08-19-2017, 08:38 AM
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#741
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Posted the 6 millionth post!
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Has it been mentioned yet that the "mother of all rallies" for Trump on the National mall is scheduled for Sept 16, the same day as the National Juggalo March?
Dis gun b gud!
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08-19-2017, 09:41 AM
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#742
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Franchise Player
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Slinger
The central tenant of the antifa is to not allow that to happen. They are literally "anti-fascists".
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This is where you lose me. The central tenet of antifa is to suppress any perspectives they deem to be wrong through violence. Not just actual nazis - run of the mill trump supporters, people who talk about topics they don't approve of, reporters, even just random people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You don't have to be an actual Nazi for Antifa to treat you like one. They beat people with metal clubs, bats, in one case famously a bike lock, because they disagree with them politically. This is a horrendous, awful movement. They are not crusaders for justice, and people posting photos comparing them to WWII soldiers are idiots.
Yes, they're better than Nazis, because as Rube just noted, Nazis are about ethnic cleansing and racial superiority. The underlying ethos of Nazism is clearly about as bad as you can get, so the motivations of antifa are to be preferred more or less by default. But they essentially stand for, "conform to our world view, or we'll beat the #### out of you until you do". That's not to be celebrated. Nor is violence to prevent the people you don't want to speak from speaking.
Quote:
Until Wednesday, I never felt in danger during a protest. Around 7 p.m. I saw a huddle of people yelling at one another. As more people surrounded them, a burning red trucker’s hat was held up on a stick. There were reports that another student wearing what appeared to be a “Make America Great Again” hat was severely injured. Then I saw someone wearing all black walk up to a student wearing a suit and say, “You look like a Nazi.” The student was confused, but before he could reply, the black-clad person pepper-sprayed him and hit him on the back with a rod.
I ran after the student who was attacked to get his name and more information. He told me that he is a Syrian Muslim. Before I could find out more, he fled, fearing another attack. Amid the chaos came word the event had been canceled. It was clear early on that the majority of violent protesters most likely were not from the campus. Still, in the aftermath, I heard people say that peaceful demonstrations would not have succeeded in preventing Mr. Yiannopoulos from speaking.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/o...t.html?mcubz=3
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These people seem to take it as read that it's so important to stop people you don't like from saying the things you don't like, that physical assault is justifiable. I'm just going to go ahead and post this again, because it should act as a full answer to this idiotic political position.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Spencer
The fact that they are excusing violence against Richard Spencer inherently means that they believe that there’s a state of exception, where we can use violence. I think they’re actually kind of right. War is politics by other means and politics is war by other means. We don’t all want the same thing. And that’s why I think there is a kind of state of war going on.
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It should give anyone who sympathizes with antifa pause to recognize that, regardless of their respective motivations, America's leading white supremacist wants exactly the same outcome that they do.
__________________
"The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Last edited by CorsiHockeyLeague; 08-19-2017 at 09:43 AM.
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08-19-2017, 10:10 AM
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#743
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Lifetime Suspension
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rubecube
I get that communists regimes have killed a lot of people but communism as an ideology doesn't advocate for ethnic cleansing. Nazism does.
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Communism in theory and in practice advocates "class cleansing". Furthermore, in practice many of the same hatreds(anti-semitism, white supremacy..) eventually come into play in all totalitarian systems based on intimidation and violence. Have a look at pictures of Cuban leaders. Did you notice a lot of blacks amoung them?
Fundamentally the henchman that do the dirty work are indistinguishable and can move from one extreme to another fluidly. If you look into it, most of the real Nazis(Third Riech) were recruited from German communist groups in the 1930s, hence the term National "Socialism".
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08-19-2017, 10:29 AM
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#744
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Lifetime Suspension
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: The Void between Darkness and Light
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Many sides. Many sides.
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08-19-2017, 11:00 AM
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#745
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Franchise Player
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
One of the things that make the far-left and far-right so opposite is their relationship to violence.
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Yet they have so much in common.
- Dogma rooted in a simplistic and emotionally-satisfying narrative that eschews complexity and nuance.
- Striving for an idealized state of society where everyone will conform to that dogma.
- Dehumanizing some entity (Jews, Communists, Whites, Muslims, Capitalists, etc.) and blaming them for all the world's ills.
- Belief that the Cause is so vital, and the Enemy so ruthless, that freedoms and tolerance must be abandoned.
“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”
“The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement.”
“All mass movements, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred, and intolerance.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
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08-19-2017, 11:21 AM
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#746
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Franchise Player
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Flamenspiel
If you look into it, most of the real Nazis(Third Riech) were recruited from German communist groups in the 1930s, hence the term National "Socialism".
