Jump to content
Mookie (original)

Donald Trump plays DayZ

Recommended Posts

Somehow, I think the zombies were able to secretly suck out many peoples' brains before we ever knew they were a problem...

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Not to cause a scene or anything, but Antifa can piss right off. Violence begets violence. Punching people, Nazis or not, achieves nothing and only leads to more violent outbursts. I'll not lend my support to a group solely because it opposes Naziism, nor will I tolerate being described as a Nazi because of that lack of support. There was violence on both sides. One side was worse than the other but that doesn't make Antifa - many of whom are full-on "send them to the gulags, comrade" style Communists - the innocent party. I see a lot of memes - images of American soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy with the caption "Antifa distrupts white supremacist gathering." There was a lot of disruption in the East as well, but I doubt that holding up Stalin as an Antifa icon would be received quite so positively. There's more naunce than "Nazis bad, everyone who opposes them good." 

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, BeefBacon said:

Not to cause a scene or anything, but Antifa can piss right off. Violence begets violence. Punching people, Nazis or not, achieves nothing and only leads to more violent outbursts. I'll not lend my support to a group solely because it opposes Naziism, nor will I tolerate being described as a Nazi because of that lack of support. There was violence on both sides. One side was worse than the other but that doesn't make Antifa - many of whom are full-on "send them to the gulags, comrade" style Communists - the innocent party. I see a lot of memes - images of American soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy with the caption "Antifa distrupts white supremacist gathering." There was a lot of disruption in the East as well, but I doubt that holding up Stalin as an Antifa icon would be received quite so positively. There's more naunce than "Nazis bad, everyone who opposes them good." 

yeah violence and aggression changes absolutely nobody's mind - I dunno who antifa thinks they're helping.  assuming they're trying to help...

as for the neo-nazis and racists that are all out of the closet now, I think it's just sad.  ignorance is sad.  living in the past is sad.  just... ignore their little dress-up parades.  sad.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 20.8.2017 at 0:59 AM, Red_Ensign said:

 ignore their little dress-up parades. 

The result you see now. The main problems of the Trump base in the forums...

Should they be Netanyahu fans that fear blacks, muslims and mexicans or should they fear blacks, muslims, mexicans and also Jews. (2020)

The republicans struggle to find out who they are.

 

 

 

Edited by ImageCtrl

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

They should fear all people. Looks like this.

They should look always like a crybaby.

 

  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, ImageCtrl said:

They should fear all people. Looks like this.

They should look always like a crybaby.

 

"noooo I'm not a white supremacist - I'm a different kind of complete asshole.".  lol

  • Like 3

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 8/19/2017 at 9:34 AM, BeefBacon said:

Not to cause a scene or anything, but Antifa can piss right off. Violence begets violence. Punching people, Nazis or not, achieves nothing and only leads to more violent outbursts. I'll not lend my support to a group solely because it opposes Naziism, nor will I tolerate being described as a Nazi because of that lack of support. There was violence on both sides. One side was worse than the other but that doesn't make Antifa - many of whom are full-on "send them to the gulags, comrade" style Communists - the innocent party. I see a lot of memes - images of American soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy with the caption "Antifa distrupts white supremacist gathering." There was a lot of disruption in the East as well, but I doubt that holding up Stalin as an Antifa icon would be received quite so positively. There's more naunce than "Nazis bad, everyone who opposes them good." 

Do we need to make a corollary to Godwin's law about broadly labeling people as communists?  Nazism is easily condemned on the grounds that they seek to marginalize, subjugate, or exterminate entire classes of people based on race, religion or nationality.  I find it unfair and morally questionable to label those who oppose them as communists.  While communism has been an abject failure, the reasons for this are complex but nearly equally due to both the internal corruption by state officials, and economic pressures from capitalist interests that did not wish to compete against a means of production that would disrupt their ability to profit greatly from globalist trade practices; which often sought to establish monopolies or otherwise dominate markets to generate massive profits for the few in the ownership class, at the expense of the many who needed access to those resources to survive.
Calling someone a communist because they violently oppose Nazism and white supremacy is not a constructive addition to any discussion on this topic.

