Senate The US Politics 2.0 Discussion Thread

Looks like some masked (totally proud) white nationalist hate group called Patriot Front decided to march through Boston along the Freedom Trail yesterday, while shouting 'reclaim America'. From the pics it seemed like really young guys. No women.

 

I'd like to use this opportunity (I know, you're all shocked) to remind everyone that the only way to stop these groups is for people (largely antifascist) to go out and counter their attempts at intimidation. There is no debating that this works.

The Unite the Right rally was huge. We had actual Nazis walking around screaming blood and soil. But a huge antifa gathering came out. A man punched Richard Spencer on camera some time later. The next year the Unite the Right rally was tiny.

This works. The far right relies on intimidation and machismo. When their leaders get punched, get beaten up, those leaders lose standing in their own people's eyes and they lose the ability to lead these fascist movements. When there is physical pushback against these rallies, they lose steam.

 

Alternatively, we could just have a functional social fabric and legal system that works together to effectively discredit and suppress these ideas. It is wild to me that you present the number one best solution as individual people going out on the streets to do karate with one another.

 

Sometimes a baseball bat upside the head works where words fail.

 

What's more likely to happen, the GOP rolls out a federal ban on abortion after gaining complete control of all branches of government and some blue states ignore the federal ban and continue to allow women to have access to abortions, OR, blue states don't do anything to effectively fight back the federal ban and Dems wait around for enough of the conservatives on the Supreme Court to drop dead so they can replace them with more liberal judges who revive Roe or something akin to it, the latter of which taking several decades to carry out?

 

They try the second option but it never plays out.

 

As a preface, I don't entirely agree with Vivec on the use of violence. There is certainly a place for it and it often can be an acceptable response to oppression, but I think it should be strategically employed and most left-wing violence in the United States, with its tiny radical left, is unlikely to accomplish anything but bringing the full weight of the US government to bear on activists and vulnerable people caught up in all of it.

That said, it would be nice if we had a functional social fabric and legal system to stamp out fascists. I'm not confident we do. Sure, law enforcement-- at least at the federal level-- is happy to go after 28-year-old 8kun freaks who live in their grandmothers' attics, but, as we're seeing with the January 6th aftermath, they're not as willing to throw the book at those who actually used their power to advance fascism. Local law enforcement can be compromised as they were in Charlottesville. That's why it took civilian anti-fascists to confront Unite the Right.

 

Okay but we don't have that, we aren't going to have that anytime soon, and our police seem to be aligned with these groups, either ideologically or directly involved.

 

The most effective way for a school bullying victim to stop the bullying is to punch the bully in the face. I would never suggest that as a first resort, but it's often the necessary end result. Take your suspension vacation from school, enjoy some ice cream if you have a sensible parent, and never deal with it again. The same works with Nazis.

The idea, basically, is to embarrass them and make them afraid of you. It doesn't take much, because bullies and Nazis are alike in that they are cowards. They like to act mean and tough, but when you rise to that level and confront them, they run away with their tails between their legs. That's why it works, and very effectively.

 

Red flag laws saved 7,300 Americans from gun deaths in 2020 alone – and could have saved 11,400 more (forwardky.com)

A possible solution and one that can be proposed more and fought for.

 

I think these are all very fair and reasonable points. On the violence part, I agree that it is "unlikely to accomplish in anything" in the US at present, but I am not necessarily ruling it out in all cases across all of human history. Anyway, well met.

 

This is why we need someone like this as opposed to all these incompetent fools. Makes me more disdainful of the corrupt system than usual.

 

Have you tried words? Or rather, have you tried using the correct words? We haven't even begun to forcefully denounce these Nazis, but instead we want to skip straight to the violence.

Even if it does come to violence, you still need words. Civil wars are won by convincing more people to join your side instead of the enemy. The pen is literally mightier than the sword.

 

You raise an important point, but words are not a panacea and often fail. It’s hard to argue with someone who has already decided not to listen; the trick is convincing a majority of people who feel otherwise to join your side before they end up in that category.

Democrats struggle with that concept and have been unable to learn that lesson despite being told of it’s importance time and time again.

 

Why? How are they this stupid? It's been about 30 years since Newt Gingrich wrote "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control", it's been out there for all to see, and Republicans have been using it as their playbook every day. Meanwhile, Democrats somehow still don't get it.

 

My brother in Christ, what do you think happens after you convince people to join your side?

 

In normal circumstances, you'd have more votes and you win. In a civil war, you have more troops, and you win that way. It's the same dynamic, just on different levels on the ladder of escalation.

 

It's less stupidity and more stubbornness.



This sums it up. Nobody wants to admit they're wrong and people like this fall into that category. The Civil War ended with defeat for the Confederate states, who were then dragged into the Union. But then blackmailed the Union into certain concessions.

 

Considering that Republicans are dividing up the country more and more aren't they creating the circumstances to make it easier for blue states to leave the union? If the Supreme Court allows Republicans control over election laws to keep them in power more or less forever then we'll no longer have a United States. What would be the point of blue states staying in the union?

 

I knew it. She's a double agent.

 

Conservatives don't want control over themselves, they want control over non-conservatives. There's no chance of them letting blue states go.

 

It's owning the libs, not let the libs go. I think making half the country suffer, in their Theocratic Utopia, as they've had to do for the last 80 years is the point.

And besides, far too many blue states/cities/whatever subsidize the red states. So they're gonna need them to stay in the 'union'.