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The X-man cometh
Nov 1, 2009

I know this is totally airbrushed, but Melania has had a rough 4 years. She looks totally different now.

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betaraywil
Dec 30, 2006

Gather the wind
Though the wind won't help you fly at all

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

It’s extremely hosed up to me that trump getting banned from twitter had a more profound effect on world politics than him losing the election. If qanon falls apart, it’s because of an anonymous mod at the twitter corporation.

Yeah the nightmare could have been stopped in 2015, but Nazi Jack and Les Moonves and all the others love money too much. Everyone who said "sunlight is the best disinfectant" at any point in the last six years deserves a swift, non-disfiguring beating or financial penalty.

History Comes Inside!
Nov 20, 2004




The X-man cometh posted:

I know this is totally airbrushed, but Melania has had a rough 4 years. She looks totally different now.

Unless Barron is currently the world’s tallest 12 year old this picture is way older than 4 years

poo poo is that even Barron? Trump is looking way younger too.

Edit: holy poo poo Barron Trump actually is the worlds tallest 14 year old I guess, I always thought he was older. gently caress me.

History Comes Inside! fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Jan 22, 2021

DarkCrawler
Apr 6, 2009

by vyelkin

indiscriminately posted:

Just because something feels good doesn't mean it is good. Like, what you're talking about here is some of the same self-centered indulgence that you disdain in these pathetic people. Are you not better, and smarter, than they are?.

Oh, definitely, that is why I limit my disdain towards people who actually deserve it. I don't think what I do is good, though, but not everything one deserves has to be. But it isn't even in the same galaxy of bad that your average Qltist has engaged in.

Lib and let die posted:

Don't waste your time. This is the guy that ardently defends the US imposing sanctions on foreign nations and starving the poor citizens of those nations in USPol.

Former sure, latter, no. And not just the U.S. ;)

Froghammer
Sep 8, 2012

Khajit has wares
if you have coin

DarkCrawler posted:

Can't have honest conversation with someone who isn't honest.
The grifters aren't honest, your scared aunt that's terrified of how complicated the world is and is longing for simple answers probably is

Civilized Fishbot
Apr 3, 2011

DarkCrawler posted:

Then call me a oval office, because these past few days there has been no mercy on my part. Every instance of tearful histrionics on their part just make me thirst for more. I don't know how many I've driven to quit whatever internet space we're in for good, but it has to be a non-zero number because holy poo poo you can't come back from some of these absolute meltdowns.

I'm this close to just photoshopping Trump's face on Ramses II and busting out the Shelley quote for a quick response but I'm pretty sure it would miss the mark in 99% of cases.

I'm not even drunk lol, schadenfreude is all the drug I need right now. Beautiful. Is this it? Can this be the high point of mockery? Will nothing compare forevermore? I just can't imagine that any group of people would be willingly self-owning themselves this much in the future, but then again...people.

Either way, I have to live in the moment and treasure it.

You don't sound like a oval office, you sound like a loser. Nobody should ever be proud of posting on the internet; you're wrestling with pigs in the mud.

indiscriminately
Jan 19, 2007
Same variety of specious, superficial rationalization you'd hear from a QAnon. You may be convincing yourself but that's as far as it goes.

DarkCrawler
Apr 6, 2009

by vyelkin

Civilized Fishbot posted:

You don't sound like a oval office, you sound like a loser. Nobody should ever be proud of posting on the internet; you're wrestling with pigs in the mud.

Proud? Where did I say I'm proud? Fish in a barrel, buddy, nothing to be proud of.

Amused, endlessly.

Froghammer posted:

The grifters aren't honest, your scared aunt that's terrified of how complicated the world is and is longing for simple answers probably is

Probably not though, by all available information on these people.

indiscriminately posted:

Same variety of specious, superficial rationalization you'd hear from a QAnon. You may be convincing yourself but that's as far as it goes.

You really going with "both sides" here? What exactly is wrong with my rationalization? Since it is equivalent to QAnon it should take you about five seconds to point that out.

Astrochicken
Aug 13, 2007

So you better go back to your bars, your temples
Your massage parlors!

It's good to have healthy boundaries and look at the crying qanon lady without becoming overcome with empathy to such a degree that you have to post about it.

