Veteran status as a protected class in and outside the US is on my mind because of the general outrage at the Twitch streamer Frogan for saying “U.S. military, boo-fucking-hoo, I hope you get PTSD”. You may have heard of Frogan from being banned by Twitch for a month for participating in a hummus tier list.
https://hexbear.net/post/3733513
Something however that was less talked about was the push from liberal/right wing people attempting to get her de-platformed for discrimination against veterans which are under US law considered a protected class against illegal discrimination along with race, religion, country of origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability, et cetera. Even in Twitch’s guidelines this is explicitly stated.
Twitch does not permit behavior that is motivated by hatred, prejudice or intolerance, including behavior that promotes or encourages discrimination, denigration, harassment, or violence based on the following protected characteristics: race, ethnicity, color, caste, national origin, immigration status, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, serious medical condition, and veteran status.
From my perspective one of these things is not quite like the others. This seems like a very US brained thing to include in your terms of service especially in an international company where there is an international community of streamers who may be veterans of many different armies. Let’s say for example someone who served in the Taliban started Twitch streaming and was talking about their experience gunning down Yankees. I would strongly assume the same people who wanted Frogan de-platformed, would also want this hypothetical person de-platformed, but this person would be by definition a veteran and thus included as a protected person and could not be taken down for talking about their war experiences if they were consistent with what they claim/pretend to be their values. This thought experiment is basically just to highlight that it is incredibly unlikely that this “protected characteristic” would be actually treated consistently by those invoking it.
I think there is almost nothing to do about this on US run platforms like Twitch as a streamer who cares about not being banned. You should probably just never mention veterans because at any point if you say something even somewhat controversial you could be banned for discrimination/hate against veterans. In the eyes of the Twitch terms of service saying you wish PTSD to US veterans, even if those veterans are war criminals, is equivalent to saying you wish HIV to US gay people. I think this will be weaponized more and more especially since people will see that Frogan got banned for a month for an unspecified reason and will try to use this same strategy to attack people who criticize IDF/US soldiers and get people banned for talking about war crimes and other atrocities, and this is now going to start being considered a legitimate vector to de-platform people on spaces like Twitch.
Not saying she can’t participate in US politics, but I don’t even think Pokimane can vote for Kamala because she’s Canadian.