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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
That was a super interesting post. This is much better than this thread usually is.
So we've now expanded the category of speech where it's okay to use violence to silence people to:
a) advocating for genocide or race-based violence; and
b) advocating for an armed revolution.
Any further categories we need to add here where it's okay? Maybe advocating for violence, generally? And to be clear, are we talking about just punching in the face? What if they start talking again, do you keep punching them until they stop? Can we just do whatever it takes to shut them up?
These aren't rhetorical questions; I'm seriously trying to figure out where people draw the line. Or rather, lines.
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Personally I believe that each situation is unique and so such "lines" are not something I even try to have. Rules of thumb at best.
But yes, I think if someone is clearly advocating violence against you, it's okay to punch them in the face. Not necessarily the most recommended option, but as a rule of thumb I'm okay with that.
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What about the Nazi ideology are we focused on here? It's probably not the tenets of national socialism so much as the concept of ethnic purity or mass killings, right? Because there are a number of states that successfully pulled that off and went on to operate as viable states afterwards. Look at Indonesia.
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I am completely at loss as to what you're trying to say here. Are you seriously trying to argue that ethnic cleansing and massacres of socialists (which for those who don't know is what happened in Indonesia in the 60's) is fine if the state doesn't collapse afterwards?
Also, those same ideologies directly contributed to a 30 year civil war in Aceh, so again, I'm really just at loss as to what you're trying to say here.
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Your argument here, if I understand it, is that there is something essential to the Nazi ideology that is incompatible with a functioning democracy. I'm not actually sure that's necessarily true (largely because I don't know exactly what part of the Nazi ideology you're focused on), but let's assume you're right.
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Nazism is essentially defined by three things
1) Fascism (or in other words radical authoritarian nationalism)
2) "scientific" racism
3) anti-semitism
To argue that there could be some form of Nazism without fascism and racism is simply absurd, not just historically but also if you look at the current Nazi movement.
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If that's the standard we're using for our face-punches of silence, wouldn't we definitely want to start beating up anarchists?
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First of all, this completely ignores the part where Nazism is a fundamentally violent ideology that preaches racial supremacy and supports completely removing undesirable elements from the society and especially from positions of power.
As for anarchism, I think for this conversation to make sense to anyone else, a very short explanation of what anarchism is is needed, because it's very much not common knowledge.
As a very rough generalization, anarchists believe in the idea of self-governed societies backed by volunteering, as opposed to representative governing backed by the a monopoly of violence of the state. (The latter is how all western democracies are organized right now.)
Whether or not a particular anarchist is fundamentally opposed to democracy really depends on what kinds of anarchist you are talking about. Anarchism by it's nature is a lot of things, and simply saying "anarchists" doesn't really mean much.
For example, anarcho-syndicalists are essentially a workers-rights movement which strongly supports direct democracy (as opposed to representative democracy), and in many places are in practice more concerned with labour disputes and the organization of labour unions than they are in changing the form of government. Anarcho-syndicalists have also proven to be quite capable of peacefully taking part in democratic societies. If you think of them as "sort-of-communists", you're really not too far off.
In that sense I would say no, anarchism is not directly opposed to democracy.
Then you have for example anarcho-capitalism, aka "free market anarchism", which is pretty much what it sounds like. It's essentially exactly the same as radical libertarianism. I think it's safe to say this is a completely un-democratic idea, and frankly if you want to punch anarcho-capitalists in the face because they want to bring about the destruction of democracy, well, I'm not going to say you're a bad person for doing so. But I wouldn't recommend it. After all, these guys do not support violence.
In general I would also say that anarchists tend to be mostly concerned with opposing the "monopoly of violence" part of current societies. I think it's a really stupid way of thinking, and would be extremely dangerous if it actually happened, but they are also super-marginal and in the large scale of the Western society at worst a nuisance.
White supremacy / fascism on the other hand is a huge movement right now, with supporters in many governments.
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It just seems like you're arbitrarily picking beliefs and practices you find odious and saying it's fine to silence the people who hold them.
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As you can see, it's not arbitrary at all
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I think the exact problem we're hoping gets addressed is the notion that it's a cold war. Make it a hot war. Get everyone's views out in the open and let's see whose win. I'm pretty confident that reason and evidence have a shot at the title, if actually given a chance. They were doing pretty well for a while and it's time for a comeback.
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That's not what a Hot War and a Cold War mean. A Cold War is a non-violent clash of ideologies. A hot war is when people literally start to die.
There's also the problem that as we have seen many times, the far right is in no way interested in debate. What you're suggesting is the ultimate liberal fantasy of how things should be done. If you listen to the current reactionary conservative movement, this is exactly the kind of "nonsense" they hate.