Froghammer
Sep 8, 2012

Khajit has wares
if you have coin
How the gently caress do you not have redtext yet

EDIT: bemused, smug acceptance of the status quo and refusal to view other people as people smacks of 2009ish Internet culture. It's 2021. Empathy is cool now. Please grow and evolve

Froghammer fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Jan 22, 2021

DarkCrawler
Apr 6, 2009

by vyelkin

Froghammer posted:

How the gently caress do you not have redtext yet

EDIT: bemused, smug acceptance of the status quo and refusal to view other people as people smacks of 2009ish Internet culture. It's 2021. Empathy is cool now. Please grow and evolve

Empathy to people who don't deserve it is wasted empathy. It won't be reciprocated and they will just go with the next fascist, just like they did for the one before that. And one before that. Forget and forgive is so 2008. You had the most outwardly empathetic president ever and they rewarded you with Trump.

Feel free to cash out for a redtext if that makes you feel better when I'm right, you're wrong, and these people betray what few good things America still stands for the next time around. Maybe that will help you. It won't be the first one. I'll keep making GBS threads on Y'all Q-aida in the meanwhile and reserve my empathy for non-wastes of humanity.

I don't think it is me who needs to grow and accept reality. Evolution means actually doing something new when faced with a threat. It isn't me driving for the status quo that empathy for these fucks inevitably leads to.

DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jan 22, 2021

Ohtsam
Feb 5, 2010

Not this shit again.
Heh, Texags is killing its qanon thread just after a bunch of transplants from the LSU equivalent subbed to the site.

The X-man cometh
Nov 1, 2009
Who goes to somethingawful dot com and expects empathy?

Froghammer
Sep 8, 2012

Khajit has wares
if you have coin

The X-man cometh posted:

Who goes to somethingawful dot com and expects empathy?
Adults

nah
Mar 16, 2009

I would be so upset if I “wasted” (?) my empathy on another human being

Microplastics
Jul 6, 2007

:discourse:
It's what's for dinner.
something that is awful Dot Com has grown out of its edgy teenager phase and become a responsible adult.

Lammasu
May 8, 2019

lawful Good Monster

Wildeyes posted:

Not sure if I can dig up the tweet, but a journalist who had observed people who had fallen into conspiracy theories/extremism recently tweeted about how gaining a new interest (like finding a girlfriend) often made them lose interest in whatever extremist thing they were swept up in. One guy started drifting away from QAnon because he got a nice new car.

They don't need deprogramming, they just need something benign to fill the void.

Oh you all laffed at Bleeding Edge but now that you actually need it...

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
I have empathy for people who spent the last 4+ years scared shitless of actual threats caused by MAGA nation, not a bunch of delusional cultists who hosed around and found out and are weeping bitter tears as a result.

indiscriminately
Jan 19, 2007
If you are a good person, to what degree is that your own doing? How much are you allowed to pat yourself on the back for your goodness? Seems to me not very much. You didn't choose the family and geography you were born into, you didn't choose your inherent gifts or your health, you don't even choose your thought process, really. Your good actions are mostly (completely) the result of circumstance. It took me a few decades to understand this but once I did it became much easier to empathize with people who suck.

edit: vvvv Yes yes, the beatings will continue until morale improves. Quite the enterprise you have planned.

indiscriminately fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jan 23, 2021

Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc
Didn't we learn anything from the failure of reconstruction? Defeating traitors does not make them not hate you, going easy on them does not dull their bigotry or reconcile them to society. They're sad because they didn't get to murder the people they wanted to murder. They deserve overwhelming condemnation and opprobrium every day until they come to their senses. No quarter to nazis.

Ola
Jul 19, 2004

Magic Underwear posted:

Didn't we learn anything from the failure of reconstruction? Defeating traitors does not make them not hate you, going easy on them does not dull their bigotry or reconcile them to society. They're sad because they didn't get to murder the people they wanted to murder. They deserve overwhelming condemnation and opprobrium every day until they come to their senses. No quarter to nazis.

This is the same fallacy as "the beatings will continue until morale improves". You can't beat nazism out of a nazi, even though that's exactly what they themselves think is the cure for various ideological ailments. Lots of well functioning people in society have completely hosed beliefs. But as long as they're not oppressed (properly oppressed, not "they won't let Kid Rock sing the n-word on Rush" type of oppressed), ostracized, starving or in group psychosis, they have little reason to become terrorists. Most of them anyway.

