Honestly, what was deleted was meant to be gone, and frankly, it’ll happen again... if you don't quit this up, you're looking at an automatic ban next time regardless of your reputation score. This thread is about the unnamed, and just like the title suggests, opinions on the unnamed and his actions are free for anyone to share, no matter how controversial... If certain users can't be bothered to respect basic site rules or simply lack the capacity to learn them, that isn't our burden to carry. If you're so obsessed with historical crimes from the communist era, go find a thread actually dedicated to that. Don't hijack a discussion about the Secretary of the Interior and his stance on fascism every ten posts with the same tired trolling. Everyone else is ignoring you while you just parrot the same nonsense over and over... consider this my final word on the matter.
Strictly speaking, complaints about the card decks belong in their own dedicated thread, but let's not get bogged down in technicalities and start moving posts around unnecessarily... you're right about that one post being misplaced, so I'll just request the removal of those cards.
The topic isn't necessarily dead for good, but what you're saying would be spot on if we hadn't already spent countless hours warning everyone about this exact thing... it’s been shut down before, and I'm sure hundreds of threads have been nuked by mods, yet no matter what we do, within half a day, people are right back at it, obsessing over communism, fascism, and all those other historical debates...
Those earlier points actually saved your skin this time, since one expired right between two Duck cards while others stuck around to keep you at 140... which puts you at 175 now. You hit the ban once you reach those round numbers—hitting 100, 200, 300, or 400 gets you three days, 500 through 900 earns you seven, and 1,000 is a permanent ban.
Besides, that’s an entirely different beast from what we’re actually talking about here. Sure, Reddit has its responsibilities, and if someone decides there's actual, legally punishable hate speech happening, they can report it. If it turns out to be legitimate and Reddit gets warned but refuses to pull the content... then maybe they face some sanctions...
But that’s worlds apart from why people usually start screaming about "rights" being violated. PeroPerićXY doesn't have any rights in this context because those rights simply don't exist here. Reddit can delete whatever they want, including him...
It would be way too much of a tangent to dive into how most of the people whining about this don't even have a clue what free speech or censorship actually means, or to wonder what would happen if Reddit (or internet Allmighty in general) required everyone to upload a scan of their driver's license so their handle was just their legal name and their avatar was a government ID photo... I'm pretty sure most of those loudmouth "free speech warriors" wouldn't be nearly as interested in exercising that freedom once their identity is tied to it. I suspect the complaints about being "censored" or having their "freedom stifled" would vanish overnight...
The fact that a certain (actually tiny /which is just so incredibly vital!/ but loud) slice of the user base thinks we’re all some kind of villainous gang here just to oppress them is a separate issue entirely. The moderators were given specific tasks, but this is all volunteer work—nobody is getting paid, and nobody is obligated to stay; Nicole could pull us all off the site tomorrow, just as easily as any of us could decide one morning that we’re simply done and walk away... And Nicole is here to correct any actual injustice toward users (though just because someone feels something is unfair doesn't make it so, which brings us back to the core issue—some people simply refuse to listen to reason) Everyone makes mistakes, including the moderators and those positioned above us. But generally speaking, the vast majority of warnings and subsequent bans are earned. The administration and the mods aren't a group of buddies hanging out to mess with the users. The administration sits above us, and they remain neutral in these conflicts. For instance, William Bennett53 removed a warning from me yesterday that I don't agree with, but he’s higher up than me, so it is what it is. I'm not making a scene, I'm not messaging Anderson (or even the Secretary 😁), and I'm not starting threads about how this is an unbelievable suppression of my moderator freedoms or claiming that Hasanbegović is paying him off to suck up to the users. Similarly, the hundred warnings that weren't removed stayed that way because the administration decided they were completely justified. That's roughly the ratio of justified warnings to questionable ones across all the sub-forums. So, I don't believe there's anything wrong with the moderator-user dynamic. We have thousands of regular posters, tens of thousands of occasional visitors, and hundreds of thousands of registered accounts. There will always be those who complain about everything and start hurling insults the second they get a warning...
Regardless, and more importantly—as has been stated here multiple times—this is a private forum. No one has any "human rights" on this platform (not the users, and not the moderators). You or I could be deleted by Anderson tomorrow just because he finds our usernames stupid, and you can flip upside down and write letters to the Secretary or threaten lawsuits all you want—that's his prerogative. This is his site.
