DS9 - Tribunal

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I've heard this before and it just sounded like people conflating Marx with totalitarianism.

There's enough odiousness to make me wonder exactly lurked beneath his thinking. I think his ideas resonated with people for a reason, and it isn't the one that the label lists. It's similar to Hitler and Nazism: It wasn't racist purity and a 1000 year Reich that resonated with people, it was murdering as many people as they could before they dragged the whole world down that did in the same manner that mass shooters have a manifesto but their actions always boil down to desperately gunning down as many as possible enjoying their moment as a god in their little corner of the world.

Of so you're more in the camp of Marx being the godfather of SJWs?

[Beastro]

I've heard this before and it just sounded like people conflating Marx with totalitarianism.

There's enough odiousness to make me wonder exactly lurked beneath his thinking. I think his ideas resonated with people for a reason, and it isn't the one that the label lists. It's similar to Hitler and Nazism: It wasn't racist purity and a 1000 year Reich that resonated with people, it was murdering as many people as they could before they dragged the whole world down that did in the same manner that mass shooters have a manifesto but their actions always boil down to desperately gunning down as many as possible enjoying their moment as a god in their little corner of the world.

Of so you're more in the camp of Marx being the godfather of SJWs?

A major figure in unleashing a many headed hydra.

Communism, Fascism and whatever new utopian ideology people concoct, I see them all as just pieces of a beast unleashed that has be plaguing us for centuries.

SJWs are just the most current, and hardly the most coherent, ripple that has come from stone being thrown in the pond.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I've heard this before and it just sounded like people conflating Marx with totalitarianism.

There's enough odiousness to make me wonder exactly lurked beneath his thinking. I think his ideas resonated with people for a reason, and it isn't the one that the label lists. It's similar to Hitler and Nazism: It wasn't racist purity and a 1000 year Reich that resonated with people, it was murdering as many people as they could before they dragged the whole world down that did in the same manner that mass shooters have a manifesto but their actions always boil down to desperately gunning down as many as possible enjoying their moment as a god in their little corner of the world.

Of so you're more in the camp of Marx being the godfather of SJWs?

A major figure in unleashing a many headed hydra.

Communism, Fascism and whatever new utopian ideology people concoct, I see them all as just pieces of a beast unleashed that has be plaguing us for centuries.

SJWs are just the most current, and hardly the most coherent, ripple that has come from stone being thrown in the pond.

Right. But there's this thing of politicians always exploiting economic jargon in order to sell tickets to get presidency.

[Freeverse]

I've said nothing about the Proud Boys in this discussion. I've just replied about Gavin and Milo, the former left the organization and the other has nothing to do with it though that ilk congregate around him.

That's what the conversation was about. The entire post that you clipped a quote from was directed specifically at the Proud Boys. Conversely, I haven't said anything about Gavin McGinnes, because I don't care. He comes off pretty racist, but I'm more concerned with the organization that has done various fascist things, regardless of what distancing their founder has done.

I also wasn't talking about Milo Yiannopoulos. I only mentioned him in one previous post, and that was only because someone else brought him up, and it seemed like everyone here was unaware of the company he keeps. He's probably a collaborator and not a true believer, but until he stops collaborating, the difference is academic.

Whatever they are and what they might do or not do I'm sick of this shit that's been building for years. I don't know how old you are, but I've seen things developing for over 15 years and noticed the change in talk of many in chat, message boards and elsewhere where idle teenage banter of taboo breaking through the joking of racism and other subjects developed into a settled overt outlook in many I once knew. This isn't just my own anecdotal observations of online friends, as I clearly saw the development of that build across the internet and knew it was just a matter of time until things like open antisemitism would erupt, which it has.

It isn't violence, but I do not like seeing the change of the culture taking place from that angle and many others. I greatly dislike the feeling from the circles you seem to be in that appears to be encouraging this crap on your own end by driving people into opposition from your sanctimony and righteous, uncaring fury. It seems in the end to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: you guys seem to want fascists to be back precisely so you have people to deservedly punch and you don't care if you drive people in their ranks because it simply gives you more faces to hit.

I feel like you have misread my posts, and I'm not here to interpret why that might be. It would be uncharitable to make assumptions, but I urge you to consider whether the responsibility lies with those who call out antisemitic attitudes and behaviors when they occur, ironic or not, or if it lies with those who remain silent, or even play along.

I mean, obviously it's the ones who actively attempt to recruit people. Which is happening more and more, and if you're really looking to spoil your mood there are places all over the internet you can find this going on.

I'm not trying to control your tone at all, but I don't like it. The sentiment expressed within it is that it's inexcusable to use violence against anyone, anyone except your enemies which you label as fascist. I do not like the dilution of that word and I'm sickly intrigued to witness the effective replacement of demonization with "fascistization" - everyone is just itching to point the finger now and say that F-word at their opponents with the Right-wing just slightly behind the curve on that.