The important thing is to keep making a society where nazism doesn't spread and you do this best by giving everyone good education and health care, so that they get good skills, understand their society and their rights and don't have any big life changing problems which could otherwise have been easily solved. America has a long way to go here. Think how good it can get! I've been getting subsidized creams for eczema all my life, maybe Steve Bannon would be a really nice guy today if he didn't itch so bad.

Group psychosis is perhaps too strong a term and doesn't apply to most Qers, but there's also something about being part of a big movement, particularly if you're disenfranchised to begin with. Lots of Qers have probably never felt so good in their lives as being part of this cult and they don't have the knowledge or experience which informs the morality which condemns calls for insurrection, execution etc. It wasn't a well reasoned process that concluded that sawing Nancy Pelosi's head off was going to erase their credit card debt, but a big group of people with sudden hope loves shouting YEAH at whatever a powerful figure tells them.

Many of them, hundreds of thousands, are hopelessly evil fucks, but they can live out their lives just fine in a good society without causing harm, and everybody else can do too without having to be their friend.

Did reconstruction really fail? There hasn't been a civil war since. Did it deliver perfect unity? Nope, but that's a tall order. Who knows what this time will look like in 1000 years. Maybe our time will be a brief gasp of enlightened air between two dark oceans of autocratic oppression. But maybe the future is so bright that future students will think everything was solved in 1865 and only annoying history students will go "well actually it took 200 years".

nah
Mar 16, 2009

These aren’t nazis you losers, they’re internet dipshits, just as retarded as you, but in a different, only slightly sadder way

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
The larger problem with Reconstruction was that the federal government said, "okay, we'll let you have a little bit of racist oppression, as a treat" instead of firmly stamping it out.

generic one
Oct 2, 2004

I wish I was a little bit taller
I wish I was a baller
I wish I had a wookie in a hat with a bat
And a six four Impala


Nap Ghost

nah posted:

These aren’t nazis you losers, they’re internet dipshits, just as retarded as you, but in a different, only slightly sadder way

Ideologically speaking, a lot of them are Nazis. They’re not about to take over the country or anything, but a lot of them absolutely share the same sentiments about a certain 14 word slogan.

Also, don’t use the r-word.

Ola
Jul 19, 2004

nah posted:

These aren’t nazis you losers, they’re internet dipshits, just as retarded as you, but in a different, only slightly sadder way

It was a mistake of me to sum them up in a distracting slur. But most nazis were just dipshits who seized an opportunity to advance themselves in society, particularly pre war in Germany or collaborators in invaded countries.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
Mocking and shaming people can actually get them to engage less in something, and breaking their level of engagement is usually what allows someone to move on.

pseudanonymous
Aug 30, 2008

When you make the second entry and the debits and credits balance, and you blow them to hell.

Ola posted:

It was a mistake of me to sum them up in a distracting slur. But most nazis were just dipshits who seized an opportunity to advance themselves in society, particularly pre war in Germany or collaborators in invaded countries.

Do you know what you call people that are comfortable with putting people in concentration camps and exterminating undesirables and treating people unlike them as subhuman but are not fully cognizant of the tenets of national socialism and do not fully endorse the philosophical musings of Adolf Hitler but go along with them “to get ahead”?

You call them Nazis.

And yes, you absolutely can beat them until morale improves, what do you think WWII was?

vortmax
Sep 24, 2008

In meteorology, vorticity often refers to a measurement of the spin of horizontally flowing air about a vertical axis.
Always Be Punching Nazis

Otteration
Jan 4, 2014

I CAN'T SAY PRESIDENT DONALD JOHN TRUMP'S NAME BECAUSE HE'S LIKE THAT GUY FROM HARRY POTTER AND I'M AFRAID I'LL SUMMON HIM. DONALD JOHN TRUMP. YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT.
OUR 47TH PRESIDENT AFTER THE ONE WHO SHOWERS WITH HIS DAUGHTER DIES
Grimey Drawer

pseudanonymous posted:

Do you know what you call people that are comfortable with putting people in concentration camps and exterminating undesirables and treating people unlike them as subhuman but are not fully cognizant of the tenets of national socialism and do not fully endorse the philosophical musings of Adolf Hitler but go along with them “to get ahead”?