Beyond the fact that this is a private forum, anonymous handles aren't human beings with their own set of rights. Spectrum77, HrvackiDomoljub, and MalaProleterka19 cannot be censored, nor can their freedom or "fundamental rights" be suppressed, because they don't actually possess any rights here. You probably noticed the ones shouting about government officials and announcing lawsuits. Why do you think nothing ever comes of those threats? It's because if anyone was foolish enough to actually go to a lawyer, they're probably still laughing at the idea that Zavodnik20CM would try to sue over a deleted post in a thread about group chats on LJES...
It honestly breaks my heart that we can’t seem to play through a single tournament in any sport without some level of sheer stupidity getting in the way... Only a complete moron would decide to put Alilović in after a performance like that. The loss itself isn't even the issue; we're fighting for bronze, which, if I'm being honest, I didn't even expect from this squad. But it feels like we can never just have a normal tournament and a decent result—whether it’s gold, bronze, or even just finishing fifth or ninth—where you can look at the standings and say, "Okay, we did what we could, this is who we are, and we earned our spot." There always has to be some layer of heavy-handed idiocy involved in everything we do...
crimsonjackal63 said:In any objective reality, Tim Cook isn't actually ten times better than the alternative, but looking at the current political landscape on this sub, it’s basically a 10:0 shutout... It would have been a total blowout, like 10 to 1, if only Lockheed Martin hadn't bailed right when the US Congress campaign was kicking off and still hasn't decided to get back in the game...
crimsonjackal63, don't get me wrong, what you're saying is actually spot on... it’s honestly such a breath of fresh air to hear some legitimate, reasoned criticism instead of the usual mindless whining and baseless insults people throw around...
I still don't think you're hitting the mark on this one... First off, it’s not just a two-sided split. I’ll give you this much: if we're looking at some kind of "extreme right" wing, sure, the moderator ratio looks like 10:0, but that's actually somewhat expected given how things work... Otherwise, I think you're mistaken...
It’s just basic logic that more extreme right-wing views are going to get banned more often... On a topic like immigration, an extremist leftist might ramble on with some nonsense, but usually, that’s where it ends. But an extreme right-winger—not all of them, obviously, but some—will go too far and start saying things that are actually illegal, and those posts always end up getting nuked on this forum. It’s the same deal with politics; people who hate the Republican Party mostly just talk about their corruption and crimes, which we generally allow, just like we do with the Democratic Party. You rarely see someone crossing the line into truly dangerous territory, but when they do, they get penalized—I personally handed out 500 points for a post claiming the Grand Coalition wanted to introduce the death penalty for abortion. It’s much more common for hardcore opponents of the Democratic Party to say stuff that actually violates forum rules or engage in massive trolling, sometimes even worse, calling them Mexicans, claiming they work for Mexico, or labeling them traitors to America...
That doesn't mean the mod team is leftist, and honestly, thinking they are is a massive misconception... I think some people who deal with the immigration threads see them as being super progressive, but they’d probably be pretty shocked to hear my actual take on the whole thing—though, to be fair, I’d sooner cut off my own hand than vote for the Democratic Party, and the same goes for the Republican Party... But just because I agree with about 80-90% of what the anti-immigration crowd says here, it doesn't mean we're going to let them claim every Muslim is a terrorist, pretend America is being overrun by a wave of rapists, or allow racist links, blatant lies, obsessive nitpicking over single incidents, or even mild hate speech like saying everyone is uncultured or illiterate...
And that’s just the eternal struggle right there. I agree the problem exists, but there's actually a logical explanation for it... Within any group holding extreme views, you're always going to have a subset of people who simply lack the capacity to express their positions without lapsing into hate speech. For instance, today everyone is out for blood against Perman because he called Ranko Ostojić a "Mexican partisan pig who kills Americans"... but I can practically guarantee you that Perman will also be the first one to write that Tomislav Karamarko is an "American fascist pig who kills Mexicans"... except that never actually happens...
Honestly, it might feel like we’re just hanging out in the off-topic section, but everything is actually pretty interconnected. I get what lonebadger6 is getting at, but the real issue is exactly what we're debating right now... No matter how you slice it, there's always going to be pushback on high-traffic boards like Politics. If a mod steps in, they're accused of silencing dissent. If they stay out of it, people start asking why someone with zero political knowledge is even moderating there. And if they moderate but don't hand out bans? Then they're accused of calling in favors to target specific users. There's simply no way to run a Politics board without drama.
