EPTOn January 30 2018 19:17 Pr0wler wrote:
These are dumb, too.
These are dumb, too.
Ofc those are. But that's the politics, right there.
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hitthat
Poland2311 Posts
Ofc those are. But that's the politics, right there. | ||
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Deleted User 26513
2376 Posts
On January 30 2018 21:04 Hollow wrote: Arguments from "I personally can't recall" aren't very convincing... it's very close to the appeal to personal incredulity. Saying "discussion has never undermined society" is basically reframing the problem so as to avoid saying "discussion never influences harmful actions", which is bogus (and explains why you'd frame it this way). It's been well studied that people don't change their beliefs when confronted with evidence that opposes their beliefs. They actually get reinforced. We even have a name to call it now: the backfire effect. The threat of punishment (whether it is by law or social ostracization) does prevent people from spouting hateful things. We are social animals. If you're really committed to it, you'll likely join an activist type group. And if you do, you'll soon get on a 'hateful group' list and you'll struggle more to push your hateful ideas. No, I didn't avoid saying that. I said it using different words. I think that discussion can't be harmful. If people can't be influenced by discussions, why do we have them ? Generalizing like that is absurd, if I have to be honest. What about the people that didn't knew anything better ? They grew up in a community that believes that the earth is flat, so now it's pointless to try to convince them otherwise. That's bogus. The people with hateful ideas are not struggling... They are (freely)demonstrating on the streets and are being elected in the parliaments. | ||
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Kickboxer
Slovenia1308 Posts
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
I would personally rather give Nazi's the freedom of speech than side with people who hold views such as the quoted. In particular I believe that one is fueling the far-right by drawing lines that can easily be danced around. You end up with far-right parties that use historical rejections as argument for why they are different. As if it was an accomplished to reject the past. That doesn't mean you should tolerate the intolerant. It means you need other concepts than political damnation. | ||
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Longshank
1648 Posts
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On January 31 2018 02:52 Plansix wrote: I am also confused by the quote. In the case of the fascists, they said "Thank you for the freedom of speech" and then turned around and ran on a platform attacking the very concept of democracy and civil liberties. They undermined democratic institutions like the judiciary and press. It's a Goebbel's quote. When one argues to limit freedom of speech against Nazis to prevent them from rising they are replicating that sentiment. With the best of intentions. But I feel like the recent developments have shown that it didn't work very well. You don't beat illiberal views by using illiberal tools, no matter your intention. I'm not advocating to remove such limitatins, it's food for thought. "Hold the line"-politics usually don't work out in the longrun, not when it comes to social and worker rights, not when it comes to the rise of Nazism. You have to reform the basic laws that people are interacting on equal terms when you want to prevent them from turning to illiberalism. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
Edit: Why would you quote a Nazi when they are known for always arguing in bad faith? They used the civil liberties given to them to gain power and then took them away. There is no insight to be gained from quote them, since they sought power by whatever means necessary. | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
And this actually does work. If you look at the Anglosphere (especially the US) where revisionist historians and whole institutions exist to promote say holocaust denial, lots of people who are sympathetic to far-right ideas feel strengthened when they congregate, protest, and so forth. And as TheDwf said, if someone believes that six million Jews deserved to be thrown into the ovens there is no argument to convince them otherwise. They are simply vile racists with abhorrent views. You can contain them, but you can't change them. Maybe they change by themselves at some point in the future, but surely not if you appease them. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
Tell me again how it works. Amaze me. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On January 31 2018 04:40 Big J wrote: I live in a country where 25% of the people are voting for an outright nationalsocialist. A guy that used to go on simulated war exercises, on Nazi activist tours, that interupted a theater performance that was critical of Austria's role in Nationalsocialism, whose mentor was a Nazi underground leader in the 80s. A guy who gets called out by a part of his "fans" everytime he half-arsed condemns the crimes of the Third Reich. Tell me again how it works. Amaze me. Well WW2 was close to 80 years ago and most the people who lived through it have passed on. The laws and prohibitions worked for all of that time in one way or another. But now we have reached the era where people have no context for the 1930s, which the Nazis came to power. So the law and other like it worked for a really long time, but at some point your country collective dropped the ball at little. One of the things we need to wrap our heads around is that the people who lived through WW2 were a big factor in why fascism wasn’t able to take root again. Not the laws, or education. Just people leaning on one of the most disruptive and harmful events in modern history as evidence, stopping those ideas from ever taking root again. | ||
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Longshank
1648 Posts