You call them Nazis.

And yes, you absolutely can beat them until morale improves, what do you think WWII was?

Nuanced and alternate takes within the spectrum also exist. Infinite punishment for infinite assholes gave us wwii after wwi, after all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade

Morningwoodpecker
Jan 17, 2016

I DIDN'T THINK IT WAS POSSIBLE FOR SOMEONE TO BE THIS STUPID

BUT HERE YOU ARE

Ola posted:

This is the same fallacy as "the beatings will continue until morale improves". You can't beat nazism out of a nazi, even though that's exactly what they themselves think is the cure for various ideological ailments. Lots of well functioning people in society have completely hosed beliefs. But as long as they're not oppressed (properly oppressed, not "they won't let Kid Rock sing the n-word on Rush" type of oppressed), ostracized, starving or in group psychosis, they have little reason to become terrorists. Most of them anyway.

The important thing is to keep making a society where nazism doesn't spread and you do this best by giving everyone good education and health care, so that they get good skills, understand their society and their rights and don't have any big life changing problems which could otherwise have been easily solved. America has a long way to go here. Think how good it can get! I've been getting subsidized creams for eczema all my life, maybe Steve Bannon would be a really nice guy today if he didn't itch so bad.

Group psychosis is perhaps too strong a term and doesn't apply to most Qers, but there's also something about being part of a big movement, particularly if you're disenfranchised to begin with. Lots of Qers have probably never felt so good in their lives as being part of this cult and they don't have the knowledge or experience which informs the morality which condemns calls for insurrection, execution etc. It wasn't a well reasoned process that concluded that sawing Nancy Pelosi's head off was going to erase their credit card debt, but a big group of people with sudden hope loves shouting YEAH at whatever a powerful figure tells them.

Many of them, hundreds of thousands, are hopelessly evil fucks, but they can live out their lives just fine in a good society without causing harm, and everybody else can do too without having to be their friend.

Did reconstruction really fail? There hasn't been a civil war since. Did it deliver perfect unity? Nope, but that's a tall order. Who knows what this time will look like in 1000 years. Maybe our time will be a brief gasp of enlightened air between two dark oceans of autocratic oppression. But maybe the future is so bright that future students will think everything was solved in 1865 and only annoying history students will go "well actually it took 200 years".

They genuinely believe the election was stolen. That means they feel completely disenfranchised from the entire political process in a country ruled by an entirely illegitimate leader. It's rubbish but that's what they believe.

There will be bloodshed as a result of this. Reserve your sympathy for their victims.

indiscriminately
Jan 19, 2007
How about we debate less about which people we can and can't sympathize or empathize with and instead direct our outrage ("overwhelming condemnation and opprobrium") at the corporations and platforms and demagogues that actually are responsible for producing this reality.

Ola
Jul 19, 2004

Morningwoodpecker posted:

They genuinely believe the election was stolen. That means they feel completely disenfranchised from the entire political process in a country ruled by an entirely illegitimate leader. It's rubbish but that's what they believe.

There will be bloodshed as a result of this. Reserve your sympathy for their victims.


I genuinely believed the US government had alien prisoners at Area 51 when I was 13. I only sort of believed it after watching X-Files, but after being exposed to group psychology when talking about it my school mates, I was convinced. We ascribed no end of malice to the US government, merely stealing an election would be peanuts. But it obviously didn't have any deep reasoning behind it. We didn't first have a thorough understanding of the nation state, democratic governance and astrobiology, then deliberately abandon that knowledge to achieve mayhem. We didn't have that knowledge to begin with and jumped into an exciting fantasy caused by ignorance fertilized with fiction. There was no bloodshed. Any subsequent knowledge we gained moved us further from that fiction. It's not weird that dumb people believe dumb things, even if those things seem shocking to you who know better.

I certainly have more sympathy for any victims, but it doesn't take much knowledge of history to understand that preventing bloodshed isn't very well achieved by starting bloodshed or by harshly ostracizing large parts of your society. There are plenty of people who will go to prison of course and there are plenty of people who at least should lose their careers for fanning the flames. Hopefully plenty of real nazis and proud boys are properly exposed so they are easier to keep tabs on in the future.