As a rule of thumb, if you look at debates organized between liberals and conservatives, it's almost always the liberals who ask the conservatives to come around and be heard, and very rarely the other way around.
People like Milo Yannopoulos especially are not interested in debate. They are only interested in free speech to the extent that they get a platform to rant from. They are in no way interested in providing the other side a chance to respond.
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At the risk of being accused of semantics, this is pretty important: can you define the ideologies you're saying are clashing? Because it's really obvious from your post that your idea of what "liberal" means is very different from mine. I suspect you mean two loose collection of mutually incompatible policy positions that aren't really tied together by anything but have been aggregated to the "left" and "right" side of the political spectrum, respectively.
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I think the "left = liberal, right = conservative" idea that is pretty popular especially in the US is one main reason why people have so much trouble recognizing this ideological strugle in the West. While it's not completely without basis, I think it mostly muddies the situation.
The traditional left/right split was a class split, and very much a split between workers and entrepreneurs/owners. We're all capitalists now. When megacorporations like Google are reguraly on the liberal side in political fights, and a multimillionaire like Elon Musk is a liberal icon, I think it's pretty clear the liberals != left in any traditional sense.
I think if you look at Putins Russia, you see a pretty clear blueprint of what is the conservative side. Strongly authoritarian central government, reactionary gender roles, oppression of minorities, white supremacy, militarism etc.
In short, it's essentially fascism. Unfortunately, most people have trouble recognizing fascism if it doesn't wear black uniforms. People also tend to have an idea that fascism was more about militarism and black uniforms than it was about reactionary conservatism. (I blame Hollywood for this.)
The liberal side IS very much hodgepodge of different ideas that are mostly connected by a common enemy (conservatives) and the fact that they generally kind of support each other. So on that side you have everything from environmentalists to ACLU to black rights to trans rights and what have you.
It's very much an asymmetrical situation. This asymmetry is a reason why I think the liberal side has been A) slow to realize it's in a war and B) kind of taking a beating in the big fight over political power.
All these people are ultimately liberals of one sort of the other, but previously they have not really had much of a use for a primarily liberal identity, as their prime concerns have been elsewhere. (And yes, I think people like Corsi are partially right when they say that some of these people don't understand the basics of liberalism and because of that keep alienating potential allies and just otherwise shoot themselves in the leg.)
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I'm not sure I disagree that there's a clash of ideologies coming, but if there is, I suspect it'll be between liberals - in the sense of the real meaning of that word - and authoritarians. If so, the "left" and "right" will gradually become less important.
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Yup, I very much agree that left/right split is not the key here, and I won't argue with those labels. However, I see authoritarianism as more a symptom than a cause. I don't think the people who support Trumps authoritarian style do so because they like authoritarianism, but because they want Trump to protect their precious conservative ideals from liberals.
Btw, I think the most correct labeling would be simply to call it a fight between liberalism and fascism, and I think that's what it will be called if the liberals win.
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You say so above in condoning the silencing of some ideas by means of violence.
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I also support silencing ISIS recruiters. I don't really see much of a difference between Nazis and them.
I also support the monopoly of violence, and I don't think punching a nazi threatens our democracy or legal system. If I felt like punching a Nazi I would personally rather stand trial to make it clear that I accept the punishment, in the tradition of civil disobedience.
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Isn't this hypocritical, given your earlier statement about punching Marxist revolutionaries? An armed revolution in support of marxism - i.e. political violence aimed at effecting a change in how the country operates - justifies beating someone to stop them from talking, but violence in support of what you've described as "liberal" ideology is laudable? Maybe there's a good reason for treating these sorts of political violence differently, but I'm not sure I see what it is.
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Well, for starters they have completely opposite motivations and they are pretty much as far apart in scale as they can be.
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There are now two groups of people with very different ideas about how the country and world should be run, each of whom are utterly certain that their ideal vision of society is the righteous, correct outcome and are willing to compromise more or less any principle to effect this outcome.
There is then a third group that says, "no, you say you know what's best, but I don't trust you. Every time some political movement du jour has claimed dominion over what must be for everyone and tried to seize total control to create their utopian vision, they've ultimately been shown to be wrong. The principles we came up with about 200 years ago have carried us to the golden age of human history. Let's continue that project."
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Let's just say that I don't think much of this "third group". The world changes on the backs of people who make a stand. I think history has clearly shown that real change for the better always takes someone fighting for a vision. Sometimes it's a bad vision, but in the long run things have moved to a better direction.
BTW; I sincerely hope this fight doesn't turn much more violent than it has so far. Unfortunately if we really are at a major historical clashing point of ideologies, that seems unlikely.
I do think there is a chance that the current reactionary wave is pretty much the last desperate show of force by a dying breed, and it will really just blow over as long as people just peacefully stand up to it and refuse to give in.