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That isn't even the slightest bit true. Communist and Social Democrat leaders were purged and/or exiled from Germany once the Nazis came to power and many of the rank and file ended up in concentration camps.
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08-19-2017, 11:31 AM
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#747
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Franchise Player
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
I also think pretty much everything people say about the violence of the far-left is based on a certain amount of ignorance and misunderstanding. This isn't really an accusation because the far-left activist community actually has thought a lot, lot more about the use of violence as political tool than pretty much any other group. There's a ton more nuance to political violence (and really violence in general) than people commonly realize. [...]
One of the things that make the far-left and far-right so opposite is their relationship to violence. For the far-left it's considered a necessary evil, the use of which is to be constantly analyzed and examined, as is the question of valid targets for certain levels of violence.
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"I'm sorry, sir, I'd really love to allow you to go to that pro-Trump event, but I'm afraid it's necessary to spray mace in your eyes and hit you repeatedly with this club. I just want you to know, I take no pleasure in this; I've done a lot of soul-searching and considered the political importance of violence and this is where I landed".
In seriousness, I really think this is an incredibly dangerous and hugely misguided way of looking at this problem. Again, it seems rooted in a justification for the use of assault on the basis that the cause motivating you is just and righteous. You want to do good, as you see it, and you think that the best way to accomplish this is to hurt the people standing in your way. This is hardly the first time that rationale has been applied; I'm sure there were relatively few Spanish monks who actually wanted to torture people with thumb screws and the potro, but they thought there was a divine purpose to it all that utterly dwarfed any immediate suffering.
People don't generally perpetrate evil out of a desire to do evil. They do so because they think that they're trying to create a better world, and at the end of the day, in the service of righteousness, the ends justify the means.
As a separate issue, even if what you were saying were morally defensible, I still wouldn't agree at all that the vast majority of people perpetrating violence ostensibly on the basis of left-wing ideology have pondered its necessity or the philosophical underpinnings of using it in certain contexts. I don't think the guy who sent three people to hospital by smashing them in the face with a bike lock while wearing a ski mask did so after careful contemplation of the political justification of the use of force against anyone in a MAGA hat. At best, it's a convenient justification, but for the most part, it's just "they're bad, we're good, let's hurt them to make them stop saying things". Much of it is standard fare mob violence. Some people just suck.
__________________
"The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
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08-19-2017, 12:07 PM
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#748
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NOT breaking news
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Calgary
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Communists don't advocate ethnic cleansing. They just come steal your property and everything you own.
__________________
Watching the Oilers defend is like watching fire engines frantically rushing to the wrong fire
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08-19-2017, 12:13 PM
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#749
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First Line Centre
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When it comes to breaking eggs for that omelette, yes they are equal opportunity.
Anyways it's nice to see that the protests in Boston went the way they should. Peacefully.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by yamer
Even though he says he only wanted steak and potatoes, he was aware of all the rapes.
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08-19-2017, 01:46 PM
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#750
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Franchise Player
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i'd be interested to see any stats on antifa violence unrelated to protest marches.
Just straight incidences of Antifa member beating the crap out of someone outside of these rallies...just for #### and giggles.
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08-19-2017, 02:16 PM
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#751
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Participant
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Gonna leave this here, with the question: Can you name one target of antifa that you would deem "tolerant"?
Quote:
The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.
Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
- Karl Popper
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It's easy to categorise antifa as morally wrong if you start from a position that violence is always morally wrong, but if you view it from the perspective of what antifa is a response to, I think it gets a lot muddier. Is war wrong? If so, is it equally fair to condemn those that defend as those who attack?
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08-19-2017, 02:33 PM
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#752
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Franchise Player
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There are lots of people who have been beaten up by Antifa who weren't "intolerant", unless you re-define "intolerant" to "anyone who rejects the world view of the identity politics crowd", which would in itself discredit the argument as being inherently authoritarian. Alison Stanger, for one. But leaving that aside, I've seen a bunch of Popper references pop up (lolol) on social media in the past week. Here's the key passage.
Quote:
But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
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Meeting a real, immediate threat of violence with violence is something that one can put forward an argument for... though even in that circumstance the law asks that you first try to find a way to avoid it by running away, if necessary, in an effort to preserve the state monopoly on violence. But regardless, even Karl Popper, who is expressing an extreme proposal on the justifiable limits of free speech (one that goes farther even than Canada's policies), and doing so in the immediate aftermath of the second world war, is predicating his argument on the logic of self-defense.
Interestingly, that same passage pretty directly condones beating up postmodernists.
__________________
"The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Last edited by CorsiHockeyLeague; 08-19-2017 at 02:42 PM.
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08-19-2017, 03:22 PM
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#753
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Participant
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
Interestingly, that same passage pretty directly condones beating up postmodernists.
