Seems like a good spot for this:
Nonviolence works the same way: if you're engaging with someone / some group who isn't violent, there's an expectation that you'll also remain nonviolent. If they pull a gun on you and you happen to be packing (and a quick shot) and shoot em dead, that does NOT bring you down to their level.
From the German constitution:
Anyone who abuses the freedom of expression, in particular the freedom of the press (Article 5 para. 1), the freedom of teaching (Article 5 para. 3), the freedom of assembly (Article 8), the freedom of association (Article 9), the secrecy of letters, mail and telecommunications (Article 10), the property (Article 14) or the right of asylum (Article 16a) to fight against the free democratic basic order, forfeits these fundamental rights. The forfeiture and its extent are pronounced by the Federal Constitutional Court.
Exactly. I don't get why this simple concept is so hard to understand. I've had many people claim Germany doesn't have freedom of speech since you are not allowed to salute Hitler. By invading other's rights, you give up yours. It's not hard to comprehend.
There also is this section:
Parties that, according to their goals or the behavior of their supporters, aim to impair or eliminate the free democratic basic order or to endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany are unconstitutional.
to fight against the free democratic basic order,
Wold be nice if "liberal democracy" consisted of anything that can be called democratic with a straight face - perhaps then Germany wouldn't be one of Israel's most vitriolic genocide enablers.
You did know there's a western-backed genocide being perpetrated in Palestine right now, right?
You mean... apart from the fact that Germany is funding, supporting and enabling Israel's genocide?
But what does this have to do with democracy? If the elected parties fund a war, morally correct or not, it is still democracy as they were chosen. There are multiple German parties who oppose Israel, but they weren’t elected
It's all well and good until you end up like the US or the DPRK. Any clown fiesta can be touted as "democracy" as long as the people doing it don't have any meaningful resistance to doing so. Objective truth is a myth in the real world.
Any system can be undermined with enough criminal energy.
People often argue against certain laws that they can be abused if judges collude with the executive.
But if the separation of power between executive, legislative and judiciary and the related mutual controls break down then the actual laws don't matter anymore anyway.
Does the paradox of tolerance even exist?
If you tolerate a group that hates a group of people, there are people that hate a group of people, meaning the society is intolerant to that group of people until those people are gone
If you dont tolerate a group that hates a group of people, there are people that hate the group that hates a group of people, meaning the society is intolerant to that group that hates the group of people until those people are gone
Because there is no way to become a tolerant society until one of the 2 groups is gone, the easiest way to become a tolerant society would mean getting rid of the easiest group you can get rid of.
Which group would be easiest to get rid off:
- Jews, communists, slavic people, Romani people, all races but one, people with mental and physical illnesses, LGBTQ+ people and poor people Or
- People with a specific ideology
Anything else wouldnt matter since the society will remain intolerant
PS: by "get rid off", i mean remove people from the group, not specifically kill
Does the paradox of tolerance even exist?
If you tolerate a group that hates a group of people, there are people that hate a group of people, meaning the society is intolerant to that group of people until those people are gone
Exactly: there is no paradox there if you don't think of tolerance as an absolute. This blog post put it pretty well:
Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact.
If they pull a gun on you and you happen to be packing (and a quick shot) and shoot em dead, that does NOT bring you down to their level.
What if they start by shouting "He's got a gun!" and then pulling a gun and firing at you? And then what happens if the news media reports the killing as "Brave hero defends neighborhood against armed criminal" while encouraging other people to behave in a similar fashion? And then what happens if the people shouting "He's got a gun!" and shooting, as an excuse to engage in a kind of localized ethnic cleansing or social repression, are members of and friends with the local police department?
How do you resolve the paradox of tolerance when you aren't in a position physical, social, or political of dominance?
A take on the paradox of tolerance that I really like is that tolerance is not a moral absolute: tolerance is a peace treaty and not a suicide pact, so its "protection" is only afforded to those who abide by the treaty and it doesn't mean tolerating everyone no matter what. Here's a blog post on this, and a relevant quote:
Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact.
Sorry, that means you're just as bad as the fash. You should be engaging them on the marketplace of ideas, just like people did in WW II when they stopped the fascists with kindness and debate
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All of mainstream media? Where have you been?
Once, someone threw a milk shake. The NYT was wringing hands for weeks.
I mean of course I was being hyperbolic but I've had several people tell me something equivalent to pretty much like this. "Using violence against fascists is stooping to their level" is another classic.
edit: aaaaaand here we go, there is now at least one person in these comments saying exactly this
There's been a push for decades that everyone should be respectful and peaceful and not bother anyone when they protest in any way. The entire country forgetting how we've accomplished almost every major societal change.
Does anyone actually advocate for this?
You mean... apart from about nine out of every ten liberals?
Fascism was never stopped. Can never be stopped. Fascism is not a political ideology, it is an expression of human psychology.
