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Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

MeLKoR posted:

Apart from that the ruling class cares not a fig for The Nation, in fact they are quite happy to gently caress over their country for profit. Do you see them losing any sleep over the consequences shipping jobs to 3rd world countries is having on their own Nation? Hahaha, as long as it lined their pockets they would (and often did) sell their countrymen into slavery.

Adam Smith actually realized this in the Wealth of Nations. He couldn't come up wih a reason for why the capitalists would actually prefer Great Britain over other countries though, so he made up the invisible hand and declared that as if guided by an invisible hand they'd prefer Britain. It's the only mention of the invisible hand in the entire book.


quote:

Every individual... neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it... he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II, p. 456, para. 9.

Seriously, this is liberalism.txt in its original form. Focusing on the individual and being completely blind to the fact that certain classes of individuals share certain personal interests that in fact are entirely contrary to the public interest. Now, we can forgive Smith since in his time nobody had come up with this kind of class-based view yet (although he still deserves poo poo for his handwaving), but its been centuries by now and we're still hearing the same bullshit.

Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Aug 11, 2013

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Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Jedit posted:

It was right that the people of Cable Street stood against the fascists. It was wrong for them to make it a battle. When you're a hundred thousand strong, you don't need to fight to stop 3000 fascists coming through. You just stand there and say they will not. If there's violence, you let someone else start it. The Cable Street protesters chose to start the fight; in the process they surrendered the moral high ground. They also did a lot to prove that Mosley was right - there the BUF were, marching peacefully and legally, when the Jews roused the rabble against them and attacked the police for trying to maintain law and order (at least, that's how they span it). In the wake of the Battle there was a rise in anti-semitism that didn't die down until Hitler declared war.

They didn't start the fight you twit. The put up blockades and showed up a 100,000 strong. The police then attempted to clear the blockade and attacked the crowd in order to allow the lawful march of the fascists. There never was at Cable street any fighting between fascists and anti-fascists, only between police and anti-fascists.


You know what really would've been a good way to crush the fascist message? 3000 fascists hanging from lampposts.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Kieselguhr Kid posted:

This is always my paranoiac fear. Hand-wringing liberal apologism for fascism stops being merely pathetic and starts to become actively disturbing when you realise the history of liberal collusion with fascism.

Underneath all the hand-wringing, what I hear as a leftist is 'when poo poo hits the fan, I'm going to buddy up with the people killing you.'

The fascists might be the ones pulling the trigger, but it was always the liberals who gave them the gun in the first place. Look at Germany in 1918 and again in 1933. Italy in 1922. Look at how the Republican side in Spain was split into a liberal faction still hand-wringing and trying to come to some kind of understanding while the anarchists and communists were already fighting for dear life.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Fojar38 posted:

Kindly don't be so condescending as to treat me as though I don't know what fascism entails. I think that I've been very clear thus far as to precisely what my opinions of fascism are.

If you knew what fascism entails you wouldn't tolerate it. It's not an ideology that has just incidentally gotten violent in its past. It's not an ideology that has simply had people commit violence in its name. It's not the same as Stalin being responsible for countless deaths in the Holodomor or through purges. It's not the same as Britain being responsible for countless deaths through famine and colonialism in India. It's not the same as the United States responsible for tens if not hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq and Afghanistan and thousands tortured in the name of the war on terror. All those things are capital B Bad. However, fascism is worse. Fascism has violence at the center of its ideology. It *requires* violence to even fit together as an ideology. As a reactionary ideology it is defined by its opposition to various other ideologies, concepts, policies and people, and distinguishes itself by the violence it is willing and wanting to commit in order to get rid of all those things. There's no such thing as a non-violent fascist. There's only a fascist who hasn't gotten strong enough yet to feel confident enough and able to commit violence. The only reason Golden Dawn doesn't have an Auschwitz running is because they do not yet have the means.

The difference between communism and fascism is that nowhere in communist theory are massacres or purges or even any violence at all necessary. The revolution can and hopefully will be entirely peaceful. However if we're realistic we realize that the upper classes and reactionary elements within society will resort to violence whenever a communist revolution happens or even just becomes a faint possibility. Violence in defense of yourself in such a situation is wholly different from the fascist desire and need for violence. They don't commit violence to defend themselves from anything. They commit violence for the sake of committing violence. For the joy of having their boot stamp on a human face. For being able to laugh at others' suffering.