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Only if you can provide evidence that postmodernists can be categorically defined as intolerant (not of other intolerance) and advocate violent means.
Otherwise it's an awfully loose interpretation.
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08-19-2017, 03:43 PM
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#754
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Franchise Player
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
Only if you can provide evidence that postmodernists can be categorically defined as intolerant (not of other intolerance) and advocate violent means.
Otherwise it's an awfully loose interpretation.
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yep...
still waiting to see if anyone can find a single incident of a antifa mob beating the crap out of someone in a non-demonstration protest.
yes, antifa has been known to go too far during protests against white supremacist marches or even lectures of conservative speakers on university campuses.
That point is conceded.
I haven't seen any incidences of antifa members creating issues outside of these mass protest events....
Neo nazis beating the #### of someone for no reason? happens all the time.
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08-19-2017, 04:02 PM
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#755
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Franchise Player
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^Why are you waiting for that, though? You're looking for someone to offer a counterpoint to your argument that Nazis are worse than Antifa protesters in that particular regard? If so, I don't understand; no one is arguing that Nazis aren't worse than Antifa in that way, and in other ways too.
As to why people are, in general, more likely to act like animals when in a large group of like-minded people, there's lots of research on that point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
Only if you can provide evidence that postmodernists can be categorically defined as intolerant (not of other intolerance) and advocate violent means. Otherwise it's an awfully loose interpretation.
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I was sort of joking, but it was a reference to the statement, "they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive" - if you've ever had a conversation with someone devoted to postmodernism, it can be a surreal experience, where the very concept of objective reality that can be verified is in question. There's a pervasive reading of Foucault's Truth and Power that is highly suspicious of logic and rationality, viewing them as tools of the oppressor class. As a result, argument based on reason is rejected at the outset, because to engage in it would be playing the game on the terms of the oppressors. Engaging with someone who holds those views like suddenly finding yourself in a Beckett play.
In seriousness again though, if violence can be justified on the basis that your opponents won't listen to reason, well, it's pretty easy for people to convince themselves of that. That seems to me to be far too low a bar to place in front of vigilantism. It's not until you get to the "fists and pistols" part that you're in the realm of sound policy.
__________________
"The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
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08-19-2017, 04:39 PM
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#756
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Participant
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
^Why are you waiting for that, though? You're looking for someone to offer a counterpoint to your argument that Nazis are worse than Antifa protesters in that particular regard? If so, I don't understand; no one is arguing that Nazis aren't worse than Antifa in that way, and in other ways too.
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I can't speak for that poster, but there always seems to be this period when discussing issues related to the political spectrum where one issue is so awful it's not even deemed worth discussing (it's a "closed" issue to most intelligent people, like Nazi=bad), so one of the next worse issues gets discussed. The problem is that sometimes this issue is so insignificant compared to the other issues surrounding whatever event, that it seems phony to focus on it (even though it's totally natural to do so). In addition, you get people from the "other side" who are happy to pile on to the issue (in this case, people on the far right taking antifa to task in a way that paints them "as bad" or somehow equal to nazis, as in "your worst are just as bad as our worst, haha") which clouds the discussion with some heavy bias.
It's the same reason why Trump's comment about violence on many sides struck a chord. There are scenarios where it's not necessarily "the time" to discuss antifa, and bringing up that issue can seem like someone is excusing the real issues at play (white supremacy in this case).
It's like finding out your dad is in the hospital and your brother keeps asking about what's for dinner. Yes... you'll have to eat, but that discussion can also wait.
Anyways, that's why I think they're asking. Because using this event to talk about how bad antifa is seems so irrelevant that it reeks of ulterior motives (even though for most people there probably aren't, for some, there probably are).
Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
In seriousness again though, if violence can be justified on the basis that your opponents won't listen to reason, well, it's pretty easy for people to convince themselves of that. That seems to me to be far too low a bar to place in front of vigilantism. It's not until you get to the "fists and pistols" part that you're in the realm of sound policy.
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True, made even more difficult by how you interpret the immediate threat of violence. Can violent words (hate speech) be justifiable reason for violent action?
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08-19-2017, 04:41 PM
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#757
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Franchise Player
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
^Why are you waiting for that, though? You're looking for someone to offer a counterpoint to your argument that Nazis are worse than Antifa protesters in that particular regard? If so, I don't understand; no one is arguing that Nazis aren't worse than Antifa in that way, and in other ways too.
As to why people are, in general, more likely to act like animals when in a large group of like-minded people, there's lots of research on that point.
