|
Darth Walrus posted:I dunno, I'd say that the best way to truly defeat the GD is to try to help Greece as much as possible in rebuilding its economy, assembling a functional government, and bringing back a little hope for the public. Direct antifascist action is containment, designed to keep the situation stable-ish until the underlying problems have been solved. Treating people to hate fascists is not the be-all and end-all solution, it just results in the fascists realising they've got an image problem and dressing their horrible opinions up in a different way. Until people are no longer desperate and hopeless enough that fascism and related ideologies seem like an appealing solution, the Golden Dawn will never die even if the specific organisation of that name crumbles. Yes, that is very true. I realise I was speaking about Golden Dawn specifically, and not fascism; as long as peoples' lives are poo poo they'll be drawn to anti-establishment ideologies, such as fascism in a democracy. But the only ways economic conditions can improve is if the Eurozone leadership realises the monumental idiocy that drives its financial policies towards Greece, which is something that is not ultimately up to the Greek people and institutions to decide; the best we can do is protest, through the vote and through taking to the streets (though the latter has been largely ignored so far).
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2013 12:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 21:35 |
|
|
YF-23 posted:if anyone wants to truly defeat Golden Dawn the best way to go about it is to reveal them for the scum they are and make that dominate the narrative so much that the mainstream media cannot but follow suit. This happened after Physsas' murder, so what's important is that that narrative is maintained. But then people will see them as victimised and they'll only become more powerful!
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2013 12:29
|
|
|
Kieselguhr Kid posted:But then people will see them as victimised and they'll only become more powerful! There's literally no response to fascism that doesn't play into fascists' hands!
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2013 12:32
|
|
|
Don't torture anyone, please.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2013 12:32
|
|
|
YF-23 posted:The best weapon so far against the Golden Dawn has been to let them make fools of themselves and show what horrible people they are. It's hard to say what sort of organised resistance could be set up against them; the police cannot be counted on, and when it has to do something it'll go light on them. I do not belong to any left-wing groups and I'm far from the capital so I don't really see any protests, so I don't know how protests and so on get organised, but if anyone wants to truly defeat Golden Dawn the best way to go about it is to reveal them for the scum they are and make that dominate the narrative so much that the mainstream media cannot but follow suit. This happened after Physsas' murder, so what's important is that that narrative is maintained. And then what? What's the endgame here, because if you think that you just have to make GD look like fools and that'll make them go away, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Darth Walrus posted:I dunno, I'd say that the best way to truly defeat the GD is to try to help Greece as much as possible in rebuilding its economy, assembling a functional government, and bringing back a little hope for the public. Direct antifascist action is containment, designed to keep the situation stable-ish until the underlying problems have been solved. Treating people to hate fascists is not the be-all and end-all solution, it just results in the fascists realising they've got an image problem and dressing their horrible opinions up in a different way. Until people are no longer desperate and hopeless enough that fascism and related ideologies seem like an appealing solution, the Golden Dawn will never die even if the specific organisation of that name crumbles. Unfortunately the restoration of econmic stability and hope for the future isn't going to happen with the current government in power, because everybody is still too committed to neoliberal dogma. Given this fact, Greece seems to be headed for a revolution of some kind or other, which makes it even more urgent to contain GD so they won't have a shot at making it their revolution. Omi-Polari posted:Real quick general question, but does anyone think torture is a justified tactic against fascists? Is it morally permissible to use waterboarding against them? Well, do you think that dumbass gotcha questions are a justified tactic when discussing things?
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2013 12:42
|
|
|
Kieselguhr Kid posted:But then people will see them as victimised and they'll only become more powerful! You are right, getting people to see how horrible they are is exactly the same to pre-emptively murdering their members. Let me make a list of how these two things are the same:
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2013 12:46
|
|
|
YF-23 posted:Yes, that is very true. I realise I was speaking about Golden Dawn specifically, and not fascism; as long as peoples' lives are poo poo they'll be drawn to anti-establishment ideologies, such as fascism in a democracy. But the only ways economic conditions can improve is if the Eurozone leadership realises the monumental idiocy that drives its financial policies towards Greece, which is something that is not ultimately up to the Greek people and institutions to decide; the best we can do is protest, through the vote and through taking to the streets (though the latter has been largely ignored so far). Another thing worth considering is donating to charities working in Greece and (if geography, time, et cetera permit) doing volunteer work there. One of the biggest draws of the GD is how it has taken over social provision as the government collapsed, allowing it to present itself as the only organisation to really look out for the public. It would be good to break that monopoly.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2013 12:48
|
|
|
How strong was GD 6 years ago compared to 6 months ago?