Don't beat around the bush here. Everyone agrees that there must be some limitations to freedom of speech. Whether it be the famous shouting fire in a crowded theater, or hate-speech or direct calls for violence or blackmail or intimidation and extortion practices or conspiring to commit murder. Everyone draws a line somewhere. I draw the line at fascism, and if you don't I must ask you, what the gently caress is wrong with you?

Omi-Polari posted:

Why can't you just use the state's law enforcement and intelligence forces to monitor fascist parties? Someone said earlier that Germany is the country that's least likely to see the fascists gain any sort of influence at the political level again, and it's my understanding that the German state has a pretty intense apparatus set up for monitoring and controlling them.

The German apparatus monitoring fascists is so good that they missed a string of neo-nazi murders of Turks for years and years and thought it was just some poo poo from inside the Turkish community. All liberal states have an extensive history of deeply infiltrating and monitoring any groups even vaguely leftist. Down to entirely peaceful animal rights and environmental activists and advocacy groups being infiltrated to the point of the police infiltrators sleeping around with women in these groups and having babies with them in the UK. The scrutiny given to right wing hate groups is nowhere near comparable.

Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Aug 11, 2013

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Pesmerga posted:

No, but guys, guys, if we do nothing, don't worry, the fascists will totally stop!


So, look, you're in good company. David Cameron thinks that if we turn up and pour money into games being held by a fascist regime, we are in fact helping to condemn that regime. No need even for boycotts, the best answer to fascism is silence.

Dutch government took the exact same line. The minister for sports came out and said that for example Dutch speed skater Ireen Wüst, who is bisexual, going to Russia and winning medals would be a much bigger signal than a boycott. I just don't buy that.

Omi-Polari posted:

Both communism and fascism propose totalising solutions to the ills of liberal society, and when implemented over the 20th century in their Nazi and Stalinist forms, provided the rationale for industrialized mass murder.

Please cite Stalinist industrialized mass-murder.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Obdicut posted:

To be fair, Jesse Owen's victory in the Olympics held in Nazi-controlled Germany was pretty rad, doubly so because it clowned (some) racists in the US, too.

I just don't think we can actually guarantee the safety of the athletes. Putin's government won't give a poo poo if they get beaten up or even killed.

On the other hand:

quote:

the party removed signs stating "Jews not wanted" and similar slogans from the city's main tourist attractions. In an attempt to "clean up" Berlin, the German Ministry of the Interior authorized the chief of police to arrest all Romani (Gypsies) and keep them in a "special camp," the Berlin-Marzahn concentration camp.

quote:

Academics cannot agree whether the IOC during this period was a willing collaborator or an organisation that favoured the aesthetics of fascist governments.[9] Although the IOC was insulated from the reality of Nazism, elements of Hitler's regime were in parallel alignment with the sporting ideologies of the IOC.

quote:

American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman, the only two Jews on the U.S. Olympic team, were pulled from the 4 × 100 relay team on the day of the competition, leading to speculation that U.S. Olympic committee leader Avery Brundage did not want to add to the embarrassment of Hitler by having two Jews win gold medals.

Real victory for Liberalism there.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Unluckyimmortal posted:

The Holodomor? I mean, if you literally look at just the loving wikipedia article it looks pretty much like "industrialized mass-murder" to me. It's just a different industry and state apparatus, but plenty modern.

Yeah no that's not what industrialized mass-murder or industrialized genocide means, unless you're willing to say that several of the Indian famines were also industrialized mass-murder on the part of the UK I guess.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Pesmerga posted:

Here is the latest from Greece: -


History is repeating itself. Conservative groupings suggesting alliances with them because they have more similarities than differences (probably mistakenly believing they can control them, as these parties are wont to believe), members of the clergy openly supporting them...this is seriously scary stuff.

This is why we should burn all the loving churches.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

my dad posted:

That's just what Greece needs. An angry Dutchman with a torch. :rolleyes: Will you at least let the religious Greeks leave, or do you intend to lock them up inside a church and just torch them all?

