I like that!
11 Likes
10 Likes
I know! That’s why I went back to highlight it from the thread. And when a chessmaster is saying “don’t play mind games”, it’s serious.
8 Likes
A better translation would be: My point is being dismissed as it would be ineffective in its application.
If this is your major point, that ridicule is the greatest means of discrediting nazis, then you need to go back and watch a few decades of Mel Brook’s films (as well as several decades of Jewish comedians):
We have Springtime for Hitler, and we still have Nazis… not coincidentally, we are seeing the last generation of holocaust survivors dying from old age, meaning that the holocaust itself is nearly out of living memory.
[ETA] Adding Springtime for Hitler, because Mel Brooks:
Dude, we’ve had the conversation about these issues already. They have been entirely debunked by people way smarter than me. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel here. Much like there isn’t much need to bring back the debate over the helio-centric vs. geo-centric universe, we really don’t need to bring back the debate on white supremacy, do we? It gains us nothing, because the people who are invested in it aren’t using anything remotely approaching facts and reality…
With regards to liberalism, I assume you’re talking about the paradox of tolerance, which has been brought up here before:
9 Likes
It is really outside of this discussion, but my point is that liberal opposition seems to be able to undermine the … maturity? … of some liberal concepts without engaging or defeating the concept itself. So how to fight fire with fire I suppose. I agree that the tact probably would not work directly against Bannon to reduce his credibility to the center (you’re not ever going to knock his cultists off). That makes it a moot point in relation to this discussion.
What? Have you ever read The Economist? It’s as close as a weekly magazine comes to being the official journal of the neoliberal globalist consensus (the same one that Bannon is bent on destroying and replacing with a bunch of squabbling protectionist and isolationist right-wing regimes).
It’s probably worth further explaining to you that neoliberalism is not a left-wing economic philosophy.
9 Likes
I’ll check it out. Ridicule is probably the not the best word. It really a dismissive attitudes to certain concepts. I live in the south. When certain topics come up, they are just dismissed. It is not vicious or anything, it is just it has already been reviewed and discredited (though probably not by them directly.) And it is multilayered. Scratch one and there is another ready to go. There is no drive to test these, but embarrassment or fear of embarrassment that does something.
Why was kneeling wrong then kinda okay then well still kinda Okay but more so. It was right before talking to veteran, but that made it embarrassing when someone cited veteran respect. And the nike burning was pretty embarrassing (past a certain demographic).
So that is what I mean by systemic. Or a broad, multi vector effort to move default concept of what is embarrassing to believe.
I disagree.
In my opinion, what we need to do is find ways to change the mind of people who support Nazi-like ideologies. I thing that the best way to do that is to find how these ideologies contradict some of their other core values. For example, we can point to how Nazis and the Confederacy were enemies of the United States, and how you cannot be a good American and also a Nazi supporter or a supporter of the Confederacy. We can also appeal to their Christian values and make them see how they contradict hate and racism; we can point to the fact that Jesus was a Jew, a Middle-Eastern, and a refugee; we can also remind them of teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.
Calling them stupid or ridiculing their beliefs or their leaders may actually reinforce their hate for the values that we are trying to champion.
4 Likes
God no. I am not saying tolerant intolerance. I am saying can you trap in a social obligation discredit him in a way that anyone not of his cult would be fear of even casually agreeing him him.
We’ve established that would not work. I am just clarifying.
By giving them a platform, it’s inherently taking their ideas seriously.
So do I. I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, though.
You’re seriously muddying the waters here. Bannon advocating for white supremacy is not the same as black athletes protesting white supremacy and police violence, if that’s what you’re attempting to suggest (it’s pretty unclear from what you said). Kneeling was always okay, even if some people think it’s somehow direspectful. It’s not.
Again, we have had in our society an attempt to make racism/white nationalism a ridiculous idea, which few people took seriously in a public way. We have decades of culture which have highlighted the danger and ridiculousness of said ideas… Yet, here we sit, in 2018, still weighing the merits of whether or not white supremacists should be invited to high profile conferences.
TLDR - What you’re suggesting has already been done, and it’s still “up for debate” among some people.
Are you saying that inviting him to a conference would discredit him in the eyes of those who like him and agree with him? Because that’s also unlikely. They believe that there is a “liberal” conspiracy to “shut down the truth” driven by “social justice warriors” who want a communist society. Because what they believe isn’t reality, it’s quite hard to discredit someone like Bannon in their eyes.
6 Likes
I threw out that if the right conditions were met maybe having Bannon there would have advantages. It has be made fairly clear that the conditions are not likely to happen and if they were it still probably would not work.
I agree.
The kneeling and such was not about Bannon directly, but trying to answer your question about what I meant by subtle,
Literally the only platform liberals and progressives should provide to Bannon and his fascist ilk:
[and, no, water should not be liquid of choice in the tank; I’d also make the fencing optional]
10 Likes
I didn’t think the protests were that subtle. Kaepernick was fairly explicit in what he was doing, but okay.
7 Likes
Well, you know how it is, one person’s “subtle” is another person’s “totally obvious based on multiple statements made in the national media.”
7 Likes
There’s no burning need to debate Flat Earthers once again, and it’s not a free speech issue if they’re denied a platform for their ideas.
It’s pointless to debate the true believers, because they’ll only extend their conspiracy theory to unity, and the trolls only want entertainment.
There’s no middle ground for compromise, no chance that they’ll be right.
If anyone really want to debate white supremacist fascists, go to their clubhouse or beer hall and see how that works out.
9 Likes
A clubhouse sounds fun, but their beer hall might be a little putsch for me.
7 Likes
Not the protests! Man, I am doing a horrible job at explaining this. The subtle move was talking to a veteran. No, my examples are not great.
There is a layer of dogma, social norms … something that says certain things are inherently okay. I’d give examples, but honestly the nit picking is getting hard to handle. Think of something that someone would never admit they did (in social circles) or freely admit they did. Are any of those different now? BDSM, weed, beating a spouse, swinging. Some places, yes some places no.
How did the (I think it is called) Overton window move for those. How did default acceptance/apathy/derision occur/change. It is not usually one big move. But there are little moments that move the needle.
Again: this is outside the specific Bannon conversation. I am just trying to answer your question.
How so? It’s not like he hid that fact or was doing that in order to trick some people.
One of those things is not like the others, me thinks. The other 3 are up to the individual. Abusing a spouse is not.
Usually via social movements that worked to convince people that change needed to happen. All of which has happened for the ideas that Bannon is espousing. Whit e supremacy has been entirely debunked, yet here we are. There have been social movements dedicated to ending white supremacy. There have been histories and political science books dedicated to just these ideas that Bannon champions that have shown just how dangerous and destructive they are. He has nothing to offer in the way of public discourse, because he has nothing original to say.
That’s what I’m getting at here, that Bannon’s ideas are not new or novel or in need of yet more public debate, because that’s already happened, for pretty much hundreds of years in the US. Why does his extreme views need to be given more air, when we’ve spent so much time talking about it?
And BTW, I’m not “nitpicking” here, I’m trying to figure out what you mean.
8 Likes