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2013 18:14
|
|
|
Water balloons, used oil, shaving cream, rotting produce/eggs, tubs of grease, and silly string. Lots and lots of silly string. e:This is only useful for when they're marching on a scheduled parade route, but still, trash the fash.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2013 04:42
|
|
|
Omi-Polari posted:Real quick general question, but does anyone think torture is a justified tactic against fascists? Is it morally permissible to use waterboarding against them? What the gently caress would the point of this even be? Get the location of their secret fascist headquarters located in a volcano on a remote island?
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2013 13:08
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:What the gently caress would the point of this even be? Get the location of their secret fascist headquarters located in a volcano on a remote island? Since torture is completely loving useless for information-gathering, I would assume that it would instead be used as a deterrent/as part of an extensive brainwashing process to imbue Correct Thought. Not that that's more ethical, mind. Just theoretically more effective at doing what it's supposed to do.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2013 13:19
|
|
|
Darth Walrus posted:Not that that's more ethical, mind. Just theoretically more effective at doing what it's supposed to do. Ah yes, torture to change peoples beliefs, that certainly worked well for the Spanish Inquisition.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2013 13:30
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:Ah yes, torture to change peoples beliefs, that certainly worked well for the Spanish Inquisition. Welp, I guess that there's the option of preventing someone from being a fascist by making them too traumatised/dead to believe in anything any more. Again, I think this idea is still terrible and kinda monstrous, I'm just trying to figure out some sort of vague logical basis that might lead to someone suggesting it in the first place.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2013 13:40
|
|
|
Darth Walrus posted:Welp, I guess that there's the option of preventing someone from being a fascist by making them too traumatised/dead to believe in anything any more. My anti-torture stance is the primary informer of my pro-mass killings stance. Hmm yes, quite. Or you know, not.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2013 13:59
|
|
|
Out monstering fascists seems like a race to the bottom decent people couldn't win and one that would cost allies and general good will. Plus of course the police would be much more diligent in investigating crimes against fascists than ones committed by them so it would just be putting decent people at further disadvantage.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2013 14:04
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:My anti-torture stance is the primary informer of my pro-mass killings stance. Hmm yes, quite. I'll just quote myself again here: quote:Again, I think this idea is still terrible and kinda monstrous, I'm just trying to figure out some sort of vague logical basis that might lead to someone suggesting it in the first place. Usually, even terrible beliefs are at least internally-consistent (see also, fundamentalist homophobia), but I'm having a tough time working out the logic behind this one. I don't deny that it's horrible and wrong, it's just so horrible and wrong and self-defeatingly dumb that it's hard to work out which set of values and priorities it might theoretically fit into.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2013 14:07
|
|
|
ReV VAdAUL posted:Out monstering fascists seems like a race to the bottom decent people couldn't win It gave rise to social democracy in Finland. I call that a win.
|
|
#
?
Nov 4, 2013 18:46
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:Ah yes, torture to change peoples beliefs, that certainly worked well for the Spanish Inquisition. Remember how the people that came out of the Gulags turned into devout Stalinists? Or how the people who leave U.S. prisons turn into entrepreneurs?
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 01:14
|
|
|
Mans posted:Or how the people who leave U.S. prisons turn into entrepreneurs? Ain't that generally what got them into prison in the first place?
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 01:23
|
|
|
Warcabbit posted:Ain't that generally what got them into prison in the first place?
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 08:52
|
|
|
Someone is selling for them to be using.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 13:44
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:Ah yes, torture to change peoples beliefs, that certainly worked well for the Spanish Inquisition. Not that I support torture but it did work. Pre-Christian beliefs were largely stamped out of Europe by the turn of the millennium using state violence, and most heresies were destroyed within 100 years of appearing (Calvinism and Lutheranism excepted, they had states of their own to inflict violence). Spain likewise destroyed its Muslim and Jewish populations.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 19:32
|
|
|
Yeah, this. It was terrible but you can't say it wasn't effective. In the peninsula there wasn't so much as an hint of the religious wars that engulfed the rest of Europe. This is not at all an endorsement of the Inquisition. In the end the economic impact of cleansing the country of all heretics/infidels/whatever ended up being worse than if we had religious wars but still it was quite effective in "changing people's beliefs".