Yes I'll literally go over and burn everyone to ash...

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!
Anybody still have the video of the police and GD charging protests together?

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!
Also:

GD and police operating together against yesterdays antifa demos:
http://blog.occupiedlondon.org/2013/09/19/video-neo-nazis-and-police-operated-together-against-the-antifa-demo/

Eye-witness report of the murder:
http://blog.occupiedlondon.org/2013...itness-reports/

quote:

From eye-witness report: “Around 24:00 a group of 15-20 fascists, wearing black t-shirts and military pants and boots, was deployed on P. Tsaldari street. During that time, Killah P was walking with his girlfriend and another couple when he was spotted by the fascists shouting “what are you looking for here, you know there is no place for you in this hood”. The fascists hunted the two couples down P. Tsaldari street towards Gr. Lampraki avenue, where from another street, a new group of around 10 fascists came out and surrounded the guys. At that time, a car drove opposite in an one-way street, stopped, the driver came out and stabbed Killah P once in the heart and once in the abdomen (the stabbing on his abdomen had an upside-down “L” shape).
The whole scene took place in the presence of DIAS motorbike police, that only afterwards and only as soon as most of the fascists had already dispersed, arrested the murderer (according to some witnesses Killah P while still in shock kept pointing at the murderer and this is how the cops arrested him – a 55year old holding a knife, described by other eye-witnesses as a known Golden Down associate). The ambulance took 35 minutes to approach and Pavlos was pronounced dead at Nikaia general hospital.”

Report by the victims' father: http://blog.occupiedlondon.org/2013/09/18/antifascist-worker-and-hip-hop-artist-murdered-by-golden-dawn-nazis-in-piraeus-additional-reports/

quote:

Pavlos’ friends made a remark against Golden Dawn inside a cafe where they were watching a football match. Somebody from a nearby table overheard them and made a phonecall to Golden Dawn members. Golden Dawn squads arrived almost simultaneously with DIAS motorbike police. Pavlos tried to help his friends evade the scene, but he was ambushed by another Golden Dawn squad and surrounded. Then another Golden Dawn associate drove with his car opposite in an one-way street, stopped and stabbed him to death, while the DIAS policemen did not intervene. One girl asked them to help but they didn’t. They only approached afterwards to arrest the man with the main suspect

By local residents:

quote:

by other local residents: it all seemed like an ambush and not an arguement, there were dozens of people hunting down and surrounding one (Pavlos), their faces and uniforms resemble to the ones that attacked the communist party (KKE) members a few days earlier.



If any of you bleeding heart "we can't bash the fash we'd be just as bad" liberals are Greek, blood is on your hands too. If you aren't Greek, learn the lesson now so you'll be prepared if this poo poo comes to your country.

egh, post != edit

Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Sep 19, 2013

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Cerebral Bore posted:

It's all well and good that these fuckers got the boot, but the question is who they'll replace them with. If people this high up are GD sympathizers then it's pretty much certain that the problem isn't contained to the regular beat cops and that the police force is in fact shot through with fash from top to bottom, so where will you find competent, non-fascist people to replace them with?

What I'm worried about is that they will just promote people who are just as big assholes as those who were suspended and pretend that everything is OK with that.

What you're saying is that possibly all of the cops, are in fact, bastards?

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

weavernaut posted:

^^^Backfired how? Did the Mafia unite with the Italian equivalent of the Resistance or something? :v:

This is closer to the truth than you might realize.

Also, from what I know of Nazi Germany's bureaucracy, while having a reputation for ruthless efficiency, was actually hilariously inept, incompetent and corrupt. What with the whole promoting based on ideology rather than performance and attracting dumb bullies to ever higher positions.

Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Sep 26, 2013

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

MothraAttack posted:

What are the chances of their supporters fighting back, as it were?

I'd say slim. Given the article above about how the organization worked, the rank and file doesn't get to make decisions and would have no idea how to organize effectively. Plus, fascists are cowards. 40-on-1 ambush in which they kill a guy and get to be violent and 'manly' when ordered? Sure. Going up against terrible odds on their own accord? Unlikely.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Fideles posted:

I think when we look at some of the ineptitude shown by some of the current ultra right wing movements in Europe, your point is very sobering. I guess it is dangerous to dismiss these organisations as irrelevant idiots.