On the subject of physically opposing white nationalist and neo-Nazi supporters, there is a legal principle in the US known as "fighting words" which was established by the 1942 Supreme Court decision in the case of Chaplinski V. New Hampshire.  It basically states that a person who is in public espousing ideas that a reasonable person would consider to be offensive may not find that their speech is legally protected; specifically, words that "inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."  In the case cited, it was a man speaking out against organized religion (or preaching about the JW refusal to salute the flag, depending on which account you read) who was removed to police headquarters for his own protection from the angry mob that he incited; after calling the city marshal a "God-damned racketeer" and "a damned fascist" en route, he was arrested for the use of offensive language in public.  His claim was that the arrest was unlawful in that it violated his First Amendment right to free speech, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law.  It established the idea that protected speech only goes so far, before reasonable people would seek to physically disrupt your ability to continue speaking such things.  One condition of this determination is whether the person's speech is necessary in the conveyance of ideas or functional in adding to the truth of the matter.  To quote Justice Frank Murphy:  "It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality."  I must also note that this incident was an apparent social defense of the institutions of Christian American Nationalism, so the foundation is built on the values of the Republican identity as expressed in modern times..

 In other words, if one is literally asking to get punched in the mouth, the public may be reasonably permitted oblige them.  Admittedly, this concept has not been very well tested, and people still get assault charges for responding violently to utterances that have no other purpose than to deeply offend the listener.

But as for the ideas of Nazism and white supremacy, it seems well established which side of these issues that reasonable and just people would stand.  We have fought wars over these ideas, both in the American Civil War, and the Second World War.

The idea that one would use force to stop the furtherance of these movements is well supported by historical precedent. And after having seen the detriment to human life and society at large, I find myself hard-pressed to not advocate for shutting this shit down by the most direct possible means.

Edited by emuthreat
fragment sentence
  • Like 4

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
20 minutes ago, emuthreat said:

Do we need to make a corollary to Godwin's law about broadly labeling people as communists?  Nazism is easily condemned on the grounds that they seek to marginalize, subjugate, or exterminate entire classes of people based on race, religion or nationality.  I find it unfair and morally questionable to label those who oppose them as communists.  While communism has been an abject failure, the reasons for this are complex but nearly equally due to both the internal corruption by state officials, and economic pressures from capitalist interests that did not wish to compete against a means of production that would disrupt their ability to profit greatly from globalist trade practices; which often sought to establish monopolies or otherwise dominate markets to generate massive profits for the few in the ownership class, at the expense of the many who needed access to those resources to survive.
Calling someone a communist because they violently oppose Nazism and white supremacy is not a constructive addition to any discussion on this topic.

...


The idea that one would use force to stop the furtherance of these movements is well supported by historical precedent. And after having seen the detriment to human life and society at large, I find myself hard-pressed to not advocate for shutting this shit down by the most direct possible means.

I don't think you understand. Antifa, as it exists in America, is literally an anarcho-communist movement. This isn't me calling them a mean name, they literally describe themselves as anarcho-communists. So I'm not calling them communists because they oppose Naziism. I'm calling them communists because they are literal, full-blown, real-life, actual communists. The irony, of course, is that people who take issue with Antifa and their methods are often labelled as Nazis, even though the concerns they raise are completely valid. And yes, the reasons for the failure of communism are many and varied. I'm sure that if a functioning communist system were to pop out of nowhere then it would be a utopia, but the path to that utopia is so bloody and so difficult as to be functionally impossible to realise.

I'm not really interested in legality. Violence solves nothing. Censorship solves nothing. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the best way to get these people to change their minds is through open discussion and debate. These people have shit for arguments. They're not difficult to dismantle. Despite their beliefs they are, mostly, rational human beings who are capable of having their perspectives changed. You want to punch a Nazi? Fine. I'll not shed any tears for them, but I will point out that punching that Nazi has achieved precisely jack shit. His mind hasn't been changed. If anything he's going to be even more firm in his beliefs. You "shut this shit down" through violence, and all that happens is that these people seethe and bubble below the surface with nothing but screeching and violence to convince them that they could possibly be wrong.

