Asklemmy

55969 readers

310 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 7 years ago

MODERATORS

What is the Lemmy community's opinion on Scouting? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 5 days ago by Casuls_Die_Thrice@lemmy.zip to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Context: I was a Boy Scout for a number of years, making Eagle in 2020 right as COVID was really kicking off.

It was right afterwards, however, that the CSA scandal started popping up everywhere (which thankfully I was never exposed to or involved in during my time), and lately it seems like the organization & movement as a whole has fallen by the sociocultural wayside.

I would say that my time as a Scout did me objective good; I learned a decent amount about first-aid & survival-craft, participated in a number of volunteer & civic projects, and it generally made me a more well-rounded person. However, there's no denying the impact that something "bigger than the Catholic Church scandal", as I've heard it described, has on an institution such as this.

I'd like to get the community's opinion, however; were any of you Scouts? How was your experience? What is your opinion of the institution today?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Salah@hexbear.net 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yes but not only that. Today you will see many scouting groups being places where right extremist ideology is being spread without any supervision or intervention by governments.

[–] MaxLemminist@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

do you have some sources or examples?

[–] Salah@hexbear.net 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Sorry I don’t, I just know from experience and talking to other people in different regions with the same experience.

If you want personal anecdotes, these are things that I know happen at scouting groups (not all, but enough for it to be a systemic issue): sharing hitler memes and memes about jews or other minorities, social acceptance of making jokes about jews or other minorities, collecting nazi memorabilia and roleplaying with them, doing roleplay games where the younger kids are put in pretent internment camps. Everyone I’ve talked to who’s been in scouting has been a nightmare to talk to about social issues because they actually believe in racist tropes.

[–] MaxLemminist@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Where are you from? This is shocking

[–] Salah@hexbear.net 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

These anecdotes are from Germany, The Netherlands and Denmark

[–] MaxLemminist@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm in Belgium, close but never heard that stuff.
Even with plenty of fascist scum around

[–] Salah@hexbear.net 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I don’t think these stories often leave the inner circles of the scouting groups where this happens since they know it’s not socially accepted in broader society. I just happen to have been at the wrong places to learn about it.

[–] MaxLemminist@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago

that makes sense