Nope, not at all. Violence is not inexcusable. It's undesirable, but there are plenty of cases in which it may be either necessary or justifiable. Not the least of which is self-defense, or the defense of others. No one in my political alignment actually wants to punch fascists all day every day. We just think that if no one else is telling them to fuck off, that punching one of them to show they aren't welcome is acceptable.

And maybe one of the reasons the word fascist is being used more often is its increased visibility. Maybe people are just more generally aware of it than hey used to be. Not to say that it's never used erroneously, but the times that does happen seem to be getting held up as an example of a widespread problem that's just not spread as wide as some people seem to think.

Stop fucking looking at everything through the lens of fascism! All you see is good and fascism. The label dominates your perception of everything. The Proud Boys could and very likely are pieces of shit, but that I feel is immaterial to if they are fascist or not. One can be an asshole, a bad person or even an evil one without the F-word being drawn into it. You are not a fascist, but that doesn't mean your outlook and where it can and will lead isn't dangerous.

The only condition which I find violence acceptable to be used is when someone else initiates violence first with your use of it being to end a dangerous situation and restore order. It shouldn't extend beyond that. Once we get to the position where we have to throw that away everything else is gone, and in the case of your country, that means laying the groundwork for another wonderful civil war.

Look, when I describe what fascists are like, and you say that maybe I have more in common with them then I choose to admit, then I take that to imply that I am similar to fascists in some way. That's what I was responding to, and that's why I'm talking about not being fascist.

Also, again... the conversation I was in was about the Proud Boys being fascist or not. I wasn't attempting to argue that all bad people are fascist, only that this specific organization is. And since the topic was "are they fascist or not" that's the lens I was talking through. The conversation was about that one thing, so that's the one thing I was talking about.

And, hey, I disagree with when violence is acceptable, and that's OK, I don't condemn you for your position on this topic, but I think it's got some big problems. First of all, the idea is, in fact, self-defense. Because hate speech causes violence. This has been observed in numerous studies. So if someone is coming to your town to spread hate speech, and you've tried to use non-violent means to stop that, but were unsuccessful, then maybe it's better to punch one racist instead of hoping that this time, they don't inspire others to do violence. And to be clear, they don't have to call for acts of violence for that to end up being the result. They don't even have to want it, but it is one of the effects of their speech. I guess you could argue that defense of others is not self-defense... but that line of reasoning is very troubling for its implications. That using violence to protect someone I don't know is wrong, that's something I can't get behind.

Also.... "restore order" is maybe not the best language to use when justifying violence. Plenty of atrocities have been committed with the idea of restoring order, to the point where I can just kind of vaguely gesture at the continent of Africa. I don't think that's how you meant it. Just that it comes off a bit unsettling.

But, if I'm reading you right, I think I still have a problem with it. Order is not a good, in and of itself. It's certainly useful for establishing equality, liberty, justice, and peace. But the moment that order takes precedent over any of those things is when I have a problem with it. In fact I think that holding up order as a moral value is, just... bad. Like, I think that introducing a bit of chaos is a good way to change unjust systems for the better, but I don't think that chaos is inherently good.

None of those countries listed have enshrined freedom of speech. Everyone in those country's assumes that is protected when it never was, it was just en vogue to go with the US on it since the end of WWII and that cultural fad is now fading. European nations have never loved that idea and never will.

There's a difference between all forms of speech deserving equal consideration and equal protection. I certainly do not give that kind of talk equal consideration, but that is different from allowing them the right to say their stupidity. And I'm not just saying that out of some principled desire to give them equal treatment either, it's to undermine their crap by not affording them a sense of importance that persecution would bring.

Look at the KKK decades ago. It had shrunk down enough they were lucky to have a few thousand in their protests at the best of times. Simply put, they were not worth it to bother, and I surely wished they could have faded away into oblivion. Now I don't know what their numbers are now, but I don't like seeing the opposite treatment being done with people like the Proud Boys, but that then makes me wonder if that is deliberate or not, which goes back to my dreaded suspicion that too many on the Left want fascists to punch again like the good old days of 1930s Germany, that if they don't have any around, then they'll make them.

I actually don't think that regulation is the answer, I was just kind of pointing out how common it is for liberal democracies to litigate hate speech because it is different from other forms of speech. Hate speech makes it more difficult for members of targeted groups to exercise their own speech because they are more likely to be the target of hate crime. Again, there are studies about this, and not everything is conclusive, but they're really starting to show that when you protect hate speech, it has the opposite effect from what you're hoping.

I wish we could just agree to ignore racist idiots, but that's what led to the current climate, along with authoritarian regimes gaining some key political victories. Like, this might bother you, but Trump is a fascist. If you don't think he's actually a fascist (he super is based on his policies and the constant dog-whistling), we can agree to disagree. Whatever. The point I'm making is more important than what specific label you want to give him. When he became president, there was a wave of violent crimes against queer people and people of color, all over the U.S., with a common refrain being "we won, the president is on our side, Trump says you're fucked" and the like. Whatever he is, simply by being elected, he inspired violence. And none of that happened because people on the left called him a racist, it happened because they thought that they could get away with it, because he got away with saying everything he did.