If someone in your life is becoming a fascist, like is happening in many of our lives, do you get a gun and kill them? Does that solve fascism in your life? Perhaps you merely punch them until they stop being a fascist. Is this really actionable advice?
Fascism is growing because people are afraid of an increasingly uncertain future that they have no power over. Threatening them with violence will only make them more afraid and draw even more on what fascism offers them. The people in our lives need love, not violence.
Fascism is not a political ideology
"Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement […]" (wiki, although I'm sure you'll soon tell us that Wikipedia is not a valid source because you don't understand the difference between using Wikipedia as a source on Lemmy vs. in a scientific article)
The people in our lives need love, not violence.
The people in my life aren't Nazis
That last part is the important bit. If you know a fascist, they don't need to be part of your life.
No no, apparently that's "purity testing" and you're a bad person for not wanting to associate with fascists
The people in my life aren’t Nazis
I know the right-wing infosphere has brainwashed multiple members of my family. I don't have a way to check the percentage of people I've known in my life that are now brainwashed. I know that my life would have been lesser had I not met every single one of them. I don't see the people in my life as a purity test, they're still the same people. What happened to them is a reminder that we must first and foremost defeat fascism, the political ideology.
What the – and I simply can't emphasize this enough – fuck does it have to do with PuRiTy TeStInG if I don't want to associate or spend time with people whose political ideologies would fucking literally have me stripped of human rights if not outright murdered because of my gender and/or gender identity? What sort of an obligation do I have to keep those people in my life if they have publicly stated opinions that make it clear that I may not actually be physically safe in their presence?
And no, I don't have a way to "check the percentage of people I've known in my life that are now brainwashed" either you utter cabbage, I just don't knowingly associate with extremists conservatives let alone literal Nazis. If somebody I know turns out to have fallen off the deep end, I just don't keep associating with them. See, no magical PuRiTy TeStEr required?
So yes, great, good on you for being so accepting of people, I unironically commend you for that, but even though I have no idea who you are or what your background is, this comment – like a lot of the hugbox let's defeat the nazis with love bullshit I've seen earlier – definitely feels like it's coming from someone who's got no experience with being on the receiving end of bigotry or misogyny. Easy to be a bit more understanding and accepting of Nazis when you wouldn't be one of the first people they'd shove in a camp.
Edit: and I'm saying this as an avowed lover of hugboxes of various kinds. "Cute but will fight"
Not everyone has the luxury of knowing no one who has been brainwashed by the right-wing infosphere. A person not having anyone who has partially or fully adopted fascist ideology in their life is not something to brag about. Nor should that be the goal.
People have families. People have childhood friends they've known their whole lives. People have classmates with the same or similar schedule as them. People have adult friends in their social circles. People have co-workers at their jobs. People cannot control the political ideology of the people around them. If someone is informed enough to know exactly who in their life is currently a fascist and can disassociate exactly from those people then good for them. The majority of people will not be able to do that. Nor will doing that solve the problem.
When the response to this
The people in our lives need love, not violence.
is this
The people in my life aren’t Nazis
That's a purity test. Your argument is to sort ourselves by political ideology.
Easy to be a bit more understanding and accepting of Nazis when you wouldn’t be one of the first people they’d shove in a camp.
I am a Jewish, atheist, social democrat, lesbian, trans woman. I'm white and pre-transition, so I get to benefit from white male privilege for now. But if the fascists could put me in a death camp they would.
If a person is in danger from someone in their life and can dissociate from that person, then by all means dissociate from them.
The way to defeat fascism is to defeat the ideas that make up the political ideology. Isolating ourselves does nothing to forward this goal.
You're still missing the point here. I never said I keep tabs on everyone at all times just so I can pull the eject handle if they turn Nazi, just that if it does turn out somehow that someone is a Nazi, that is when I pull the eject handle.
In any case, my argument absolutely is that I'm going to sort my friends by political ideology – and no, I don't give people forms to fill out or install cameras in their homes. Doesn't mean everyone has to think exactly like me, but "no Nazis" doesn't feel like it should be a high bar. Sure, maybe this does nothing to help solve the situation but I have no interest in having to be buddies with them, let alone loving them – better people are welcome to it, but I'm done, I'd jump off a cliff if I had to listen to yet another "rational" fascist wannabe explain why my whole gender is inferior to his and then dismiss me when I get ANGY. Call it purity testing all you want, but for me and I suspect a lot of people this is self care
Hey, sorry to necro-post. But now it's just you and me and all the internet tough guys have left. I appreciate your point of view and I am curious about something you said.
How can the "political ideology" of fascism every "be defeated"? Even accepting that you can "defeat" an ideology, and that fascism is even meaningfully thought of as an ideology at all (which I don't think is a helpful lens), fascism works, and it works because of elements of human psychology that we can't simply get rid of. People will always be able to enlist the support of others by throwing vulnerable people under the bus. How is that an ideology that can be defeated? Surely we have to address the conditions that allow human psychology to be exploited in such a way, to help people empower themselves and not feel the fear that makes hatred appealing in the first place.
