4 ms·

The humorous part to me is when folks talk badly about 'antifa' they either forget or gloss over what the 'fa' means in antifa.

by gortok 2y ago

kristopolous 2y ago
they've redefined it as "first amendment". Also they've convinced themselves that hypernationalistic fascism was somehow a project of the leftists the fascists rounded up and slaughtered. It's the same mechanism of imagining an enemy causing the negative consequences of the policies they advocate for. It's actually the core thing that connects tech startups, conspiracy theories, medical quackery, and fascism - a desire to be guided by the imaginary and construct necessary delusions to deny reality. Wildest thing is, every now and then, it works out - the most delusional Bitcoin people of 2010 are genuinely billionaires now. Most of the richest people had to deeply believe in what was, at some time, an irrational fantasy and that taking inadvisable acts of insanity would somehow work out.
- yellowapple 2y ago
  > the most delusional Bitcoin people of 2010 are genuinely billionaires now. It seems a bit odd to call them delusional while in the same breath admitting that they were right all along.
  - kristopolous 2y ago
    Both are true. The world is complicated. You can go to the old Bitcointalk forum. Some people stocked up, for instance, because they thought the American dollar and civilization would collapse in 2012 due to the supposed Mayan apocalypse. Some bought feverishly in 2016 predicting a communist takeover by Hilary Clinton... There's many dumb reasons people bought and held. Think back about what investments you could have done to maximize your income - you'll invariably come up with things like "I should have put my life savings into Tesla before they delivered they're first car instead of $100. Then I should have held on regardless" or "I should have trusted that Steve Jobs returning to Apple after failing at Next was going to be a legendary turnaround by combining his failed NextStation into a new operating system. Then he'll come out with Apple Newton 2.0 and it will make them one of the most powerful companies in the world" If I had told you in say, 2004, to take all the high end CRTs being tossed out en masse, put them in a huge barn in the desert and then sell them for thousands each in 20 years, you'd call me nuts. These are all absurd things that happened. You can be a stupid fool and still hit it right sometimes.
    - nl 2y ago
      A surprising (?) number of medium-term Bitcoin HODL'ers held because they lost access to their holding during an exchange collapse (Mt Gox etc) and then regained access because of government action. The irony is poetic.
    - yellowapple 2y ago
      > There's many dumb reasons people bought and held. True, but you can readily point to the things they were actually dumb about. Most people, I'd argue, had the simpler reason of "I'm willing to bet this will grow in value over the long term, given that it's finite and it has some advantages over normal money" - and those people ended up being very, very right. Likewise, even in those "absurd" examples you bring up, there would have been entirely rational reasons to believe them, like - "Fossil fuels are unsustainable so the automotive market will start to shift toward electric cars; I should invest in electric car companies, even early-stage ones", or - "I think Unix is the operating system of the future, and Apple taking Unix mainstream by rebranding NeXT will give Microsoft a run for their money", or - "These CRTs are obsolete, but so are vinyl records and some crazy audiophiles still pay big bucks for those decades later, so maybe I shouldn't be so quick to toss these out" Even without the benefit of hindsight, those seemingly-crazy bets could have been - and probably were - predicted via entirely rational and intelligent thought processes. Those rational people likely didn't put all their eggs in any one of those baskets, but they didn't do so for Bitcoin, either, and still ended up rich.
      - kristopolous 2y ago
        No it's not. There's dozens of companies where this didn't work out at all. Plenty that were terrible bets. Crypto currency wasn't a new thing. There has been digital currencies going back decades. They had all failed and become worthless. Looking at the these ones that became valuable and chin stroking with a monocle is silly. You can rationalize anything but that's really just imagined story telling. It's all fundamentally irrational. Wise people don't get on top, it's blustering audacious gamblers and those of fortuitous delusion. You combine that together and you could everybody from SBF, to WeWork, to Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes. This is far more predictive of future events than writing stories after the fact and convincing yourself that everything is sensible
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
exoverito 2y ago
Probably not as humorous as this: https://i.redd.it/000igemozcl61.jpg https://i.redd.it/000igemozcl61.jpg The Berlin Wall was officially called the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart". Russia claims they are fighting in Ukraine to denazify their regime. North Korea is called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. A bit naive to take these self-appointed labels at face value.
- kristopolous 2y ago
  Sure but gay rights activists were sincere about gay rights. AIDS activists like Act Up were genuine about the threat of AIDS. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the civil rights movement were genuinely students committed to nonviolence. The suffragists genuinely wanted woman's suffrage. But for anti-fascists, we have jpeg memes calling them fools. Just like how racists dismissed the civil rights movement, homophobes dismissed gay marriage, people against women voting dismissed suffragists, and people made jokes about AIDS in the 80s, people who dismiss anti fascists are probably... well... We'd all like to imagine we're August Landmesser - especially those who were driving around with American flag bumper stickers during things like Abu ghraib. The ones who are most fervent about saluting also swear they'd never be heiling. Sure. Right. Nobody ever thinks they're the bastard.
  - Levitz 2y ago
    >But for anti-fascists, we have jpeg memes calling them fools. Yes, because "fascist" is possibly one of the most abused words in our political landscape. If a group showed up from the right promising to beat up "commies" I don't think people would be too keen on that either.
    - kristopolous 2y ago
      Not really. There are groups that self-describe as fascist such as National Alliance, American Vanguard or Patriot Front. National Vanguard has careful literature back to 1930s fascism. Search for "National Vanguard History of American National Socialism" it's a lengthy multipart series on why they think they are the true descendents of American fascism. There's also groups like Identity Evropa (now known as AIM) and the base. There's pro fascist gab, telegram, bitchute, rumble, and parler channels/groups. They make memes about how much they absolutely love fascism and are extremely open and explicit about it. I've lurked in these groups, gone to their meetings, I've got literature with titles like "why Hitler was right" and "fascism will fix it". But sure enough there's people who even look at this that are like "well well, people will call school hall monitors fascists" as if it can't actually exist. This is equivalent to hearing a school child call something gay and then concluding homosexuality couldn't possibly exist. I mean really now ... knock it off. People aren't that stupid. (I'm not anti-fascist btw, I'm just anti-bullshit. All the fascist logic I've heard happens to be bullshit but it's the BS I've got a problem with)
zahlman 2y ago
No, they don't. Highlighting the irony is a core aspect of the critique, in fact.