And, you know... words change over time. I don't know how different the general idea of what constitutes a fascist is compared to back in world war 2, but I think that being unwilling to call someone out as a fascist because it might dilute the word is ascribing too much power to fascism. Its like how certain slurs have been reclaimed by the groups they were used against. By changing how it's used, the oppressed took power away from their oppressors. It's more important that the people who might become victimized define a term than it is that the word be used accurately.

As for the KKK and the Proud Boys, well... The KKK hasn't grown too much, and it's because their image is so bad. They do have new members coming in, but a lot of them are the children of current members. And the Proud Boys? The kind of attention they're getting is absolutely deliberate. It's part of their fucking recruitment strategy. They go out, and pick fights, and tell potential recruits how cool it was to get into those fights. They often claim they didn't throw the first punch, sometimes that's true, sometimes it isn't, but they play it that way because they're far more media savvy than the KKK. They do what they can to make themselves look good and their opponents look bad. And so, they aren't open about the more extreme views many of them hold, and they say "anti-feminism" instead of "women should be subservient to men", or "anti-political correctness" instead of "trans people are delusional".

And your dreaded suspicion... well, if I may break one of my own rules and speculate as to why you might think this? It seems like you are taking what the left has said and using your own motivations to rationalize a position you don't agree with. Essentially "I don't think you should punch people, but if I did, why would that be?" rather than actually parsing why it is that some people on the left (and believe me, not all of us agree on this point) think it's acceptable. I hope you don't take this as an insult because it's hard to put yourself in the mindset of someone you have a fundamental disagreement with, but it seems like a failure of imagination.

Perhaps you have some kind of desire for moral simplicity, even though you know that's not the way the world really is. I want things that I know just aren't true, so I don't think it's unusual. For instance, I wish gender didn't exist. I find the entire rigmarole quite annoying. But there are in fact genders and humans have them. Even I probably have one. Oh well.

Regardless, I don't like the feeling of the change in culture, and I don't mean it in the way you might think. I worry simply that people are giving up in their belief of things like representative government and other things. They're shifting enough that the foundations of things as we know it will collapse, and not because people deliberately trying to tear it down, but because people are changing enough that the system is simply unworkable and so we're right back to needing aristocracy and rigid hierarchies again, the only question is who gets to dominate at the top of them after the scramble that seems to be developing.

I mean, I'm opposed to most hierarchies no matter how flexible they are, but I understand the worry that there's not enough being done to have something in place to replace the current system. This is absolutely something that the left talks about. Perhaps not as much as we should, but we're absolutely aware of it. There's a lot more fighting the system than working on the alternative because fighting the system is extremely difficult and you have to keep doing it or it'll go back to the way it was. But also, at the moment, the changes that have been happening are fairly small compared to other big shifts in the past.

I don't want to dismiss your concern, because it's very valid. When the world changes, there are always difficulties. But the real problem is that people in power aren't hearing out the alternatives that are being proposed because it's in their best interest to convince everyone that they way things are is the only real option. It's easier to say that communism is worse than to actually defend capitalism. It's easier to say that society will descend into chaos without the police than it is to justify the abuse of power that's been going on for decades. It's easier to accuse someone of being "soft on crime" than it is to justify a law that increases the incarceration rate without reducing the crime rate.

I hope we've gotten over some initial hurdles, because while I suspect we won't necessarily come to an agreement, you are coming off much more sympathetic and willing to actually engage in the points I'm making than the other person I was previously talking with.

As one last note for now, I would highly recommend checking out Innuendo Studios on Youtube. The guy who runs the channel is very good at explaining himself and there's a series called The Alt-Right Playbook which is highly informative and may help you to understand not just where I'm coming from, but also how the Alt-Right operates. Here's a link to the playlist, if you're interested.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ[/youtube]

[Beastro]

The entire post that you clipped a quote from was directed specifically at the Proud Boys. Conversely, I haven't said anything about Gavin McGinnes, because I don't care.

And I talked about both until our lines of conversation met when I began noticing your posts, their sentiment and this line:

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

For someone who likes to speak often about not caring or believing people, I certainly did got a reaction out of you.

We just think that if no one else is telling them to fuck off, that punching one of them to show they aren't welcome is acceptable.

There's a difference between punching someone in a random conversation and doing so on a mass scale at protests and other public events. You also discount the fact that they may actually want that to justify doing the same to you, as they are itching to antagonize those they oppose.

And maybe one of the reasons the word fascist is being used more often is its increased visibility. Maybe people are just more generally aware of it than hey used to be. Not to say that it's never used erroneously, but the times that does happen seem to be getting held up as an example of a widespread problem that's just not spread as wide as some people seem to think.

I'm talking about something that goes back to WWII. The only change in the past ten years has been the increased use of the term towards people who do not fit the term that can include anyone and everyone. I know Americans who love to declare the Democrats a fascist party. That may sound utterly silly to you, but I find your sides use of it equally as silly.

Look, when I describe what fascists are like, and you say that maybe I have more in common with them then I choose to admit, then I take that to imply that I am similar to fascists in some way. That's what I was responding to, and that's why I'm talking about not being fascist.

