Antifa rocks!

[brennan]

Cloud, the path to freedom does not lie in giving away your freedoms because other people abuse them. If you vote for censorship you give someone the power and authority to decide who can and can't speak, who do you trust to have that power but not abuse it? Who do you trust absolutely with the power to say 'these people are bad people because they say XYZ, let's lock them up' and never worry that they will turn that power on you?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I'm begging you to at least accept the possibility, that in the past and as of right now and possibly even in the immediate future, society is not currently free for EVERYONE. Certain groups are simply not granteed the same rights, be they socially or legally and their experiences are totally different from yours and are usually more negative, you cannot ignore or discount them without incurring their wrath and indignation, nor without seeming distant from their issues.

Like i genuinely don't know what else to say but to emphatically stress that freedom cannot be enjoyed when existential threats exist, you cannot live a happy life if you are under threat, that just isn't possible, chemically, mentally or otherwise. There is a reason why minorities have a higher suicide and self-harm rate, as well as mental illness rate and it is because of the above. This isn't a coincidence, but a result of what happens when it continues unabated. Transpeople's suicide rates are alot lower if others affirm them and accept them and rise when people misgender and abuse them, for example.

I admire the effort you've made to get this across to people who are operating in the experience of "the world is a pretty safe place and i personally don't notice any intolerance of serious consequence going on." It's not working particularly well in a lot of cases, but I think it probably has worked in some.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Cloud, the path to freedom does not lie in giving away your freedoms because other people abuse them. If you vote for censorship you give someone the power and authority to decide who can and can't speak, who do you trust to have that power but not abuse it? Who do you trust absolutely with the power to say 'these people are bad people because they say XYZ, let's lock them up' and never worry that they will turn that power on you?

Minorities already have the law actively used against them when it is applicable Brennan, even in your own country it is weaponized; stop and search is but one example that is used to tacitly discriminate against PoC.

The inability for LGBT people to have SSM was and in some countries still is, a form of discrimination used to deny LGBT people the same rights and benefits afforded to straight people.

That transpeople are required to go through rigorous hoops before they can even begin to get help is also a form of discrimination, regardless of the intent of the medical community.

I understand that you are arguing on hypotheticals in good and genuine faith but my response is to simply refer you to the fact that these already occur and they do so at the expense of minorities. There is no easy answer to this question, society must be constantly vigilant; humanity has proven itself easily led astray and i doubt we will fix that problem anytime soon, but surely it is better to prevent the reoccurance of the past then it is to merely hope it does not happen again? That is my position.

The world is not a good place Brennan, you and i both know this, but there is no other way to ensure that bigotry does not spread, without restricting the rights of some, which we already do in many other cases for both security, safety and even health-related reasons.

I dislike compromise when it comes to certain issues, but this is one of the cases where it is the only feasible answer that doesn't come at the expense of minorities nor maintains the status quo that is harmful to not just minorities but also to the majority. There is no upside to allowing bigotry a platform to florish and exist, no hidden benefits, certainly not ones that would be ever felt by the victims of the prejudiced.

 

[brennan]

society must be constantly vigilant; humanity has proven itself easily led astray

Yes and here you are speaking about restricting freedom of speech and espousing political violence.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Yes and here you are speaking about restricting freedom of speech and espousing political violence.

Against Neo-Nazis, Fascists and any other group that calls for the elimination of minorities. I cannot distill my position any further nor will i sanitize the reality of it.

Even if you disagree with my stance do you at least agree that on some level, the rights of the prejudiced must be withheld for the greater benefit of society, not in totality but some? So that they do not victimize and attack those they view as lesser than them?

You cannot protect the rights of those that would attack and victimize minorities without harming minorities, the rights of both come at the expense of each other and i think it is acceptable for the prejudiced to bare the burden, mainly because numerically they are already outnumbered by minorities and it makes more sense to me at least, to not endanger or harm groups that have and always will, exist independent of political persuasion.

It is no mere coincidence that Pride has been co-opted by big business; it makes political and economical sense to appeal to the LGBT community, even if that means alienating those prejudiced towards them. I merely wish to extend that to non-business matters.

Nevermind that violence or the implicit threat of it at least is ultimately the only thing that will ever stop fascists from assuming control. History is clear about that much, at least.

