There are some interesting interviews about the different points of view, but the bottom line is that the anti fascist movement is not liberal.
Honestly, itās about believing in the ideals of this country, which are worth believing in and fighting for. The fact that we donāt always live up to those ideals isnāt a reason to give up on them but rather an opportunity to do better.
Idealism is a privilege of those in more peaceful times. This is a war, whether or not progressives realize it, and the other side is willing and able to do anything to win. Tolerance and high minded moral dithering are useless in the face of actual fascism. We didnāt talk Hitler out of the Holocaust.
Iāll disagree that ideals are convenient things to be discarded when times get tough. Itās at those times when they are tested that it is most important to hold them clearly.
Think civil rights and non-violence.
The ideals of the Democratic party in America have lead to a cancerous weakness that has allowed the cruel, amoral tactics favored by Republicans to succeed again and again at enormous human cost. Being nice to them and playing fair is exactly what they want, and itās going to kill us all before much longer. Republicanism must be destroyed outright. If some of us must abandon righteousness to ensure the rest survive, so be it. Iām very comfortable with how history would judge my actions in that instance.
Civil rights was not just a non-violence movement. Thatās just BS they teach to high school students. You canāt reason with Nazis; theyāre Nazis. These are human beings who literally see other human beings as not worthy of life or not even as human.
Just giving you shit.
That and Iāve tried your suggestions. It got my life threatened. After several dozen such interactions I decided Iād rather pick and choose my battles with people worth bothering with. There are reasonable people out there. Thing is, theyāre not the alt-right fascist guys.
As I said, I was mostly joking, but there is a history of trying to work things out with fascists. They only respond to violence or threats of violence at the end of the day. Which is kind of a given when your ideology is literally murder millions of people.
Itās allā¦ complicated stuff, just thinking out loud hereā¦
TEXT WALL INCOMING BRACE FOR IMPACT
Jason is completely right that much of lingering racism in society has come down to patterns of alienation and mental health - however iām not sure about the particulars of exactly how this all plays out here. To some extent the alt-right is explained by the rise of āalternative mediaā thanks to the internet, where dubious facts are transmitted and accepted as true. This is analogous, but not the same, as the way the boomer generation passes around dubious facts are being true - they both see āliberalsā as being deluded and āfactually wrongā but the elder generation because growing up they saw the hippie generation destroy itself and still have a stereotype of ābleeding heart liberalsā that think with emotions instead of logic or science, while the younger, alt-right seem to believe in conspiratorial power frameworks. The alt-right however is different than conventional racist organizations like the KKK, the latter who increasingly appealed to the most ignorant, backward, and uneducated, in that the alt-right have a certain appeal among more āeducatedā nerdy classes. And so i donāt think mental health or social inequalities completely explains away the apparent rise in participation. In many ways the rise of the alt-right has more to do with the rise of āmale-onlyā spaces, like 4chan and (to a certain extent) Reddit, and āmale dominatedā alternative organizations, like the MRA movement and Anonymous. I canāt help but feel like part of this phenomenon is a reaction to the increasing prominance of women and womenās interests in social media and politics, and that the kind of racist personified by the alt right weāre seeing now is of the shit-eating grin kind, but that the danger he (and itās always he) poses is in giving intellectual justification for the commoner, run-of-the-mill racist who will in fact be happy to do all the horrible things they seem to want to give license to.
Ever since i got into Life is Strange (GOTYā) i began reading female dominated or mostly female social media communities as part of reading and learning about reactions to that game, and from there branched off into other directions. The one salient point that is different from ātypicalā male dominated content is how almost without exception social media made for and by women is positive, supportive, validating and encouraging. Like the old ditty about the range, womenās social media is a place where āseldom is heard a discouraging wordā. The hyper competitive, alpha-male jockeying, verbal sparring than mostly male places generally devolve into simply doesnāt happen in women-only spaces. Itās hard not to imagine there are some poignant inherent differences at a play here, but the relevant take-away is that ever since womenās social media has become prominent in young womenās lives, young women (and older women as well) have become increasingly vocal in their defense of women against the kinds of attacks men regularly inflict on each other. And this drives a certain kind of guy crazy, because verbally shitting on your opponents online is what men love to do. Women-driven ideologies like identity politics, safe spaces, asymmetric political laws (issues about consent is almost entirely female oriented, criminalization of soliciting prostitution while legally protecting the prostitute as in Sweden, divorce outcomes and the harsh application of child support enforcement, ect) give these guys both a cause and a place - a male dominated space gathering point online - where they can build up a head of steam and get more and more angry about all their perceived injustices. And even more so because, unlike their fellow complainers, women are immune to the kinds of arguments they employ because women will just leave when faced with those kinds of confrontations. Out of that frustration and self-reinforcing feedback loops comes the alt-right.