You don't have to be Fascist to be similar to them. I worry you have as much in common with the Jacobins as well due to such proactive willingness to use violence over a war of words.

Because hate speech causes violence. This has been observed in numerous studies.

Then that is on the perpetrator for committing a crime and will be handled accordingly. That is a good reason nonetheless to be prepared to protect yourself and know how to. The issue with your line of thinking is how preemptively acting gets into sticky territory and how I ultimately see it drifting into "Please think of the children" Victorian busy-bodying that opens up a doorway for the righteous minded to start trying to manage the minds of others.

then maybe it's better to punch one racist instead of hoping that this time

It won't end with one being punched. Even if you'd be fine with that, others will not. It is more than just the Far-Right that's filled with hate here.

Also.... "restore order" is maybe not the best language to use when justifying violence. Plenty of atrocities have been committed with the idea of restoring order, to the point where I can just kind of vaguely gesture at the continent of Africa. I don't think that's how you meant it. Just that it comes off a bit unsettling.

Someone punches me, I punch them back, we scuffle, I get them in a rear naked choke and disable them from further causing me harm, end the fight by making clear they've lost and I can really hurt them if they chose to keep going. I do not continue the fight after that as it's been decided and deescalation can be undertaken as civility is reestablished. That is what I meant.

Continuing on turning the guy's face into hamburger is what you're thinking of and not what I'd call restoring order.

Order is not a good, in and of itself. It's certainly useful for establishing equality, liberty, justice, and peace. But the moment that order takes precedent over any of those things is when I have a problem with it. In fact I think that holding up order as a moral value is, just... bad. Like, I think that introducing a bit of chaos is a good way to change unjust systems for the better, but I don't think that chaos is inherently good.

We are getting into the fundamental divide between the Left and the Right. I'd argue we are inherently beings of order by the very fact that we are alive. Life is, in purely materialistic terms, highly ordered matter. We fight like dogs to preserve and protect order, and we in our modern days cannot comprehend how ordered our world is and what real chaos is like.

With that said you are right about order, because order can become too stagnant and can fail to adapt to changing circumstances (and changing threats). We do need a bit of chaos if only to keep us on our toes, but the crucial thing is a bit of chaos. I'd argue the Left and modern society has tilted towards allowing too much in and that will result in destabilization and disaster in the same way drinking too much water will kill you (as opposed to dying of dehydration).

We can agree too on chaos not being inherently good either, but that is why I have a strong ambivalence about Progressivism, as in essence I see it as enshrining chaos as a tamed god people think they can control.

I actually don't think that regulation is the answer, I was just kind of pointing out how common it is for liberal democracies to litigate hate speech because it is different from other forms of speech. Hate speech makes it more difficult for members of targeted groups to exercise their own speech because they are more likely to be the target of hate crime. Again, there are studies about this, and not everything is conclusive, but they're really starting to show that when you protect hate speech, it has the opposite effect from what you're hoping.

I don't see an ideal solution being made, and if it comes down to what I think is of the greatest benefit for society, I don't see that in this path. I only see an ever tightening grip and an opening of abuse that will further damage what I value in society. The same goes for the flaws in the justice systems of our countries, at least in the West, and how they measure up to any alternatives.

I wish we could just agree to ignore racist idiots,

Many people don't want to, many want to actively be hostile and antagonize them and I worry we're now long caught up in a negative feedback loop with no good end in sight even if we defuse it as best we can.

Like, this might bother you, but Trump is a fascist. If you don't think he's actually a fascist (he super is based on his policies and the constant dog-whistling

It doesn't bother me, but we will have to disagree. He is as much as fascist as Obama was a Muslim in disguise.

As for dog-whistling, we'll have to disagree again. I am sick of this dog-whistling talk just as much as I'm sick of the false flag talk. I don't discount that such a thing exist (as false flags do, too), but people are so eager to leaping on things said as being dog-whistles now that all perspective on the term has been lost. In the end, I cannot help but feel it's yet another sign of how lacking in trust we now are now that we refuse to accept the words of our opponents as genuine. That then leaves us all open to the bottomless pit of our imagination which then fills our hearts with whatever fears we might dread to see in those we oppose.

When he became president, there was a wave of violent crimes against queer people and people of color, all over the U.S., with a common refrain being "we won, the president is on our side, Trump says you're fucked" and the like. Whatever he is, simply by being elected, he inspired violence. And none of that happened because people on the left called him a racist, it happened because they thought that they could get away with it, because he got away with saying everything he did.

That is a step too far in making a connection. They may well have been inspired by him winning the election, but that is on them to act of their own accord and it's clear that was nothing he called others to do. You no doubt disagree on that, but I'd say that line of thinking goes down a rabbit hole where anyone's actions could be blamed for something someone else said (or failed to say).

In the end, it's best to leave things at the foot of the asshole who did the deed.

