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A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked, but especially fucked in a democracy. Democracy is literally legitimization of force against the minority,

A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked, but especially fucked in a democracy. Democracy is literally legitimization of force against the minority, by virtue of vote. Even the constitution, which supposedly protects minority rights, can be amended to remove those rights by a prejudiced majority. IMO the prejudiced minority has the best chance when they can make it as painful as possible for the majority to harm them. That is, to disable the state's law as much as possible from being wielded against non-aggressor minorities. >How does this work when one is a minority in a prejudiced society? In practice in places like Northern Syria, which much of is essentially devoid of strong government, Syriac Christians banded together with machine guns and literally kill anyone who comes to aggress against them. Sure, Assad / the Kurds (who are their allies) / other majority around them could fuck them up if they like, but it's not worth the trouble.

davidgay 4y ago
> A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked, but especially fucked in a democracy. The history of genocides and ethnic cleansing, plenty of which happened historically and recently outside democracies, disagrees.
- notch656a 4y ago
  No one is disagreeing that governments are the biggest perpetuator of killing in the past 100 years. Government is responsible for far more killing than by non-government actors. Using your interesting logic, one would disagree with the existence of government if one were trying to minimize these deaths. Is this your argument in support of anarchism?
  - incompatible 4y ago
    There are complaints that an anarchist society wouldn't be perfect, as though any perfection can be found in any of the well-over 100 governments run on the principle of capitalism plus government authority. Not even the capitalist ideal is respected (freedom to use your private property however you like), since it would cause so many problems in practice.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  The history of the supposed poster child of "democracy" w.r.t. its handling of the native peoples inhabiting its territory disagrees with your disagreement.

davidgay 4y ago

> A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked, but especially fucked in a democracy. The history of genocides and ethnic cleansing, plenty of which happened historically and recently outside democracies, disagrees.

notch656a 4y ago
No one is disagreeing that governments are the biggest perpetuator of killing in the past 100 years. Government is responsible for far more killing than by non-government actors. Using your interesting logic, one would disagree with the existence of government if one were trying to minimize these deaths. Is this your argument in support of anarchism?
- incompatible 4y ago
  There are complaints that an anarchist society wouldn't be perfect, as though any perfection can be found in any of the well-over 100 governments run on the principle of capitalism plus government authority. Not even the capitalist ideal is respected (freedom to use your private property however you like), since it would cause so many problems in practice.
yellowapple 4y ago
The history of the supposed poster child of "democracy" w.r.t. its handling of the native peoples inhabiting its territory disagrees with your disagreement.