But you don't have to be their friend, you don't have to hug them. The justice system can deal with those who need to be dealt with. The bigger picture is to keep on trying to build a society where this is less likely to happen, not ostracize and oppress because that makes it more likely to happen. And we need to find a good way to deal with malicious propagandists online.

XMNN
Apr 26, 2008
I am incredibly stupid

indiscriminately posted:

If you are a good person, to what degree is that your own doing? How much are you allowed to pat yourself on the back for your goodness? Seems to me not very much. You didn't choose the family and geography you were born into, you didn't choose your inherent gifts or your health, you don't even choose your thought process, really. Your good actions are mostly (completely) the result of circumstance. It took me a few decades to understand this but once I did it became much easier to empathize with people who suck.

edit: vvvv Yes yes, the beatings will continue until morale improves. Quite the enterprise you have planned.

if you get right down to it all thought and actions are down to deterministic electrochemical processes in the wet sack of fat we call a brain, so who is really responsible for anything they say or do

indiscriminately
Jan 19, 2007
Yes, that's a pretty good gotcha to attack this line of argument when it's being used in a self-serving way.

Weldon Pemberton
May 19, 2012

Otteration posted:

Nuanced and alternate takes within the spectrum also exist. Infinite punishment for infinite assholes gave us wwii after wwi, after all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade

Yeah this. I am a husk who felt nothing watching that video, but surely from a pragmatic perspective it makes more sense to brutally punish the leaders, grifters and active rioters only. There should be a path offered for the random idiots who believed without doing anything notable, and the path should be the easy and socially advantageous way out compared to persevering with the cult. As much as this will disappoint those who are feeling vengeful, this means they shouldn't really have to do anything except go 'I don't believe that any more, sorry for spreading hurtful nonsense' and stop. It might not mean they instantly become good people, but anything is better than what they're doing now. After someone has left they don't need to be given a cookie or treated with kid gloves, but any criticism should be based on their current behaviour and not 'oh, looks like you were Q at one point, I'll feel free to disregard everything you say." If they aren't allowed to move on then of course this poo poo will become a permanent part of their identity and they'll feel aggrieved.

Daduzi
Nov 22, 2005

You can't hide from the Grim Reaper. Especially when he's got a gun.

Weldon Pemberton posted:

Yeah this. I am a husk who felt nothing watching that video, but surely from a pragmatic perspective it makes more sense to brutally punish the leaders, grifters and active rioters only.

What about those who actively campaign against necessary counter-measures during a global pandemic?

Morningwoodpecker
Jan 17, 2016

I DIDN'T THINK IT WAS POSSIBLE FOR SOMEONE TO BE THIS STUPID

BUT HERE YOU ARE

Ola posted:

I genuinely believed the US government had alien prisoners at Area 51 when I was 13. I only sort of believed it after watching X-Files, but after being exposed to group psychology when talking about it my school mates, I was convinced. We ascribed no end of malice to the US government, merely stealing an election would be peanuts. But it obviously didn't have any deep reasoning behind it. We didn't first have a thorough understanding of the nation state, democratic governance and astrobiology, then deliberately abandon that knowledge to achieve mayhem. We didn't have that knowledge to begin with and jumped into an exciting fantasy caused by ignorance fertilized with fiction. There was no bloodshed. Any subsequent knowledge we gained moved us further from that fiction. It's not weird that dumb people believe dumb things, even if those things seem shocking to you who know better.

I certainly have more sympathy for any victims, but it doesn't take much knowledge of history to understand that preventing bloodshed isn't very well achieved by starting bloodshed or by harshly ostracizing large parts of your society. There are plenty of people who will go to prison of course and there are plenty of people who at least should lose their careers for fanning the flames. Hopefully plenty of real nazis and proud boys are properly exposed so they are easier to keep tabs on in the future.

But you don't have to be their friend, you don't have to hug them. The justice system can deal with those who need to be dealt with. The bigger picture is to keep on trying to build a society where this is less likely to happen, not ostracize and oppress because that makes it more likely to happen. And we need to find a good way to deal with malicious propagandists online.