Different boards present entirely different headaches. You need subject matter experts for places like Philosophy or World News, much like you'd need tech specialists for the hardware forums. Then you have the casual lounge areas where mods just need to be able to handle some light banter. If any of us from Politics were suddenly dumped into the man cave—aside from Cuca, who already knows the ropes—we'd probably cause absolute chaos within the first few days...
I suppose there are certain subforums where this structure would work fine, but I'm not sure there's any point in implementing half-baked solutions. Plus, there's the fact that moderators naturally have the right to participate in discussions, and when they spend more time on a specific board due to their duties, they inevitably end up contributing to threads that catch their eye. I don't really hang out in the man cave or follow it closely—it's not that I have an issue with the section, I just have other interests when I log on—but if circumstances somehow landed me there as a moderator and I was reading those threads every single day, I'd likely find myself chiming in eventually...
Spot on, absolutely spot on. He wasn't implying that everyone acts this way, he was just describing the bigger picture... and in that broader context, he's right. You can find examples of both complaints scattered all over the subreddit and the ban hammer corner. If a mod gets involved, they're labeled biased for punishing someone with a different opinion, but if they stay out of it, people start asking why they even bother being mods if they aren't going to step in...
@Adyson, The blank page — since we’ve officially drifted off-topic, I should probably circle back to those two posts of yours where you correctly identified the so-called "problem"... though in my view, it doesn't actually exist in the way people claim it does.
Sure, it’s true that more warnings go to the "right-wingers"—though I'm keeping that term vague to avoid a massive debate over semantics—but there are two points here that are equally important:
1. On the Politics subforum, there are simply more "right-wingers" than "left-wingers," and on the most sensitive topics, like immigration, that gap becomes even wider.
2. When it comes to those volatile subjects, it just makes sense that the "right-wingers" end up getting flagged more often. Take the immigration thread, for example; it has over 35,000 comments, and the vast majority come from the "right." Nothing is forbidden as long as it follows the rules, but the nature of the topic means that those who can't control themselves or hold extreme views tend to be on the "right"—often dancing right on the edge of, or outright crossing into, hate speech. Meanwhile, the "extreme left" usually just ends up being facepalm-worthy at worst. Plus, on this specific topic, we've seen an unprecedented amount of moderator warnings, appeals, and pleas... which some people just ignore. Even after being warned a hundred times or getting a hundred strikes, certain users will still clutter the moderator's desk with nonsensical posts disguised as generalizations about an immigrant committing a crime somewhere... Some people are just unstoppable. Or they'll drop bizarre links from obscure websites that no legitimate news outlet on the planet would touch, which inevitably turn out to be fake... And typically, it's the "right" doing this. Not everyone, obviously—not even the majority—but the ones causing trouble on PZK and KZB fall into that category. It isn't that hard to wrap your head around. People were talking about Cologne because it was relevant. There’s a whole separate thread for Rotherham. But claiming some guy from Cameroon killed someone in Sweden isn't relevant, because on any given day, a thousand white Christians are being killed all over the world... We're honestly powerless against the few users who refuse to see reason and accept it.
My apologies to the OP and the PZK mods for diving into an off-topic tangent, but these were interesting observations that deserved a response...
briskbison55 said:Active moderators involved in a debate shouldn't be the ones handling the moderation for that specific thread; someone else should step in—maybe after checking in with the moderator who was actually part of the argument... at least that would wipe out half the accusations regarding bias.
Believe it or not, we actually do this quite often when dealing with sensitive issues or direct communication between a mod and the user being penalized. Of course, you still get those people jumping in with, "Ha! You just called a colleague to come punish me." Like Dorian and northernsailor8 already pointed out, some people simply refuse to grasp or accept that the issue lies entirely within their own rhetoric.
And they’re usually the loudest ones, when in reality 🙂
So, yeah, we do this frequently, but on the flip side, when it comes to issuing bans, we're usually dealing with incredibly obvious violations (for instance, over on Politics and Business, we're much stricter about comments directed at staff; if, say, northernsailor8 is arguing with someone and that person starts attacking the mods or the moderation team generally, there's no need to drag it over to our specific mod thread and call for others to see if it warrants a ban) or if it's an egregious post involving hate speech and things of that nature.