I admire the effort you've made to get this across to people who are operating in the experience of "the world is a pretty safe place and i personally don't notice any intolerance of serious consequence going on." It's not working particularly well in a lot of cases, but I think it probably has worked in some.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, although i admit that may be a tad gauche and can be seen as incendiary. It is not good enough to talk the talk about defending minorities when they are in existential and real danger, one must do it to be seen as an actual ally. I realize what i am demanding, but understand that minority groups have been told this time and time again, with little to show for it. The benefit of the doubt has already been broken and it takes time for it to repair.

 

[brennan]

The rights of 'the prejudiced' are the same as the rights of the minorities, if history shows us that they are rights that are good for society and that societies without them are worse places - which it does in the case of freedom of speech for example, then no. Restricting those rights cannot be in the interest of minorities.

Edit: this reminds me of arguing about gun ownership in the USA, where in one of the least safe societies in the west, people argue that guns make them safe, when it is guns that make their society unsafe.

Nobody is granting the right to attack and victimise minorities here, only the right to freedom of speech and expression - you appear to be conflating two different things. It is perfectly possible to grant free speech without anyone being harmed; indeed denying groups that right is precisely what seems mostly likely to lead extremists to feel they have to resort to violence. I would argue that we are already going down that path, hence for example the Tommy Robinson phenomena in the UK.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

I will repeat this again, the crux of the matter is that when you uphold the rights of the prejudiced that comes at the rights of minorities.

Now which side are you willing to tolerate having their rights and dignity infringed upon? Which is more palatable to you? I am okay with the prejudiced bearing the brunt of this, if it means that minorities are safer and if that is selfish, then so be it because i believe the tolerating prejudice to be selfish. That isn't a position that can be compromised without it harming one side or the other.

You must make a decision which side is worthy of having their rights protected because functionally there can be no neutrality in this regard.

Edit:

Although i know people will disagree, let me put forward a parallel.

The rights and dignity of children come at the expense of the rights and needs of paedophiles, they are diametrically opposed but society accepts this, or least it SHOULD accept, that the former trumps the latter (although historically it hasn't in insitutions, we both know people want strong justice when it affects them and theirs).

Would you not agree that you cannot tolerate paedophilia without it coming at the expense of children? Paeophilia is demonstrably harmful as is prejudice against minority groups but yet one of these is questioned and the former is almost a given in any sort of decent society, to the point where i am willing to wager that you too would struggle to tolerate it and would find it morally repugnant to give an inch on the issue either.

Does that parallel, comparison etc, make it easier to understand why i find it hard to compromise on this issue? Or at least does it begin to explain why i hold the positions i do? You can disagree with the comparison but i am genuinely trying to explain the reason for my strident opinions.

 

[brennan]

which side are you willing to tolerate having their rights and dignity infringed upon?

Simply: Neither.

And it doesn't matter how many times you repeat yourself, doing away with freedoms cannot make your minorities safer.

The rights of children do not come at the expense of those of paedophiles. Paedophiles have the same rights as anyone else and they do not include the right to rape minors. You keep talking about the rights of fascists as though they include the right to harass, bully and kill. Nobody has those rights.

 

[Berzerker]

In this thread we've seen people trying to equate an anti-fascist group with zero deaths attributed to them with neo-nazis and other far-right groups who have demonstrable deaths attributed to them, at some level they must know what it comes across as, perhaps not but it's not up to me to coddle them and their fantasies...

If I was Antifa at Charlottesville I'd attribute 3 deaths to my presence. Yes, I can point to the neo-Nazi who drove the car, but I cant hide from the fact those 3 people died because we attacked protesters. The freedom to speak, the freedom to report and publish, the freedom to assemble for redress of grievances, the 1st Amendment is the bedrock of democracy and Antifa is a jackhammer.

I accept that but i genuinely don't think it's possible to tackle extremism from the right-wing without some sort of implicit force or violence, or indeed any form of extremism, Christian, Islamic etc.

Would you abolish religions that preach intolerance?

Do you think it was wrong when New Zealand moved to shut down the sharing of the mass shooter's manifesto and attack video?

I believe showing what war looks like helps prevent war, might even turn some away from evil. There was a Twilight Zone episode about a German U-Boat commander who sank a ship having to repeatedly relive the experience as a passenger on the ship he torpedoed. That was his hell. People have a tendency to put themselves in other people's shoes when evil is done to them, hiding the evil creates further detachment.

Cloud argues free speech advocates are detached from his reality, we dont see the evil he faces. But what evil awaits a world without free speech? Some of the strongest defenders of free speech were in groups targeted by bigots and they paid with their lives. Once free speech is done away with and the political pendulum swings back Antifa will have given fascists their totalitarian state and the left will be silenced.

