I Issue A Challenge

[Fixer]

Go to a Nazi speech or demonstration with a speaker set and blast out "The Hobbits are coming to Isengard!" every time they try to say something.

Watch out for anti-semetic dog-whistles, especially terms like "cultural marxism" and call them out in public.

These are all classics.

Counter productive. Silencing an opponent only makes people think they had a valid point you didn't want them to hear. You need to expose these ideas to fresh air so people can see how badly they stink.

Silencing of the BNP's Nick Griffon during a question time interview got him a surge of support which resulted in the election of a BNP councillor. He was voted out and their number vanished after that because sensible people realised what they were actually like.

Also cultural marxism is just another term for the Frankfurt School school of thought. I've heard plenty of plenty classical liberals use the term including a Jewish professor in discussion of the Historikerstreit. It's now strange to see a term used in discussions of extremely complicated moral and philosophical debate apparently as a way to figure out which people are the secret Nazis.

[The Romulan Republic]

And this is not a rhetorical question, or a Gotcha, or a trick.

This is addressed to all of you who condemn the violent opposition of Nazis, because you protect free speech, or because you believe that peaceful means are more effective.

I want you to tell me what non-violent means you are using to oppose the Neo-Nazis.

At present:

Besides voting, and attempting to contribute through my modest means to the political discourse of our society by engaging in discussions such as this, I am a registered member of the Democratic Party and a volunteer for Democrats Abroad. I will continue to support efforts to elect politicians who will reform our Justice System and contain, not condone, domestic terrorists, white supremacists, and Right-wing extremists.

Outside of American politics*, I volunteered extensively for the BC Green Party during the last provincial election.

I intend to make a donation to a civil rights organization, or to the Democratic Party, as soon as I have the available funds (I have made similar donations in the past).

If you can suggest any other non-violent means I might use to oppose Neo-Nazis, and Right-wing extremism generally, I'm all ears.

*In case this is unclear, I am a duel citizen of the US and Canada.

Edit: To be honest, Trump's election, and the rise of Right-wing extremism in America, was part of the impetus for me to take the step from just voting and talking, to actively participating in political parties.

Certainly!

You can raise funds for a nonprofit cause even if you DON'T have money through Goodsearch.com. It's a search engine, like yahoo or google or bing, except that you get to CHOOSE which registered nonprofit you support, and then every time you search they get a penny of ad revenue.

You can participate in protests.

You can call your members of congress asking them to denounce 45 and his twinkle-eyed encouragement of Neo Nazis. Emails rarely get read, letters and petitions don't have a lot of impact either, but deluging the phones gets noticed. If your congress members have town hall meetings nearby, show up to them and make your position clear in person.

Go to a Nazi speech or demonstration with a speaker set and blast out "The Hobbits are coming to Isengard!" every time they try to say something.

Watch out for anti-semetic dog-whistles, especially terms like "cultural marxism" and call them out in public.

These are all classics.

Thanks.

I've called my Congressman before (over America's lack of support for refugees), but I'll try to do so more often.

Protests too, if any relevant ones occur here.

Congressional Town halls are probably out, though, since I'm currently living in Canada.

[excalibur]

If someone wants to express an opposing point of view, I'll let them do it unless it becomes violent or it preaches violence to prove a point. I think I had brought up before that ideas like socialism, communism, etc always come out of something that had potential good, but how they are always taken advantage of by the madmen of the world and twisted into something that can be compared to evil or just irresponsible. There's also the ideal of extreme nationalism that came from the concept of closed borders and protecting one's cultural identity, but that is always an odd thing when using the USA as an example that has a somewhat recognizable identity but one that has been shaped by a couple hundred years of progress, checks and balances to be cliche that has prevented it from becoming similar but entirely different to Europe, where most of the US's culture originated from. When Marxism, communism, Nazism, etc all were at their peak of both popularity and power, the US, a decidedly similar western country to Europe was barely influenced by the extremism that Europe underwent. Sure there was a red scare, threats of Nazism taking roots in America, even today with the continued resurgence of "Democracy Socialism", an almost parody disguise for communism/socialism at its core but repackage into something more hip, yet regurgitated formula of the past.

The point I'm trying to make is no mater how many of these spotted protests and some devolving into full blown riots there are in America, it still doesn't affect the overall country, not a single riot has ever led to movie level of taking over a city to so long that it becomes a 3rd world country war zone. That's because in the end, even the rioters want to go home, turn on their TVs, take their stuff and start another day. There's savagery but it's savagery that prefers to live in civilization than true anarchy and entitled savagery. There has yet to be a revolution on a scale of the Russians or some evil take over of Nazis or crisis of actual totalitarianism because of how different America is and how large both land mass and population compared to other parts of the world and how diverse we push for. America, still being the "melting pot of the world" or I would call it a tossed salad is why we can have these extremists show up and they can never truly take root or garner any real power. Neo-Nazis can never truly take over (similar with how diminished racism as a perceivable threat), Fascism is not a thing because America is not a cartoon evil empire.


