Look who you are defending. You seriously think those guys give a fuck about anybody else's rights? Do you see any reason to doubt their violent intentions? Because I do not. This is not a bad taste outfit at a fancy dress party. This is a bunch of rampaging white supremacists on a warpath.
A bunch of angry people with fasces and swastikas shouting "blood and soil" oh and killing people and I'm supposed to, what, assume they are there for a fucking kumbaya singing and a drum circle?
The guy who punched Richard Spencer in January has not been charged. Not a single counterprotestor or antifa was charged on Saturday. Only the NAZI terrorist who killed someone was charged. The cops won't even arrest me because they know no jury would ever convict me.
Consider this scenario. You are sitting quietly in a pub minding your own business. Suddenly a big burly drunkard gets up, starts approaching you declaring loudly his intention to beat you to death.
It's clear he means it. But thanks to his drunkenness you see a moment where you can get a first swing in. Do you take that opportunity? Or do you wait for him to throw the first punch not knowing if you will still be able to fight back after it connects? Me - I throw that first punch and I do not stop until he doesn't get up. And no judge or jury would convict me because I defended myself against a credible threat.
This is no different. Wearing the swastika or the fasces or the KKK cloak is a credible announcement of your intention to murder me. By making that announcement you give me the right to pre-emptive lyrics defend myself. And there is no other credible meaning I should be expected to infer from it beyond your announcing your intention to murder me.
Those who wear the flags of genocide and treason are busy threatening your life personally and inciting others to harm you as well. Any action against anybody wearing those flags is self defense because the flags themselves are a declaration of war upon you
I'm not labeling people. I'm labeling an idea. People choose to adopt an idea and can choose to abandon it again. But they cannot choose the things that idea labels them on. They cannot choose their color or their country of birth.
That makes using such labels evil by default with no possible redeeming value. But labeling ideas is inherently good and fighting evil ideas is called heroism.
Right because history that ended centuries ago is the same as history that repeated itself just last weekend. Could you sound more stupid if you tried?
Adopting an ethno nationalist ideology is a lot like stepping into a boxing ring. By doing so you have voluntarily forfeited the right not to have the shit beaten out of you.
You do know that Japan actually fought on Hitler's side yes? And China is not ethno nationalist in the least. In fact its a more diverse country than the USA.
Tolerance is a peace treaty, it only works when all sides accept a live-and-let-live attitude. NAZIs literally define themselves by their unwillingness to let others live (here). They won't abide by the treaty, so they don't get protection under it. And since, historically, their tactics have been murderous - punching them in the face is a very restrained response.
When somebody wants you dead and you ONLY punch him in the face, I admire your peaceloving nature.
Except they clearly haven't as they have not adopted a single principal of the philosophy of fascism. Notably rejection of the single most absolutely critical thing that defines fascism: ethnic nationalism. You cannot be fascist without it.
For a country that fought a war against fascism its amazing how nobody in America has the slightest idea what it is. It's not a synonym for statism and it's on the far opposite end of the economic scale from socialism. It's further to the right economically than anarcho-capitalism.
That's the most untrue bullshit I ever read! The fascists were hardcore crony capitalists! Musolini himself said 'corporatism' would be a better word for it. Fascism economically was all about collusion between corporations and government to ensure absolute power.
Fascists hated socialists and still do. That guy is just flat out lying to you.
You clearly don't know what the word meant, ever. Antifa has ALWAYS been violent, you can consider that a bad thing - they believe they are fighting against evil. And they were US allies in the war.
But what they are not is, in any way, subscribers to fascist ideology. Punching somebody is a far-cry from being a fascist, ESPECIALLY when you're punching fascists. Neither does censorship make you fascist. Nor even authoritarianism.
These are all things that fascists did - but they are not exclusive to fascism, not symptomatic of fascism, nor a requirement FOR fascism.
On the other hand the idea that a country or state should be dominated by a particular cuture or race - that IS a defining attribute of fascism. The original NAZIs were fascists as well. The Neo-NAZIs remain so. Richard Spencer is an absolute fascist. Dozens of people in Charlottesville were waviing signs with the fasces on it (a bunch of axes tied together) - literally the symbol of fascism and in fact, the origin of the word.
