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That's fine and good. What happens when its a whole bunch of "traditionalists" (read: white supremacists) espousing the following views: 1. Xenophobia

That's fine and good. What happens when its a whole bunch of "traditionalists" (read: white supremacists) espousing the following views: 1. Xenophobia 2. Hyper-nationalistic 3. militarism 4. Glorification of violence and readiness to use it 5. Fetishization of masculinity 6. Leader cult 7. Lost-golden-age syndrome 8. Hierarchical party structure and tendency to purge the disloyal And when you look at the numbers, the majority of the people are apathetic and disempowered. And those that despise this go against those whom support it by voting or participation? Sometimes, a direct and harsh response is needed to preserve our institutions.

busterarm 8y ago
I hate to say that I don't buy it here, but popular sovereignty (and its close cousin, social contract) is a core belief of liberal democracy. Literally "the will of the people". The people deserve the state they vote for, nothing more, nothing less. If you try to maintain the institutions over the mechanisms that guarantee those institutions, you'll find that those institutions will slip away from you anyway. You risk turning into the very thing you're fighting. As someone who views themselves as more in the center, this is exactly how I see mainstream left politics going right now. "The concept of popular sovereignty holds simply that in a society organized for political action, the will of the people as a whole is the only right standard of political action"[1] [1]:https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Massachusetts_Constitution_of_1780.html?id=ZLHT4V6sFa4C https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Massachusetts_Const...
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  And the idea of fascism is newer than 1780, as you quoted. Not to mention, grassroots campaigning of this ideology across the internet is also rather new. And summoning up the specters of fascism isn't a scare tactic. It's what happened last year in Charlottesville. White supremacists of all types had a big march. Even killed a counter-protester. Maybe you saw it? We even had a neofascist group do a march here in my local city. And right now, there's flyers espousing the "goodness" of fascism. You can argue all you want from people from 300 years ago. I know if these people get say-so in government, I and my friends will lose rights, become disenfranchised, and possibly murdered. They say precisely that. So yeah, I do have a rather strong claim to not want fascists to take hold.
  - samueldavid 8y ago
    is communist antifa any better?
  - busterarm 8y ago
    If the ideological root of your governance cannot withstand a newer competing ideology without its compromise, then at face value your ideological system is 1) flawed, 2) deserves to die, and 3) will inevitably die; with haste. I do not believe this to be true and representative democracy managed to survive the larger half of a century with opposition from fascism, socialism, communism, autocracy, modern dictatorship and Orwellian totalitarianism. I think this trend will continue but it seems that you do not. Keep in mind that a full third of the English language comes from German. In the 20s & early 30s, one of the largest and most financially/socially successful groups of immigrants in the US & UK were German. Germany and Fascism were politically very popular here and openly supported until (and on the US side, part-way through) WWII. Even under those circumstances, it was politically untenable. This is even more true now.
busterarm 8y ago
As an aside, you're painting with some pretty broad brushes here labelling all of those people as white supremacists. There is certainly some overlap there, but the numbers of white supremacists are small and the numbers of people with an affinity for some of those listed is much larger and not exclusively white (or male). And in the case of most of that list, not even exclusively right-wing.
- tptacek 8y ago
  What makes you think the number of white supremacists is small? The definition of "white supremacist" isn't "stupid looking shield in one hand and tiki torch in the other". Everybody who believes that African Americans are on average less intelligent than "white" people is, prima facie, a white supremacist; that's what the term means. There's been an effort (online) in the last year to shift the semantics of the term, so that "white supremacists" might refer exclusively to performative white supremacists. That's pretty Orwellian, and there's no evidence it's catching on. I don't see a reason to dignify the effort. The term means what it obviously means.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    You actually missed one half of the definition. Like, the accepted definition. The part that adds ", and that white people should be dominant over other races". No, there aren't really many people that believe that anymore, to the point that it's enshrined in our law. For longer than you've been alive, even. Being a bigot does not de facto make you a white supremacist. The term itself is _extremely_ loaded and automatically implies certain forms of political action. It's starting to get really difficult to take you seriously anymore, guy. Though I guess that's what I should expect from someone who embraces being a sockpuppet.
    - dang 8y ago
      Personal attacks will get you banned here. We've already had to warn you about breaking the site guidelines; please don't keep doing it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
nostrademons 8y ago
Then they end up marginalizing themselves economically and diplomatically. If they take to violence, then liberal democracies should feel free to meet force with force. But not until then - if you believe in classical liberalism, you should not be willing to throw the first punch, nor to compromise principles out of fear. If you adopt traditional tribal/nationalist mentalities out of fear of those who already follow them, then you've already lost, while if you make clear what you stand for and live it, you're at least fighting for what you believe in.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  > Then they end up marginalizing themselves economically and diplomatically. If they take to violence, then liberal democracies should feel free to meet force with force. But not until then - if you believe in classical liberalism, you should not be willing to throw the first punch, nor to compromise principles out of fear. And I do tentatively agree with you. However, there's a whole loaded meaning of " If they take to violence".. How much violence? Speech can be violence, no? Screaming "nigger" at black people is in horrible taste, but is questionable if its a crime. Allegedly murdering people, like what was reported to happened the Charlottesville rally - is that violence enough? What happens when their websites state they would demonize, illegalize, and murder people if they got power? How much violence needs happened before the "arbiters" of liberal democracies stand with their pitchforks? > If you adopt traditional tribal/nationalist mentalities out of fear of those who already follow them, then you've already lost, while if you make clear what you stand for and live it, you're at least fighting for what you believe in. I'm for open-ish borders, as long as people are fingerprinted/faceprinted and announce whom they are on coming in. I don't care if you were a criminal in your original country, as it could have been made up for countless reasons. Frankly, I enjoy diversity. I live in a diverse area for the region, and I would like it moreso, but this is what we have now. My grievances are with people espousing views to harshly remove immigrants, treat them worse than animals, de-humanize them, and go to lengths to actually murder them. You can say I "already lost"... Lost is having that group that would do us innumerable harm in control.
  - nostrademons 8y ago