Edited by BeefBacon
  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

@BeefBacon  In the modern age of globalism and regulatory capture, I think communism being a four letter trigger word is terribly myopic.  But that's well beside the point.

The reason that Antifa serves a necessary purpose in MY HOME COUNTRY, is that they serve to dilute the White Nationalists from standing unopposed in large numbers.  There are so many people I see and speak with who are so politically ambivalent, that they will just take the path of least resistance and join whichever side appears to be winning.  The legal aspects of this are important, because hate speech and incitement to violence are not protected speech, and the government should be intervening in the case that someone is caught on camera or in public saying things like down with jews.  The idea here being that if the secret service would arrest someone for making the same statement with Trump's name substituted, then by the 14th Amendment, that same legal deterrent should be applied to white nationalists advocating against other races.

 In the case of Charlottesville, it was a group of organized white supremacists who descended on a town with torches to attack them for their decision by local government to remove a shrine to confederate ideals.  At the same time that the alt-right is campaigning for states rights and local determination so they can marginalize "the others" in their own communities, they defy their own ideals by traveling to other people's homes to impose their way of thinking--which I hope most reasonable people could quickly identify as morally repugnant.  Many of these confederate shrines where erected in the 1920's and '30's, during the days of Jim Crow laws and local governments infiltrated by the KKK, as a means to bolster and display their resistance to the idea that all humans are equal in the eyes of the law.  The idea that people wish to improve the social climate in their towns by removing displays in commemoration of a movement which tried to rend this country in two over their refusal to stop enslaving other human beings is a perfectly reasonable decision on their part.  How many IRA monuments do you have standing in Dublin?  My guess would be zero...

Again, getting back to the legal implications of protesters and conterprotesters showing up with batons and shields, there is a concept in the US of "mutual combat" between two consenting parties.  I have tested this personally in my adolescent years when a group of friends would entertain ourselves by drinking and holding impromptu bare fisted boxing matches with each other in the streets. Invariably, the police would show up, and after discovering that we were all friends punching each other for fun, they would have little recourse than to tell us to keep the noise level down.  As much as modern sensibilities have conditioned us to detest, abhor, and condemn violence, it is legally permissible in most states between consenting parties, to the extent of nullifying statues against assaults and battery.  They do draw the line at what you might know as GBH.

In this modern era where freedom of speech is being bastardized into freedom to hate, where federal laws against hatespeech and incitement are going ignored, and where emboldened white supremacists are taking to the streets , it is necessary that they be shown strong resistance.

In the case of an impotent, apathetic, or corrupted government, sitting on their hands and refusing to enforce the laws of the land, it is both the duty and the right of good people to stand up and fight for what is right.

Edited by emuthreat
  • Like 3

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, emuthreat said:

The idea here being that if the secret service would arrest someone for making the same statement with Trump's name substituted, then by the 14th Amendment, that same legal deterrent should be applied to white nationalists advocating against other races.

Or to black nationalists? Though I don't condone violence being committed against certain elements of BLM, say, who like to march down the streets calling for the deaths of police officers. That's not because it is or isn't legal. I don't care. My point is that it doesn't solve anything. Nobody has ever been smacked in the face, or been beaten half to death and then gone "Now I see the error of my ways." Of course, if you are peacefully protesting and you are met with violence, feel free to respond in kind. "Violence" doesn't include threatening behaviour like carrying swastikas, however. I'm talking actual, tangible, physical violence. Even then, restraint should be urged, though I'm sure it's a little bit different if you are faced with a wall of braying white supremacists.

Freedom to hate is an unfortunate side effect of freedom of speech. Incitement to violence should not be tolerated. This includes calls to exterminate the Jews. This includes calls to physically assault people accused of being Nazis. I don't want to conflate my own morals with US law, however. Again, I don't know about the legality, and nor do I care. As I have said already, violence doesn't achieve anything. It might be necessary in self defence, or in defence of somebody else who is being physically attacked, but otherwise I find it very difficult to justify.