The word STILL means what it meant in 1929 and using it to mean whatever the fuck you want it to mean achieves only two things: 1) it makes YOU look like an uneducated idiot 2) It gives cover to actual fascists to continue posing a danger to the entire world. Neither of these are good outcomes.
You may think AntiFa's violence is no longer justified, I would argue that this weekend proved otherwise - but to call them fascist is merely to prove you don't understand what fascism was or why it was evil. You associate some of the things that some fascists did with the concept and call all who do those things fascists - all you do is make the most evil people on the planet look less evil by claiming that less evil people are on par with them. By your reasoning every republican who ever banned porn is a fascist too. After all - fascists did censorship right ? Every dictator no matter if they were a communist or a far right capitalist is a fascist by your stupid definition - even though they would not agree on ANYTHING. It's not some catch-all word that describes everybody from Pinochet to Stalin.
It describes a particular ideology - that of Musolini, Hitler and their modern incarnates. Nobody, NOBODY else qualifies. The most fascist leader in the world today is Donald Trump. He subscribes to the overwhelming majority of the fascist ideology. That and that ALONE can qualify anybody for the name. It's the name of a certain ideology - nothing else.
You keep using that word. You ought to learn what it means. Antifa was fighting the original fascists in Italy in 1921 already. Yes its the same organization.
Do facts ever enter your head ? Lets just take your last sentence: "hey try to do the same thing the Dems did when they passed the ACA in the first place, keep it hidden and then bring out a massive bill and not give sufficient time to digest and evaluate it before demanding a vote"
Yes, that's what the GOP is trying to do - and it's fucking evil, but that is not at all how the ACA was passed. The dems went bipartisan on that. They chose a healthcare proposal that originated with the republicans (Newt Gingrich practically wrote it in reality). They then spent over a year in negotiations, public hearings, townhalls. Republicans added more than one hundred amendments to the original draft bill. What was finally passed was, perhaps, the most bipartisan bill in US history - and one of the most consulted-on bills too.
Yet immediately after it passed the republicans started lying about it- claiming it was forced down their throaghts and rushed through. Bullshit. They had over a year to negotiate - and they USED that year, adding more than 100 amendments (including removing the public option - the worst mistake the democrats ever made was letting them do that).
Now compare that to Trumpcare- which fits your description perfectly.
And as for the shutdown - no that was entirely, exclusively, and utterly the fault of the obstructionist refusal to compromise by the republicans, especially Cruz and the 40-odd (then) members of the 'freedom caucus' (which is about as dumb a name as 'freedom fries' were). There was one demand that was never going to fly - to undo the healthcare bill, they had the option to pass a budget without that impossible demand - they chose to keep it in right to the end, and thus they chose to shut down the government. Ultimately they didn't 'cave' - they just plain fucking lost.
And as it stands now, just look at the present state of things. If liberals were like the republicans (all about power and winning) then they would be quietly letting Trumpcare pass. It's mere possibility has already raised support for single-payer to the highest levels in US history. A huge amount of that support comes from Trump voters ! Imagine what it would do if it passed. It would absolutely guarantee that the next time the dems are in power single payer WILL happen. And yet liberals in the democrat party are fighting AGAINST Trumpcare, they aren't making the tactical decision to let it pass and use the disaster to get single payer. Even Bernie Sanders who has spent his entire career fighting for it, and Elizabeth Warren are fighting against Trumpcare. Because as much as they want single payer - they aren't prepared to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives to get it. There isn't a republican on the hill who wouldn't gladly sacrifice millions to get his signature policy passed.
That's the difference. How anybody sane can support the republicans is beyond me. The party literally exists for the sole purpose of fucking you in the ass and making sure that if some rich asshole decides he can make money by killing you that the coming murder will be legal
Okay... let me put this in terms you can understand. There is NO SUCH THING as "caving to the left". Government is DESIGNED to require compromises - NOBODY is supposed to get everything they want. You're supposed to negotiate with the opposition. "We'll give you this much of what you want, if you'll give us that much of what we want".
That's how it's SUPPOSED to be - it's how the founding fathers fucking designed it.
Politicians who refuse to make compromises, who refuse to negotiate, who pretend their constituents are the ONLY people in America - don't belong in government and are assholes who are betraying the entire country including their own constituents. Ted Cruz is a textbook example of how NOT to govern a country.