The humorous part to me is when folks talk badly about 'antifa' they either forget or gloss over what the 'fa' means in antifa.

by gortok 2y ago

The humorous part to me is when folks talk badly about 'antifa' they either forget or gloss over what the 'fa' means in antifa.

kristopolous 2y ago

they've redefined it as "first amendment". Also they've convinced themselves that hypernationalistic fascism was somehow a project of the leftists the fascists rounded up and slaughtered. It's the same mechanism of imagining an enemy causing the negative consequences of the policies they advocate for. It's actually the core thing that connects tech startups, conspiracy theories, medical quackery, and fascism - a desire to be guided by the imaginary and construct necessary delusions to deny reality. Wildest thing is, every now and then, it works out - the most delusional Bitcoin people of 2010 are genuinely billionaires now. Most of the richest people had to deeply believe in what was, at some time, an irrational fantasy and that taking inadvisable acts of insanity would somehow work out.

yellowapple 2y ago
> the most delusional Bitcoin people of 2010 are genuinely billionaires now. It seems a bit odd to call them delusional while in the same breath admitting that they were right all along.
- kristopolous 2y ago
  Both are true. The world is complicated. You can go to the old Bitcointalk forum. Some people stocked up, for instance, because they thought the American dollar and civilization would collapse in 2012 due to the supposed Mayan apocalypse. Some bought feverishly in 2016 predicting a communist takeover by Hilary Clinton... There's many dumb reasons people bought and held. Think back about what investments you could have done to maximize your income - you'll invariably come up with things like "I should have put my life savings into Tesla before they delivered they're first car instead of $100. Then I should have held on regardless" or "I should have trusted that Steve Jobs returning to Apple after failing at Next was going to be a legendary turnaround by combining his failed NextStation into a new operating system. Then he'll come out with Apple Newton 2.0 and it will make them one of the most powerful companies in the world" If I had told you in say, 2004, to take all the high end CRTs being tossed out en masse, put them in a huge barn in the desert and then sell them for thousands each in 20 years, you'd call me nuts. These are all absurd things that happened. You can be a stupid fool and still hit it right sometimes.
  - nl 2y ago
    A surprising (?) number of medium-term Bitcoin HODL'ers held because they lost access to their holding during an exchange collapse (Mt Gox etc) and then regained access because of government action. The irony is poetic.
  - yellowapple 2y ago
    > There's many dumb reasons people bought and held. True, but you can readily point to the things they were actually dumb about. Most people, I'd argue, had the simpler reason of "I'm willing to bet this will grow in value over the long term, given that it's finite and it has some advantages over normal money" - and those people ended up being very, very right. Likewise, even in those "absurd" examples you bring up, there would have been entirely rational reasons to believe them, like - "Fossil fuels are unsustainable so the automotive market will start to shift toward electric cars; I should invest in electric car companies, even early-stage ones", or - "I think Unix is the operating system of the future, and Apple taking Unix mainstream by rebranding NeXT will give Microsoft a run for their money", or - "These CRTs are obsolete, but so are vinyl records and some crazy audiophiles still pay big bucks for those decades later, so maybe I shouldn't be so quick to toss these out" Even without the benefit of hindsight, those seemingly-crazy bets could have been - and probably were - predicted via entirely rational and intelligent thought processes. Those rational people likely didn't put all their eggs in any one of those baskets, but they didn't do so for Bitcoin, either, and still ended up rich.
