EPTIt can be just a guy with some right wing thought walking next to you that is basically indistinguishable from everyone else, or on the extreme a bunch of skinheads with swastika flags marching and chanting.
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21963 Posts
It can be just a guy with some right wing thought walking next to you that is basically indistinguishable from everyone else, or on the extreme a bunch of skinheads with swastika flags marching and chanting. | ||
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abmhm
21 Posts
Want to cut immigration? You need the anti-globalist far-left, who oppose exploitation in Africa and South America that drives educated people out of those countries. You also need to stop climate change which is becoming a factor in driving migration, so once again the far-left is necessary to achieve this. Not to mention the Salafist problem and the ties to Saudi Arabia that those same globalist neoliberal NATO-loving centrists adore so much because it gives them the power of oil money funneled through western banks. If you want to get working-class people to buy more products that are geared towards combating climate change (from electric cars to chicken instead of beef), you have to pay them more so they can afford those products, or you have to make the products cheaper. Give them proper jobs and wages rather than this neoliberal nonsense of employment agencies with uncertain contracts and unstable hours where you have to a fight a bureaucracy of two corporations just to get paid overtime. Neoliberal centrists like Macron represent the elites that want quantitative easing to inflate the housing market, foster "investments" in corporations (which means they either outsource or automate work, abolishing jobs) and loans that enable stock buybacks. All of which means that people who don't already have such things in abundance are screwed, and none of it creates jobs at home - meanwhile women are forced to sell their bodies online, while men make alt-right videos for ad money. The far-left and the far-right, meanwhile, represent the interests of ordinary people everywhere who simply want to live their lives. The goals of the far-left and the far-right are largely the same. The goals of neoliberal centrist elites are to exploit the minor political differences in perspective between the far-left and far-right so they can harvest them all (both nationally and globally) for cash and power - exemplified very well in that New Republic article. Occupy Wallstreet was not by hijacked right-wingers, but by paid "leftist" SJWs who wanted to make it about race, gender and sexual orientation rather than a fight against the globalist bankers. It's nothing but a distraction. I can't imagine which globalist banker would fund such a thing... Let them call us racist far-right xenophobes and violent far-left anarchists. I am both. And I am proud of it. I'd rather be that than a globalist warmongering terror-inducing maniacal neoliberal centrist banker. The fight against white supremacy, the patriarchy, the bankers, ending foreign wars and immigration, stopping the degeneration of society is all the same fight. It's a fight against globalist neoliberalism. If you think that they are not on the same side, you've been had by globalist propaganda. If you think that the notion there is violence means that you should distance yourself from us. Consider this: From The Guardian: The 37-year-old, a French light-heavyweight champion in 2007 and 2008 who retired from the sport in 2013, said in a video that he had “boiled over” after being teargassed with his wife on his eighth Saturday protest. “I reacted badly. Yes, I reacted badly,” he said, adding he had seen the “repression” of the police towards protesters. And then think how you felt about the protesters in Syria when 4 protesters were killed by the police in the city of Daraa, and then the protesters went ahead and killed 7 policemen. Were they in the wrong to do so? Ultimately, yes, but do you have no sympathy for them? Should the movement against Assad have been dismissed at that point? People in France are being (tear)gassed for peaceful protests. Before the New Year, the cops brought out tear gas on Saturday mornings. That makes the protests more violent quite early on in the day, resulting in more violence throughout the afternoon and into the evenings. The State induces violence in order to get ordinary people on their side. You might say "you cannot compare this to Syria" - but ultimately they are same in terms of the mechanics that apply. If Assad had not acted with more oppression towards protests against him, the people would not have revolted so massively and aggressively. And it's not like the protesters in France are killing or gassing the cops. End submission Our position Is to kill their corrupt vision | ||
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iamthedave
England2814 Posts
