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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2023

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  • Why are you arguing in favor of parties that want to infringe on people’s human rights?

    1. Denying people their right to vote is LITERALLY “infringing on people’s human rights”. You are arguing in favor of this!

    “Protocol 1, Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees the right to vote in free and fair elections.”

    https://www.ohchr.org/en/about-democracy-and-human-rights

    1. I’m not defending the AFD. I’m defending human rights and civil liberties. There’s a major difference that you don’t seem to understand.

    You are the one arguing that infringing “extremists” human rights is valid to protect everyone’s human rights, ignorant of the fact that all the government has to do to disenfrachise entire groups of people is redefine what “extremism” means (e.g. like declaring protests and property damage of Tesla to be “terrorism”). You are using the exact same logic fascists use to seize control.

    Do you think you get to decide what “extremism” is? To me, many global leaders are/were “extremist” and should be serving life in prison for their crimes – multiple members of the Bush admin in the US, numerous members of Israel’s government and military, etc – but most of worlds dominant political classes do not agree that wars and genocide (which have killed thousdands/millions of people) are “extremist” enough, or “extremist” at all. How can they justify these crimes? Because they committed these crimes fighting terrorists/extremists!

    What do oligarchs have to do with that anyway?

    Oligarchs own the lion-share of the media, corporations, capital, and political financing – everywhere – therefore they heavily influence the definition of terms like “extremist”, “terrorist” or “anti-humanist”, both socially and legally.

    How does any of that lead into dictatorship? What about separation of power? What about other means of political influence, like wide spread worker strikes, those wouldn’t be affected by the dismantling of political parties.

    I’ve given you concrete examples. I suggest you read up on modern history and how dictatorships are formed, and what civil liberties and human rights actually are.

    Why the fuck are people spouting libertarian nonsense in defense of fascism?

    You don’t know what libertarianism is. Libertarianism is not libertarian politics, political parties, or the fascists/conservatives who bastardize it for power/profit. It is the opposite of authoritarianism. If you believe that democracy, human rights, and civil liberties should be protected, you are a libertarian. You can’t be anti-libertarianism, without being pro-authoritarianism; just like you can’t be anti-ANTIFAscist, without being fascist.

    For what it’s worth I don’t believe you are arguing in bad faith, but I do believe you are uninformed/misinformed. You can either admit that there are major flaws with your argument, and that it has a potential to cause more harm than good, or you can dig in and continue resorting to logical fallacies.


  • You are much smarter than the users I encountered below, who downvoted the following examples I provided:

    It’s no different to a “means test” for voting. It sounds great initially, but falls apart if you dig deeper. The virtue of the means test is determined by who governs the means test. Once you create it, you have created the attack vector, and all the fascists have to do if they weasel their way into power is simply change the terms of the means test — you’ve already completed and normalized the hard part for them. As an example, Trump is currently using a 200 year old law to deport any immigrant an ICE agent chooses, without trial. He’s using this law because it gave the president blanket unilateral powers to apply it as they see fit.

    Another example from the US that has assisted fascism in denying blacks their right to vote; an old law declared anyone convicted of a felony ineligible to vote, then conservatives created the war on drugs to target and persecute blacks and the left. All they had to do was make non-violent drug offences a felony. As a result, millions of blacks have been denied the right to vote. All because the gov could decide who could and couldn’t vote because of X, and any future gov could control the terms of X.

    Extremists need to be defeated, but you can’t defeat fascism with the tools of fascism. If the 2nd example I gave above were never created, America may have never devolved into MAGA/fascism.


  • So you agree that whoever is currently in government — which are highly-influenced by their oligarchy, everywhere, to varying degrees — should be able to dictate who can and cannot be involved with politics?

    Congrats! You’ve made the EU great again! You’ve now given the majority the ability to eliminate political opposition, all challenges to the status quo, and supported a current/future populist achieve their goal of dictatorship. Time to pat yourself on back, now off to the gulag!



  • That is a dangerously reckless and ignorant take of the paradox. The paradox is a rejection of protecting the intolerant, and their use of an argument they do not adhere to themselves. It does not mean we should build the tools and laws of fascist oppression to combat fascism.

    It’s no different to a “means test” for voting. It sounds great initially, but falls apart if you dig deeper. The virtue of the means test is determined by who governs the means test. Once you create it, you have created the attack vector, and all the fascists have to do if they weasel their way into power is simply change the terms of the means test — you’ve already completed and normalized the hard part for them. As an example, Trump is currently using a 200 year old law to deport any immigrant an ICE agent chooses, without trial. He’s using this law because it gave the president blanket unilateral powers to apply it as they see fit.

    Another example from the US that has assisted fascism in denying blacks their right to vote. An old law declared anyone convicted of a felony ineligible to vote, then conservatives created the war on drugs to target and persecute blacks and the left. All they had to do was make non-violent drug offences a felony. As a result, millions of blacks have been denied the right to vote. All because the gov could decide who could and couldn’t vote because of X, and any future gov could control the terms of X.



  • I’m sure you can find many with words analogous to voters, changing, perceptions, opinion polls, etc. I know I’ve seen dozens of examples of conservatives changing their opinions dramatically based on propaganda, while everyone else — the people not indoctrinated with a mental illness — stay relatively static; as in +/- 5% instead of 10-40%.

    You will likely have to use advanced search and the internet archive. Also best to search key propaganda narratives like “migrant caravan”.




  • The rest of the “free” “democratic” world has supported them the entire time, and is now equating merely voicing support for the victims of genocide with terrorism.

    I figured the turning point would come around the time Israels far right committed domestic terrorism, and violently stormed IDF bases demanding the release of a soldier charged with using rape as torture. That changed nothing. Our “ally” is fucking indistinguishable from any Nazi, and our governments continue to whole heartedly support genocidal fascists.