    - kristopolous 2y ago
      No it's not. There's dozens of companies where this didn't work out at all. Plenty that were terrible bets. Crypto currency wasn't a new thing. There has been digital currencies going back decades. They had all failed and become worthless. Looking at the these ones that became valuable and chin stroking with a monocle is silly. You can rationalize anything but that's really just imagined story telling. It's all fundamentally irrational. Wise people don't get on top, it's blustering audacious gamblers and those of fortuitous delusion. You combine that together and you could everybody from SBF, to WeWork, to Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes. This is far more predictive of future events than writing stories after the fact and convincing yourself that everything is sensible

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

exoverito 2y ago

Probably not as humorous as this: https://i.redd.it/000igemozcl61.jpg https://i.redd.it/000igemozcl61.jpg The Berlin Wall was officially called the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart". Russia claims they are fighting in Ukraine to denazify their regime. North Korea is called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. A bit naive to take these self-appointed labels at face value.

kristopolous 2y ago
Sure but gay rights activists were sincere about gay rights. AIDS activists like Act Up were genuine about the threat of AIDS. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the civil rights movement were genuinely students committed to nonviolence. The suffragists genuinely wanted woman's suffrage. But for anti-fascists, we have jpeg memes calling them fools. Just like how racists dismissed the civil rights movement, homophobes dismissed gay marriage, people against women voting dismissed suffragists, and people made jokes about AIDS in the 80s, people who dismiss anti fascists are probably... well... We'd all like to imagine we're August Landmesser - especially those who were driving around with American flag bumper stickers during things like Abu ghraib. The ones who are most fervent about saluting also swear they'd never be heiling. Sure. Right. Nobody ever thinks they're the bastard.
- Levitz 2y ago
  >But for anti-fascists, we have jpeg memes calling them fools. Yes, because "fascist" is possibly one of the most abused words in our political landscape. If a group showed up from the right promising to beat up "commies" I don't think people would be too keen on that either.
  - kristopolous 2y ago
    Not really. There are groups that self-describe as fascist such as National Alliance, American Vanguard or Patriot Front. National Vanguard has careful literature back to 1930s fascism. Search for "National Vanguard History of American National Socialism" it's a lengthy multipart series on why they think they are the true descendents of American fascism. There's also groups like Identity Evropa (now known as AIM) and the base. There's pro fascist gab, telegram, bitchute, rumble, and parler channels/groups. They make memes about how much they absolutely love fascism and are extremely open and explicit about it. I've lurked in these groups, gone to their meetings, I've got literature with titles like "why Hitler was right" and "fascism will fix it". But sure enough there's people who even look at this that are like "well well, people will call school hall monitors fascists" as if it can't actually exist. This is equivalent to hearing a school child call something gay and then concluding homosexuality couldn't possibly exist. I mean really now ... knock it off. People aren't that stupid. (I'm not anti-fascist btw, I'm just anti-bullshit. All the fascist logic I've heard happens to be bullshit but it's the BS I've got a problem with)

zahlman 2y ago

No, they don't. Highlighting the irony is a core aspect of the critique, in fact.