I was sort of joking, but it was a reference to the statement, "they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive" - if you've ever had a conversation with someone devoted to postmodernism, it can be a surreal experience, where the very concept of objective reality that can be verified is in question. There's a pervasive reading of Foucault's Truth and Power that is highly suspicious of logic and rationality, viewing them as tools of the oppressor class. As a result, argument based on reason is rejected at the outset, because to engage in it would be playing the game on the terms of the oppressors. Engaging with someone who holds those views like suddenly finding yourself in a Beckett play.
In seriousness again though, if violence can be justified on the basis that your opponents won't listen to reason, well, it's pretty easy for people to convince themselves of that. That seems to me to be far too low a bar to place in front of vigilantism. It's not until you get to the "fists and pistols" part that you're in the realm of sound policy.
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I just... I just don't know how to respond to this drek. Its kind of like trying to discuss morality with a pre-schooler. You say, "This type of behavior hurts people." With the response, "But why does it hurt people, when I don't feel anything?" The only response is, you'll understand when you begin to comprehend the larger collective in which we exist. But until then, be happy trying to understand Grover, and the near and far concepts. The most basic of moral concepts are not understood here, or are intentionally being ignored.
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08-19-2017, 05:08 PM
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#759
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Franchise Player
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
I can't speak for that poster, but there always seems to be this period when discussing issues related to the political spectrum where one issue is so awful it's not even deemed worth discussing (it's a "closed" issue to most intelligent people, like Nazi=bad), so one of the next worse issues gets discussed. The problem is that sometimes this issue is so insignificant compared to the other issues surrounding whatever event, that it seems phony to focus on it (even though it's totally natural to do so). In addition, you get people from the "other side" who are happy to pile on to the issue (in this case, people on the far right taking antifa to task in a way that paints them "as bad" or somehow equal to nazis, as in "your worst are just as bad as our worst, haha") which clouds the discussion with some heavy bias.
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I agree - there's only so long that we can all sit around nodding sagely at the statement "Nazis are the worst". The discussion is clearly going to move to other topics eventually, and we're seven hundred posts deep here. It's important to make it clear that by talking about antifa as being awful and justifications for their behaviour being wrong, that it's clear that this in no way equates them to neo-Nazis. There are different flavours of bad, some equivalent, some not. This is not. But by the same token, it would be great if the knee-jerk reaction to someone saying "yeah, antifa is pretty terrible though" was not "how dare you compare them to Nazis". I'm not saying you're doing that, but it seems to be a pretty common reaction to even raising the issue.
Quote:
It's the same reason why Trump's comment about violence on many sides struck a chord. There are scenarios where it's not necessarily "the time" to discuss antifa, and bringing up that issue can seem like someone is excusing the real issues at play (white supremacy in this case).
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Again, I agree with you. As I think I said earlier, Charlottesville is like the epitome of "not the time". It's not the time to talk about the general principles underlying preservation of historical monuments to people who by modern standards we would consider immoral, because the monuments were apparently put up for explicitly racist reasons, they have little historical value and the people they commemorate don't have much to commend them. It's not the time to talk about Antifa, because unlike the Nazis, Antifa didn't kill anyone in Charlottesville, and if they behaved badly at all, that behaviour was utterly drowned out by the sheer horror of what they were up against in this instance.
Like I say, though, either the thread dies or we talk about something else, because I think we're more or less all on the same "Nazis = awful as it gets" page.
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True, made even more difficult by how you interpret the immediate threat of violence. Can violent words (hate speech) be justifiable reason for violent action?
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Well, even there you have to be more specific. If some guy says to a group of his friends, "I think the Jews are secretly running society to hoard all our money and control us", that's hate speech, but there's no suggestion that the speaker wants to kill Jews. If he follows the above with, "it's time for us good white people to water the roots of the tree of liberty with the blood of those tyrannical Jews", well, now you've arguably crossed the section 319 line, so... enjoy prison.
There's a reasonable debate to be had, I think, about whether 319 is something we actually want, or if we want to allow that guy to say his schtick without fear of reprisal so we all know who and what he is. There are plenty of arguments to be made pro and con, and one of the reasons it's too bad Michael Chong didn't get the CPC nomination is because he would have launched that debate and it would have been an interesting one. But anyway, most days, I'm comfortable with where Canada draws the line on this.
__________________
"The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Last edited by CorsiHockeyLeague; 08-19-2017 at 05:11 PM.
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08-19-2017, 05:30 PM
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#760
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Norm!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GirlySports
Communists don't advocate ethnic cleansing. They just come steal your property and everything you own.
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Well except for Pol Pot who pretty much ethnically cleansed most of his people, while he was targeting minorities (Chinese etc). Or Stalin and his resettlement of Chechans and Tartars and the extermination of as many Poles as he could.
Or Mao and his attempt at the extermination of Mongolians.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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