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 19:52
|
|
|
MeLKoR posted:Yeah, this. It was terrible but you can't say it wasn't effective. In the peninsula there wasn't so much as an hint of the religious wars that engulfed the rest of Europe. You know that old chestnut about ideas being bulletproof? Turns out, they're just bullet resistant. With enough ammo and ruthless disregard for basic humanity, you can eventually kill one.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 19:54
|
|
|
The Inquisition did not destroy Spain's Muslim and Jewish populations, it only forced them out. That seems like a pretty big distinction to me.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 20:17
|
|
|
The Inquisition also created a rather extensive underground culture of people who were outwardly Christian but still carried on Jewish or Muslim religion behind closed doors.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 20:19
|
|
|
Miltank posted:The Inquisition did not destroy Spain's Muslim and Jewish populations, it only forced them out. That seems like a pretty big distinction to me. Anyway "violence didn't convince the fascists, it simply drove them out of the country" seems largely the same result to me, no fascists in the country. Install Windows posted:The Inquisition also created a rather extensive underground culture of people who were outwardly Christian but still carried on Jewish or Muslim religion behind closed doors. Arguing that violence isn't an effective tool to model collective thought is just plain silly. Did Stalin have any problems with internal dissent? There are plenty of reasons why this is a terrible approach but being ineffective is not one of them. As long as you are willing to really grind your opponents violence is quite effective, that's why it keeps being used over and over again. MeLKoR fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Nov 5, 2013 |
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 20:53
|
|
|
No, the Inquistion did not work. The Spanish Inquisition ran for about 80 years. It took another couple centuries of extreme repression to actually eliminate stuff, and then primarily by straight up execution. Incidentally, the Inquisition and its successor policies were only interested in establishing a single line of thought that everyone would agree to. It would not be amenable to using the same tactics to only stamp out one particular school of thought you dislike while still allowing free dialogue among multiples you don't have a problem with. MeLKoR posted:Did Stalin have any problems with internal dissent? Yes he did. So did Hitler for that matter.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 21:07
|
|
|
idk guys the despot who sent literally millions of people to the gulags as political prisoners, had Trotsky exiled and then assassinated and is overall known for his purges, did he have a problem with internal dissent???
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 22:03
|
|
|
Install Windows posted:No, the Inquistion did not work. The Spanish Inquisition ran for about 80 years. It took another couple centuries of extreme repression to actually eliminate stuff quote:and then primarily by straight up execution. quote:Incidentally, the Inquisition and its successor policies were only interested in establishing a single line of thought that everyone would agree to. It would not be amenable to using the same tactics to only stamp out one particular school of thought you dislike while still allowing free dialogue among multiples you don't have a problem with. rscott posted:idk guys the despot who sent literally millions of people to the gulags as political prisoners, had Trotsky exiled and then assassinated and is overall known for his purges, did he have a problem with internal dissent??? And those millions of people were all guilty of dissent? People were sent to the gulags for anything and everything, I doubt more than a tiny fraction were really guilty of what they were accused. How many of those millions sent to the gulags came out and gave him any trouble? Their families? Their friends? No one? Seems effective. And we are discussing if purges are efficient and your argument on why purges aren't efficient is that purges took place? Really? C'mon! The man ran a campaign of terror and as a result was secure in power until he died a natural death. I'd say persecution achieved his goals very effectively.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 22:58
|
|
|
MeLKoR posted:The Inquisition ran for centuries in both Spain and Portugal. No, the Inquisition proper ran for about 80 years. The restrictions against other beliefs continued for centuries. That is because most of the sentences were against people who were Christian but minorly stepped out of line, not against out-and-out infidels. It was ineffective, because the only people it really "changed" were ones that it killed. Putting people a few miles outside the borders didn't change their beliefs and there was extensive continued belief in things deemed heretical. You know, just like how Hitler wasn't very effective in getting rid of his "undesirables" until full scale murder was sanctioned against them. Which is why the entire concept is ineffective.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 23:07
|
|
|
Can we just agree that torture is horrible and beyond the pale and whether the Inquisition does it, the US government does it or the Hypothetical Antifascist Purity Commission does it, it's not something to be condoned or actively, seriously considered for further use? Please.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 23:17
|
|
|
Anybody who thinks ideas are bulletproof should try to find a modern Cathar.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 23:34
|
|
|
SaltyJesus posted:Anybody who thinks ideas are bulletproof should try to find a modern Cathar. Not only did the Cathars oppose war and believe that reproduction should be avoided as much as possible, two factors that made continued survival in those times a bit of a problem on their own, they were also ruthlessly slaughtered and massacred. Essentially they would have died out on their own slightly slower then the Shakers almost have, even without the armies of Catholicism helping them along.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 23:44
|
|
|
Only in this thread can I read someone dismiss the relevance of art and affirm that of ideology in the same loving sentence. What the gently caress do you think ideology is, kid? 