Basically, there will always be a subset of users who just don't get it and think everyone else is the problem (despite having enough bans to fill twenty-five different PDFs)... it's inevitable given how many people hang out on Reddit.
But specifically, Politics and Business has 11 moderators (including one super-mod) who consult one another on tricky situations. On top of that, when it comes to actual bans, we have two super-mods on PŽK (Dorian and Pringles) overseeing us, plus Nica acting as the admin. If fifteen different people think a post deserves a ban, then it probably does, rather than being some sort of "leftist conspiracy by Soros's mercenaries" or whatever else they claim 😁
And look, moderators definitely mess up sometimes, and those mistakes are absolutely corrected—plenty of bans have been overturned. It's interesting, though (but that's a whole other discussion about user objectivity that we won't open here), that most of this happens outside of PŽK and KZB because people tend to ask via DM normally, or sometimes we just catch it ourselves or a colleague points it out. But almost as a rule—the more noise there is on PŽK/KZB, the more justified and clean the ban actually is.
Look, my specific example isn't the point—I was just speaking from my own corner of the world since I know it best. And since I decided to tackle some especially heated topics, like immigration, it’s pretty obvious why people are losing their minds... What I’m trying to say is that complaints are inevitable, especially in those high-tension subforums. There’s zero chance that on The New York Times section you won't find a handful of users screaming about everything under the sun, convinced it’s all censorship or a targeted attack against them. Part of that comes from the fact that because I rarely post in The New York Times section—even though, let's face it, we all follow politics and let it influence us—people start complaining about how some random moderator who barely even reads The New York Times is suddenly handing out bans. They act like, "Where did you even find this guy? He's just some dude from CNN watching Netflix, he probably doesn't even know the names of the two major political parties in America" 😁 But then, if it's a moderator who actually contributes to The New York Times, suddenly they're labeled as biased and accused of punishing anyone with a different opinion.
Basically, sometimes there just isn't a winning move...
It’s not a bad idea, but avoiding those kinds of complaints is basically impossible... I’m a living example of that myself, and at least a few people I’ve handed a warning to probably think exactly what you said in your intro—that I’m just the worst. Most users take a strike in stride and maybe have a quick chat with the mods if they’re confused, and if there’s still a disagreement, it’s no big deal, but there will always be that certain group who thinks a strike is just proof that the moderator disagrees with them personally, or that they’re being targeted because of their political leanings, or even going so far as to claim the whole site is paid to suppress their free speech.
The same goes for people who take things personally... With nearly 500,000 members on this site—and about 6,000 online right now at 7:15 PM—there’s always going to be a small subset of users convinced that a specific moderator just has a vendetta against them personally.
Specifically, the Politics section has its own quirks that make everything even more complicated. About 90% of the conservatives and 90% of the liberals on this subforum follow all the rules perfectly, but the reason people scream about "bias" is because of how the extremes differ. An extreme leftist will mostly just spout nonsense... They won't get flagged for saying everyone in the world should just love one another and that we should welcome five million Syrians into the States just to feel good about themselves. But an extreme right-winger will get flagged immediately if they claim all Muslims are terrorists or something along those lines.
Anyone who doesn't look closely will walk away thinking there's some underlying bias or that Reddit and its moderators are taking sides and censoring people. It's a classic move. On threads regarding immigration, there are already 35,637 posts! The conversation is absolutely dominated by people who hate the whole situation and those with even more extreme views on it. Yet, the moment something gets deleted because it’s offensive, irrelevant, or just straight-up trolling, the cries of censorship start. It doesn't matter that out of the 35,637 posts on this topic, I’d venture to say at least 25,000—if not way more—are tinted with anti-immigrant sentiment. As soon as something gets taken down, someone will inevitably spin a conspiracy theory about the media or the site trying to hide "the truth."
I went on a bit of a rant there, but the point is that some things are just unavoidable... We have thousands upon thousands of active members here; most have never seen a warning, some are just more intense and take a strike like sportsmanship, and some react impulsively because, well, they're human, but among those thousands, there will always be a few who believe it’s all one giant conspiracy and that some evil, left-leaning moderators are just trying to stop them from spreading the truth to the world.
