Senate The US Politics discussion

This is amusing but yes, if you want to spread the debate wider, absolutely.

Seriously?

You're going down this route?

I've been giving those Nazis the exact same kicking, calling out those that defended them and Trump every step of the way.

In terms of wider debate I meant debate in here that started last night about other atrocities, not the debate about CV - there is no other debate there. The WS, KKK, Trump side are 100% in the wrong.

 

Bologna massacre is another for the list. Which, if the US doesn't get its act together, could end up happening in 2017.

 

didn't it already happen in 1980 ?

 

This isn't about "giving the Nazis the exact same kicking". This is about going on a tangent about something that is totally irrelevant to the matter at stake, and this tangent is in the interest of the whataboutists.

There were no "communists", real or fantasised, in Charlottesville, and King Leopold wasn't there either. As a matter of fact, both communists and King Leopold stopped being a threat quite a while ago. What is a very real threat is the fact that Nazis are present and active in our societies, both in the US and Europe, in 2017, and what amplifies this threat is that we take the bait when we're told to "look over there". We should know better than that.

 

Sadly relevant. Even eerily relevant.

 

Thank you Chyntuck.
We must listen to Chyntuck. He's from a nation that is the future US.

 

It's a she, but thanks for the "compliment" anyway

 

That is wholly different than attacking someone or rounding someone up simply because they have a set of beliefs.

 

My apologies

 

Then educate me. How can you take an ideology and make it illegal? How do you police it? I'm not talking about making it illegal for hateful ideologies to publicly demonstrate, but how you folks seem to think that you can just up an wipe out an ideology.

 

As it has been said countless times in this thread: German constitutional law on the vary degrees of supporting Nazism.

 

I wasn't. I may have missed some of the debate as the discussion on Communism began last night and seemed to pick up again this am. I have some posters on ignore so if I've missed certain points I apologise. I've not taken any bait, I've continued to keep the CV and the rise of the white supremacist fronts in mind with pretty much every post I believe and I believe the best way (or a way) to deal with any attempted deceleration is to acknowledge any flaws and move on quickly, keeping the attack where it belongs - which, as I've said from the start is on the thugs in CV and wherever else they rise.

I know that communism has nothing to do with the events in CV, nor do I think I've made such a claim.

I also acknowledged that communism offers no immediate threat in the same way. I also mistakenly believed that this was a message board debate where tangents arose as part of the discussion - just as the last page or so now seems to have been criticism or snark directed my way. Fine. If you feel my posts merit that that's ok, but you're taking on ideas you disagree with whilst also (I presume) still not losing focus on the horror of Nazis in CV.

Nothing anyone says in any of these posts detracts from that horror in anyway. Nor for that matter has any direct impact on it either way. All we can do is air our opinions and try and sway those who might be swayed.

 

I'm glad you're open to it, BBP.
We didn't wipe it out. But we did manage to make it an absolute taboo, as absolute as they come, and to stigmatise it like nothing before or since.
We prohibited Mein Kampf, the swastika, and hate speech.
I was once against it, thinking it was a relic from the past, no longer dangerous - but alas I was wrong and now I am glad we have it.

 

I have no issue with this. I have no issue with making it illegal to publicly gather to demonstrate in the name of hatred. What citizens to in private is their own business though and should not be policed.

 

This is probably going to come as a surprise for Danna, Watto and others that I've interacted with more often in other threads, but I also don't think that banning Nazism as an ideology is remotely the beginning of a solution – first of all because banning ideas is a slippery slope and we shouldn't engage in that, but most importantly because forcing Nazis and their ilk to go underground doesn't make them less real, it simply makes them invisible.

When Golden Dawn was elected to parliament in Greece in 2012, they started receiving dozens of visits from delegations of Nazi and Nazi-like parties from around Europe, including (or even especially) from countries that ban Nazism. Everyone was surprised because people had no clue that those groups existed and that they were networking and had been doing so for decades. They were just constantly shifting and changing their names and modes of organisation for the past several decades so they could exist under the radar. Also, they joined or associated with "normal" far-right parties and basically hid in there. Then suddenly they had a pretext to come out in the open when the refugee influx came to Europe and we all went, "uh, wait, this [insert "normal far-right party name here] is much worse that I thought" while being woefully unprepared to confront them.

Western countries have an entire legal arsenal to address criminal activity, and Nazi organisations by their very nature do all sorts of things that go against the law. We don't need to ban them from existence, we just need to enforce good ol' criminal law.

 

Wasn't that the whole point of "antifa" in the first place - that extreme neo-Nazis are already mostly underground, and they reveal them and "out" them to the public and their employers?

 

He doesn't want to bring them together. He wants them to come to him, begging for a deal. That way, he can lord it over them.

Watching a CNN interview yesterday with members of antifa and that's what they claim.

 

Despite the Republicans controlling all 3 branches...

(in Obama's 111th Congress, they passed 383 public laws and 7 treaties)

http://www.businessinsider.com/cong...-number-of-laws-bad-for-stocks-economy-2017-8


Hmmm, what was happening in 1973-1975?

 

As a European, I freely offer my services to teach my American friends how freedom of speech really works

 

I've seen editorials theorizing that if Trump had started out with something popular, like say infrastructure, that might have forced the Democrats to the table. Although Trump's idea of infrastructure is probably "sell federal highways to private companies who will then charge tolls forever". Of course, that was never going to happen, not with Trump's ego and the seven-year long Republican promise to repeal Obamacare (to get money for tax cuts too). Too bad they didn't spend much of those seven years actually coming up with a plan, it was easier just to shut down the government.

I wonder how many of those laws were just "undo something Obama did". They'll probably spend the first year or so tearing down Obama laws (due to some rule saying they can undo stuff from the last year of Obama's term, I think?) but they've got to come up with some sort of agenda besides just repeal Obamacare and make the rich even richer.

Standards have been falling for years, and Trump is kind of the ultimate/most recent expression of that. Approval ratings for Congress were really low, which unfortunately led to an outsider like Trump winning (among many other factors). 20 years ago a government shutdown was still kind of a big deal (I think during Clinton's term?). Now it seems like it nearly happens every year, along with the debt ceiling being held hostage regularly. And guess who the White House Budget Director is, one of those Senators who hates the idea of a "clean debt bill". Ironically without a common "enemy" the Republican party is arguably in even worse shape now. Having a worse than ineffectual President doesn't help either. If Trump did nothing all day that would be bad enough, but he doesn't understand that calling his party's health bill "cruel" is kind of counterproductive.

 

What Chyntuck says is interesting. Not remotely the beginning of a solution. Then what is?
I'll say it has provided comfort and a sense of security here. Not falsely either, because apparently when the nazis want to organise they have to go to Greece. As long as we have these laws I don't have to fear nazis.
I admit it's counterintuitive when you're a proponent of free speech. I guess I'm not an absolutist (You were right Ender Sai). I'm not for free speech when it comes to hate speech. Not from nazis, not from clerics, anybody. As to all things, there's a limit.

 

Freedom of speech has consequences. Which a lot of people tend to forget especially on Twitter and YouTube.

 

Indeed:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...lles-starring-fascist/?utm_term=.2db2f520b57a

It's a very satisfying read.