void is very ticklish, it's not unheard of that the void silences the shouter.

(Is this good? No of course not, it's a very sad state of affairs that somehow constructive de-escalatory discourse is not incentivized on these platforms, and preaching to the choir, virtue signalling, trolling and so and so are.)

> Why would anyone choose to communicate about a complex issue this way?

Same reason other people make bad communications. They assume everybody else thinks the same as they think, and know what they know, and know nothing else and think nothing else.

Well I will say if we were friends on Facebook and I saw that post come up in my feed, I would have just removed you as a friend. Even with context, I don't see how that can be interpreted as anything but shitty.

I think the shitty thing is how these two slogans were used for dehumanising other people by the same kind of people.

And there was context - a series of long form posts that I have published over the years standing up for all kinds of minorities, from gay people to refugees being dehumanised actively, on huge billboards, by the government.

But you do you.

I'm still confident that the core of the message was on point, even though I accept that the form was chosen in a moment of anger - I saw a locally acclaimed artist post a very well designed "all lives matter" poster and was disgusted by how everyone was cheering on how positive their message was and I couldn't help but imagine how someone applauded the typographer who created the slogan at the gates of Auschwitz.

Simimilar European background, and I would have interpreted this in the exact way you intended.

I reckon it would have needed more literally benign slogans, or have the idea further developed.

You wonder if your comparison of people's argument to the slogan that sat above the gates of Auschwitz could have been interpreted as offensive?

I'm sure you had some internal logic as to how you got from some modern slogan to the holocaust, but without actually explaining your thought process how exactly is anyone else going to understand that logic?

I think it is not appropriate to compare the Holocaust with slavery and disenfranchisement of blacks in the US. The Holocaust was a event spanning under a decade that must not be forgotten. Slavery was reduced in the US but not banned so it is a problem that has been spanning 400 years - and still happening. They are both wicked and evil issues but entirely different in scope and effect.

I'm not sure if it would be offensive to make a comparison, but equating bad thing with bad thing without nuance doesn't make you look clever.

I was not equating the two things.

I was illustrating how people come up with slogans that sound good for things that destroy lives.

> people come up with slogans that sound good for things that destroy lives

Did you consider writing just this instead? Why use sarcasm for something that can be said plainly and straightforwardly instead?

No, I did not, at the moment. I trusted that my friends who know my track record regarding social issues will know that I'm not for either of the two things referenced via these slogans, quite the contrary.

Contrast can be a tool, and I could have written a long and boring essay on how sad and disgusting these phenomena are or just put them up against one another.

Do you think something like this would have worked better? I'm quite the RATM fan.

Some of those who said Arbeit macht frei Are the same who say All lives matter

This is is what I meant.

So you posted an Alt-Right and a Nazi slogan on Facebook without context and wonder why Facebook didn't like it? How should anyone know that you were being sarcastic?

I would understand your confusion if you had made a long joke or written a sarcastic story, but posting Nazi slogans without changing or doing anything to them is not really humorous (to me).

To the public, there's no difference between you posting these slogans, and an actual Neo-Nazi doing the same thing.

Maybe I just don't understand the point you're trying to make.

I do understand what you mean by people posting slogans they don't understand. In that case I'd still put the blame on the people. If people just happily post slogans without researching what they mean, then that's not BLMs or Facebooks fault.

Both situations are a bit unfortunate, but I think we have talked enough about what "Black Lives Matter" means, to the point where it's a quick google search away.

I did not mean it is humorous - I meant it as an illustration of the horrible context of slogans that are word-by-word positive: "work makes you free".

I found that people around me did not understand the BLM context, because there is no local context. "Roma lives matter" could be a local context, because there's a lot of discrimination against roma people.

I was not making a joke, I was angry at how commonplace the hatred was from people who might not have seen a single black person apart from the cinema screen.

The police brutality context is also kind of lost here, because while there are a bunch of dirty cops, physical brutality from them is practically unheard of.

The holocaust, on the other hand is a very real thing. People were deported to Auschwitz and other camps from the very _street_ I live in.

I just hoped people would realise how that certain good-sounding slogan is not much different from the contemporary good-sounding slogan.

Again, maybe I should have added an explanation, but I felt like it took away from contrast and I was very fed up with the amount of backlash towards what people overseas were standing up for.

Had conversations with friends about the (lack of) contrast between the two slogans and basically everyone understood the point. Facebook did not, but as I said, I'm aware that this was an edgy form for my point.

Regarding whether there's a difference between who is saying what: well of course there is, the context of this post was my posting history standing up for various sidelined groups and minorities and the audience of this post were my friends who very well know that I am as far from using either of the slogans in an agreeing manner as is Trump from a PhD in psychology.