DS9 - Tribunal

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well I think it's a valid question for consideration.

I don't think it's so much authoritarianism that they look at that's so appealing, it's just protection of whatever it is they think is going to change. If you're going to vote for only the person that protects those interests at any cost, you easily start not only allowing the window open for such a condition, but also echo it in the very caveat of protecting those interest at any cost. From there you would just have to look at the people they actually do support and their modes and medians of particular ideologies that individuals subscribe to.

[Darth Wedgius]

Where are the Proud Boys advocating authoritarianism?

In my home town for starters. I've seen and heard them in action, and they're really not subtle at their rallies.

Just because they don't come out and say it, doesn't mean they aren't authoritarian.

What authoritarian things have they done or called for? It's true that not calling for authoritarian measures doesn't mean they aren't authoritarian, but by that standard we're all possible authoritarians.

[Freeverse]

They don't have to call for authoritarian measures because they all know what they want, and people like them know what they want. They chant Nazi slogans and propagate regressive ideas, and forward conspiracy theories like "the great replacement". They love violence and worship power, and are fully in favor of anything that harms people who aren't like them.

And frankly, I'm not particularly concerned if you believe me, because the only reason I've continued this conversation is in the hope that some third party observing us might gain some insight into the very real threat that fascism continues to pose even now.

[Link8909]

So I have a question, with how often Chief O'Brien ends up in these terribly situations that it’s become a meme, has anyone made a montage video of all the “O’Brien must suffer” clips put to the music of “Hard Knock Life” from Annie (2014)?

If not, if ever SFDebris or anyone else ever makes a tribute video for O’Brien, I recommend using the song “Hard Knock Life” from Annie (2014); on that note as well, I think that song would work well to a tribute video for Waspinator from Beast Wars.

On this subject as well, I know there was a music video for Harry Kim set to the song “You're Pitiful” by Weird Al Yankovic, I think its still on YouTube.

[Mickey_Rat15]

That's also something to keep in mind when you ask how many Nazis there are in America. If you look just at the American Nazi Party, then yeah, that's a pretty small number. But they're hardly the only Nazi organization in America; even if you only look at groups that openly identify themselves as Nazis, they're far from the largest. And there are plenty of other groups and individuals who, while they reject the Nazi label, still argue for many of the same beliefs.

Every person who was at the Charlottesville protest with a Nazi flag was a Nazi whether they hold membership in the party or not. Chanting "blood and soil" or anything else that is effectively a Nazi slogan would also count. I'd go so far as to say anyone who willingly participates in a protest that includes any Nazi flags or slogans is at best a Nazi sympathizer.

So any person who willingly participates in a protest with communist symbology: hammer and sickle, or Che Guevera t-shirts and such is a communist and should be ostracized from polite society as well? Do you really want t go down that route of suppressing any idea someone does not approve of?

[Mickey_Rat15]

What we are talking about, is being willing to punch Nazis. And again, there is a debate to be had about the validity or effectiveness of such a tactic, but that is what it is; nothing else.

What you are talking about is giving yourself moral license to use violence against demons and reserving yourself the right to define who the demons are. That is a cancerous attitude in a civil society. it is dangerous, not the least reason being that I don't trust the people calling themselves "anitifa" to have the wisdom and judgement to know what is and is not, a Nazi. They strike me as having an unfortunate mixture of ignorance and sanctimony.

[Mickey_Rat15]

What the Cardassian system most calls to mind for me was the guidelines to colleges the Obama adminstration issued under theauspices of Title IX on campus rape. What resulted was ignoring principles of due process and innocence until proven guilty. Much of the rhetoric in support of this policy sounded familiar. If someone is not punished for an accusation of rape, then the system is not taking rape seriously, whether the person accused did the deed or even if the specific events described could be reasonably defined as rape, did not really matter. The rights of the accused confront their accuser or respond to the charges was curtailed with the rationalization that women do not lie about such things.

We are coming dangerously close to having the societal attiudes that would enable the Cardassian legal system to be implemented. A lot of those attitudes are coming from the self-proclaimed progressive side of our politics.

[Beastro]

And frankly, I'm not particularly concerned if you believe me

No, that's no surprise.

Given the rest of this post I took this from I have to say you're a lot closer to their ilk than anyone else in this thread. So much so in sentiment I wonder how much of what you spout has more to do with projection than anything else.

So any person who willingly participates in a protest with communist symbology: hammer and sickle, or Che Guevera t-shirts and such is a communist and should be ostracized from polite society as well? Do you really want t go down that route of suppressing any idea someone does not approve of?

"But, but those were good people. They maybe killed tens of millions, but their hearts were in the right place. They cared. Unlike those evil Nazi's, they hated and wanted to kill the right kinds of people, like the Nazi's and anyone else they decided were like them for getting in their way, not the poor little victims we must eternally protect, coddle and look down upon as mere minorities."

I'm not saying that is Freeverse's outlook (but he gets close in sentiment), but it is many people's and it's disgusting.

I've seen the development of the other end of this crap going on for a good twenty years and I'm sick of the development where casual racism and idle shit talk became slowly more and more serious. It's why I never liked from the outset the "ironic" use of the Kekistan flag as I knew for many there was more going on there.

To be quite frank: why the fuck can't we drop all this shit and leave it behind? At the very least can't we start fighting and killing each other for other reasons? I have family that fought and paid the price of ending this crap decades ago. I want both sides dead and buried rather than rising up again and being each a Scylla and Charybdis that keep pulling everyone to their side. I'm tired of idiots wanting to relive the bad old days of Weimar Germany.

All pf this is two heads of a hydra fighting. It's the same pathological crap that came out of the centuries beforehand. Reminds me of: https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/10/leninthink

Recently Attorney General William Barr asked how his critics would have reacted had the fbi secretly interfered with the Obama campaign: “What if the shoe were on the other foot?” From a Leninist perspective, this question demonstrates befuddlement. In his book Terrorism and Communism, Trotsky imagines “the high priests of liberalism” asking how Bolshevik use of arbitrary power differs from tsarist practices. Trotsky sneers:

You do not understand this, holy men? We shall explain it to you. The terror of Tsarism was directed against the proletariat. . . . Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords, capitalists, and generals . . . . Do you grasp this—distinction? For us Communists it is quite sufficient.

What is reprehensible for them is proper for us, and that’s all there is to it. For a Leninist, the shoe is never on the other foot because he has no other foot.

[Darth Wedgius]

And I hope people are aware of the problems of deciding without evidence that someone is authoritarian, and deciding that allows authoritarianism to suppress them.

It's pretty important. https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-man-said-accidentally-attacked-by-left-wing-protesters-in-philadelphia/

[TGLS]

So any person who willingly participates in a protest with communist symbology: hammer and sickle, or Che Guevera t-shirts and such is a communist and should be ostracized from polite society as well? Do you really want t go down that route of suppressing any idea someone does not approve of?

I'm not going to get into whether Stalin was worse than Hitler, or Communism is worse than Nazism or what have you. What I will argue is that Nazism and Hitler are synonymous in ways that other ideologies aren't (i.e. Communism and Stalin, Liberalism and FDR, Conservatism and Reagan, etc.) The chief reason is that there is no other person in Nazism who has similar stature to Hitler, while other ideologies have many people who come to mind.