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I don't know how a country filled with guns can survive the normalization of calling people you disagree with Nazi, Fascist, etc. We've all been taught since gr
by quitspamming 1y ago
I don't know how a country filled with guns can survive the normalization of calling people you disagree with Nazi, Fascist, etc. We've all been taught since grade school it was a good thing to kill Nazis, even in small percentages there are mentally unstable people who will hear you call someone a Fascist and take the logical step from "it's good to kill nazis" to "they're a nazi so I should kill them". I am both very pro freedom of speech and right to bear arms, and I think where Canada and the UK have gone with hate speech laws are too far, but I don't know how you solve this.
- crooked-v 1y ago[flagged]
- bdhe 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lenkite 1y agoAren't they being very non-racist ? AFAIK all illegal immigrants get deported - brown or yellow or whatever. Why have immigration laws if they are not enforced ? If there should be 100% open entry & benefits to the US, then Congress should first abrogate those laws, right ? It seems in the recent past, I beg your pardon - only suckers - entered the legal way with documentation.
- nsriv 1y agoWho do you think gets stopped to meet quotas?
- lenkite 1y agoNah - ICE under the Trump administration has deported dozens of Irish folks who have overstayed in the US, even folks from Germany and UK. There have already been famous cases like Cliona Ward from Dublin. Lot of whites kept in solitary confinement. You can accuse the agency of authoritarianism but not racism. They are going after everyone illegally in the US.
- shmoe 1y agoBecause if you're racially profiling, you probably aren't tossing out the white immigrants. You may, in fact, revive the Office of Refugee and Resettlement for the creators of South American Apartheid instead.
- lenkite 1y agoLOTS of white illegal immigrants have been tossed out. It doesn't really make the news though.
- typpilol 1y ago[flagged]
- runjake 1y ago> What is a better way to describe their unprecedented actions in this country? I think you have the concepts of fascist and authoritarian confused.
- pjc50 1y ago[flagged]
- quitspamming 1y agoIt's interesting that you don't think I'm talking about both sides. Rush Limbaugh used to call women he disagreed with feminazis. The "tea party" under Obama used to call everything communist and fascist.
- nilamo 1y ago[flagged]
- michaelmcdonald 1y ago[flagged]
- bcrosby95 1y agoI'm old enough to remember Fox News hosts playing B-roll of Nazi footage while discussing Obama back in 2008.
- drak0n1c 1y agoI'm old enough to recall MSNBC in 2011 cropping video footage of an Obama townhall protestor to only show his long-sleeve shirted back with slung open-carry rifle. They used it to immediately launch into a pundit discussion claiming that the protestors were motivated by racial animus. Turned out the protestor was black. News manipulating footage to cast aspersions to historical boogeymen is routine. All it takes is one pundit mentioning an imagined similarity to play the edited B-roll.
- oceanplexian 1y ago> I don't know how a country filled with guns can survive the normalization of calling people you disagree with Nazi, Fascist, etc. The same way it did for the last 250 years as the world's oldest Democracy. By respecting and upholding our Constitution, especially the 1st and 2nd Amendments.
- fabrice_d 1y ago[flagged]
- mothballed 1y agoNo one shot the Skokie march Nazis and they literally showed up at a Jewish dominated town at a time when there weren't even background checks for guns. The ACLU even defended them in court, which is unthinkable that they would stand on their principles and do that today. There's just less tolerance for discussing or exhibiting "extreme" or highly unpopular opinions, nowadays, it seems. Although, I could definitely be wrong -- people like MLK were shot for doing same long ago.
- magicalist 1y ago> Although, I could definitely be wrong -- people like MLK were shot for doing same long ago. I mean, you're almost there realizing the recency bias. The 1970s, when the Skokie Affair occurred, were arguably the high point for political violence in the post-WWII US.
- tokioyoyo 1y agoI generally agree with you, but wouldn’t lump Canada into this rhetoric. Its hate speech laws are fairly balanced, if I’ll be honest. It’s going to sound absurd, but right now, USA’s global image is a very good counter-ad towards “complete” freedom of speech.
- all2 1y agoWe are an excellent example of what happens when the Hegelian Dialectic is applied successfully by the small minority. We are also an example when a people becomes completely divorced from their cultural and religious heritage. Without a moral anchor, we are a people cast adrift, lost in confusion, calling evil good and good evil, all trying to do our own thing and benefit ourselves, consumed by greed, by self-interest. Freedom of speech, or lack there-of, plays no role in what is happening in the United States. This country and its founding charters were written for a moral people. That the country is byzantine, crumbling, has more to do with a people who have lost their way than it has to do with this-or-that law that the government no longer heeds.
- kanbara 1y agoamerica is not a country founded on a religious heritage. and regardless of what you may think of the beginnings of the country, it very quickly became a country of immigrants. there is no religion that should be placed at the head of the country’s belief system. what moral anchor do you think we need?
- mothballed 1y agoClassical liberalism
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- billy99k 1y ago[flagged]
- OCASMv2 1y agoCalling people nazis and fascists nilly willy doesn't even count as hate speech...
- sharkjacobs 1y ago"Hate speech" isn't just hateful speech, it's a specific term with a specific meaning. Being a nazi isn't an inherent characteristic of a person, it's an affiliation or ideology that they consciously choose.
- xienze 1y ago[flagged]
- o11c 1y ago[flagged]
- bcrosby95 1y agoPlenty of people I know believe illegal immigrants should be deported. The difference between them and people accused of being a Nazi is they don't go around calling them all rapists and murderers. The problem isn't the claimed actions they want to take, its the dehumanization being resorted to.