I'm also not saying that taking down these statues is wrong. If they're actual civil war era statues commemorating some great battle or act of bravery - leave them up. If they were erected in the early and mid 20th century in protest of civil rights laws - take them down. I don't know much about the background and process behind the removal of these statues, but I suspect it involved a lot of peaceful protests and petitions. I don't think anybody rolled into city hall and beat local officials into submission with batons. This is a double-edged sword of sorts, however. Neo Nazis are well within their rights to peacefully protest the removal of these statues, no matter how morally repugnant they are, but others are free to counter-protest that protest. Just keep it peaceful. Them being Nazis is not a reason to physically attack them any more than Antifa being anarcho-communists is a reason to attack them. Maybe that's an overly principled Utopian view, but it's the one I hold - not just because I'm an airy-fairy Corbyn-loving democratic socialist, but also because it's pragmatic to advocate discussion over violence. As I alluded to before, perhaps my attitudes would change when faced with a wall of neo-Nazis, but for now, that's my position.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, BeefBacon said:

Or to black nationalists?

Dude, you just played yourself.  There is no such group of black nationalists.  There are black people tired of being beaten and killed for no reason with no recourse.  If you are unwilling to focus on the problem at hand, is it possible that you are the problem?
If you don't understand the prison industrial complex and its role in the systematic discrimination and persecution of black Americans, perhaps it is time to recuse yourself.  For many, it is a daily struggle for their lives and bodily integrity against state sanctioned police abuses. 
For decades people with racist attitudes have taken roles in police and government, and established policies of de facto systematic discrimination.  Never before in my lifetime were these attitudes expressed so openly in the streets.  I feel we are at the precipice of an unfortunate turn.

 Sometimes the bad people don't need to be smacked and made to see the error of their ways, they just have enough of a deterrent to feel the need to shut up and get out of the way.

  • Like 3

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, emuthreat said:

Dude, you just played yourself.  There is no such group of black nationalists.  There are black people tired of being beaten and killed for no reason with no recourse.  If you are unwilling to focus on the problem at hand, is it possible that you are the problem?
If you don't understand the prison industrial complex and its role in the systematic discrimination and persecution of black Americans, perhaps it is time to recuse yourself.  For many, it is a daily struggle for their lives and bodily integrity against state sanctioned police abuses. 
For decades people with racist attitudes have taken roles in police and government, and established policies of de facto systematic discrimination.  Never before in my lifetime were these attitudes expressed so openly in the streets.  I feel we are at the precipice of an unfortunate turn.

 Sometimes the bad people don't need to be smacked and made to see the error of their ways, they just have enough of a deterrent to feel the need to shut up and get out of the way.

No, there are definitely black nationalist groups. Louis Theroux even did a documentary on them - it may or may not be on Netflix in your country. Being a piece of shit knows no skin colour. There are black people who are tired of police brutality and institutional racism and all that good stuff. They have my support. There are also black people who think that white people are subhuman, or who march through the streets calling for police to be killed. They exist, unfortunately. I am focusing on the point. It was a throw-away comment highlighting how if it's okay to punch Nazis, is it therefore okay to punch black nationalists? Is it therefore permissible to use violence against any group that advocates for some kind of ethnic or ideological supremacy? I don't think it should be, because it doesn't yield results. It does nothing to progress society because it does not make these people change their minds, and it does nothing to reduce their numbers.

Thanks for the lecture, though, and thanks for suggesting that I might be "the problem" based on a single sentence that you decided to load with conjecture.

5 hours ago, emuthreat said:

Sometimes the bad people don't need to be smacked and made to see the error of their ways, they just have enough of a deterrent to feel the need to shut up and get out of the way.

Now we're getting somewhere. Hitting people does not make people see the error of their ways. Even intimidation tactics are only a very short-term solution, and aren't exactly preferable. Peaceful protest is proven to have results, but showing up dressed in all black, wearing masks and wielding clubs isn't conducive to peaceful protest. Groups like Antifa do more to harm liberalism, progressivism and left-wing ideals than a bunch of torch-wielding neo-Nazi buffoons ever could. But then, of course, Antifa aren't liberals - after all:

  "Liberals get the bullet too"

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

"The fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists".

