Germany Neo-Nazis march by the thousands...

[Admiral X]

And now here we are, we now live in a world where moderates are moving towards the far extremes because they are the only ones that feel as if they are listening to them.

I'm sure there's some of that, but I can't help but think that moderates are just keeping their heads down while the crazies fight it out amongst themselves.

[Admiral X]

Where I come from, if somebody is being racist, it's within reason to call them a racist.

The problem is that the labeling has been thrown around so much that it's turned into the story of the boy crying wolf. The real reason it's being done is an attempt to simultaneously shame people into silence, and hope that others will actually believe the accusation and not listen to anything they might say, while also being absolutely lazy because it means (in the minds of those making the accusation) that they don't actually have to think of any counter arguments. The side effect the people who do this never seem to consider is that the majority of people aren't actually like them, and that there actually are quite a few instances where it's completely obvious that they're talking out of their ass, so it's actually going to make most people either throw their arms up and just not care when the labels get thrown around. You know, like how McCarthy was taken seriously at first until people finally figured out he was full of shit. Thing is, there actually were some communists.

If somebody chooses to join racist hate groups just because they are annoyed that people keep calling them racists, well then they were probably never that anti-racist to begin with.

Again, given how loosely the label is applied, one wonders which groups are actually hate groups, and which people might actually be racist and the like.

You'll notice that, despite years and years of being called Femi-Nazis, feminist speakers don't actually turn to Nazism.

As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words.

[Karha of Honor]

Yeah, but if I see somebody being racist, I'm going to call a spade a spade.

And that's fine. I'm all for letting people call each other anything they damn well please.

But the point that I think clearspira was trying to make is that a lot of people across Europe are beginning to feel that their governments no longer represent them or have their best interests at heart. They feel (justifiably or not) that their concerns are being ignored.

unknown is saying "Hey, we didn't ignore them. We called them racists."

Now, maybe that works differently in Europe, but in the US, when you call someone a racist, you're basically shutting the conversation down. And that's fine, if your goal is to exit the conversation. But if your goal is to convince the person you're talking with that you understand their concerns and want to be their ally, then it's a poor choice of tactic.

Welcome to the USA for the last 20+ years. Both parties' lines have been mostly about rich people problems ever since the Republicans went full Objectivist and the Democrats decided that neoliberalism was the it thing. Both sides fucked the school system, Bush by throwing standardized testing at everything and Obama by pulling that absurd "Race to the Top" idea. Only real difference is that the Democrats are corrupt and willfully blind and the Republicans are even more corrupt and evil. They both ignore the little people and take their votes for granted.

And yeah. If you call someone a racist in a soundbite (as opposed to in a more natural conversation, something that doesn't really exist anymore thanks to the Internet stripping nuance out of fucking everything), you're telling them to shut up and telling all your supporters that that person shouldn't be taken seriously. I don't know how it works in Europe, but I'm pretty sure that telling neo-Nazis to shut up and get bent is the right thing to do, because they're fucking Nazis and literally the entire point of their ideology is murder and mindless hatred.

Why should i not think that Democrats are also evil?

[TGLS]

I'm sure there's some of that, but I can't help but think that moderates are just keeping their heads down while the crazies fight it out amongst themselves.

That doesn't exactly have a history of working. Look at the Mensheviks and the Kadets in Russia, or all the moderates in Weimar Germany, or the democrats in late Imperial Japan. They all got screwed after the crazies took over.

[Karha of Honor]

I'm sure there's some of that, but I can't help but think that moderates are just keeping their heads down while the crazies fight it out amongst themselves.

That doesn't exactly have a history of working. Look at the Mensheviks and the Kadets in Russia, or all the moderates in Weimar Germany, or the democrats in late Imperial Japan. They all got screwed after the crazies took over.