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On January 31 2018 05:01 Plansix wrote: Well WW2 was close to 80 years ago and most the people who lived through it have passed on. The laws and prohibitions worked for all of that time in one way or another. But now we have reached the era where people have no context for the 1930s, which the Nazis came to power. So the law and other like it worked for a really long time, but at some point your country collective dropped the ball at little. One of the things we need to wrap our heads around is that the people who lived through WW2 were a big factor in why fascism wasn’t able to take root again. Not the laws, or education. Just people leaning on one of the most disruptive and harmful events in modern history as evidence, stopping those ideas from ever taking root again. Yes, exactly. A law that has no support makes little sense. You can't hold up laws that go against people's interests. It's the same as with social issues: you can't keep up a law that prevents rents from going up if it is against capital interests and you can't prevent Nazism from rising by forbidding it. In both cases you have to deal with the underlying problems, the things that make people seek for authoritarians that "clean up the mess" that other people are making against their interests. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On January 31 2018 05:17 Big J wrote: Yes, exactly. A law that has no support makes little sense. You can't hold up laws that go against people's interests. It's the same as with social issues: you can't keep up a law that prevents rents from going up if it is against capital interests and you can't prevent Nazism from rising by forbidding it. In both cases you have to deal with the underlying problems, the things that make people seek for authoritarians that "clean up the mess" that other people are making against their interests. That was never my argument. The law was fine. Fascist ideas are pervasive and appealing to people and cannot be countered simply debate or “better ideas.” And for decades they were not a problem because countries limited the ability for people to promote them on mass. Then the internet came and people saw it as this “disruptive” element that bypassed the old conservative conventions about media. And media was the vector that fascists used to great effect back in the 1930s. We dropped the ball because people in the 1900s and 2000s thought we were beyond worrying about it. The same dumb argument that claimed the US was in a “post racism” era. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On January 31 2018 05:26 Plansix wrote: That was never my argument. The law was fine. Fascist ideas are pervasive and appealing to people and cannot be countered simply debate or “better ideas.” And for decades they were not a problem because countries limited the ability for people to promote them on mass. Then the internet came and people saw it as this “disruptive” element that bypassed the old conservative conventions about media. And media was the vector that fascists used to great effect back in the 1930s. We dropped the ball because people in the 1900s and 2000s thought we were beyond worrying about it. The same dumb argument that claimed the US was in a “post racism” era. It's not just fascism, it's the whole spectrum of authoritarian ideas that are pervasive and on the rise. Fascism is just one of the trickiest of those, because it combines a lot of populist arguments: prejudices, traditionalism/conservativism, nationalism, being against the rich etc. Since all politicians, including the self-proclaimed liberals and socialists, keep on regurgitating the ideas that good politics can make real life conditions better for the people, a lot of people start to seek fo for those parties that speak of the most problems at once and are the most forceful/authoritarian in trying to achieve those goals. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On January 31 2018 05:59 Big J wrote: It's not just fascism, it's the whole spectrum of authoritarian ideas that are pervasive and on the rise. Fascism is just one of the trickiest of those, because it combines a lot of populist arguments: prejudices, traditionalism/conservativism, nationalism, being against the rich etc. Since all politicians, including the self-proclaimed liberals and socialists, keep on regurgitating the ideas that good politics can make real life conditions better for the people, a lot of people start to seek fo for those parties that speak of the most problems at once and are the most forceful/authoritarian in trying to achieve those goals. Populism will always be the greatest threat to democracy. Some forms of populism end in economic crisis. Others end with camps and national sham. Fear people who say they want to kill the rich right along side those who demonize immigrants. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On January 31 2018 06:23 Plansix wrote: Populism will always be the greatest threat to democracy. Some forms of populism end in economic crisis. Others end with camps and national sham. Fear people who say they want to kill the rich right along side those who demonize immigrants. Of course. But that doesn't mean it won't happen if you don't change the eco-social conditions that make people demand these desperate solutions. One thing that I believe most "educated people" don't understand is that there aren't half as many dumb people as they believe there are. People understand very well what they want and are quite capable of drawing conclusions on the basis of what they have been told and what they have experienced. If you tell people for decades that "this is their country" and "they can demand whatever they want from politics because of democracy", you will end up with people that vote against "sharing" their country. And if they can't vote against, they will believe they have the moral high ground, even if it takes doing the most cruel things to those that they believe are intruders. If you tell people year after year after year "how great we are all doing economically", then they will ask you for "their share" and if not they will seek for their share where they believe they can find it, which is they will demand it from "the rich". Such things aren't stupid conclusions, they are highly logical by what the people are being told. The only solution I see to this is to empower everyone individually. You can't replace individual responsibility and consent to laws, trades and state decisions with the power of "liberal" or "social" governments, "free" press and whatnot. These are illusions. They are important ingredients for a free society, but they cannot work if more and more people believe with good reason they don't have control over their lives, their lands and their politics anymore. | ||
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