I'd say that's an important lesson yes. They are hilariously inept and would be much scarier if they wouldn't be (but then they probably wouldn't really be fascists) but if all the stars align they'll murder millions.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Emden posted:

And every time a left-socialist group gets into power they pull a Great Leap Forward, right? Or maybe a Holodomor? History is not cyclical. You can't predict the future by looking in the past. Okay thanks.

Ok imagine you get your biggest wish politically, what would society look like if you could reshape it to your vision?

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Riso posted:

The problem of the established parties is not only that they often refuse to address concerns of the people, like immigration, but that they also give up their original values to chase after the ever elusive center for more votes until they become completely exchangeable.

It has a lot to do with the (temporary) death of ideology in politics. Liberalism became so dominant that ideology became a dirty word and instead everyone convinced themselves that the way forward was simply a matter of looking at all the facts and picking the scientifically best thing to do, conveniently forgetting that the "best" thing relies entirely on your definition of what a good society looks like, your vision of the future, if you will. Parties stopped articulating such visions entirely beyond platitudes of things being "better", ie. in the future we want better education, better healthcare and a better jobmarket, vote for us! Unfortunately, literally loving everyone wants this. Then, when they invariably start to fail to deliver, out come the far right parties who are, it appears, the only ones not afraid to present an ideological vision statement and define "better" in radically different terms than the parties of the status quo do. Although to be fair, they need to obfuscate or equivocate on some of their points, as they can't come out and say just how far they're willing to go to deal with the immigrant/non-white people "problem", so instead they have to talk about reducing immigration, kicking out criminals and self-deportation. Meanwhile, the (traditional) socialist parties are increasingly defined as conservative parties, as they are against the "obvious and correct" ways forward all the center-liberal parties push. But instead of presenting a vision based on a radically different ideology in socialist terms, they fight for maintaining pensions at 65, keeping workers rights where they are rather than making firing people easier, keeping the healthcare coverage we have and so on and so forth. What they don't do is propose pension at 55, a 30 hour workweek, more healthcare coverage for cheaper and raising taxes, especially on the rich, significantly to pay for it and I have never in my life heard a politician of any party talk about the workers owning the means of production.

The average voter ends up presented with only 2 real options, the status quo in various flavours, which they determine isn't working, and a radical right alternative. People start either voting radical right, or stop voting.

Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Oct 11, 2013

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!
Wilders is inviting Le Pen to Dutch parliament to talk about forming a united front against the pro-EU people. He's also thinking about including Vlaams Belang, Lega Nord and UKIP.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

ekuNNN posted:

This was Wilders' way of dealing with the other racists too, before this year. He always distanced himself from being compared to FN or Lega Nord or Vlaams belang, but now he doesn't seem to care anymore, which worries me.

Combine with embracing neo-nazis showing up at his rallies and his poll numbers and it is worrying. At least everyone in his party that isn't him is a total blundering moron, so the LPF is likely to see a repeat as soon as Wilders calls it quits.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Antwan3K posted:

A grand total of 0 persons, if I recall correctly? Or have they moved away from the NSB approach?
Vlaams Belang is in its death throes though. The party is trying out a firm anti-EU stance, but Belgium is probably the worst country to do that. Even the nationalist right is in favour of the EU, and its diktats, to absurd degrees.

Well I meant people in office for his party, unless there's some political talent at the provincial and local level that I'm not aware of that they decided to keep out of parliament for some reason. Either way, all the non-Wilders PVV parliamentarians are mouth breathing morons.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

ekuNNN posted:

Actually, most of our nationalists love the Germans. Usually when our neo-Nazis have marches or rallies half the people there are Germans that have been bused in.

Well you know, they worked really well together last time the Germans came over.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Darth Walrus posted:

But I thought that fascists were all about how conflict is a purifying force and peace leads to stagnation?

He's a poo poo fascist, just another thing he fails at.