Not only is Antifa attacking free speech thereby promoting bigotry on both sides, the left is creating the apparatus to silence the left. The Democrats rig an election and get caught, so they turn it into a (figurative) war on Russia with new Red Scare "inquiries" into 'have you ever known a Russian'. So now FB, Google, and Youtube etc get in trouble for allowing too much free speech and they start cracking down. Well guess what, the crackdown is targeting leftists too under the guise of combating conspiratorialists while the people (the Democrats and their media outlets) leading the assault on free speech are pushing a conspiracy (Trump/Putin) to garner support. Its all very Machiavellian.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

It wasn't an act of defence on his part, he even said as much when he spoke to his mother in prison about it; he hated Heather Heyer and thought her death was an acceptable thing because of who she was. You cannot get away from that, try as you might.

And in regards to religion, what makes you think the issue is even comparable in terms of solutions?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

It is simply more expediant for me to use "bigots" than having to go through the gamut of listing every potential minority group impacted by racism. Does that help explain my usage? If not, please genuinely suggest a word that has the same utility and i will switch to that.

Well fair enough that you just want a single word to keep typing out instead of a shopping list, I can't argue with that desire. I don't think bigot is the right word to choose though because it doesn't mean "people with bad/immoral/dangerous ideas", which seems to be what you are talking about. Off the top of my head though I can't think of a better one though, but I don't think it helps that the group or groups you're talking about are rather amorphous and ill-defined. For example in the above you now seem to be talking exclusively about racism. Other times it's transphobes. Other times it's anyone who ever voted Republican. Sometimes it's Christians. Sometimes it's actual murderers. I don't know of a single word that describes all of these, let alone one that describes only a certain subset of these which is in a continual state of flux.

We already curb peoples freedoms with the intent on protecting them. Why is this any different Manfred? What makes speech something so sancrosanct, that it cannot be touched lest we deprive it of some essential quality? It is not a right everyone enjoys and it is not a right that can exist without coming at the expense of a swaythe of society.

Of course we curb some freedoms, but there are many many more that we don't curb, and each freedom granted is a potential avenue for someone to do harm to themselves or others. Ban people openly discussing ideas we don't like because it might lead to violence down the road. But then they'll just go underground, so we need to try and shut down those avenues too. But then they could just use the open avenues and talk in code, so we need to ban anything we've identified as code. In fact ban all online communication completely just to be safe. Ban the internet. Ban phones. Ban the sending of letters. Ban people congregating in person in groups larger than three in case they conspire to share bad ideas and commit violence. Ban guns. Ban knives. Ban forks. Ban glass bottles. Ban any household objects that weigh more than 1kg as they could be used to bash people's heads in. No make that 500g. Ban rocks. Ban fists. Ban being allowed out in public. In fact just place newborn babies in sealed rooms and raise them with computers and don't even let them know that other human beings exist, because if they find out that they do then they may not like some of them and wish to commit violence against them.

I'm sorry I'm just not big on banning things. Some things yes, but mostly no. And I find it weird that you're saying "why is this different" about speech, since speech is simultaneously the least directly harmful thing there is, whilst also being one of the most fundamentally precious things any one of us can do. Communicating and expressing ourselves is kind of at the core of the human experience. AR-15s less so. So that's why it's different. I find it scary you can't see that.

...I meant personal animus, not violence.

I presumed you did, but given so much of this conversation has been about actual violence, it seemed worth making sure what "with hostility" might mean. Be as verbally hostile as you like, I'm not going to try and get your voice banned.

I just want to break decorum for a second and remind you that minorities are already being silenced by the same people you have defended and in that case, it usually that happens to involve death or violence at the very least Manfred. I realise i repeat myself, but it is a very salient and important point that must be made, we must not reduce this to mere words, when there are very real consequences.

I don't think it's a very salient point because I haven't been defending anyone silencing anyone else, least of all by assaulting or killing them. Maybe this is another result of your Schrodinger's amorphous adversary that we can't find a name for, that you can't even tell who or what I'm defending because you never really define who you're talking about in the first place. Or maybe it's just because it seems, as I said before, as though you consider anyone who is slightly right of centre to be basically someone who is openly and actively advocating for your immediate extermination, which is a worldview I just don't buy into.

 

[Bugfatty300]

it is guns that make their society unsafe.

Whereas racist rallies and nazi propaganda has a neutral effect on our society.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Simply: Neither.

And it doesn't matter how many times you repeat yourself, doing away with freedoms cannot make your minorities safer.