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On January 09 2019 21:35 iamthedave wrote: This is the standard sort of argument used to try and break up united movements. You shouldn't like these guys (who you probably don't but are side by side because you're in the same boat) so why are you engaging in protest with them? Because it's a pretty solid argument. There is no good reason to support a movement that aligns itself with antisemites or conspiracy theorists. And more generally as the tone in much of the comments was similar, the yellow vest 'movement' isn't really a movement. It's a mob that sets cars on fire with a good dose of general violence. There is no program to this or any sort of political framework. It's rioting for the sake of being upset. And that shouldn't fly at all. There is no answer to serious political questions in this movement. The tax on fuel is necessary to price in the environmental hazard of fuel consumption, it is necessary if we want to address climate change. Just giving handouts or pushing down the retirement age is unfeasible and comes at the cost of future generations. Macron's reforms are unpopular but address real problems, the yellow vest protesters don't even pretend to have a coherent political program. And what is particularly ridiculous is this narrative about this movement being somehow for the poor. Middle class people protesting a fuel tax rise aren't the poor, the poor people are living in the Banlieues and don't have a car. There's surprisingly few minorities or women at all. It's very French in so far as political violence in France usually comes from an already quite privileged, unionised middle class rather than well, people who are actually destitute, which are mostly sidelined by the political system. There's a reason the yellow vest movement has found an unlikely media ally: Fox news pundits and American white suburbia. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23490 Posts
On January 10 2019 04:30 Nyxisto wrote: Because it's a pretty solid argument. There is no good reason to support a movement that aligns itself with antisemites or conspiracy theorists. And more generally as the tone in much of the comments was similar, the yellow vest 'movement' isn't really a movement. It's a mob that sets cars on fire with a good dose of general violence. There is no program to this or any sort of political framework. It's rioting for the sake of being upset. And that shouldn't fly at all. There is no answer to serious political questions in this movement. The tax on fuel is necessary to price in the environmental hazard of fuel consumption, it is necessary if we want to address climate change. Just giving handouts or pushing down the retirement age is unfeasible and comes at the cost of future generations. Macron's reforms are unpopular but address real problems, the yellow vest protesters don't even pretend to have a coherent political program. And what is particularly ridiculous is this narrative about this movement being somehow for the poor. Middle class people protesting a fuel tax rise aren't the poor, the poor people are living in the Banlieues and don't have a car. There's surprisingly few minorities or women at all. It's very French in so far as political violence in France usually comes from an already quite privileged, unionised middle class rather than well, people who are actually destitute, which are mostly sidelined by the political system. There's a reason the yellow vest movement has found an unlikely media ally: Fox news pundits and American white suburbia. There's also reasons the movements by those getting their rights abused in the name of national security and other marginalized groups in France didn't get the attention the yellow vests are either. Anti-Semitism is dimwitted, but there are a lot of dimwitted people with dangerous beliefs at every level of government in practically every country, I think it's pretty silly to think the government can arm Saudi Arabia but it's the yellow vests who have gone too far not rooting out anti-semitism in their protests. Looking for a thorough manifesto of their ambitions for political office and the policies they will implement seems to be missing why they are out there in the first place. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On January 10 2019 04:30 Nyxisto wrote: Because it's a pretty solid argument. There is no good reason to support a movement that aligns itself with antisemites or conspiracy theorists. Your German government consist of people like AKK who believes that homosexuality is like incest. And she is by far not the bottom of the CDU/CSU when it comes to homophobia. Yet you don't distance yourself from the German government, nor does the SPD, nor do you demand it of the SPD. Which is reasonable if you believe most of their politics aren't bad, even though you don't support homophobia yourself. Same goes for far-right claims in the yellow-vest movement. | ||
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abmhm
21 Posts
On January 10 2019 04:30 Nyxisto wrote: And what is particularly ridiculous is this narrative about this movement being somehow for the poor. Middle class people protesting a fuel tax rise aren't the poor, the poor people are living in the Banlieues and don't have a car. There's surprisingly few minorities or women at all. You are making me angry with your ignorance. I will educate you. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/03/who-are-the-gilets-jaunes-and-what-do-they-want: Who are the protesters and what are their grievances? Protesters have largely come from peripheral towns, cities and rural areas across France and include many women and single mothers. Most of the protesters have jobs, including as secretaries, IT workers, factory workers, delivery workers and care workers. All say their low incomes mean they cannot make ends meet at the end of the month. The movement is predominantly against a tax system perceived as unfair and unjust, but there are numerous grievances and differences of opinion. Most want to scrap the fuel taxes, hold a review of the tax system, raise the minimum wage and roll back Macron’s tax cuts for the wealthy and his pro-business economic programme. But some also want parliament dissolved and Macron to resign. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/15/gilets-jaunes-protesters-turn-out-in-paris-for-fifth-weekend Hélène Dejesse, 60, an artist, had travelled from Charente in south-west France to attend Saturday’s protest in Paris, saying she was “not interested” in Macron’s concessions. Nurses Sophie Portejoie, 45, Christelle Tesson, 49, health assistant Virginie Rabaud, 32, and student Ophélie Joaquim, 22, had come in from the Essonne, just south of Paris. “We’re pacifists and of course we’re afraid there might be violence, but we have come anyway, otherwise we will gain nothing in life. We’re fighting against precarity,” Portejoie said. “There’s too much injustice between those at the top of society and those at the bottom.” Tesson added: “We’re doing this for our children. Mine are both in work but they have small salaries with which to pay big rents and charges. It’s one tax after another. We can take no more.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/07/macrons-arrogance-unites-us-on-the-barricades-with-frances-gilets-jaunes Céline, a classroom assistant for children with special needs, earns €800 (£710) a month. She cannot afford rent so lives with her four children in a relative’s house in the suburbs of Toulouse, in the south-west of France. “Macron’s first move in office was to slash the wealth tax for the mega-rich while cutting money from poor people’s housing benefits,” she said. “That is a serious injustice. The country is rising up and he’s staying silent, he’s hiding in an ivory tower, that’s what disturbs me, he’s not taking responsibility.” At the roundabout barricade in Lespinasse, 20 people from surrounding villages – builders, nurses, workers in the local aviation industry – protested near a crucial fuel depot, wearing the yellow high-visibility vests that define France’s gilets jaunes movement. Isabelle, 41, a single mother, had never taken part in a protest movement before. She works at a sandwich stand at Toulouse airport for the minimum wage – less than €1,200 a month – and her daily shifts begin at 3am. She was among many who had deliberately spoiled her ballot paper in last year’s presidential election final round, unwilling to choose between Macron or the far-right Marine Le Pen. In the 17th arrondissement, Le Monde’s reporter saw a group of young men wearing yellow high-vis vests overturn scooters and set them on fire. Disgusted, more peaceful gilets jaunes protesters tried to stop them: SourceCéline, 43, who works in the catering service at a hospital outside Paris, fled from tear-gas on the Champs Elysées with her husband & daughter. ‘The crowd was peaceful, and then they fired at us,’ she said. SourceThey were leaving Paris to head back to their toll-booth barricade near Mantes-la-Jolie. ‘We’re not here for tear-gas or violence, but to make ourselves heard’. They had been demonstrating regularly at the motorway toll for 3 weeks. ‘We’ll keep going’ On January 10 2019 01:38 iamthedave wrote: Alas, I have learned never to take seriously a man who believes the term 'SJW' belongs in a serious discussion. "Would you take a woman seriously that uses those terms? Sexist pig." <- This is what I mean, the ones who call everything sexist or racist or whatever, regardless of the issue at hand, and refuse to recognize that people who do not fall within their preferred box of gender/race/sexuality can also be facing issues of economic uncertainty in life. As I said, I feel aligned with all of them (those who fight against white supremacy, the patriarchy, the banking elites, but also the white males who want to preserve their traditions and the people who don't care about the SJW goals). But I'm also not particularly excited by the fact that now, for example, it's women who are in charge of the military-industrial complex and the intelligence agencies in the USA. I don't see how that's going to make a lick of difference. What? We will now have pink drones assassinating and gays torturing people around the globe in the name of national security? That's not any better. Same with banks - if the practices remain the same, then what's the point of having women do the oppression? Would you have liked Trump better if he had been a woman? It's not a fight worth fighting unless you address the issue of the concentration of power that the elitist white banker male represents. Just consider that the most extreme elements of the SJWs were brought forth into prominence in a lot of Occupy Wallstreet media coverage to cast a certain light on the movement. Perhaps even with the deliberate effort to set the conservative Republicans against such a movement - even though many Republicans are working-class people maligned by those corporatist banking elites that they vote for (case in point: Cesar Sayoc; although it's not like Obama helped him keep his home - that's the duplicity of the neoliberal centrists in the Democratic Party at work right there). That conservativism is then exploited by highlighting "crazy liberals" in a particular movement. Much like the media loved to highlight the most racist elements from the Trump campaign. Much like the corporate media such as WaPo, USA Today and NBC News went "full Breitbart" on prison meals being served. Much like Nyxisto seems to think there "very few women and minorities" protesting (as if race or gender matters) or how he thinks the gilets jaunes are all about violence. Of course the media will show the violence. That's what they're there for these days: divisiveness & sensationalism. Does it not occur to you, Nyxisto, that there's few minorities amongst the protesters, because minorities are in the minority? That's why the majority of people protesting happen to be white. That does not, however, delegitimatize their grievances. The French are on the streets protesting, not black or white people, French people: I think there's some mutts in that video there for you to gawk at, Nyxisto, does that make you happy? Of course it is difficult to get political solutions from lower-middle class protesters. They are not politicians. They are not bankers. The protests have no leaders. There's far-right on the streets, there's far-left, and there's apolitical people. Expecting them to have answers is an absurdity. They don't set the policies. They just do their jobs. And they are living paycheck to paycheck, only barely able to afford rent and unable to get a mortgage because they're not allowed sufficiently steady incomes. | ||
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m4ini
4215 Posts
Of course the media will show the violence. People like you clearly wouldn't, because it wouldn't suit your argument. Much like DMH or whatever he's called forgot to mention that the kids he tried to tear-bait with were in fact torching cars and throwing stones at the police an hour before, or like you forgot to mention that there's a very high probability that the boxer was gassed because, again, yet another protest went full retard, so i'm not entirely sure why you scrutinize media for sensationalism if you're literally doing the same just in the opposite direction, with a bit of bullshit sprinkled on top of it ("it's the polices fault that we're violent" - disregarding the fact that literally every political protest in france turns out like this). This is also completely ignoring the fact that you actually elected Macron. The way to fix it is to not vote for him again. Like, democracy isn't hard to understand. "Would you take a woman seriously that uses those terms? Sexist pig." That's probably the dumbest strawman i've ever seen btw. We will now have pink drones assassinating and torturing people around the globe? And that's probably the dumbest argument i've seen from someone calling others sexist. those who fight against white supremacy, the patriarchy But I'm also not particularly excited by the fact that now, for example, it's women who are in charge of the military-industrial complex and the intelligence agencies in the USA. I don't see how that's going to make a lick of difference. "I want equality, but now that there's equality, i don't particularly care for it because it doesn't matter anyway". Right then. | ||
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schaf
Germany1326 Posts
On January 10 2019 06:08 Big J wrote: Your German government consist of people like AKK who believes that homosexuality is like incest. Can I have a quote on that? I have never heard of it before. Btw: akk is not in the government, she is leading the ruling party but has no federal post. | ||
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abmhm
21 Posts
On January 10 2019 06:58 m4ini wrote: People like you clearly wouldn't, because it wouldn't suit your argument. Much like DMH or whatever he's called forgot to mention that the kids he tried to tear-bait with were in fact torching cars and throwing stones at the police an hour before, or like you forgot to mention that there's a very high probability that the boxer was gassed because, again, yet another protest went full retard, so i'm not entirely sure why you scrutinize media for sensationalism if you're literally doing the same just in the opposite direction, with a bit of bullshit sprinkled on top of it ("it's the polices fault that we're violent" - disregarding the fact that literally every political protest in france turns out like this). I did not disregard this. I explained it. The boxer was gassed because some people were violent. But he was not. He turned violent after being tear-gassed. Just like in Syria, Assad cracked down because some people were violent. However, this triggers a broader reaction of even more violence. But it is not about placing blame, it is about recognizing that violence is used as a reason to dismiss legitimate anger and a reason to crack down on protesters with more violence. And I am specifically showing the other side of it, rather than the violence, because people here & some media at large (including Putin) were using the violence as a way to dismiss the movement or justify government oppression. If you want to see or read about the violence, you can just go to the previous page. I do not need to rehash that. On January 10 2019 06:58 m4ini wrote: This is also completely ignoring the fact that you actually elected Macron. The way to fix it is to not vote for him again. Like, democracy isn't hard to understand. I did not