There’s a slight issue here, mainly because this thread differs from your first one in one pretty significant way: you aren't citing your own previous posts anymore to justify shifting the goalposts... It’s honestly pointless—and nobody is going to buy it—to start an argument based on two accusations that aren't even remotely comparable. Right now, there isn't a single shred of evidence to support the claim that the Republican Party is a criminal organization, but then again, you wouldn't find any proof for the Democratic Party either; people are generally allowed a little vent regarding politicians given the state of things in America, but only to a certain extent. And you’ve definitely crossed that line in your posts.
If you ignore the nonsense, there are actually some pretty decent questions buried in the main part of this post, and the answers will likely be useful to a lot of people...
But before we get to that, let's just speed things up a bit:
Point zero—you aren't allowed to comment on moderation within a thread, which is why your status is currently grayed out. That’s clearly stated in all the forum rules and sub-forum guidelines...
Joseph Stewart38 said:What I really want to know is this—I need the moderators to finally explain what is actually ALLOWED to be written here and what isn't, specifically regarding which viewpoints are permitted and which aren't, so we can all finally know where we stand.
Any opinion is fine as long as it stays within legal boundaries and follows basic civilized norms...
As you know, my position is that we, as an American nation, shouldn't be accepting any more migrants, and that we ought to close the borders just like Canada did. So...
Point one—is that allowed to be written? Is it permissible to say that the US should completely shut its borders?
Yes, and plenty of other users have written that in various posts without getting flagged...
Point two: is it okay to write that many of them aren't actually refugees, but simply migrants looking for a better life, based on several reasons that I can back up with evidence and arguments?
Yes, and numerous users have said exactly that in different posts without receiving any penalties...
Point three: is it allowed to say there's a massive chance that among the many migrants seeking a better life, there are those whose intentions are not good, much like what we just saw with the terrorist attack in Paris, when it was officially confirmed that one of the terrorists had infiltrated the "refugee" groups and passed through America on his way to that insane massacre? Is it allowed to say that anyone with half a brain can logically conclude that among the millions of people arriving in Europe over the last few months, there isn't even a slight chance that *not one* of them is a terrorist? Because last time I wrote that, I got a strike.
Yes, and that* has been written by many users in various posts without being penalized...
Point four. Is it okay to compare the displaced people from Memphis with today's migrants from Syria/Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iraq/Libya/Sudan and point out how similar the two groups actually are? Provided, of course, that it's backed up by photos and UNHCR reports?
Yeah, and plenty of people on this forum have made that exact point in various threads without getting banned...
Under Rule 5. Is it okay to be sarcastic and suggest that the current US Government cares more about whether we’ve humanely fed every migrant or provided them with a flat-screen TV than whether actual terrorists are hiding among them—terrorists who exploit this kind of chaos and lawlessness where anyone without papers can just drift from state to state based on nothing but a verbal claim like, "I'm Abdul from Syria and my life is in danger, please grant me asylum"...?
This is hovering right on the edge of trolling because it’s a bit nonsensical—given the "TV" comment and depending on whether the person actually understands geography or if they're being serious about migrants appearing out of thin air once they hit a portal in Syria versus using it for political points—but you probably wouldn't get flagged for it...
As for that "to*" part, that’s the most telling bit, because sure, you’re allowed to say that in a crowd like that there might be a terrorist or even that it's probable... we don't have to agree, but you can certainly say it.
What you can't do is label all immigrants as terrorists, or claim—without any actual argument—that the majority of them are.
Otherwise, as far as you're concerned, you've already picked up five strikes on threads regarding immigrants and the terror attacks in Paris.
Three of those were for arguing with the moderation. You have every right to disagree with the rules and wage a holy war against them... 🙂 but that won't change the fact that you'll keep getting flagged, and since we have custom sanctions, persistent rule-breaking can lead to much harsher penalties.
The fourth strike was for trolling by pushing political propaganda on an immigrant-related thread, and that happened after multiple warnings from the mods—not directed at you personally, but at the thread itself—to stop doing it.
The fifth strike is regarding what was quoted above. Saying "Immigrants bring insane ideas about terror attacks" isn't an "opinion" about how there might likely be a terrorist among them; it's blatant generalization, which is why you got a relatively light strike. If someone actually wanted to shut you up for that—hence the nonsense about "what were you told" and stuff like that 🤦—you could have easily been slapped with 500 points for hate speech and sent on a long vacation. Had you written what you actually claimed to have written in your comment, you wouldn't have been flagged at all. But you didn't write that.