And, you know... words change over time. I don't know how different the general idea of what constitutes a fascist is compared to back in world war 2, but I think that being unwilling to call someone out as a fascist because it might dilute the word is ascribing too much power to fascism. Its like how certain slurs have been reclaimed by the groups they were used against. By changing how it's used, the oppressed took power away from their oppressors. It's more important that the people who might become victimized define a term than it is that the word be used accurately.

I don't mind fascist being diluted. I don't like it, though, when a term is so diluted in a way that it encourages people to declare themselves it because they feel they're damned if they do and damned if they don't because they'll be called it no matter what.

Same goes with Nazi if only for the fact that I kinda care about all the mass murdering they did and neither like people casually calling themselves that "ironically" nor it being thrown around as a label for ones political opponents. I certainly do like when it is diluted through the mocking and belittling of the Nazi's themselves, but that has nothing to do with our current troubles.

I feel you're contradicting yourself here. First you say people should be able to call fascists out for being fascists then at the end of this quote you say people have the right to repurpose any term in order to attack back at their oppressors.

What is it? Is there something essential to the word fascist that applies specifically to certain things people do, say and believe or is it a convenient word to use to throw at your enemies? In the end all I see is demonization either way.

They go out, and pick fights, and tell potential recruits how cool it was to get into those fights. They often claim they didn't throw the first punch, sometimes that's true, sometimes it isn't, but they play it that way because they're far more media savvy than the KKK.

You're the one saying it's fine to punch their faces.

Stop playing their fucking game then as it's helping them recruit.

And your dreaded suspicion... well, if I may break one of my own rules and speculate as to why you might think this? It seems like you are taking what the left has said and using your own motivations to rationalize a position you don't agree with. Essentially "I don't think you should punch people, but if I did, why would that be?" rather than actually parsing why it is that some people on the left (and believe me, not all of us agree on this point) think it's acceptable. I hope you don't take this as an insult because it's hard to put yourself in the mindset of someone you have a fundamental disagreement with, but it seems like a failure of imagination

That is a possibility.

There's putting yourself in the mindset of another person and then there's agreeing with it. I can see the twisted logic behind what the Nazi's did in WWII, but I can confidently call it outright evil and not see any value in it at all.

I can see why you can see physical violence as a form of self-defense against hate speech, but I disagree that that is a good enough reason to become physically violent and would rather the other side goes beyond the pale first, because I cannot help but see things going down a very dark path if you follow that line of thinking.

I say that as someone who very well knows how much people effect other people. There are good reasons to be careful with who you make your friends and close acquiescences as they cannot help but influence you, but to carry that line of thinking too far leads to obsessing about people's actions to a degree that can only lead to tragedy and harm as you paradoxically try to prevent such harm.

Perhaps you have some kind of desire for moral simplicity, even though you know that's not the way the world really is. I want things that I know just aren't true, so I don't think it's unusual. For instance, I wish gender didn't exist. I find the entire rigmarole quite annoying. But there are in fact genders and humans have them. Even I probably have one. Oh well.

Simplicity and complexity have their own pitfalls. I seek balance, but I also know the things beyond my control are many and those within my grasp are few.

The annoying things in life are what make it worth living. If we had everything under our control to tune it to the way we wanted we'd become bored of the whole thing and not play the game of life as it would have no challenge to it. And if you'd then say you'd want to engineer it so you'd be liberated from the need for challenge and such, then I'm sorry to say that regardless of your theistic position, you're not God and none of us will ever have the power to bend everything to our whim like that (and even then I'd say you'd be enslaved to your desire for pleasure and fear of suffering than being truly free).

I mean, I'm opposed to most hierarchies no matter how flexible they are, but I understand the worry that there's not enough being done to have something in place to replace the current system. This is absolutely something that the left talks about. Perhaps not as much as we should, but we're absolutely aware of it. There's a lot more fighting the system than working on the alternative because fighting the system is extremely difficult and you have to keep doing it or it'll go back to the way it was. But also, at the moment, the changes that have been happening are fairly small compared to other big shifts in the past.

Hierarchies exist no matter what. You throw some castaways out on an island and they'll sort themselves out in hierarchy within a day or two, if not in a few minutes as leaders step up, facilitators facilitate, mediators mediate and followers follow.

If you don't like that, then toss it in with gender as one of those annoying things about reality you'll never be able to change. You change people enough to not need hierarchy and people will not be recognizable anymore. I do no think you'd really like living in a truly egalitarian society if only for one reason, they are often violent as people are too equal to compromise on their own while they lack a higher authority to mediate through and enforce compromise. I think as an average American you wouldn't do well having to assert yourself in the ways such society demands.

The system is old, but has a good foundation if only because it's old and has stood the test of time. Wiping it out and starting fresh doesn't work well in the long run. To put it one way from the perspective of why new navies often do horribly "I takes three years to build a cruiser; it takes three centuries to build a navy". Navies are not built, they're grown, as are all systems and institutions. You wipe out a forest, you cannot bring one back overnight, and any institution will be a metaphorical collection of saplings for a long time if you've clear-cutted the old growth badly enough.

But the real problem is that people in power aren't hearing out the alternatives that are being proposed because it's in their best interest to convince everyone that they way things are is the only real option.

