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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Senate European ultranationalists!

Discussion in 'Community' started by Lord Vivec, Feb 23, 2014.

  1. TOSCHESTATION

    TOSCHESTATION Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 17, 2003
  2. TOSCHESTATION

    TOSCHESTATION Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 17, 2003


    Saul Alinsky was an American community organizer, considered to be the founder of the modern movement. He is the author of "Rules for Radicals".

    Tell me again how he's not relevant to the Left*?

    *hint: not specifically 'communism' and only 'communism'

    edit:

    Regarding Lord Vivec's comment about "hard questions" and "honest debate about race" which prompted my comment:

    Might I remind you of the kind of reaction that British scientific reporter Nicholas Wade is receiving for his latest book, "A Troublesome Inheritance"? Hint: his science is being knocked for less than scientific reasons.
     
  3. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001

    Belgium has compulsory voting, but it's not enforced and I don't think it's for MEP elections.
     
  4. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

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    Apr 17, 2006
    Yeah I'm not thinking of any states that have mandatory voting for EU elections.

    The turnouts weren't very enthusiastic, but they've always been like that. Slovakia had a horrendously low turnout though, something along the lines of 13% or so.
     
  5. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002

    the reaction from scientists? the reaction of scientists has been that he's overreaching and attributing things to genetics primarily, that are in fact far more complicated products of environment & circumstance, culture, epigenetics, and, last of all, fluctuations of genetics
     
  6. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

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    Apr 17, 2006
    You can't just use words TUSHIE has never heard of before.
     
  7. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

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    Aug 18, 2002
    on the contrary, epigenetics are rather fashionable at the moment, id imagine he's heard about them in the popular press

    though admittedly probably a pretty poor explanation of them, science journalism being science journalism
     
  8. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

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    Dec 16, 2012
    Do we know what countries had the highest level of turnouts?
     
  9. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
  10. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

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    Dec 16, 2000
  11. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
    It's more La Haine than Kristalnacht, if that's what you're implying. But does kind of suggest Muslims and Europe don't mix. When you have the most primitive of all the primitive superstitions in the most liberal and tolerant of societies, something won't work.
     
  12. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

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    Aug 18, 2002
    you almost tricked me into liking that post by invoking La Haine
     
  13. Obi-Zahn Kenobi

    Obi-Zahn Kenobi Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 23, 1999
    I think part of the genius of Saul Alinsky was not that he created a system which was adopted by people to initiate and sustain rapid social and political change, but that he correctly identified and explained what traits are associated with memes and radical groups that cause them to be effective in their ability to cause change.

    I have a strong bias against conspiracy theories, so I cannot view Alinsky as a grand puppet master, swaying the innocent American children to embrace godless leftism and using a Rube Goldbergesque plan to destroy American society and its fundamental institutions. However, from the very little of Alinsky that I have read, it seems like he was very good at identifying what makes a movement for social and political change effective. Some movers for change who are familiar with him and his work have likely attempted to use his suggestion to their advantage However, I think of this more like a scientist identifying that single nucleotide polymorphisms in proteins regulating the expression of hemoglobin are more prevalent among groups adapted to high altitude, then someone claiming that Tibetans chose to adopt these SNPs so that they could live at high altitude.

    This is a reflection of my assumption that social change generally occurs not as the puppet of conspiracies, but as a competing marketplace of memes. I guess I could be wrong and the Rothschild family is manipulating everything for personal gain.
     
  14. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001

    Saying religion creates issues and the most anti-women, anti-gay, anti-progress, and illiberal of all creates the most should not stay your hand.
     
  15. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

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    Aug 18, 2002

    just seems a bit hyperbolic and ahistorical is all
     
  16. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
    I'm not sure it is either. I'm not saying it's always been the case - i.e. I think the historically most tolerant and inclusive society for Jews to live in was the very Muslim Ottoman Empire. But in the modern context? Of all the monotheistics? Really dewd?
     
  17. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

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    Aug 18, 2002
    well no my problem is more with saying x and y "don't mix" because there were riots seems a bit silly
     
  18. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
    Yeah, but it's not really that though is it?

    I suppose to be fair, it's more accurate to either say "many aspects of" or "large segments of the population don't" or something...
     
  19. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

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    Aug 18, 2002
    i would submit that riots and unrest are often a fleeting byproduct of "mixing"-in-progress, not a symptom of its "failure"

    a new equilibrium is being established
     
  20. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
    So a kind of teething process?
     
  21. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

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    Dec 16, 2000
    Complete with jew toys, it seems, if the recent rioting is anything to go by.
     
  22. Chyntuck

    Chyntuck Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 11, 2014
    Greece (56%)

    Edit: just to add that 56% was the official turnout - reality was probably higher because voter lists are out of date and there's a lot of people who are registered to vote but are dead or belong to the Diaspora and have never lived in Greece.
     
    Gamiel likes this.
  23. Chyntuck

    Chyntuck Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 11, 2014
    Me again, sorry for the double post, but after taking the time to read the entirety of this thread (I'm Greek so it's an issue that's of concern to me), I'd like to point out a few things.