elect anyone. The people I vote for don't make it into parliament or presidencies. Not to mention the fact that Macron made his promises to fix France but does not appear to hold up his end of the bargain. Or the fact that the whole political division as it exists today has been designed to keep people like him - the centrists - in charge. This comes back to the argument I made about divide & conqueror: pinning the left against the right and pretending that neoliberal centrism is the answer. This is why I support both the far-left and the far-right in their quest to overthrow centrist neoliberalism. I am radical anti-neoliberal centrist in that regard, being socialist (leftist) in nature but still seeing the validity of arguments against immigration (far-right) and how it ties into the neoliberal world that has been built up since universal suffrage was introduced. But I am not a nationalist. I don't believe in invisible lines drawn on maps. And communism is just a way for elites to gather ALL power to themselves, like what the Bolsheviks did in the Soviet Union. On January 10 2019 06:58 m4ini wrote: That's probably the dumbest strawman i've ever seen btw. And that's probably the dumbest argument i've seen from someone calling others sexist. "I want equality, but now that there's equality, i don't particularly care for it because it doesn't matter anyway". Right then. It's not a kind of equality that benefits anyone. I'm fine that women are in charge of things, but it is not exciting to me because people are still being killed. It would excite me if putting women in charge meant that the drones stopped flying. But Clinton would not have stopped the drones any more than Trump did. Muslim women and children who happen to be in the same homes as the "terrorists" that are being targeted are still brutally murdered by those drones. That is why I am not excited about it. I am not excited about it because the inherit power structure that enables this kind of behavior - the global imperialist power structure that put the white (American/European) male in charge of the world to begin with - has not been addressed in the slightest. It's the same as if you would suggest that #metoo were to be resolved if it was the women who are doing the abusing, rather than men. It is the power dynamic that enables the abuse in most of those situations, not the gender or the race. Or that putting a black man in charge of the US would stop its imperialist nature, which it did not. It is the Con of Diversity that people fall for. White supremacy, the patriarchy, the elitist bankers, the liberal coastal elites, even "the Jews" are merely symbols of this power structure. But none of them, by themselves, appropriately address the core of issue at hand. And if you subscribe to only one or two of them - and especially if you do so in a direct manner, rather than understanding the symbolism of it - then you will malign many helpless working class people in the process. Such as what Hitler did. For the Germans in the 30s, it was the elites amongst the Anglo-Saxon Jews who were in charge of Britain that put down Germany again and again, from sanctioning them into poverty and starvation and casting the Kaiser as a warmonger even before WW1, to the Treaty of Versailles afterwards. And Hitler, as a German elite, exploited that reality to enable his campaign against the ordinary Jews at home - whilst the elites who had money and connections all fled or stayed out of harm's way. But it was not the ordinary Christian conservative white working class person who was responsible for slavery. Not any more than it was the ordinary Jew who was responsible for what was done to Germany in the lead up to WW1. It was the elites at the top owning the plantations and the slave ships who made those decisions. It was the "highly educated" folk (the ones who could write & print books in that time) who came up with & spread the theory that blacks are inferior. In the early 20th century, it was the American Rockefellers - friends of the British Rothschilds - who financed the popularization of the idea of eugenics to Germany. Similarly, it is not the ordinary women who simply want a job and be self-sufficient that are responsible for the oppressive neoliberal decisions that Margaret Thatcher made. It is not the ordinary women who decided that feminism should mean that a family must require two full-time incomes to exist and no time to take care of your children or pass on your traditions. It was the elites who decided they could double the wage slavery work force. It was the elites who decided that planned obsolescence was a great thing. Address the power structure. Address the exploitation. Not the ordinary people who have no say or little say in these things. Attacking them based on the grounds like what Nyxisto did only serves to further their rage. And it is a rage that is justified. | ||
Godwrath
Spain10132 Posts
