So, how is what you propose any more effective? Does milking it for emotional catharsis while simultaneously worsening the problem eventually get better results than making an effort to resolve the problem dispassionately?
If a populace and its government were both so immature, they would meanwhile be suffering from much worse problems in the background without even being aware of it.
We have a saying in Germany that goes âpaper is patientâ. Thankfully, everything is on the internet these days.
So your quote is probably this one: âDer revolutionäre Fortschritt âŚâ - where they claim to quote Marx, but are actually quoting Lenin who very freely quotes Marx as
⌠revolution progresses by giving rise to a strong and united counter-revolution, i.e., it compels the enemy to resort to more and more extreme measures of defence and in this way devises ever more powerful means of attack
Lenin is referring to the failed Russian revolution of 1906, and Marx originally isnât giving a recipe for uprising, but very specifically describing the failure of the French liberal revolution of 1848, in the context of how the next revolution of course has to be a socialist one.
So the bottom line is, wherever through the convoluted history of this quote we look, 1848, 1906, or the 1980ies, it is all a profound history of failure.
Seeing how everybody these days is an expert on the history of both, what could possibly go wrong.
And for shits and giggles, read the lovely responses this got.
Not at all. Here in Norway we all treat Breivik as the contemptible criminal that he is. The then prime minister very early on made it clear that no new law would be created, no special treatment would be given. The public is not and was not clamouring for changes and the government was not in any danger of being ousted.
I donât have a twitter 
, can someone please tell them they are a bunch of spineless, xenopohobe, knee-jerking cowards? Glob, sometimes I do hate democracy. How can you even have a democracy when you hardly have any citizens, but only a herd of consumers, i.e. walking sacks of bowels with a credit card stuck in their ass?
You donât need an account to see public posts. Just click any of those links but the responses are pretty obvious.
Iâm not saying I donât recognise whatâs happening, I just find it incredible that there is so little variation in responses. Of course the authoritarian urge is strong, but itâs amazing that there seems to be no government capable of thinking past immediate short-term benefits to the situation theyâll find themselves in in a few years time - alienated, impotent and with the consent by which they govern crumbling.
Another re-post from the Paris thread:
This vid deserves to go viral, cause Waleed Aly is a fucken champ.
Maybe they would, but then thatâs part of the problem. If representative government has any value, itâs not in amplifying the impulses of people in the confused heat of the moment, but in standing for what they would still respect the next day.
Pericles watches the Spartans burn the countryside, tells his furious electorate he will let them instead of being provoked into a rash defeat, and is the better for it. Bush reacts to 9/11 with fury and leads his country into a broader disaster, one that has helped the rise of groups like ISIS. You can call that human or what his countrymen wanted, but there was no shortage of humans sober enough to protest it.
There is a trick here, that because such attacks are spectacular people forget what risks they really face. I donât think you calling safety a fundamental need is wrong; Iâve argued before that security vs. liberty is a false choice and each needs the other. But that just makes it worse to shred actual safety for momentary illusions, exacerbating the problems that promote terrorism in the first place.
Problem is, itâs in the interests of capitalists and shitheel politicians to promote complete risk-illiteracy. Scumbag motherfuckers telling you to be afraid of terrorists above all else are engaging in doublespeak, since anyone telling you to be afraid of shit rarer than lightning is the real terrorist.
Oh yes, letâs dehumanize our ideological foes. Thatâs always a great place to start. (Sarcasm!)
Many terrorists have had pretty decent educations.
Hey! I just heard about those guys for the first time the other day!
Indeed. Tend to be better educated than the grunts sent up against them. They are fighting for a reason they have worked their way to and against the hegemonic power structure.
The Bolshevik strategy of sharpening the contradictions seems to me to have been fairly explicitly referenced in ISâs press releases. Including the one referenced in the I original article referring to the grey area.
Though itâs even more obvious in the context of Charlie Hebdo where France took the bait - hook, line, and sinker - by arresting people (Muslims of course) for hate speech and u permitted speech.
The piece of âdoing the terroristsâ work for themâ that I find most striking is the extent to which the wannabe tough guys end up glorifying the Islamic terrorists, and ISIS in particular. They go on and on about what dangerous badasses ISIS affiliated types are, thus playing into ISIS recruiting propaganda. Worse, they insist that ISIS is the purest manifestation of Islamic theology and that all the Muslims with whom ISIS are at war are lukewarm cherry-pickers. They thus join ISIS in pushing its line that it is the one true representative of Islam.
Some of this opposition ISIS puffing is looks semi-deliberate. If you see yourself as the Christian good guy in the coming clash of civilizations, it makes sense to inflate your opponents too.
This!
Follow the ISIS money trail far enough back and youâll find the enemy is usâŚ
(Donât believe me? Watch their propaganda videos and tracts, itâs straight out of the American âHearts and Mindsâ playbook. With production quality to match. Not to mention their strategic operations come right out of a DoD training manual.)
They were inspired by state overreaction to student protests (killing a student protesting Iran IIRC) to seek further over reaction to undermine the stateâs validity in the eyes of the middle class.
Red Army Faction painted themselves into an isolated and increasingly deranged corner. They had no real popular support when they suicided in prison.
That said the German state was fairly ham fisted and gave them some sympathetic support through the way a bunch of ex nazis got to be in power and went to town on leftist protestors.
I mean, fucking Marvel used it as a trope for Iron Man 3!
I know, I know, down that road leads paranoia and conspiracy theories but maybe we shouldnât be allowing bought-and-sold politicians to pursue their religiously fuelled, gung-ho agendas.
Sometimes the guys in charge see nails everywhere for a reason.
Except sometimes itâs real. I tell people the Cheney/Bush regime was good for the world, and they think Iâm crazy until I explain that itâs only because of their ham-fisted arrogance that the world (especially Americans) now has a better understanding of how things really work behind the scenes.
I wasnât proposing anything. It was a retorical question.
My point was that normal people can be scared, that itâs trivially easy to terrorize people and their government. An attack gets exactly what they want, every time. They arenât surprised that the media spins out of control or that they launch air strikes. Thatâs not extra stuff. Thatâs the goal and itâs impossible not to achieve it.
The icing on the cake are the presidents and officials on tv saying âwe will not give them what they want! We will be strong!â Iâm sure the bad guys loooove that the most.
Who knows what the answer is going to be. No one has figured it out yet. And all the ideas so far have been wrong.