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 minute ago, ImageCtrl said:

Source infowars. I know you think they quote Churchill, because they toled you so.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Winston_Churchill#The_fascists_of_the_future_will_be_called_anti-fascists

Quite right. It's a quote wrongly attributed to Winston Churchill.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Not Voltaire

Wrongful attribution doesn't make it any less perceptive.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
45 minutes ago, BeefBacon said:

Wrongful attribution doesn't make it any less perceptive.

Thats true, I read this quote from infowars alot in forums that blame antifa as the new fascists.

In the same forums they try to figure out if they hate only Blacks, Mexicans and Muslims or if they also should hate Jews. They have many ideas how to remove them.

 

45 minutes ago, BeefBacon said:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Not Voltaire

Others prefer slavery. And they recrute each day.

Edited by ImageCtrl

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, ImageCtrl said:

Source infowars. I know you think they quote Churchill, because they toled you so.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Winston_Churchill#The_fascists_of_the_future_will_be_called_anti-fascists

Infowars? I don't think that quote is from them, neither is it from Churchill. That's also not the place where I got that quote from. In fact, I never heard of Infowars before you mentioned it.

I also didn't state that the source was Churchill, if I knew the actual source of the quote I would've mentioned his/her name.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it in a book called friends of Voltaire. she used it to describe the principle of free speech. And I don't know why anyone is wasting there breath debating with anyone it's not like anyone is gonna change there minds. i wouldn't be surprised if there is some asshats claiming that the commies are like WW2 vets fighting nazi's like Mitt Romney and the other asshat media shills. this Mob mentality on both sides will accomplish one thing jack shit with a splash of violence. I can't wait for the die phase much like the one in the mouse utopia experiment.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

@BeefBacon  When we are having a discussion about the recent and very prevalent rise in identity politics, specifically the rise of white nationalist ideals and groups in mainstream discussion, dragging black nationalists into the argument is a red herring at best,  and thinly veiled racism at worst.
I'm talking about a growing movement of people with dangerous ideas, emboldened by irresponsible leadership, and you give me a throwback to a fringe group who hasn't made any headlines for decades.  White people are not being systematically abused.  They are the system.

I've been well-aware of dog whistle politics for years as a means of subtle identification of fellow racists.  Such as when discussing the minimum wage and how it has stagnated with respect to both productivity and cost of living, someone starts complaining about the few people abusing welfare.
Reagan's campaign against welfare queens, and George H.W. Bush benefiting from the Willie Horton fear tactics are good examples.  These were both subversive tactics to use subtle racial stereotyping to instill fear into white voters and coerce them into avoiding more liberal candidates.
Trump himself made his political debut back in the 1980's by paying for full page advertisements asking for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, a group of boys who were railroaded for a sexual assault on a jogger, and later exonerated after a confession was confirmed by DNA evidence.  Trump maintained his belief in their guilt even through his presidential campaign, persisting  in his belief that their convictions should never have been vacated.  Trump has been through federal court for discriminating against black tenants in his New York residential properties.  Donald Trump was one of the most prominent and staunch supporters of the Obama birther movement, which argued that his place of birth would exclude him from the presidency; ignorant to the fact that having been born to one US citizen makes anyone a natural born citizen regardless of the location one is born.  In fact, you can see the moment when Donald Trump decided he was going to be president as he was being roasted by Obama at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2011. The election of Trump and his repeated failings to condemn or even acknowledge racial discrimination and prejudices, has emboldened a group of people who have silently simmered in hate for decades; previously only displaying Confederate flags within the privacy of their own homes, they now have the courage to fly them proudly from the backs of their pickup trucks.