And frankly - if the right in America has a problem it's not "caving to the left" anyway, it's FAILING to compromise ENOUGH. The spent 8 years on nothing but rampant obstruction - even of ideas they liked and thus produced a congress that achieved absolutely fucking nothing - and THAT is what pissed people off.
Again - Trump got elected for being economically LEFTWING. If ever there was a compromise candidate in the GOP it was Trump. Trump pushed every fucking policy the democrats have been afraid to push for being TOO leftwing for decades, and every policy the GOP has been falsely warning the democrats would push if you let them ! Trump was rightwing in may ways - he's a nativist, an ethno-nationalist (which makes being racist unavoidable), a sexist and much more - but on the economic stuff, he is the most leftwing candidate the US has elected since fucking FDR ! He's policies are to the LEFT of Kenedy. He's policies are to the LEFT of LBJ. The only current politicians further left economically than Trump are Sanders and Warren for fucks sake.
Oh come now. There has never been a more obvious and extreme RINO than Donald J. Trump. The man ran on an economic platform that was to the LEFT of Hillary (almost, but not quite, as far to the left as Sanders' platform).
Of course, he hasn't actually lived up to that platform as POTUS ("no cuts to medicaid" and "coverage for everybody" remember) - but that's what he ran on. He RAN as a straight up RINO ! He won over the rest of the republican clown car BECAUSE he was a RINO - it turns out, the public WANTED a RINO - the one thing NOBODY wanted was more tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for everybody else. And since that is what "republican" has mean ever since Reagan anybody who doesn't run on that is the very definition of a RINO.
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My stance is that punching those guys was a perfectly acceptable, indeed heroic, thing to do.
I applaud the people who stood up to those bullies.
That is the whole of my stance. And I think it's the only conceivably moral stance there can be in this situation.
https://newrepublic.com/articl...
Look who you are defending. You seriously think those guys give a fuck about anybody else's rights? Do you see any reason to doubt their violent intentions? Because I do not. This is not a bad taste outfit at a fancy dress party. This is a bunch of rampaging white supremacists on a warpath.
A bunch of angry people with fasces and swastikas shouting "blood and soil" oh and killing people and I'm supposed to, what, assume they are there for a fucking kumbaya singing and a drum circle?
Right... But wearing a fucking swastika is not, in your book, evidence of hate? You are a profoundly disturbed individual.
They are not denied justice. They are the guilty party.
The guy who punched Richard Spencer in January has not been charged. Not a single counterprotestor or antifa was charged on Saturday. Only the NAZI terrorist who killed someone was charged. The cops won't even arrest me because they know no jury would ever convict me.
Consider this scenario. You are sitting quietly in a pub minding your own business. Suddenly a big burly drunkard gets up, starts approaching you declaring loudly his intention to beat you to death.
It's clear he means it. But thanks to his drunkenness you see a moment where you can get a first swing in. Do you take that opportunity?
Or do you wait for him to throw the first punch not knowing if you will still be able to fight back after it connects?
Me - I throw that first punch and I do not stop until he doesn't get up.
And no judge or jury would convict me because I defended myself against a credible threat.
This is no different. Wearing the swastika or the fasces or the KKK cloak is a credible announcement of your intention to murder me. By making that announcement you give me the right to pre-emptive lyrics defend myself. And there is no other credible meaning I should be expected to infer from it beyond your announcing your intention to murder me.
Those who wear the flags of genocide and treason are busy threatening your life personally and inciting others to harm you as well.
Any action against anybody wearing those flags is self defense because the flags themselves are a declaration of war upon you
I'm not labeling people. I'm labeling an idea. People choose to adopt an idea and can choose to abandon it again.
But they cannot choose the things that idea labels them on. They cannot choose their color or their country of birth.
That makes using such labels evil by default with no possible redeeming value. But labeling ideas is inherently good and fighting evil ideas is called heroism.
Right because history that ended centuries ago is the same as history that repeated itself just last weekend. Could you sound more stupid if you tried?
Adopting an ethno nationalist ideology is a lot like stepping into a boxing ring. By doing so you have voluntarily forfeited the right not to have the shit beaten out of you.
You do know that Japan actually fought on Hitler's side yes?
And China is not ethno nationalist in the least. In fact its a more diverse country than the USA.
