in my mind, the chronology was that 4chan had a board called /news/ which was shutdown because it was a community for racists. Then Poole publicly and in-person confronted the owner of Encyclopedia Dramatica, accusing her of censorship for deleting racism. He realized it looked hypocritical that he also shut down a board, so he says it wasn't the racism itself he opposed, but that the racism was off-topic to a news board, so he created a politics board where racism wouldn't be off-topic.

Please point out if any part of this is wrong.

[–] footfaults@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 17 hours ago

Yep /pol/ was a containment board for the Nazis, to keep them out of the other boards. When /news/ was deleted the Nazis were shitting everywhere and it made things untenable

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah IIRC this tracks. I know /pol/ was created for containment, but it obviously didn't work because more racists flocked to the site.

[–] mattyroses@lemmy.today 1 points 2 hours ago

It gave them critical mass to reinforce each other.

[–] Parzivus@hexbear.net 27 points 1 day ago

Pretty sure this is accurate. TBH I wouldn't be surprised if this had more to do with Nikolic, the other person in these emails. Used to be a tech advisor for Bill Gates and seems to have already known Moot. They meet up and he launches /pol/ a few days later.