As for the murders, given that Golden Dawn is falling the gently caress apart and the general idiotic and violent nature of its (hard core) members combined with them probably being pretty scared right now due to that state's crackdown, I'd wager it was other Golden Dawn members who did it due to infighting or some personal grievance or other.

Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Nov 2, 2013

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

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?

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

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.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

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.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Jedit posted:

The minority communities whose people would be killed in the fascist reprisal attacks. Also nailbombs are pretty indiscriminate, so you'd probably hit someone who wasn't a fascist.

This is a good point. We should concentrate all the fascists in one place so we don't risk hitting non-fascists.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

SplitSoul posted:

So Geert Wilders is teaming up with Le Pen to rid Europe of undesirables. He reached out to the Danish People's Party to be part of the alliance, but while they have no beef with him, they consider Front National to be "deeply rooted in anti-semitism" (whereas Islamophobia is totally cool) and are "shocked" that their Swedish sister party, the Sweden Democrats, are even considering the offer. Their spokesman also distanced himself from the Austrian FPÖ and the Belgian Vlaams Belang for good measure.

What makes this funny is that, 1) their spokesman is a former member of the Danish National Socialist Movement, 2) Jörg Haider refused to meet with him and the party founder in 2000 because they were too racist(!), and, 3) the party belongs to the same EU parliament group that houses the former chairman of Vlaams Belang, a former member of the virulently anti-semitic, Bulgarian ATAKA, the neo-fascist Lega Nord and the neo-fascist Slovak National Party, noted for routinely honouring executed nazi-collaborator Jozef Tiso.


It's a very shaky alliance given that Le Pen has the history of antisemitism, not sure if they still do this but hard to imagine it is all gone, whereas Wilders is the most rabid pro-Israel guy you can find in the Netherlands because of lone island of civilization fighting the savage Muslim hordes type of thinking. Similarly, he is (well, portrays himself as, really) a staunch defenders of gays and their rights because the uncivilized Muslims hate them, whereas Le Pen is a raging homophobe.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Cerebral Bore posted:

Nothing new under the sun. Fascists and capital have always collaborated to keep the left down in times of crisis.

I suppose the only way to deal with it is for activist groups to try and find out where the funding for the fash comes from and name and shame any enterprising Captain of Industry dumb enough to have anything to do with the fash. Otherwise we're still essentially relegated to doing damage control.

That'd be nice. Wilders has worked hard to obfuscate his funding sources since forever. Personally, I think a good bunch of it comes from groups in the US, given how he sometimes shows up to give speeches to some fringe groups there that nobody really knows or cares about. His speeches in foreign countries also tend to be significantly more extreme than those for domestic consumption, yet the Dutch press never uses this to my knowledge. Where said groups get their money from, who even knows?

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Dusz posted:

Are you aware that in 1917 the Soviet republic was under overwhelming foreign assault? The aggressors had a massive material advantage, didn't think the republic was legitimate, and cared nothing about Russian public opinion. The republic was not going to survive if it didn't engage in total war against the invaders, which required unprecedented action - including mass-scale conscription and suppression of internal enemies. The sole alternative was the destruction of the republic and the total victory of criminal, treasonous and incompetent Russian feudalists.

What was your position on the Russian revolution again?

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:

You're barking up the wrong tree, orange. Dusz joined our ranks a while ago.

Oh shows how much I've been keeping up.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

DerLeo posted:

Not only one of the only recordings, it is the only recording of Hitler speaking normally.

I think the Finnish secret service might have more in its archives but they won't be released for a while yet.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!
Lack of effective leadership is an understatement when they had the likes of Grigory Kulik around who despised tanks and armoured vehicles, personally loving up the armaments of the T34 and KV1, didn't believe in minefields nor retreats nor submachine guns nor Katyushas. His command style was "jail or medal". He was wrong about literally everything and yet hugely influential.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

CeeJee posted:

He did save 150,000 Polish prisoners from getting executed.

True, yet I wouldn't be surprised if he caused the deaths of at least as many Russians. The fifth column, it was him.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Hob_Gadling posted:

Does this mean you don't see SD as Nazis?