Anyone currently super upset that the storm never happened is a real nazi, they might be too dim and historically illiterate enough to fail to realize that but that's exactly what they are. It's their version of the final solution it's organized mass murder on a truly colossal scale there's no other way to accurately describe it. The fact it's a group fantasy of brain worm infested incels the far right and other unpleasant types means they overestimate their own support and their capabilities, but that doesn't remove their ability to run about lone nutter style with a gun murdering people trying to inspire the great awakening or the storm. We've already seen that happen more than once with qanon.

If you reach out to people who want you and everyone like you dead they take it as a sign of weakness and proof you are the untermensch.

On the bright side when xenophobic people have been encouraged to hate by a dictatorial type who weaponized that to get their support it tends to recede once the leader is gone and they revert to more normal ways of thinking pretty quickly. That happened with Hitler and Mussolini's personality cults once they were dead.

The problem there is Trumps still around and talking about a return to politics so he hasn't gone, throwing the book at him popping him in prison and banning him from future office might do it. If he sits in a cell stirring his supporters up via social media it might not, if they decide he's been brain swapped into Marjory Taylor Green's body then they switch their allegiance to her and again the chain of hate is unbroken.

Interesting times.

Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc

Ola posted:

This is the same fallacy as "the beatings will continue until morale improves". You can't beat nazism out of a nazi, even though that's exactly what they themselves think is the cure for various ideological ailments. Lots of well functioning people in society have completely hosed beliefs. But as long as they're not oppressed (properly oppressed, not "they won't let Kid Rock sing the n-word on Rush" type of oppressed), ostracized, starving or in group psychosis, they have little reason to become terrorists. Most of them anyway.

Your adage is inapt. It applies to the leaders of a hierarchical organization abusing people they have control over. I'm talking about how we as the American public respond to some of our fellow citizens being insane and seditious. And I think the answer is social ostracism and unflinching enforcement of federal laws, which is very far from beatings! But in terms of "morale" I actually do want to depress their morale so much that they realize that they want to be accepted in society again more than they want to scream about adrenochrome at their children and coworkers.

To your terrorist comment, I 100% refuse to admit dangerous ideology as acceptable on the threat that rejecting such ideology would create terrorism. To do that would be craven. It would repudiate everything we stand for.

I don't mind if anyone wants to try empathetic methods to lead people out of qanon. Those people want the same thing as me, they just have a lot more patience than I do. What I reject is any suggestion that we tolerate qanon (not that I think you're doing that). It's the same way we don't tolerate open pedophilia, nazism, eugenics and so on.

quote:

The important thing is to keep making a society where nazism doesn't spread and you do this best by giving everyone good education and health care, so that they get good skills, understand their society and their rights and don't have any big life changing problems which could otherwise have been easily solved. America has a long way to go here. Think how good it can get! I've been getting subsidized creams for eczema all my life, maybe Steve Bannon would be a really nice guy today if he didn't itch so bad.

The problem is that this harmful ideology has already spread and now we need to decide how to remediate it. Talking about what we could have done is besides the point.

quote:

Many of them, hundreds of thousands, are hopelessly evil fucks, but they can live out their lives just fine in a good society without causing harm, and everybody else can do too without having to be their friend.

If they could keep it to themselves and not harm anyone would we be having this conversation?

Did you see what happened on the sixth? Have you read any stories of broken families, child abuse and brainwashing on r/qanoncasualties? Or the damage they've done to themselves by ruining their relationships, losing their jobs and sending their money to trump and other assorted grifters?

You act like qanon is just some personal article of faith that doesn't affect anyone. It really isn't and everyone should realize that by now. They got closer to overthrowing American democracy than the Confederates, or anyone else, ever did. The entire legislative branch and the number one, two and three in the presidential line of succession were in one room together just yards from a homicidal mob.

quote:

Did reconstruction really fail? There hasn't been a civil war since. Did it deliver perfect unity? Nope, but that's a tall order. Who knows what this time will look like in 1000 years. Maybe our time will be a brief gasp of enlightened air between two dark oceans of autocratic oppression. But maybe the future is so bright that future students will think everything was solved in 1865 and only annoying history students will go "well actually it took 200 years".
I'm not a historian but I believe that sharecropping, Jim crow, segregation, prison slave labor and its evolution into the modern carceral state (and therefore the plight of black communities to this very day) have a lot to do with our failure to act strongly enough against the powers that fomented the Civil War. I see a direct correspondence between that failure and the calls for "unity" we're seeing today and I don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Blurred
Aug 26, 2004