You seem to be absolving them of any responsibility here. Brainwashing isn't magical, they have simply been convinced to be evil.
Responsibility implies action. The majority of people in our country who have been brainwashed by the right-wing infosphere haven't done anything. If people are physically attacked by someone, they should defend themselves. But thinking fascist thoughts isn't a violation of the social contract of tolerance.
Thinking them may not be (although only because I believe in absolute freedom of thought). But voting for them certainly is!
People are afraid of a uncertain future? When was it any different in the past? When did people have power over the future that we do not have today?
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People are afraid of a uncertain future? When was it any different in the past?
When economic inequality was lower (at least for white people, anyway). I gotta admit he does have about 40% of a point about that.
Climate change is a terrifying prospect with billions of people expected to be forced to move within our lifetimes. The people who claim not to believe it the loudest are in fact the ones most fearful of changes that they can not control. For only one example.
You act like the world is static. It is incredibly dynamic. All periods in human history are not interchangeable. Your point doesn't seem to be that this point in history is not especially fertile for fascism, it's that every point in history is equally fertile.
People are afraid of a uncertain future?
Who made the future uncertain?
We defeated the Nazis, but not their ideas. Fascism is a collection of ideas, so it's an ideology and a political one at that. People had to invent these ideas. They were not an inherent part of human psychology. Fascism is a collective puzzle that we all have to solve together.
Violence in self-defense is necessary to stall for time. However, no matter how many fascists die, if fascist ideas are not defeated then there will always be more fascists. There is no benefit in breaking the social contract of tolerance first. We are in an information race, so the spreading of true information is always more useful than violence.
People should defended themselves regardless of the political ideology of their attackers. Once that's done for the day though it's back to spreading socialism. Fascism is growing because neo-liberalism denies people the ability to solve their economic problems. Which in our case are caused by late-stage capitalism. edit: typo
it is an expression of human psychology.
Bullcrap. Fascism is a feature specific to liberal nation states and there's absolutely nothing fundamentally liberal about human psychology.
As satisfying as it may be, the problem is that the fash gets back up after the bash. There was a pretty extensive study done on this in the 1940s, and they found quite a few methods for better handling the fash.
The sad thing is, this argument originates from fascists, they just managed to gaslight a whole generation of people that "hypocrisy" is the worst thing to ever happen to humanity, and people should hold the moral high ground to a stawman version of their ideology.
Hypocrisy IS the worst thing to happen to humanity, but intolerance of intolerance isn't hypocritical, it's necessary.
This is slander and I will not stand for it: I bet Jadzia would be down for a nice fash bash
There's a name for this I just can't remember what it is.
It's all about following the social contract. If you break the social contract you are no longer protected by the social contract.
So if you walk around advocating for the harm of others, you've violated the contract and your rights are forfeit.
Obviously there's nuance but the point is there.
Maybe you mean the peace treaty thing? I mentioned it in a couple of earlier comments, here's a copy-paste:
Here's a blog post on this, and a relevant quote:
Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact.
Maybe that's it. Sounds about right.
Don't be a dick and you won't have to deal with the consequences of being a dick.
So if you walk around advocating for the harm of others, you’ve violated the contract and your rights are forfeit.
I've yet to see a Talk Radio personality lose rights for advocating harm to others. On the contrary, they tend to receive enormous pay packages, national syndication, and A-list celebrity status as a result.
Perhaps you're confusing the "social contract" with "karmic justice". But people very rarely get what they deserve.
They are talking about an ideal, not describing the current reality. It's a resolution of the paradox of tolerance.
The “paradox of tolerance” only exists because people think “tolerance” is a universal good.
If you don’t start with that (utterly asinine) assumption, there’s no paradox.
Tolerate a guy beating his dog to death? No that’s not what the “tolerance” aspect of a tolerance society is.
“Tolerance” as a cultural feature or a policy has never referred to the tolerance of all things. It’s tolerance for race, religion, languages, etc.
The whole time, we’ve been intolerant of murder, theft, etc. The whole paradox comes out of a sloppy willful misinterpretation of the word in the first place.
It’s like a three year old concluding that “got your nose” is a paradox because they reached up and felt their nose after mommy got their nose.
The paradox itself is more rhetorical than anything because we don't live in a perfectly tolerant society in the first place. And humans are not robots that need to strictly follow a code that contradicts itself, so even if it were law it wouldn't be a paradox.
But it does work rhetorically because the paradox comes from the contradiction between "tolerate everything" and "everything includes the intolerant" by limiting the scope from "everything" to "everything that generally tries to be tolerant".
the paradox comes from the contradiction between “tolerate everything” and “everything includes the intolerant” by limiting the scope from “everything” to “everything that generally tries to be tolerant”.