I've been fascinated with the whole phenomenon. Mass immigration causes social tension and the only party that says they'll do something about it is shunned en masse. The rest of the parties are adamant on the "this is the only option" line. It's like they don't understand or care about why Sven Mellansvensson is agitated.

From a Dutch perspective this is like looking 15 years into the past.

Mass immigration is just a far right buzzword though.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

computer parts posted:

Of course the treatment of the Roma is always the elephant in the room regarding European racial relations, but they don't generally count as people immigrants to most Europeans.

Maybe it's time to make a Roma thread in D&D again.


Haha just kidding mods please don't probate me.

Seriously though, if you want a euro-D&D honeypot...

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!
Hah that's interesting because I had a conversation with my girlfriend about this a few years ago where I pointed out how much I hate that nowadays nobody is surprised by a politician lying and in fact you are the odd one if you act genuinely offended about being lied to by a politician. It is as if the very expectation that a politician will do, or at least honestly attempt to do, what they promise is not just naive, which ofcourse I know it is I'm not an idiot with no life experience, but a completely unreasonable hope or expectation in the first place. It ties into this authenticity you talked about, where actually believing in something nowadays gets you looked at as a fool, yet at the same time pretty much everyone hates the way things are going.

I've always found the line by the daughter of the political organizer in Naomi Klein's documentary on the recovered factories in Argentina very striking. She identifies as anarchist and doesn't vote, whereas her mom tirelessly campaigned for Kirchner during the film. Asked about this disconnect she says "my mother is from a generation in which she still saw politics building things up, all I've ever seen in my life is politics destroying things". Nowadays, I hear even from my parents and aunts and uncles, people from that generation where they have personally witnessed politics actually building things, things like "hah, and you think any of that is ever going to get better?" or "What does it all matter? They (the politicans) are all the same anyway."

It's like slowly now even just the belief that things could potentially get better is increasingly becoming seen as ridiculous and ridiculed. I don't remember the last time I heard anyone say they were happy with the state of politics or the direction the country was moving into, even right wingers who voted for the government or the PM. Do Wilders voters even really believe that the problems will be solved if Wilders gets his way? Like, really believe the country will become so much better and those Puinhopen van Paars will go away as we move into a bright future? The only ones who even talk about brighter futures and building things together and things getting better nowadays are politicians and the king in speeches, and as we know, everything they say is a lie anyway. It is as if by these people continuously repeating the same platitudes, even if ment as pandering, they are poisoning those platitudes and what they ostensibly stand for just by their constant associating of their terrible image and our expectations of them (lies, lies lies) with those platitudes.

Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Jan 11, 2014

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Shibawanko posted:

Yeah because Nazis would never lie, would they?

These are just showers, unless words have lost their meaning.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

OBAMA CURES ALAWIS posted:

So the guy with the cross and 1488 on his homemade shield is pro-democracy, pro-EU.

Glad to know who to be rooting for in this.

The pro-Russian side has nazis too, just different ones.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Darth Walrus posted:

Source on this? I don't doubt you, I could just use the links.

I actually can't find a source. When I think "pro-Russian" I think "Russian nationalist" and well, those guys tend to be not very nice. Maybe that's purely a Russian thing and not also Ukrainian though, and I spoke to soon, anyone know more?

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Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

V. Illych L. posted:

and European leftists on a whole are suddenly finding themselves in the curious and very uncomfortable position of playing conservatives in the face of a neo-liberal ideological onslaught.

The problem here is the traditional left stopped making demands worth a drat decades ago. When the liberals propose the pension age going up to 67, the response shouldn't be calls to keep it at 65, but to lower it to 60 and cut the working week in half. When they want to privatize healthcare (further), the response should be calls for nationalizations in the health, public transport, energy and banking sectors. When they want to suck off the almighty job creators the response should be calls to have their heads on pikes. There should be at least one party giving a real voice to radically changing the country in the opposite direction of the neo-liberals, and yet in most places that I am aware of, there isn't any. You can have milquetoast leftists who want to desperately and futilely maintain a system that's coming apart, neo-liberals who want to neo-liberal it up and the far right who want to neo-liberal it up with a side serving of gently caress dem blacks/muslims/jews/gypsies.

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