WELL I WONNER WHAT IT'S LIIIIIKE TO BE A GOOD POSTER

Ola posted:

The important thing is to keep making a society where nazism doesn't spread and you do this best by giving everyone good education and health care, so that they get good skills, understand their society and their rights and don't have any big life changing problems which could otherwise have been easily solved. America has a long way to go here. Think how good it can get! I've been getting subsidized creams for eczema all my life, maybe Steve Bannon would be a really nice guy today if he didn't itch so bad.

We need to get away from this myth that people are driven into the arms of fascism primarily by material factors. I'm not sure how it is with respect to Qanon believers specifically (I'd actually be interested in learning something about their demographics, if such data exists), but - both presently and historically - the social base of fascism has always been the middle class.

Plainly you can't be a successful fascist movement without a broad base of support, so I won't pretend that working-class people are immune to its rhetoric (e.g. the large support for the Nazis among Germany's rural poor), but it's typically been the petite-bourgeoisie who have been the most reliable supporters of fascist movements. This was true for Mussolini and Franco, whose rise to power rested on middle-class support for the destruction of democratically elected socialist governments, and it was true for the Nazis who leveraged fear of "Bolshevism" into a popular movement which was disproportionately comprised of urban middle-classes and members of the social elite. A similar story holds true in the contemporary world - support for Trump and Bolsonaro is inverse to income levels. The lowest-income people are voting overwhelmingly against them. People, that is, don't typically become fascists because they are starving and desperate for a loaf of bread, they become fascists because they already have 100 loaves of bread and they are terrified of losing a few slices to people whom they feel are undeserving.

While it should not at all affect our priorities, we should probably be clear that expansive social programs are more likely to inspire fascism than inhibit it. Think of all the prominent fascists you can name in the US (including Bannon!) and ask: 1) how many of them have ever suffered from genuine deprivation in their lives?; and 2) how many of them are explicit in their belief that government spending on social programs for the working poor is not merely wasteful, but fundamentally evil? The Main Street goose-steppers are ideologically no different: they would rather see society burn to the ground than to see their hegemony in the social hierarchy threatened, or to see someone else's life improved a jot relative to theirs. Making their lives marginally more comfortable isn't going to dampen their support for fascism for as long they believe there is a danger that this material comfort might need to be shared with others whom they see as being different and unworthy.

EDIT: The other primary factor in support for fascism is religiosity (which is certainly relevant to Qanon in particular) but I'll leave that for another post.

Blurred fucked around with this message at 10:38 on Jan 23, 2021

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Ola
Jul 19, 2004

Blurred posted:

We need to get away from this myth that people are driven into the arms of fascism primarily by material factors. I'm not sure how it is with respect to Qanon believers specifically (I'd actually be interested in learning something about their demographics, if such data exists), but - both presently and historically - the social base of fascism has always been the middle class.

Plainly you can't be a successful fascist movement without a broad base of support, so I won't pretend that working-class people are immune to its rhetoric (e.g. the large support for the Nazis among Germany's rural poor), but it's typically been the petite-bourgeoisie who have been the most reliable supporters of fascist movements.

You're not necessarily driven into fascism by poverty, but education, health care and equal opportunity are bulwarks against the desperation that can make you follow anyone who promises a magic ticket out.

You're not driven into fascism by being petite-bourgeoisie either. Just about any political movement, benign or malicious, comes from the petite-bourgeoisie. Lenin came from a comfortable family background. You need connections, funding and some skills in reading, writing and communicating to push political ideas.

Without going on too much I'll say that you all put forward some very well argued ideas that pry open some cracks in my posts. There are plenty of Qers who just go with it because it is whatever public movement that fits closest to their genuinely held white supremacist views. Huge swathes of the white, republican voting demographic thought Q was obvious bullshit, but would happily go along with a coup to keep Trump as a president as that would presumably make saying the n-word and pinching secretaries' butts ok again. There is no curing them, the only permanent solution is that they die. But my suggestion is that it's best to let them die of obesity and car crashes, and focus the education and and life improvement on the coming generations.

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