The problem at hand is the rise of white nationalism in the open.  If you have been reading the news lately, the problem is not groups of black nationalists trying to advance their ideals at the expense of others. In fact, the black nationalist movement as I had known it to exist in the past was a call to voluntarily segregate themselves from European culture and regain a mode of self-sufficiency and self-determination.  Regarding the BLM movement, most white people should actually support their cause, because their issue is with the consequences of having poorly trained, militarized police force that uses absolute authoritarian tactics to abuse the public for largely victimless crimes.  This is not a black problem, or a white, or a hispanic problem, it is a human problem. Kelly Thomas and James Boyd are particularly stark examples of how little regard police can have for human life when their absolute authority is not met with immediate and unconditional submission.  I talk about this at times with white conservatives who are not overt racists, and many of them feel that it is worth spending 5 times as much money and energy punishing people for doing even the tiniest thing wrong, than it would be to spend a fraction of the resources helping them along to doing something better with themselves.  There is a latent desire within the human psyche to find people to label as 'others' and determine that they are wrong, so they can righteously do harm to those people. 

This is the danger of the rise of white nationalism.  That a group may come to power and use legally sanctioned tactics to marginalize and abuse their political adversaries.  Just look at the war on drugs.  I have read the transcripts of Nixon's recorded conversations that strongly suggest that his decision to ignore the Shafer Commission Report on Marihuana was so he could exploit the existing habits of his political enemies to imprison, disrupt, and politically marginalize them; specifically the blacks, hippies, and those intellectual Jews (whom he claimed to all be psychologists in one particularly bizzarre rant).
The rise of white nationalism will not serve to remove these artificial barriers to success for portions of the population, but rather burden us all with more law enforcement and prison infrastructure expenses, in addition to collateral damage from overzealous enforcement.

You might want to refer to OP, and the original source material for context. Trump was being lampooned for blaming many sides, many, many sides; when it was obviously a group of Nazis and WN who flocked to a town to cause trouble.
Germany doesn't seem to have any problem determining that there is an appropriate place to decide free speech has its limits.  But then again, those who avoided violence during the 1930s were overpowered and pushed out of the discussion.

To say that nothing was ever solved through violence ignores volumes of human history.  You cannot fight systematic abuse by cooperating with the system.  You cannot change a corrupt and hostile system from the outside, nor will you be allowed inside to make changes if you are identified as an enemy of the system.  As ugly as it can be, the pacifists will all to often be the ones overrun and marginalized.  I am not advocating for violence, but I do understand that if those afflicted are too far separated from the institutions of change, the only practical solution is to tear down some walls.

Maybe I just have too much old rascal blood in me, but some things belong at the bottom of the harbor.  I would include Nazi ideals and White Nationalist movements among the top of that list.

By condemning Antifa and avoiding addressing the "white problem," you are making the same mistake as Trump did to inspire the satirical video.

 

Sorry for the wall of text.  I feel that this is a very real and pressing issue that absolutely needs to be understood and dealt with before history repeats itself.

Edited by emuthreat
link to shafer report, trump tower press conference
  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 hours ago, IMT said:

 I never heard of Infowars before you mentioned it.

Sorry. Infowars is one of the main sources that Trump use for his politics.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
32 minutes ago, ImageCtrl said:

Sorry. Infowars is one of the main sources that Trump use for his politics.

Makes sense that I don't know the site because I don't really follow U.S. politics.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You like accusing me of holding beliefs and opinions that I do not hold. You don't do it outright, but you like sneaking these little accusations in. Stop it.

I don't even know where to start.

Firstly, you're telling me literally nothing that I do not already know. Republicans also gerrymander districts to segregate ethnic minorities when it comes to voting. You're trying to convince me of something that I am already aware of, and already oppose. Yes there is some institutional racism. Yes Nazis are bad. Yes Donald Trump is bad. Yes white nationalists are being emboldened. In response, extreme anti-white racists are also emboldened to declare that white people at best should "step aside" and at worst are subhuman scum. Extreme-left groups declare that all right-wingers, or those who take issue with their methods, are Nazis or Nazi sympathisers, and then push to make it acceptable to punch Nazis - and those who they declare to be Nazis. These people aren't in power, but give it 20 years and they might be. I reject the idea that we should just turn a blind eye to racist thugs because they're not the right kind of racist, or just because they're not in power.