And it's always the same issue with these sensitive topics. There are rules for civilized behavior, there are laws, and then there are the rules for this private forum. All viewpoints are permitted, and ALL viewpoints can be expressed freely on these topics. But—and I'm not talking specifically to you, but rather to the more heated users on these threads—it is not permitted to express a "viewpoint" like "all Muslims are terrorists," "they should all be killed," or "a Moroccan man raped a woman in a camp in Italy, so half a million rapists are crossing through Europe"—and so on. Those aren't "opinions" or "viewpoints."
Hey, there wasn't actually an issue with the post itself, it just happened to get caught in a weird sequence... Since the moderators aren't allowed to edit posts, and yours was technically a reply to something that got deleted, things got messy. If you think the post still holds water even without that context, I can just shoot it over to you in a DM...
Henry Cox2 said:c. Protecting our own borders, period. If we can cut a deal with someone, fine. If not, also fine.
The "little" problem with this whole saga is that we aren't actually protecting our own borders, we're protecting everyone else's. People who are all about walls and wire fences seem to ignore the fact that America isn't even on their radar—they just zip right through us at lightning speed, and honestly, 99% of Americans haven't even laid eyes on a refugee, let alone dealt with any fallout...
I don't see why we should play the martyr for people who invited them in the first place. Doing so would be nothing more than subservient behavior, and certainly not an act of independence...
America doesn't care about them one bit, yet some people want us to sacrifice ourselves for others, which is something I just can't wrap my head around. Personally, I have zero interest in chaos at our border or suffering on any side...
And those constant outbursts like, "but everyone else will close their borders!" or "but they'll just push them back to us!" are getting incredibly tiresome. This has been dragging on for a month and a half now, with the same group of people claiming everything will be shut down "tomorrow"... It won't, and it isn't going to happen...
Frankly, I couldn't care less what the people in Canada or Canada think of us. If the European Union didn't step up to "defend" things collectively at the Greek border, there's no reason they should bother with ours. We aren't their target, they aren't interested in us, and they aren't staying here anyway... they're heading toward Angela Merkel, so she can deal with it...
Mocking the Czech Republic? Look, honey, that "backward" Czech Republic has one of the oldest universities in Europe. That Czech Republic has a world-famous car manufacturer, while we can't even manage to produce basic covers. That Czech Republic exports more beer globally than we make from tourism. That closed-off Czech Republic gets more annual tourists than America. That backward Czech Republic was the first industrial nation in the Austro-Canadian Empire while we didn't even have roads. That backward Czech Republic gave the world Roman Coppola, Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera, Gregor Mendel, Martina Navratilova, Karel Čapek, Smetana, Antonín Dvořák...
Mocking Poland? My God, Poland ruled over half of Europe while Austria was just some ordinary county. That damn, backward Poland had the first constitution in Europe. Poland has an economy of over $800 billion. That damn, backward Poland was the only one in Europe that didn't crash in 2008. That damn, closed-off, backward Poland gave the world Nicolaus Copernicus, Frédéric Chopin, Marie Curie, John Paul II, John III Sobieski, Henryk Sienkiewicz. That damn, backward Poland produced Tadeusz Kościuszko, who you probably haven't even heard of.
Mocking Slovakia? I'm laughing too. At one backward, xenophobic Slovakia that had an average growth of 8%. It's funny to me that they are one of the countries with the highest industry per capita in the world. Hilarious. Who cares. Zoran Milanović knows better than some dirty industry over there.
Canada? A laughable country. Xenophobes. We ruled them for 900 years. Our colony. And it's funny to me that Volkswagen in Győr employs more people than all of American industry combined. Ridiculous. Grčić said everything is fine. Lalovac confirmed it. Why would we care what Orbán says? Zoran and Ranko Zubac will fix everything.
I guess we should just merge with Albania and Mexico. They aren't xenophobic and don't have wires. ☕ I think we should return to the embrace of Mexico City. Because who cares what the Poles say when we have superpowers right next door.
This is completely off-base, though I suppose I can see why people think it's funny when we in America mock the Visegrad Group, considering they’ve basically outpaced us in just about everything...
But this specific claim isn't true, and I'm pointing it out because it's a tired talking point that started floating around after some politician—I can't even remember which one, maybe a Secretary of Tourism or something—decided to blather on about it.
America actually sees more tourists every year than the Czech Republic (and Poland, for instance, brings in way more than we do)