On January 09 2019 22:02 Acrofales wrote: Different motifs to be honest. At this point is a fuck you to the liberal order from all fronts.I disagree. Neither the Indignados, nor their international offshoots in various Occupy movements were subverted by right-wing fuckwits. They were white people movements for white people problems, and while those problems were also faced by other people, that was not the thrust of the movement. They were movements by poor people against the bailout of the banks while unemployment soared. Yet it didn't flirt with neonazism, as the yellow vests apparently do. Maybe it's a sign of the times, and if Occupy had happened now, they'd be doing exactly the same. Or maybe there is something qualitatively different about the poor white people protesting in yellow vests and the poor white people protesting in Occupy movements. Either way, it's a rather worrying phenomenon of the movement, and whitewashing it as "oh, it's just poor white fuckwits, ignore them" is not a good plan. Now I don't think it's a good way to discredit the movement either, so I agree with your conclusion. But the fact that this is being subverted as a racist movement is disconcerting and something the original progressive left organizers should strive to combat. Would you be so inclined to use the same argument to pensioneers who protested about their frozen pensions, because there is a good chunk of them that are VOX voters? | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On January 10 2019 07:44 schaf wrote: Can I have a quote on that? I have never heard of it before. Btw: akk is not in the government, she is leading the ruling party but has no federal post. Quote from her wikipedia entry. Im Juni 2015 wandte sich Kramp-Karrenbauer in einem Interview mit der Saarbrücker Zeitung gegen eine Gleichstellung eingetragener Lebenspartnerschaften mit der Ehe. Sie begründete dies damit, dass die Definition der „Ehe als Gemeinschaft von Mann und Frau“ damit in „eine auf Dauer angelegte Verantwortungspartnerschaft zweier erwachsener Menschen“ geöffnet werde und in der Folge Forderungen nach einer „Heirat unter engen Verwandten oder von mehr als zwei Menschen“ nicht ausgeschlossen werden könnten.[69] Politiker der SPD, Linken, Grünen, FDP und auch Jens Spahn aus ihrer eigenen Partei warfen Kramp-Karrenbauer vor, Homosexualität mit Polygamie oder Inzest verglichen zu haben. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annegret_Kramp-Karrenbauer#Gleichgeschlechtliche_Ehe And you are definitely right, AKK is not part of the government. I thought she had been chancellery minister since Altmaier took over economics, but I must have mixed that up with her taking over the post of CDU general secretary at a similar time. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
On January 10 2019 06:09 abmhm wrote: I wouldn't take a woman who uses SJW non-ironically seriously either."Would you take a woman seriously that uses those terms? I thank you for expressing your point of view but if you want to be taken seriously don't use SJW in all seriousness. | ||
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abmhm
21 Posts
On January 10 2019 08:34 Dangermousecatdog wrote: You misunderstand the point. I said that as illustration of ridiculous SJWing: tying everything to issues of gender and race, rather than the issue of concentration of power and wealth. That's what I did in that one sentence, I tied my "counter argument" to gender, rather than address the concern regarding the three letters that upset people so much.I wouldn't take a woman who uses SJW non-ironically seriously either. I thank you for expressing your point of view but if you want to be taken seriously don't use SJW in all seriousness. My usage of three letters dismiss a wall of text explaining class division in politics even when I use the term to explain how it is abused by conservatives who oppose the concept of social justice such as what I did here: Just consider that the most extreme elements of the SJWs were brought forth into prominence in a lot of Occupy Wallstreet media coverage to cast a certain light on the movement. Perhaps even with the deliberate effort to set the conservative Republicans against such a movement - even though many Republicans are working-class people maligned by those corporatist banking elites that they vote for. That conservativism is then exploited by highlighting "crazy liberals" in a particular movement. Gotcha. That's totally fair and reasonable on all of your parts. For fucks sake. It's like when you go into conservative circles and any connection between capitalism and racism is dismissed as ridiculous. Or any claims of sexism in the West are dismissed on the grounds that women can vote. It's just an extremist emotional response based on a distaste for the words that are used, rather than attempting to understand the underlying argument. "You said racism! I'm not racist, so racism has got nothing to do with the economic systems that I love! Your argument is invalid!" "You said feminism! I'm not sexist, there's all these negative connotations with sexism that don't apply to me, so your arguments are invalid!" "You said SJW! SJW is an evil phrase, you can't be taken seriously, boo!" "You're against immigration and want to preserve traditions of a particular ethnicity? You're xenophobic racists and nazis!" It's all just trigger words/phrases you can use in specific communities that just make people go REEEE and as a consequence they will dismiss any argument you make beyond that. I get called a nazi by some of these progressives. I get called a SJW by some of those conservatives. When I used that phrase, I was merely coming at the situation from the perspective of the conservative and neoliberal centrists who dismissed Occupy Wallstreet based on the grounds of that extremist progressive faction with in that group who probably made some ridiculous demands or utter some outrageous sentences based on gender or ethnicity. Which is like dismissing the problems of mass global migration enabled by globalist neoliberalism based on the fact that "a bunch of racist people on the right" are opposed to it. Fuck, I hate you people so much for your idiotic responses and dismissals. I don't know why I bother to explain anything. Just keep living on in your little bubbles. You'll find out the hard way eventually when some neo-fascist politician on the right inevitably takes power and uses the surveillance state to round up your poorer family members or your kids' poorer friends, assuming you don't have sufficient wealth to live exclusively in a gated community. | ||