1 hour ago, emuthreat said:

White people are not being systematically abused.  They are the system.

No they're not. Individual people - most of whom are white, probably disproportionately in the US - form the system. "White people" are not the system. That's just a way of dismissing the problems that people have on account of their skin colour. Now that is thinly-veiled racism.

But do you know who is the system? Who is overwhelmingly "the system?" Rich people. No matter what country you go to, no matter what time period, no matter the demographic makeup. Rich people. The wealthy, and corporate interests. Turns out that they really like fucking-over the poor. In the US, non-whites are disproportionately poor for a wide range of socioeconomic reasons, including racist ones.

1 hour ago, emuthreat said:

Regarding the BLM movement, most white people should actually support their cause, because their issue is with the consequences of having poorly trained, militarized police force that uses absolute authoritarian tactics to abuse the public for largely victimless crimes.  This is not a black problem, or a white, or a hispanic problem, it is a human problem.

I agree. I've already said that I agree. Again, preaching to the choir here. I take issue with elements of BLM, not the movement as a whole.

1 hour ago, emuthreat said:

There is a latent desire within the human psyche to find people to label as 'others' and determine that they are wrong, so they can righteously do harm to those people. 

Yes. Precisely. This is what I'm taking issue with. In the heat of the moment, I'm sure that hitting a Nazi feels like the right thing to do. What I don't like is that people are advocating for this kind of behaviour behind the safety of Twitter where latent desire should be superseded by logic and reason that states "hitting people doesn't change their mind." I'm sure violence and intimidation works as a short-term solution, but so long as we keep hitting Nazis and have no other response to them, there will always be Nazis.

1 hour ago, emuthreat said:

Just look at the war on drugs.

And the war on terror. You brought up the IRA before. They were bombing and murdering and being generally not terribly pleasant for a very long time indeed. All the king's horses, and all the king's men, and all the massacres and SAS raids couldn't bring peace to Ireland again. Peace arose from discussion and nonviolent activism, not from night-time raids and show trials. 

2 hours ago, emuthreat said:

As ugly as it can be, the pacifists will all to often be the ones overrun and marginalized

If they push you, push back. If they hit you, hit back. Third Law it. Never push first. Never hit first. Don't even give them a reason to hit you, because that weakens your position. It's a lot easier to sympathise with somebody with flowers in their hair wielding a peace sign than it is with somebody who is dressed in all black, covers their face and wields a baseball bat. All Antifa does is create moral ambiguity. It's not Nazi thugs versus reasonable counter-protesters. It becomes Nazi thugs versus anarcho-Communist thugs - have fun picking a side. It's about as attractive as the previous presidential election.

2 hours ago, emuthreat said:

some things belong at the bottom of the harbor.  I would include Nazi ideals and White Nationalist movements among the top of that list.

I agree. Again. What we disagree on is how to get there. You want to push them in and hope that they don't bob to the surface again. I want them to take their Swastikas and their Confederate flags and throw them into the water of their own volition. Short of literally murdering these people, getting them to examine their own beliefs, and shedding light on the absurdity of their arguments for the benefit of others is the only way we will get rid of them.

2 hours ago, emuthreat said:

By condemning Antifa and avoiding addressing the "white problem," you are making the same mistake as Trump did to inspire the satirical video.

The "white problem?" I wish I hadn't already referenced that thin veil you brought up before. You mention this problem, but do you have any kind of Solution? Is it Final? Or is that a little bit on the nose?

I condemn Antifa because they're worthy of condemnation, and I condemn Nazis for the same reason. The difference is that the Nazis aren't being hailed as innocent of all wrongdoing. Stalin was a monster who committed horrendous atrocities, but I'm not going to give him a free pass because he was anti-Nazi. As such, in a discussion about the Second World War, if someone tries to make out that Stalin had done no wrong and was just an anti-fascist as we all should be, I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect the conversation to turn away from Nazi atrocities and towards "now hang on a second."

 

These walls of text, though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×