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2013 23:45
|
|
|
Install Windows posted:No, the Inquisition proper ran for about 80 years. The restrictions against other beliefs continued for centuries. Portuguese Inquisition: Established 1536; Disbanded 1821 You might argue that they weren't operating at full steam and holding public burnings on the eve of being officialy disbanded but it's quite different than saying they weren't still operating as oppressors for centuries. quote:That is because most of the sentences were against people who were Christian but minorly stepped out of line, not against out-and-out infidels. Later jews were allowed back in the country and the converted christians still couldn't practice their true faith under penalty of death. And of course most people weren't executed, when faced with the the prospect of a gruesome death they recanted. Those "out-and-out infidels" you mention were the ones that got burned at the stake. Either way the Inquisition got what it wanted. If you prosecute people, cause most of them to hide from everyone else what they really believe and kill those that won't then you successfully achieved your goal of "changing the minds of the population". When the Inquisition started there were hundreds of thousands of religious dissidents in the country when they finished they could be counted in the very few thousands. How is that not effective? quote:It was ineffective, because the only people it really "changed" were ones that it killed. Putting people a few miles outside the borders didn't change their beliefs and there was extensive continued belief in things deemed heretical. It's a loving purge not a timeshare presentation.  quote:You know, just like how Hitler wasn't very effective in getting rid of his "undesirables" until full scale murder was sanctioned against them. Which is why the entire concept is ineffective. Ofaloaf posted:Can we just agree that torture is horrible and beyond the pale and whether the Inquisition does it, the US government does it or the Hypothetical Antifascist Purity Commission does it, it's not something to be condoned or actively, seriously considered for further use? Please. Install Windows posted:Not only did the Cathars oppose war and believe that reproduction should be avoided as much as possible, two factors that made continued survival in those times a bit of a problem on their own, they were also ruthlessly slaughtered and massacred. Essentially they would have died out on their own slightly slower then the Shakers almost have, even without the armies of Catholicism helping them along. If you lose control of a sect you inevitably get the Reformation or a schism, either way a big No No for the Church. Catharism was one of the many sects the Church effectively repressed into extinction, protestantism was the one they failed to. It was never a matter of "oh let's all just get along and tolerate each other", that was simply not something that could happen at that period in history. Besides catharism was getting very popular and was spreading quite fast, they were in no risk of "going extinct by themselves", that's exactly why a CrusadeTM was called for, to wipe them out once and for all. MeLKoR fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Nov 6, 2013 |
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2013 00:10
|
|
|
MeLKoR posted:The problem with the Cathars or any other sects that got ruthlessly exterminated without the fanfare of an official CrusadeTM can be resumed in one word. Luther. Oh absolutely, I agree on all points. The Albigensian CrusadeTM did prove pretty conclusively that you could stab an opinion out of a populace.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2013 00:25
|
|
|
MeLKoR posted:Spanish Inquisition: Established 1478; Disbanded 1834 It should be noted that the Holy Inquisition, the one enforced and operated under the Pope, still exists under a new name, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2013 00:29
|
|
|
Grouchy Smurf posted:It should be noted that the Holy Inquisition, the one enforced and operated under the Pope, still exists under a new name, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Yeah I haven't seen any burnings lately but that's a silly point to make by comparing the 21st century with what was happening in Europe until at least the late 16th century. poo poo was grim, "Rwanda massacres" grim at times and the Thirty Years War was atrocious. Only none of that poo poo happened here, there was simply no critical mass for it because the Inquisition was hard on the job. Not until people started getting fed up of slaughtering each other and reached a religious détente did the Inquisition slack on the job. That right there is centuries of effective work serving you a daily dose of forced conformity. The Inquisition was a terrible thing to happen but it did succeed in molding the minds of the population. There simply were never enough dissidents to have a religious civil war because all the dissidents were effectively  nipped in the bud, they didn't get to convert others.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2013 00:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 21:35 |
|
|
There was never a large number of Protestants in Spain so the effectiveness of the Inquisition is merely speculation.
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2013 01:14
|
|