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xM(Z
Romania5296 Posts
like: "There was an education in imperial schools to shape the ruled into patterns of proper subservience and 'legitimate' inferiority, and one in turn to develop in the rulers convictions about the certain benevolence and 'legitimate' superiority of their rule. Imperial education was very much about establishing the presence and absence of confidence in those controlling and those controlled. Once colonial territories were established this process began in classrooms, and arguably more effectively on playing fields. Here imperial confidence, and lack of it, was as often as not a matter of purposeful image construction." ... A large part of imperial image construction was concerned with the creation of positive and negative stereotypes. These stereotypes existed to manipulate reality in order to reflect imperial values, ambitions and priorities and to promote them as proper, necessary and constructive: imperialism required a carefully crafted image of the colonizer and colonized. Image creation has a crucial place in the dialectics exalting the colonizer and humbling the colonized. The created image was a rationalization without which the presence of the colonizer was inexplicable. | ||
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
On January 09 2019 08:06 Nyxisto wrote: But nobody seriously argues that China is freer than the West, only that it has seen a significant amount of progress since its opening up to the world under Deng, and that the placement of correct institutions, in SEZs, was a condition for prosperity, rather than somehow bought retroactively. Also on more related European news, good article on what's wrong with the yellow vest movement: https://newrepublic.com/article/152853/ugly-illiberal-anti-semitic-heart-yellow-vest-movement On January 10 2019 04:30 Nyxisto wrote: Because it's a pretty solid argument. There is no good reason to support a movement that aligns itself with antisemites or conspiracy theorists. And more generally as the tone in much of the comments was similar, the yellow vest 'movement' isn't really a movement. It's a mob that sets cars on fire with a good dose of general violence. There is no program to this or any sort of political framework. It's rioting for the sake of being upset. And that shouldn't fly at all. There is no answer to serious political questions in this movement. The tax on fuel is necessary to price in the environmental hazard of fuel consumption, it is necessary if we want to address climate change. Just giving handouts or pushing down the retirement age is unfeasible and comes at the cost of future generations. Macron's reforms are unpopular but address real problems, the yellow vest protesters don't even pretend to have a coherent political program. And what is particularly ridiculous is this narrative about this movement being somehow for the poor. Middle class people protesting a fuel tax rise aren't the poor, the poor people are living in the Banlieues and don't have a car. There's surprisingly few minorities or women at all. It's very French in so far as political violence in France usually comes from an already quite privileged, unionised middle class rather than well, people who are actually destitute, which are mostly sidelined by the political system. There's a reason the yellow vest movement has found an unlikely media ally: Fox news pundits and American white suburbia. OK, it's really time I start posting again about the yellow vests, because reading nonsense like this made my eyes bleed. It's almost fascinating, every sentence shows that you don't understand at all what's going on. It's really infuriating, I don't know what crap you read to have it so wrong. Actually, I do with this piece of article you posted, whose stupidity is mindblowing: yes there are various trash far-right groups who jumped on the boat, no they don't lead it at all, they're totally marginal. End of the story. Please don't post again on the French situation without getting valuable intel first, seriously. "There's surprisingly few women" when literally every French media has underlined how many women there are in the movement, LOL. "Quite privileged, unionised middle class" — oh my aching sides, can you be more wrong? You can literally reverse every word to approach the truth, the movement comes from people who are not in unions, and they're so "privileged" that most of them struggle to make the ends meet each month. | ||
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iamthedave
England2814 Posts