The contradiction is between the rhetorical ideal and the practical consequence. "Intolerance of intolerance" is a cute rhetorical trick, but what it amounts to in practice is a brawl between rivals. You're suggesting the Hatfields and the McCoys have solved the paradox of tolerance by endlessly feuding with one another.
It's just a resolution of the paradox, not a recipe for Utopia. Ultimately, I don't think there is a simple way to determine what should and shouldn't be tolerated. Eg, the resolved version would suggest I'm wrong for not wanting to tolerate gender reveals that result in massive wildfires.
At the end of the day, the wisdom I take from it is, "it's stupid to tolerate those who won't tolerate you".
At the end of the day, the wisdom I take from it is, “it’s stupid to tolerate those who won’t tolerate you”.
So the solution is to... do what? Rude gestures? Invent a new slur? Ethnic cleansing?
Would that mean this guy’s now outside the social contract?
Imagine not wanting to kill neo-nazis but be fine with Isreali war crimes, involving the genocide of many innocent lives
I’ve been called a neo nazi before. Are you advocating for killing me?
What’s the threshold where you’re sure enough that someone’s a nazi that it’s now ethical to kill them?
Who gives a shit what people call you.
If you're walking like a Nazi and talking like a Nazi. Hell yes I would.
My grandad would come back from the dead to punch you to death probably before I had a chance.
Can you define “walking like” and “talking like”?
Are you willing to articulate the set of rules you are advocating for selecting people to be killed?
You guys are literally plotting mass murder.
I’m being socratic to hopefully guide you into realizing you’re being monsters.
My threshold is the 'violent MAGA crowd'. The ones too far gone into the alt-right cult. If some twitter user calls you a nazi, that means shit unless you were acting like a nazi.
Fascism is intolerable and should be resisted by any and ALL means. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Fascism is intolerable and should be resisted by any and ALL means.
True. But also...
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
Civil Rights leaders of the 1960s were routinely described as bigoted, fascist, and psychotically violent. This lead to a country-spanning crack down on civil rights organizing in the 70s and 80s, and the functional extinction of national movement by the 2000s.
We had a brief resurgence of civil rights protests following the Great Recession, which peaked with the BLM protests of the late 2010s. But media slanders quickly tarred these protest movements as violent and dangerous, while a rapid police response supplemented by our advanced national surveillance crushed the leadership in short order.
The Gaza protests were quashed even faster and with still greater violence, while news media had Palestinian peace marchers tarred as Hamas terrorists and Russian double-agents.
What do you do to resist fascism in a fascist nation, without being targeted and labeled a fascist yourself? What weight does the term "fascist" carry when it serves as nothing more than a label to legitimize state and vigilante violence?
Call me the last fascist in hell then. Y'all can string me up for my crimes when we've eliminated all the threats. Keep your hands clean and I'll shut the door behind me.
It's a fair assumption to make, given that old people make up the vast majority of Trump supporters.
I'm having trouble finding a study about support by age group that separates the boomers from the older generations.
There's reason to believe that the greatest generation has a different outlook on fascism than silent generation and boomers, though at this point those two younger generations dominate the 65+ group. At this point, WWII vets (assuming the youngest were 18 in 1945) would be 97+. Boomers are mostly 65+.
At what point do our moral obligations directly conflict with the Rule of Law?
When does the need for doing The Right Thing™️ override the need for doing it The Right Way™️?
Before you answer just know that I know that I don’t know that I’ll ever know the full and complete answer to that question
The Right Thing™️ means a great many different things to a great many different people. Law is a way of funneling the most functional of these things into rules that most can agree with and live by. This requires a sacrifice of living not by your own ideology, but by one best for the whole, in exchange for a safe and functional society.
When The Right Way™️ starts catering to the interests of a few, the society becomes less safe and functional for the majority of its occupants. Thus making compliance and participation in its rules a bum deal for the populous. We obey by choice to get safety and security. When people stop feeling like society is fulfilling it's end of the bargain, they revolt. So the question is, at what point do you feel like you're being fleeced?
If your idea of "resisting fascism" is to remove democratically elected leaders and installing your own leaders then not only are you the fascist but you're the only real fascist in that analogy. That's what fascism means, it's authoritarianism, the opposite of democracy or anarchy respectively.
That's conservative ideology. Liberal only means not conservative. Stop trying to pretend that liberal means centrist. There's already a word for that. It's centrist.
Liberal is the opposite of authoritarian. Progressive is the opposite of conservative. American 1 dimensional politics does not define all of political conversation.
Liberal is the opposite of authoritarian.
Riiiight... until you threaten their precious private property, capitalism, and/or imperialism. Then you quickly see liberals singing the same song fascists do.