busterarm 8y ago

I hate to say that I don't buy it here, but popular sovereignty (and its close cousin, social contract) is a core belief of liberal democracy. Literally "the will of the people". The people deserve the state they vote for, nothing more, nothing less. If you try to maintain the institutions over the mechanisms that guarantee those institutions, you'll find that those institutions will slip away from you anyway. You risk turning into the very thing you're fighting. As someone who views themselves as more in the center, this is exactly how I see mainstream left politics going right now. "The concept of popular sovereignty holds simply that in a society organized for political action, the will of the people as a whole is the only right standard of political action"[1] [1]:https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Massachusetts_Constitution_of_1780.html?id=ZLHT4V6sFa4C https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Massachusetts_Const...

crankylinuxuser 8y ago
And the idea of fascism is newer than 1780, as you quoted. Not to mention, grassroots campaigning of this ideology across the internet is also rather new. And summoning up the specters of fascism isn't a scare tactic. It's what happened last year in Charlottesville. White supremacists of all types had a big march. Even killed a counter-protester. Maybe you saw it? We even had a neofascist group do a march here in my local city. And right now, there's flyers espousing the "goodness" of fascism. You can argue all you want from people from 300 years ago. I know if these people get say-so in government, I and my friends will lose rights, become disenfranchised, and possibly murdered. They say precisely that. So yeah, I do have a rather strong claim to not want fascists to take hold.
- samueldavid 8y ago
  is communist antifa any better?
- busterarm 8y ago
  If the ideological root of your governance cannot withstand a newer competing ideology without its compromise, then at face value your ideological system is 1) flawed, 2) deserves to die, and 3) will inevitably die; with haste. I do not believe this to be true and representative democracy managed to survive the larger half of a century with opposition from fascism, socialism, communism, autocracy, modern dictatorship and Orwellian totalitarianism. I think this trend will continue but it seems that you do not. Keep in mind that a full third of the English language comes from German. In the 20s & early 30s, one of the largest and most financially/socially successful groups of immigrants in the US & UK were German. Germany and Fascism were politically very popular here and openly supported until (and on the US side, part-way through) WWII. Even under those circumstances, it was politically untenable. This is even more true now.

busterarm 8y ago

As an aside, you're painting with some pretty broad brushes here labelling all of those people as white supremacists. There is certainly some overlap there, but the numbers of white supremacists are small and the numbers of people with an affinity for some of those listed is much larger and not exclusively white (or male). And in the case of most of that list, not even exclusively right-wing.

tptacek 8y ago
What makes you think the number of white supremacists is small? The definition of "white supremacist" isn't "stupid looking shield in one hand and tiki torch in the other". Everybody who believes that African Americans are on average less intelligent than "white" people is, prima facie, a white supremacist; that's what the term means. There's been an effort (online) in the last year to shift the semantics of the term, so that "white supremacists" might refer exclusively to performative white supremacists. That's pretty Orwellian, and there's no evidence it's catching on. I don't see a reason to dignify the effort. The term means what it obviously means.
- busterarm 8y ago
  You actually missed one half of the definition. Like, the accepted definition. The part that adds ", and that white people should be dominant over other races". No, there aren't really many people that believe that anymore, to the point that it's enshrined in our law. For longer than you've been alive, even. Being a bigot does not de facto make you a white supremacist. The term itself is _extremely_ loaded and automatically implies certain forms of political action. It's starting to get really difficult to take you seriously anymore, guy. Though I guess that's what I should expect from someone who embraces being a sockpuppet.
  - dang 8y ago
    Personal attacks will get you banned here. We've already had to warn you about breaking the site guidelines; please don't keep doing it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

nostrademons 8y ago

Then they end up marginalizing themselves economically and diplomatically. If they take to violence, then liberal democracies should feel free to meet force with force. But not until then - if you believe in classical liberalism, you should not be willing to throw the first punch, nor to compromise principles out of fear. If you adopt traditional tribal/nationalist mentalities out of fear of those who already follow them, then you've already lost, while if you make clear what you stand for and live it, you're at least fighting for what you believe in.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago
> Then they end up marginalizing themselves economically and diplomatically. If they take to violence, then liberal democracies should feel free to meet force with force. But not until then - if you believe in classical liberalism, you should not be willing to throw the first punch, nor to compromise principles out of fear. And I do tentatively agree with you. However, there's a whole loaded meaning of " If they take to violence".. How much violence? Speech can be violence, no? Screaming "nigger" at black people is in horrible taste, but is questionable if its a crime. Allegedly murdering people, like what was reported to happened the Charlottesville rally - is that violence enough? What happens when their websites state they would demonize, illegalize, and murder people if they got power? How much violence needs happened before the "arbiters" of liberal democracies stand with their pitchforks? > If you adopt traditional tribal/nationalist mentalities out of fear of those who already follow them, then you've already lost, while if you make clear what you stand for and live it, you're at least fighting for what you believe in. I'm for open-ish borders, as long as people are fingerprinted/faceprinted and announce whom they are on coming in. I don't care if you were a criminal in your original country, as it could have been made up for countless reasons. Frankly, I enjoy diversity. I live in a diverse area for the region, and I would like it moreso, but this is what we have now. My grievances are with people espousing views to harshly remove immigrants, treat them worse than animals, de-humanize them, and go to lengths to actually murder them. You can say I "already lost"... Lost is having that group that would do us innumerable harm in control.
- nostrademons 8y ago