Or it's simply not workable and there are reasons why generalizations and the mainstream exist. My niece asked me months ago why the heck schools don't custom tailor their schoolwork to each and every student, because she wants to focus more on art and less on math. I told her it simply isn't possible for the demand it would place upon the school system where we lived (and everywhere else) to do such a thing, and so public education is a catch all to provide all students with the basics of everything they might need before they mature into fully young adults and take it upon themselves to specialize.

Such is the plight of all great institutions and is a major reason why government is so inefficient and so loathed. Same goes for organized religion. It's too ponderous and so has to take small, safe steps that often wind up being compromises that appeal to none, but are often the ones that harm as few as possible while inconveniencing everyone.

It's easier to say that communism is worse than to actually defend capitalism. It's easier to say that society will descend into chaos without the police than it is to justify the abuse of power that's been going on for decades. It's easier to accuse someone of being "soft on crime" than it is to justify a law that increases the incarceration rate without reducing the crime rate.

And it's easier to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, because when you do, you're not likely to get the baby back in good condition if you have second thoughts.

There is a lot at stake with such decisions, a lot of damage can and will be done, as much as thing things may drive you nuts and anger you and those on your side, is it really worth taking that step knowing you cannot go back from it?

Conscience makes cowards of us all, but often times that's a good thing. I myself can say, given my political leanings and overall outlook on life, that I prefer to be cautious and slowly drain the sink before carefully removing the infant because that child is precious to me, even if the bloody thing won't stop crying.

I hope we've gotten over some initial hurdles, because while I suspect we won't necessarily come to an agreement, you are coming off much more sympathetic and willing to actually engage in the points I'm making than the other person I was previously talking with.

I highly doubt we'll have many agreements. That's the funny thing about discourse like this, though. You often find that you have nothing in common with other people, but despite that, they're not the threat you feared they were. As much as you may dislike their positions, as much as they might make your heart pound with anger and offence for taking such abhorrent positions, they are not a danger and you can do something that is also dying out alongside trust: afford them genuine, honest tolerance.

You cannot tolerate that which you approve of, only that which you object to.

This is probably a grammatical/editing mess, it's too late and I'm too tired to edit it.

[Madner Kami]

This is probably a grammatical/editing mess, it's too late and I'm too tired to edit it.

Either way, there are a lot of good thoughts, stances and observations in there.

[Freeverse]

The entire post that you clipped a quote from was directed specifically at the Proud Boys. Conversely, I haven't said anything about Gavin McGinnes, because I don't care.

And I talked about both until our lines of conversation met when I began noticing your posts, their sentiment and this line:

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

For someone who likes to speak often about not caring or believing people, I certainly did get a reaction out of you.

Gavin is irrelevant to the point I was making. And I still don't care about convincing the other guy, but you showed some actual attempts to engage with what I was saying, and so I shifted gears.

I'm talking about something that goes back to WWII. The only change in the past ten years ha been the increase use of the term towards people who do not fit the term that can include anyone and everyone. I know Americans who love to declare the Democrats as a fascist party. That may sound utterly silly to you, but I find your sides use of it equally as silly.

Ok, I was still an adult 10 years ago and the fascist movement here in America absolutely has more power than it did before. If the term really is being used incorrectly more often (which I doubt, because back then I pretty much only heard it used as a generic epithet) that's just the growing pains of a more aware public realizing that it has to contend with an evil most people assumed had been gone for decades.

It doesn't bother me, but we will have to disagree. He is as much as fascist as Obama was a Muslim in disguise.

Like I said, it's not the point I was making... but one of those things is a racist conspiracy theory forwarded by one of the two people in that sentence, and the other one.... might be technically inaccurate. I've been fairly polite up to now, I think, but fuck that comparison right out the door.

You're the one saying it's fine to punch their faces.

Stop playing their fucking game then as it's helping them recruit.

These counter-protests are meant to be peaceful, and for the most part, they are. We're talking about a thousand people gathering to drown out the noise of a few hundred bigots. The point is just to show that there are more of us than there are of them and that their ideas aren't welcome. The problem is that it only takes one person losing their temper for them to turn around and say "See! they're the hateful ones!"

The alternative is to do nothing and just let them spread. They're going to recruit people no matter what we do, and no matter what we do, they'll twist it to fit their narrative.

Some violence does not mean all of the violence. That's why I use punching as an example. It's on the low end of acts that everyone can agree is violent. I think that holding a person in place is also violent, but some people might not agree with that. I also think that speech can be violent, but we've already established that you don't. The important thing here is that it's discretionary. You have to make an assessment based on how much violence is necessary to achieve your goal and what the costs of engaging in that level of violence would be.

And the idea that the left wants to engage in violence, or for that violence to spread or increase in any way, is frankly, just an invented narrative of the opposition. Which leads me to my next point...

Don't let the opposing sides define each other. If you go by what one side says about the other, you are never going to understand their actual positions. Listen to what a person or group actually say they want. For example, I look at your post and see talk of personal responsibility and I could just write you off as a Randian Objectivist, but that would be disingenuous.