- Affric 1y ago[flagged]
- wallopinski 1y ago[dead]
- dotnet00 1y ago[flagged]
- cpursley 1y ago[flagged]
- dotnet00 1y agoYou might be cooked, though I don't know about anyone else, as that's an extremely uncharitable reading of my words, considering that I said that his murder shouldn't be condoned
- camel_Snake 1y agothis is such a terribly bad-faith interpretation of the parent's comment to the point I'm assuming you replied to the wrong one?
- BobbyThrowaway 1y ago[flagged]
- superb_dev 1y ago[flagged]
- sojournerc 1y agoOften people get their impression of someone like Kirk without ever actually engaging with the content. Too many hot takes and not enough real engagement. "It's cool to hate this guy..? Ok I guess he must be evil." Painfully ironic given how open he was to debate.
- dotnet00 1y agoHas he ever changed his mind from those debates? Or does he always pretend to "win" them? I ask because for a while it was a common "right wing faux intellectual" thing (think Sargon of Akkad, Milo Yulianopolis etc) to go around asking to debate. Then to not actually do much factual debating or any learning of other perspectives, and claiming that the left is simply uncapable of civilized debate because they eventually just refuse to go along with the act.
- donmcronald 1y agoThis is it exactly. When I talk to people that watch a bunch of right-wing content I shut down political topics immediately. They never change their position and are convinced their point of view is the only point of view. If you concede there's more than one side to a topic they care about, they think they've "won" and it reinforces their belief they're right about everything. I consider myself to be a centrist. There are definitely things I like and don't like on both sides of the political spectrum. If someone gives me a solid logical argument for or against something, I'll either change my point of view or, more likely, end up with a better understanding of both perspectives. I'm only one person, but my experience is that people on the political left or center are willing to accept the fact there are often two sides to an issue and that everything needs to be a balance. Most people on the political right won't do that. It's really hard to argue against someone that never concedes anything especially if you're acting in good faith and acknowledge when they make a convincing argument for their point of view. > claiming that the left is simply uncapable of civilized debate because they eventually just refuse to go along with the act 1000%
- cthalupa 1y agoIt's not even a matter of calling people fascists or nazis - there's been plenty of violence towards the politicians on the opposite side of the aisle, too. Nancy Pelosi and her husband. Melissa Hortman, John and Yvette Hoffman earlier this year. If it was just a matter of people internalizing that killing fascists is fine and thus that calling people fascists is dangerous, then we would not see the same sort of violence being perpetrated against other politicians not getting the same label. Kirk himself suggested that a "real patriot who wanted to be a midterm hero" should bail out the man who nearly killed Pelosi's husband. The rhetoric around political violence in this country has been ratcheted up to an insane degree, with or without any accusations of fascism, and this will continue or get worse as long as that remains the case.
- nailer 1y agoHe then immediately said he was joking and this kind of violence was obviously awful. I don’t think it was funny, but it’s worth completing the quote.
- foofoo4u 1y ago“It’s good to kill Nazis” — this is certainly the prevailing sentiment in modern culture, reinforced by the vast number of books, stories, movies, and video games that support the premise. But something important is often overlooked in this view of righteousness: 1. People who believe they could never become Nazis are often the most unknowingly susceptible to it. 2. People who believe they can confidently identify a Nazi are often wrong — a mindset akin to witch hunts, where everyone is seen as a witch.
- antonymoose 1y agoI’ll throw my hat in on another comment on this thread - my last wasn’t well received but ask you take it honestly. Circa 2017 during then “punching Nazis” era of social discourse, I started a new job. The first week in I went for lunch with a Junior teammate and was told “violence against ‘Nazis’” is fine, it’s justified. I asked how. I was told, my brain is a part of the body, so if someone says something so stupid that it ‘hurts the brain,’ the speech is now assault, so counter-violence is justified. I, with hint of irony, told my new coworker that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard and asked if I should now assault them for hurting my brain… and was met with hostility. I don’t quite known I’m going with this exactly, but I feel folks are not giving the world around them an honest assessment, no matter their Ivy diploma. Politics isn’t a “gotcha game” and please stop tying to make it such.
- throwaway-11-1 1y ago[flagged]
- antonymoose 1y agoNothing you’re describing is happening.
- Cornbilly 1y agoSo all those videos of masked men with no ID grabbing people off of the street are just AI I guess?
- tdeck 1y agoDon't forget law firms that participated in cases Trump doesn't like have been bullied into doing hundreds of millions of dollars of pro bono work for the administration. And his supreme court just decided, with no explanation, that picking people off the street based on their perceived ethnicity is OK. And people are being deported to prisons in countries they've never visited, where they spend all day shackled with no prospect of a trial.
- tdeck 1y agoWhat do you think the definition of fascist is? Is it ever appropriate to apply that label to someone?
- dnissley 1y agoIt of course has a technical/historical definition but it's not used in that principled way by most people. Just like "neoliberal" this is a kind of buzzword that generates a particular emotional reaction for those on the left. Meaning people being labeled with them are not just bad but really bad.
- alickz 1y agoI suspect many of the people on social media who use the word fascism could not define it I think George Orwell was right when he said it has lost most of its meaning https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/e... >It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless >By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’.
- kaycey2022 1y agoIsn't the whole point of the MAGA, non woke right, not to tone police people? How are you going to stop people from abusing other who they don't agree with? That is the basics of free speech.
- engintl 1y agoGood point. I don't think we can avoid gun violence. Maybe a good improvement would be to incent basic education ? But I hate so much attacks on freedom from governments that will always choose freedom of speech.
- dutchCourage 1y agoYou could've stopped your sentence at "I don't know how a country filled with guns can survive." The main downside of abusing the words nazi and fascist is that it gives an out to the actual fascists out there. When it comes to gun violence, there are a lot more (self proclaimed) neo-nazis killing innocent people than people killing them.