    First of all, I want to say that "ultranationalist" is a misnomer and a euphemism when it comes to qualifying parties such as Golden Dawn, Jobbik or Svoboda. Ultranationalism is one of their characteristics but it is by no means their main or only characteristic. They are parties that tick every box in the definition of the fascist minimum - authoritarian, sexist, xenophobic, racist, antisemitic, antidemocratic, valuing the nation over the state with a palingenetic approach, distinctly fond of Nazi imagery and practices, organized along a military hierarchy and with a paramilitary wing, and so on and so forth. Calling them ultranationalist is doing them a favour. They should be called what they are, i.e. fascist parties.

    In that sense there's something unfair about lumping them together with the Front National in France or UKIP in the UK. While I have no sympathy for those guys, they just don't play in the same league.However, the FN, UKIP and their equivalents in other European countries are playing a key role in legitimizing the fascists by mainstreaming parts of their agenda. The same goes for political parties that are not considered far-right by European standards; a case in point is Greece, where immigrant-bashing is a favourite pastime for both of the two parties forming the government coalition, New Democracy (right-wing) and PASOK (socialist). In the 2012 elections campaign, the current Prime Minister, Antonis Samaras, had lifted entire sentences from Golden Dawn's manifesto, e.g. "we must reconquer our cities from immigrants," while the socialist Health Minister, Andreas Loverdos, initiated a witch-hunt against HIV-positive female drug users, claiming that they are "illegal immigrant prostitutes that are putting the Greek family in danger" (there's a great documentary called "Ruins" on this story, you can watch it here, just activate the subs if they don't come up automatically - content warning: this is a pretty distressing film, so younger people probably shouldn't watch it.) There were similar things in France, notably the campaign against the Roma under Sarkozy, which is still under way, albeit with a lower profile. I think that's the sort of thing that provides fascist movements with the fertile ground they need to grow, and I wouldn't be surprised if more of these fascist movements pop up in countries where they haven't appeared yet.

    My impression (it's really just an impression, because I haven't spent enough time in North America recently, so tell me if I'm wrong) is that this is not solely a European phenomenon. For instance the Republican party as a whole also shifted to the right over the past two decades, resulting in the rise of the Tea Party.

    Another thing I'd like to point out is that the most hardcore fascist movements (GD, Jobbik, Svoboda) appeared in countries that have a troubled history with fascism and dealt rather poorly with the aftermath of World War II. Hungary and Ukraine both had enthusiastic collaborationist governments in WWII, and, after the war was over, they moved on to communist dictatorships that didn't address the pro-Nazi tendencies of large chunks of their population. In Greece (I'll develop a bit on this one since it's the example I know best), we had a civil war after WWII, and people who had collaborated with the Nazis were welcome back into the fold to fight the communist enemy. The Civil War is such a sensitive topic that its history isn't really taught in Greek schools, with the logic that if you don't talk about it it will go away, but of course it didn't go away and fascist opinions continued to fester. So, put simply, fascists were always there, it's just that they weren't organized as such: they were hosted by a variety of political parties over the years, most notably New Democracy, which always had a hard-right wing. The crisis that started in 2009 was only an opportunity for the fascists to come out of the closet, but it didn't create them.

    To touch upon the debate of laws against hate speech, I'll just say that political developments in Europe over the past few years show that such laws manage to keep a lid on hate speech in times of prosperity, but they don't actually change a population's ideological leanings, and the nasties will crawl out of the woodwork as soon as they find an opportunity to do so.

    It's also worth noting that, in European history at least, the connection between big business and fascist movements has always been cozy, especially in times of crisis - think of I.G. Farben and the Nazi party in the 1930-40s to name but one example - and it's something we're witnessing in Greece right now, where there are serious reasons to believe that Golden Dawn is funded and supported by our own brand of oligarchs. There's another great documentary about this, "Fascism Inc.", that you can watch here (also activate subs, also content warning, this is not a movie about fluffy little bunnies.)

    About the European elections now, I just want to say that, while the results are in no way representative of entire countries - participation rates being overall so low goes together with radical parties doing better at mobilizing their voters and thus garnering a larger share of the vote - the public's reaction or lack thereof is clearly cause for concern. When Jean-Marie Le Pen came second in the presidential election in 2002, there was an uproar and people voted massively for Chirac in the second round to make sure Le Pen wouldn't be elected. In the 2014 EU elections, the reaction to the FN garnering a plurality of the vote was at best subdued. EU elections are obviously not as important as presidential elections, but there's also the factor that lots of people seem to have decided that the FN is something they can live with. In Greece, Golden Dawn got the third largest number of votes. An openly neo-Nazi party got the third largest number of votes in a European country in 2014, and no one reacted, not in Greece, not abroad. Sigh.

    I'll stop here because this is a topic about which I can go on and on, but thanks for the interesting thread and I'm looking forward to reading more of your opinions here.

    PS: Lord Vivec I hope your mum is okay now.
     
  24. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    Well, that's a pretty good post to enter the thread with.


    Missa ab iPhona mea est.
     
  25. I Are The Internets

    I Are The Internets Shelf of Shame Host star 9 VIP - Game Host

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    Nov 20, 2012
    Some good points you bring up Chyntuck. A great read!