As for my admittedly unclear example of how words mean things, but can also change... fascists target minority groups, including political minorities, which I think means that it's OK for those groups to define fascism, because they are the most affected. The comparison would be something like "queer" was used to denigrate gay people, trans people and other non-conforming genders and sexualities, so over time some of us began to use it positively. Meanwhile, fascism often goes after those same queer people, so when they label something fascist, we should be more inclined to take their side over the people who are targeting them.

My personal position is that fascism is the love of power and the hatred of the other. Any attempt to systematize those two things is fascist. It doesn't have to be specifically trying to get the government involved, because that's a highly limiting caveat. Also, authoritarianism and totalitarianism and autocracy are just as bad, and have quite a lot of overlap. So, even if they're not precisely the same, I'm not terribly concerned about accidentally pushing a totalitarian into the arms of fascism, because they're already beyond the pale.

And again the whole "restoring order" thing is just really similar language to the way that bad shit gets justified by bad people. I'm only advising you to word it differently, because I don't think you're talking about throwing tear gas at protesters because you grabbed one of their umbrellas and they didn't let you take it. (That is a real thing with video evidence.) And I don't know what kinds of society crumbling changes you've been hearing about, but none of them are happening. In fact, the historic and world shattering choices that are being made about how policing is handled in my state? About a 6% decrease in funding.

Also, as a side note, hierarchy is not inescapable, that's an old, old lie and it's less true than its ever been with decentralized technology at its peak. Even big businesses have been toying with the idea of horizontal leadership. Claiming it as human nature is just the new divine right to rule. each and every hierarchy ought to justify it's existence, and some of them do. There's a reason I said "most" and not "all".

[GreyICE]

For someone who likes to speak often about not caring or believing people, I certainly did got a reaction out of you.

Why does the right wear this like a badge of pride. "I got a reaction out of you!"

Okay, if you whip out your dick and pee on my leg you'll get a reaction out of me. That doesn't mean that that action is anything other than gross and offensive. And if people react to that, it doesn't suddenly make your political opinion more insightful because you're peeing on my leg.

Running a summary as what I'm seeing of your points here and the attached logical fallacies

• People misuse the term "fascist" therefore no groups are actually fascist
• Having the same beliefs and sharing the same actions as fascists doesn't make you a fascist
• It won't end with attacking one fascist AND the consequences of hate speech end don't extend beyond a single violent act inspired by it This is just having your cake and eating it too.
• "I'd argue we are inherently beings of order by the very fact that we are alive. Life is, in purely materialistic terms, highly ordered matter. " Naturalism fallacy. Life is only possible due to an ongoing nuclear reaction from a nearby mass of hydrogen. This does not mean that generating a bunch of nuclear reactions using masses of hydrogen on earth will be positive for life here.
• Progressivism, as in essence I see it as enshrining chaos as a tamed god people think they can control. Theistic thinking, anthropomorphizing, no point to engage in

Honestly though, what annoys me most about reading this is the weird way you drunk walk between extremely specific subjects and extremely general subjects. For instance, in response to the fact that Trump uses fascist dog whistles in his speech you say "I'm tired of this false flag and dog whistle discussion, people are looking for it everywhere."

Okay, you're tired in the general sense. That refutes nothing in the specific sense. I can think that "hate crime hoaxes" are overblown and also think Jussie Smollett made a hate crime hoax. Those aren't inconsistent positions. Similarly you might think that people look for dog whistles too often. Okay. That says nothing about Trump's use of white supremacist dog whistles. He tweeted out an image of Hillary Clinton with a Star of David and a background of cash last election. That's not really a dog whistle, it's more just a whistle.



See, you can say that "oh boy, people go looking for dog whistles too often." But is the above, y'know, not even slightly subtle?

Similarly the Proud Boys. You might think that people call other people Nazis too often. Okay. But look at their actions: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys

While presenting his observation as a joke and revenue-generating ruse (“incendiary political statements garnered endless publicity for us,” he later told Gawker), McInnes seems to have meant its underlying sentiment sincerely. “I love being white and I think it’s something to be very proud of,” he told The New York Times a year later, revealing an ideology that would later form the foundation of the Proud Boys. “I don’t want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life.” McInnes also started writing for VDare.com, a white nationalist hate site. In one 2005 article, he railed against Canadian multiculturalism and lamented that Jared Taylor, the editor of the race-science newsletter American Renaissance, had not been invited to speak at the University of Ottawa. Ten years later, McInnes would welcome Taylor onto his own show, where the white nationalist spent more than an hour explaining why he believes white people are “better” than African Americans.

In the words of their founder: “I cannot recommend violence enough. It’s a really effective way to solve problems.”

It makes complaints about punching them seem a tad overwrought, yes?

Other stuff is just ideology disguised as profound statements:

Hierarchies exist no matter what. You throw some castaways out on an island and they'll sort themselves out in hierarchy within a day or two, if not in a few minutes as leaders step up, facilitators facilitate, mediators mediate and followers follow.