On January 10 2019 08:47 abmhm wrote: *A bunch of half-coherent nonsense* You could have simply stopped using three letters that signal to anyone with a brain that the person speaking is an idiot instead of going on to behave exactly like people who non-ironically use those letters do. I mean, did any of us force you to make that crack about pink drones? We're not dismissing your walls of text because you used three letters, we're doing it because it's rubbish. I can tell you think you're very well informed, but you're not demonstrating it. You sound like a guy who wears a board and screams at the sky. If you've got a specific point, make it, don't vomit out half a dozen half-formed points at once and ping pong around. Like, even your point about Macron and the 'systems of power' is half-formed. Everyone knows he got in not because everyone wanted Macron but because nobody wanted Le Pen. His election really doesn't lend itself well to analyses of the structures of power underlying French politics. | ||
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PoulsenB
Poland7712 Posts
On January 10 2019 19:29 iamthedave wrote: You could have simply stopped using three letters that signal to anyone with a brain that the person speaking is an idiot instead of going on to behave exactly like people who non-ironically use those letters do. I mean, did any of us force you to make that crack about pink drones? We're not dismissing your walls of text because you used three letters, we're doing it because it's rubbish. I can tell you think you're very well informed, but you're not demonstrating it. You sound like a guy who wears a board and screams at the sky. If you've got a specific point, make it, don't vomit out half a dozen half-formed points at once and ping pong around. Like, even your point about Macron and the 'systems of power' is half-formed. Everyone knows he got in not because everyone wanted Macron but because nobody wanted Le Pen. His election really doesn't lend itself well to analyses of the structures of power underlying French politics. A political system where you don't vote for someone, but against someone is fundamentally broken, being nothing more than another version of the old "divide and conquer" theme.. Marcon/LePen situation is the same as we have in Poland with PiS (Kaczynski's party) and their opponents; when the majority of the political scene is preoccupied with "we can't let them to be (re)elected because they're LITERALLY HITLER", any movement or political party that doesn't want to take part in this, will be marginalized by the mainstream voters and media. This leads to polarization within nations and an escalation of mutual hostility beween the supporters of the two camps, as can be seen in Poland, or the USA (which is probably the most glaring example of this trend). In such a system an ordinary citizen loses regardless of who gets elected, because instead of getting shit done by introducing good policy, the ruling party is focused on making sure their opponents become horrible boogey men in the eyes of their core voters; this also makes unaligned voters less likely to vote, because when you have a choice between shit and vomit for dinner, you'll most likely decide to not eat anything at all, and voting for "third parties" seems pointless because is such a system they'll never gather enough support to actually matter (being seen/portayed by the media as silly weirdos or dangerous extremists). Marcon maybe won the election, but as we can see now he's a shit ruler governing over an increasingly shit system. No wonder the working people finally get pissed and take to the streets. | ||
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Sent.
Poland9252 Posts
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Archeon
3260 Posts
On January 10 2019 08:07 Big J wrote: Quote from her wikipedia entry. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annegret_Kramp-Karrenbauer#Gleichgeschlechtliche_Ehe And you are definitely right, AKK is not part of the government. I thought she had been chancellery minister since Altmaier took over economics, but I must have mixed that up with her taking over the post of CDU general secretary at a similar time. I just read the article where that precise formulation comes from (Zeit, a German newspaper magazine) and she says that "tampering with the old, clearly defined model and softening up that definition might open the door for calls for other changes, f.e. the legalization of polygamic marriage or legalization of incest." While it's true that her analogy is stupid, her position is that going one step in undermining the definition might lead to worse, which is a typical conservative hardliner position about pretty much everything they dislike. Her chain of arguments is like the people arguing that legalization of soft drugs might lead eventually to the legalization of hard drugs. So saying that she said that gay marriage is like incest is clearly wrong. Zeit was seriously stretching when they made that comparison and the fact that her political rivals used it tells a lot about culture of discussion in Germany. Btw I disagree with her position, "definitions need to be clear cut or they will soften up" is just a way of saying "people can't make decisions on their own". Also I don't really get why people want to marry in the first place, but if it makes two people happy without hurting anyone why wouldn't we allow it? | ||
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