The rights of children do not come at the expense of those of paedophiles. Paedophiles have the same rights as anyone else and they do not include the right to rape minors. You keep talking about the rights of fascists as though they include the right to harass, bully and kill. Nobody has those rights.

Let's say for arguments sake that it could be shown that tolerating fascists and prejudice is demonstrably harmful? Not just to minorities but to society as a whole. Would you still accept thats as a price worth paying? And if you would, where does that leave me, a person who will reap the "benefits" of such a position? What do you think might go through my mind as you affirm that?

We are at odds because you seem to take the stance that it is a price worth paying, or at least your stance mirrors it sufficiently enough to effectively allow it. Now you might not intend that but if that is the end result then what can i do beyond pointing that out?

 

[aelf]

I prefer throwing cement bags.

Why not graduate to full on left-wing fascism and throw rolls of tape?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Indeed it is, and your intentions are so very very good. And I genuinely think they are, but even so...

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Whereas racist rallies and nazi propaganda has a neutral effect on society.

It's beyond mystifying. I'm trying to be polite but this is ultimately what it boils down to.

Well fair enough that you just want a single word to keep typing out instead of a shopping list, I can't argue with that desire. I don't think bigot is the right word to choose though because it doesn't mean "people with bad/immoral/dangerous ideas", which seems to be what you are talking about. Off the top of my head though I can't think of a better one though, but I don't think it helps that the group or groups you're talking about are rather amorphous and ill-defined. For example in the above you now seem to be talking exclusively about racism. Other times it's transphobes. Other times it's anyone who ever voted Republican. Sometimes it's Christians. Sometimes it's actual murderers. I don't know of a single word that describes all of these, let alone one that describes only a certain subset of these which is in a continual state of flux.

I acknowledge what you are saying.

Of course we curb some freedoms, but there are many many more that we don't curb, and each freedom granted is a potential avenue for someone to do harm to themselves or others. Ban people openly discussing ideas we don't like because it might lead to violence down the road. But then they'll just go underground, so we need to try and shut down those avenues too. But then they could just use the open avenues and talk in code, so we need to ban anything we've identified as code. In fact ban all online communication completely just to be safe. Ban the internet. Ban phones. Ban the sending of letters. Ban people congregating in person in groups larger than three in case they conspire to share bad ideas and commit violence. Ban guns. Ban knives. Ban forks. Ban glass bottles. Ban any household objects that weigh more than 1kg as they could be used to bash people's heads in. No make that 500g. Ban rocks. Ban fists. Ban being allowed out in public. In fact just place newborn babies in sealed rooms and raise them with computers and don't even let them know that other human beings exist, because if they find out that they do then they may not like some of them and wish to commit violence against them.

I'm sorry I'm just not big on banning things. Some things yes, but mostly no. And I find it weird that you're saying "why is this different" about speech, since speech is simultaneously the least directly harmful thing there is, whilst also being one of the most fundamentally precious things any one of us can do. Communicating and expressing ourselves is kind of at the core of the human experience. AR-15s less so. So that's why it's different. I find it scary you can't see that.

Speech is harmful, there can be no doubt about that, to pretend otherwise requires you ignoring human history.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Indeed it is, and your intentions are so very very good. And I genuinely think they are, but even so...

Even so what? Of what benefit is there to society to have prejudice and fascism spread unchecked? Or to even allow it to have a platform? It never ends well.

I am trying to be genuine here Manfred, if you can answer that question in a way that doesn't put the onus on minorities and victims to tacitly accept their abuse i will accept it, even if i don't agree with it but i honestly don't think you can because there is no easy answer, no way of accepting both without harming the other.

This is real life man, i shouldn't have to hand walk you through the consequences of allowing fascism and prejudice florish, it should obvious to you by now. This isn't a debate that can be held independent of real life, it has consequences on us all.

 

[bernie14]

Haven't read all of the comments, but @Cloud_Strife's existential arguments sound like those made by the Israeli nationalists. For what it's worth, all this moral ground- your with us or against us- stuff is garbage

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Haven't read all of the comments, but @Cloud_Strife's existential arguments sound like those made by the Israeli nationalists. For what it's worth, all this moral ground- your with us or against us- stuff is garbage

The difference being that minorities tend to not have the same power, militarily or otherwise, as a sovereign state, lest of all the same powerful allies that Israel has.

An obvious example of this would be the Palestinians.

 

[bernie14]

So the difference is in actual power, not the thought process behind it?