Tolerance is a peace treaty, it only works when all sides accept a live-and-let-live attitude. NAZIs literally define themselves by their unwillingness to let others live (here). They won't abide by the treaty, so they don't get protection under it.
And since, historically, their tactics have been murderous - punching them in the face is a very restrained response.
When somebody wants you dead and you ONLY punch him in the face, I admire your peaceloving nature.
Erm yes, that's literally the definition of NAZISM - it was also the exact same arguments Shitler made.
Except they clearly haven't as they have not adopted a single principal of the philosophy of fascism. Notably rejection of the single most absolutely critical thing that defines fascism: ethnic nationalism. You cannot be fascist without it.
For a country that fought a war against fascism its amazing how nobody in America has the slightest idea what it is. It's not a synonym for statism and it's on the far opposite end of the economic scale from socialism. It's further to the right economically than anarcho-capitalism.
That's the most untrue bullshit I ever read! The fascists were hardcore crony capitalists! Musolini himself said 'corporatism' would be a better word for it. Fascism economically was all about collusion between corporations and government to ensure absolute power.
Fascists hated socialists and still do. That guy is just flat out lying to you.
Nothing you have listed is anywhere in the definition of fascism. Even if true you only proved me right.
I never said it wasn't coercion. But it can only be an act of STATISM if it's the STATE doing the punching.
And NEITHER of those things is fascism.
Fascism is NOT a word that means "statism" OR coercion. Those have FUCKALL to do with what the word means
You clearly don't know what the word meant, ever.
Antifa has ALWAYS been violent, you can consider that a bad thing - they believe they are fighting against evil. And they were US allies in the war.
But what they are not is, in any way, subscribers to fascist ideology. Punching somebody is a far-cry from being a fascist, ESPECIALLY when you're punching fascists. Neither does censorship make you fascist. Nor even authoritarianism.
These are all things that fascists did - but they are not exclusive to fascism, not symptomatic of fascism, nor a requirement FOR fascism.
On the other hand the idea that a country or state should be dominated by a particular cuture or race - that IS a defining attribute of fascism. The original NAZIs were fascists as well. The Neo-NAZIs remain so. Richard Spencer is an absolute fascist. Dozens of people in Charlottesville were waviing signs with the fasces on it (a bunch of axes tied together) - literally the symbol of fascism and in fact, the origin of the word.
The word STILL means what it meant in 1929 and using it to mean whatever the fuck you want it to mean achieves only two things:
1) it makes YOU look like an uneducated idiot
2) It gives cover to actual fascists to continue posing a danger to the entire world.
Neither of these are good outcomes.
You may think AntiFa's violence is no longer justified, I would argue that this weekend proved otherwise - but to call them fascist is merely to prove you don't understand what fascism was or why it was evil. You associate some of the things that some fascists did with the concept and call all who do those things fascists - all you do is make the most evil people on the planet look less evil by claiming that less evil people are on par with them. By your reasoning every republican who ever banned porn is a fascist too. After all - fascists did censorship right ? Every dictator no matter if they were a communist or a far right capitalist is a fascist by your stupid definition - even though they would not agree on ANYTHING.
It's not some catch-all word that describes everybody from Pinochet to Stalin.
It describes a particular ideology - that of Musolini, Hitler and their modern incarnates. Nobody, NOBODY else qualifies. The most fascist leader in the world today is Donald Trump. He subscribes to the overwhelming majority of the fascist ideology. That and that ALONE can qualify anybody for the name. It's the name of a certain ideology - nothing else.
So even a bunch of race supremacists holding swastikas aren't NAZIs in your book?
You keep using that word. You ought to learn what it means. Antifa was fighting the original fascists in Italy in 1921 already. Yes its the same organization.
Do facts ever enter your head ?
Lets just take your last sentence:
"hey try to do the same thing the Dems did when they passed the ACA in the first place, keep it hidden and then bring out a massive bill and not give sufficient time to digest and evaluate it before demanding a vote"
Yes, that's what the GOP is trying to do - and it's fucking evil, but that is not at all how the ACA was passed. The dems went bipartisan on that. They chose a healthcare proposal that originated with the republicans (Newt Gingrich practically wrote it in reality). They then spent over a year in negotiations, public hearings, townhalls. Republicans added more than one hundred amendments to the original draft bill. What was finally passed was, perhaps, the most bipartisan bill in US history - and one of the most consulted-on bills too.