Arguably a fundamental difference between men and women online is that in general women possess a much larger share of emotional intelligence than the average guy and rely upon this intelligence to moderate behavior and responses. People should just know when something is right or wrong. Men, otoh, as can be seen both in our love of strategy games and our thousands years of history of writing laws, like to appeal to rules, to logic, ect. But of course men love nothing more than gaming the system, so in every law code you have hundreds or thousands of years of men passing laws, other men finding loopholes to get around those laws, and then other men passing new laws to close those loopholes, and then they find new ways around those, ect. For all the talk about law and order, in many ways men see rules as a kind of system to game, and while some take the laws as ethical guidelines others see them merely as obstacles to be overcome. Women, by and large, donāt care about rules if they lead to bad outcomes. So when guys are using laws protecting free speech to preach hate, and then smile like a turd muncher when called on it, women ask, āWhatās the point of free speech laws if they do nothing but protect the evildoers?ā.
Iām not sure the best way to āfixā the current rise of the alt-right. Maybe punching them leads to move violence, maybe not - literal Nazis are advocating killing millions of people at a minimum, after all. Iām not sure the kind of fellow that the alt-right appeals to arenāt self proclaimed ābeta cucksā that are just looking to use the system to bring the system down around itself in a fit of trololol spite.
However i think in the long term the solution is to integrate both emotional intelligence and legal logic into a framework of social order, where we canāt use the letter of the law to subvert the spirit of the law, nor let the spirit of the law be unfilled by the letter of the law, and where womenās especial take on society and politics - which is the future of human political society - have a larger proportion of representation.
Women saw Trump coming a thousand miles away, and they can see where he leads. Give women a real platform and listen to what they have to say, and we have the best chance of keeping racism, sexism, et all down.
Of course remembering that white women wound up supporting Trump more than not, so really, itās the WOC who might need to guide us out of this shit storm, since white women largely failed to save us from itā¦
Non-educated white women, although she didnāt win the white college educated by as much as I believe most thought she would.
I still say punch the Nazis, the literal Nazis. There is no place in this world for people like thatā¦ people who are literally okay with killing millions.
The problem comes when you start calling non-Nazis Nazis.
Sure, but I am not going by membership in the defunct Nazis party either as a definition. If someone believes in what the Nazis did and supports the monstrosities they committed, you canāt reason with someone like that. No amount of peaceful protest and non-violence education is going to make someone who thinks killing millions of people, men, women and children, in death camps for the crime of being who they areā¦ think otherwise.
I know American History X is one of those remarkable fictional pieces that makes people think otherwise but letās review what had to happen even in a fictional verse of that narrative, he murdered someone. Unless someone here wants to volunteer as a Nazisā next murder victim, I think the idea that you can have a narrative with these people is beyond wishful thinking; itās just not feasible enough for a political party to actively pursue. As for friends and family and community members, theyāre welcome to try.
No it wasnāt (see Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, etc.), however, the non - violent portion was far, far more effective (despite violent opposition) and was arguably the most important factor in the struggle.
Both were important. You need to have some sort of threat (which is often non-violent) for protest to be effective.
I will strongly disagree. This is what the government wants to push because what government is ever going to encourage violent protests against them? You cannot separate the violence from the non-violence and claim only the non-violence was responsible for change. Thatās wishful thinking, and it didnāt happen.
There has been a lot of focus on Bannon but not as much on the āother Steveā: Stephen Miller, who allegedly was the actual crafter of the immigration EO.
Iām not saying it didnāt have an impact (violent protest, or at least the threat of it) but rather that staying non - violent as the primary form was the most important factor.
Thereās been a lot of focus on him today because heās quintuple-downing on the āmillions of illegal votesā thing.
Also
āThe end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see, as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial, and will not be questioned.ā
And how do you prove that? What data points are you using to say that Malcom X, Nelson Mendela (yes he had impacts here), and the Black Panthers didnāt have a powerful impact on the movement and change? Hell people freaked the hell out when Beyonce paid a tribute to the Black Panthers. Clearly thatās still in the minds of some.