The idea these are rigid roles is very, very core to fascist thinking. I might be a follower at one thing, a leader at another, and a mediator elsewhere. I often am. I've run a boardgame night (leader), participated in protest rallies (follower), helped settle disagreements between groups (mediator), and my entire job is basically being a facilitator for certain construction projects.

The idea that people are only ever one thing is just silly. If I'm stuck on a desert island with Bear Grylls, I'm going to follow Bear Grylls and do what he says. If I'm stuck in a Chinese city with Bear Grylls I'm not going to follow Bear Grylls. I'll follow a Chinese guide. And if it comes to engineering a project, I might be the leader, and I certainly wouldn't take much input from either of those people.

I think natural human "hierarchies" are much more of the above. The entire concept of the Nietzschean Ubermensch who is a leader at all things, or the "beta human" who is a follower everywhere is just silly. Hitler's delusion that he was a "leader in all things" and could decide everything from tank design to military strategy was one of the reasons Nazi Germany failed. We really owe him a giant thank you note for the Tiger tank, Germany making that thing saved allied lives.

Or it's simply not workable and there are reasons why generalizations and the mainstream exist. My niece asked me months ago why the heck schools don't custom tailor their schoolwork to each and every student, because she wants to focus more on art and less on math. I told her it simply isn't possible for the demand it would place upon the school system where we lived (and everywhere else) to do such a thing, and so public education is a catch all to provide all students with the basics of everything they might need before they mature into fully young adults and take it upon themselves to specialize.

See, this is the core of a great idea. Maybe with computer tools and adaptive algorithms you could individually tailor each person's instruction to help the areas they were weak and speed through areas of competency.

But if you say "it is impossible" then what you mean is "I cannot do it." And then when someone else does it, you are viscerally offended and oppose them, because they are challenging you.

Instead say "that's a good idea, but here's the problem with implementing it right now." Then if those problems are solved, revisit it.

Conscience makes cowards of us all, but often times that's a good thing. I myself can say, given my political leanings and overall outlook on life, that I prefer to be cautious and slowly drain the sink before carefully removing the infant because that child is precious to me, even if the bloody thing won't stop crying.

And sometimes the baby is drowning, and by the time the water level is finished its slow decline you have a dead baby.

I dunno man, I think I'm giving the points to Freeverse on this one.

[Beastro]

I'm waiting to dash on a dinner event at any moment, so I'll be brief.

Also, as a side note, hierarchy is not inescapable, that's an old, old lie and it's less true than its ever been with decentralized technology at its peak. Even big businesses have been toying with the idea of horizontal leadership. Claiming it as human nature is just the new divine right to rule. each and every hierarchy ought to justify it's existence, and some of them do. There's a reason I said "most" and not "all".

We're talking about something that is hundreds of millions of years old. It as been with us since animals became animals.... and you think something like social activism will free people of it? As I said, it would take deep uprooting and people would cease to be people once that was done.

But that then raises the question of if it's worth it to mess with. That doesn't mean to shut up and quietly bow to superiors or anything, but to recognize how deeply it is inside of us and how any attempt to engineering a great leveling would only result in a new, fragile and most likely murderous hierarchy being asserted in place of it.

And I think that's the ultimate desire of many who seek to level hierarchies. There is a Procrustean desire to punish reality for refusing to bow to their whims and conform to their desires that results in acts of cruelty against people for reality not cooperating, which then leads into this:

My personal position is that fascism is the love of power and the hatred of the other. Any attempt to systematize those two things is fascist.

Then many historical Communists are fascists:

In his view, Marx’s greatest contribution was not the idea of the class struggle but “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” and as far back as 1906 Lenin had defined dictatorship as “nothing other than power which is totally unlimited by any laws, totally unrestrained by absolutely any rules, and based directly on force.” He argued that a revolutionary Party must be composed entirely of professional revolutionaries, drawn mainly from the intelligentsia and subject to absolute discipline, with a readiness to do literally anything the leadership demanded

As for hatred of the other, just look up the Kulaks and their treatment for an example of how treatment of the other extends to more than just Right-wing prejudices.

Do you see why I don't see this as a problem of just fascism, but a wider issue effecting, first the West, and now the entire world? This is why I hold issue with the use of the F-word in its modern use because it's distracting from the real problems such people are but part of if only by blinding them by referencing something that goes back a over century ago.

We are in the grip of something that has consumed people with the desire for power, it's effecting the whole political spectrum and it's been with us for centuries, not a mere decade.

The protests and everyone leaping to join in on them regardless of their positions? All I see in them is yet another turn of the tragic wheel we're stuck riding, only it seems the wheel keeps turning faster and faster as time goes on, and I worry it might start to come off its hinges and run wild sooner rather than later.

Anyway, time for dinner.

[Darth Wedgius]

If hate speech must be stopped by any means necessary since it leads to violence, and fighting hate speech leads to violence, then fighting hate speech must be stopped. If you want to be logically consistent.

Logical consistency aside, how many people have the Proud Boys beat up? How many people has Antifa beat up?