Yet immediately after it passed the republicans started lying about it- claiming it was forced down their throaghts and rushed through. Bullshit. They had over a year to negotiate - and they USED that year, adding more than 100 amendments (including removing the public option - the worst mistake the democrats ever made was letting them do that).
Now compare that to Trumpcare- which fits your description perfectly.
And as for the shutdown - no that was entirely, exclusively, and utterly the fault of the obstructionist refusal to compromise by the republicans, especially Cruz and the 40-odd (then) members of the 'freedom caucus' (which is about as dumb a name as 'freedom fries' were). There was one demand that was never going to fly - to undo the healthcare bill, they had the option to pass a budget without that impossible demand - they chose to keep it in right to the end, and thus they chose to shut down the government. Ultimately they didn't 'cave' - they just plain fucking lost.
And as it stands now, just look at the present state of things. If liberals were like the republicans (all about power and winning) then they would be quietly letting Trumpcare pass. It's mere possibility has already raised support for single-payer to the highest levels in US history. A huge amount of that support comes from Trump voters ! Imagine what it would do if it passed. It would absolutely guarantee that the next time the dems are in power single payer WILL happen.
And yet liberals in the democrat party are fighting AGAINST Trumpcare, they aren't making the tactical decision to let it pass and use the disaster to get single payer. Even Bernie Sanders who has spent his entire career fighting for it, and Elizabeth Warren are fighting against Trumpcare. Because as much as they want single payer - they aren't prepared to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives to get it.
There isn't a republican on the hill who wouldn't gladly sacrifice millions to get his signature policy passed.
That's the difference. How anybody sane can support the republicans is beyond me. The party literally exists for the sole purpose of fucking you in the ass and making sure that if some rich asshole decides he can make money by killing you that the coming murder will be legal
Okay... let me put this in terms you can understand.
There is NO SUCH THING as "caving to the left".
Government is DESIGNED to require compromises - NOBODY is supposed to get everything they want. You're supposed to negotiate with the opposition. "We'll give you this much of what you want, if you'll give us that much of what we want".
That's how it's SUPPOSED to be - it's how the founding fathers fucking designed it.
Politicians who refuse to make compromises, who refuse to negotiate, who pretend their constituents are the ONLY people in America - don't belong in government and are assholes who are betraying the entire country including their own constituents. Ted Cruz is a textbook example of how NOT to govern a country.
And frankly - if the right in America has a problem it's not "caving to the left" anyway, it's FAILING to compromise ENOUGH.
The spent 8 years on nothing but rampant obstruction - even of ideas they liked and thus produced a congress that achieved absolutely fucking nothing - and THAT is what pissed people off.
Again - Trump got elected for being economically LEFTWING. If ever there was a compromise candidate in the GOP it was Trump. Trump pushed every fucking policy the democrats have been afraid to push for being TOO leftwing for decades, and every policy the GOP has been falsely warning the democrats would push if you let them !
Trump was rightwing in may ways - he's a nativist, an ethno-nationalist (which makes being racist unavoidable), a sexist and much more - but on the economic stuff, he is the most leftwing candidate the US has elected since fucking FDR !
He's policies are to the LEFT of Kenedy.
He's policies are to the LEFT of LBJ.
The only current politicians further left economically than Trump are Sanders and Warren for fucks sake.
Oh come now. There has never been a more obvious and extreme RINO than Donald J. Trump.
The man ran on an economic platform that was to the LEFT of Hillary (almost, but not quite, as far to the left as Sanders' platform).
Of course, he hasn't actually lived up to that platform as POTUS ("no cuts to medicaid" and "coverage for everybody" remember) - but that's what he ran on. He RAN as a straight up RINO ! He won over the rest of the republican clown car BECAUSE he was a RINO - it turns out, the public WANTED a RINO - the one thing NOBODY wanted was more tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for everybody else. And since that is what "republican" has mean ever since Reagan anybody who doesn't run on that is the very definition of a RINO.
When somebody cites a whole bunch of facts, all of them easily verified, and the only response you can offer is an insult - you've lost the argument.
Partnering with Putin on cybersecurity is like partnering with Donald Trump to make something great again.