Our system allows for extremes to still exist, but it's because we allow them to continue to have a voice. They have a right to speak but that's all. They might even get more followers but nothing ever comes of it. There will always be the extremes that'll come up. We can never truly stomp them out, nor should we in my opinion because it makes up complacent.

As cliche as I sound, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

I can always disagree with the type of people who preach stupid things that are based on archaic notions of superiority or victimhood but I will never truly tell them to shut the fuck up if they have something to say. We live in a world where everyone has a voice and everyone should talk it out so we can understand and understanding is 3 sides. Your side, their side and the truth.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Go to a Nazi speech or demonstration with a speaker set and blast out "The Hobbits are coming to Isengard!" every time they try to say something.

Watch out for anti-semetic dog-whistles, especially terms like "cultural marxism" and call them out in public.

These are all classics.

Counter productive. Silencing an opponent only makes people think they had a valid point you didn't want them to hear. You need to expose these ideas to fresh air so people can see how badly they stink.

Silencing of the BNP's Nick Griffon during a question time interview got him a surge of support which resulted in the election of a BNP councillor. He was voted out and their number vanished after that because sensible people realised what they were actually like.

Also cultural marxism is just another term for the Frankfurt School school of thought. I've heard plenty of plenty classical liberals use the term including a Jewish professor in discussion of the Historikerstreit. It's now strange to see a term used in discussions of extremely complicated moral and philosophical debate apparently as a way to figure out which people are the secret Nazis.

'Cultural Marxism' in modern political parlance refers to a conspiracy theory which sees the Frankfurt School as part of an ongoing movement to take over and destroy Western society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt ... acy_theory

As for blasting loud music, that hearkens back to the tradition of Purim, where the kings advisor would run around spouting anti-semitic rhetoric and people would wave their noisemakers to drown him out, that aspect now being remembered in the celebration by drowning out the name of said advisor with noisemakers.

It also feeds nicely into that "the devil cannot stand being laughed at" thing.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Excalibur, I feel that either I have misunderstood your post or you have failed to answer the question.
...however, the jist of what I hear from you is "It can't happen here." I would suggest in following that line of reasoning you read an alternate history/political thriller novel of the same title, and/or maybe watch V.

[Admiral X]

All the above.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Alright then. Thank you. I admit I really wouldn't have pegged you as an NPR supporter.

[Admiral X]

I'm certainly not the fascist I repeatedly am accused of being. I don't really follow any particular political ideology, so whether I am liberal or conservative tends to come down to individual issues. Actually according to the last political compass test I took, I'm a bit to the left on that scale. I'd say I'm libertarian, but I'm not all about the "taxation is theft" or "let's privatize literally everything" stuff, so I don't really fit well there either.

[Fixer]

'Cultural Marxism' in modern political parlance refers to a conspiracy theory which sees the Frankfurt School as part of an ongoing movement to take over and destroy Western society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt ... acy_theory

Yes, you can also see in the same article:

The term 'cultural Marxism' has an academic usage within cultural studies where it refers to a form of anti-capitalist cultural critique which specifically targets those aspects of culture that are seen as profit driven and mass produced under capitalism. As an area of The Frankfurt School's discourse 'Cultural Marxism' has commonly considered the industrialization and mass-production of culture by The Culture Industry as having an overall negative effect on society.

As I said, I attended a lecture which back in the early 2000s, it covered the how Germans accepted the cultural guilt of the holocaust and part of that was how cultural marxism/critical theory applied to one side of the argument.

It's simply a theory application of Marxism to culture instead of economics. It's still used in academia right now. In the great internet slap fights and uneducated blogging wars of our age, it should not come as a any great surprise that most of the people claiming it is and is not a thing, have no actual idea what they are talking about.

As for blasting loud music, that hearkens back to the tradition of Purim, where the kings advisor would run around spouting anti-semitic rhetoric and people would wave their noisemakers to drown him out, that aspect now being remembered in the celebration by drowning out the name of said advisor with noisemakers.

It also feeds nicely into that "the devil cannot stand being laughed at" thing.

Fun tradition but since Antisemitism survived the following two millennia, I think the strategy could use some work

If people hold rallies and protests and silence them instead of cleverly mock them, you drum up sympathy for those you silence. Or to borrow a GRR Martin quote:

"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say"

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Yeah waving a noise-maker isn't equivalent to mutiliation. It's a way of letting somebody know that they are not welcome here and forcing them to vent there spleen at chums in a bar or their favorite subreddit.

Before I scuttled my subreddit, I saw people crying "cultural marxism" whenever something sounded too lefty for their tastes. The existence of a valid, academic meaning does not erase the fact that Neo-Nazis have taken it up as one of their dog-whistles. Virtually everything the Nazis use once had a good and decent meaning or purpose. They almost validate the Augustinian and Tolkeinesque view of evil as being able to corrupt or copy but not truly create.