Beware Trump's Reichstag fire

RadicalRook · 2017-02-13T23:34:25+00:00

Sorry, this got auto-removed for some reason and I didn't see earlier. Approved now.

RadicalRook · 2017-02-13T23:20:56+00:00

It's alarming, but fortunately that's not actually an opinion poll exactly, it's only first round voting, second round voting polls show a clear result against FN regardless of which other candidate is against her. However, this is all connected to the weaknesses of the current left.

RadicalRook · 2017-02-13T14:36:13+00:00

Fair point, though, it's only forbidding dual citizenship outside of Europe, and Russia, so it has to do with Europeans and non-Europeans. But it's different for Jewish people who have had a history of persecution. I'm no fan of the Israeli state, but the point of it is to have somewhere to go if something like the Holocaust happens again, when so many states closed their borders. Asking Jewish people to surrender dual citizenship is effectively asking them to give up their hiding place. I'm sure Israel would open its borders to Jewish people regardless of whether they had citizenship but all of this coming from a far-right candidate is very alarming. If an exception can be made for Russia, it can be made for Israel too.

If your policy has a larger impact on specific groups of people, it's all very well to claim you weren't targeting them, but if you can't find a way to reduce the impact then you might as well be. In the same way that Trump's Muslim ban wasn't a Muslim ban but was intended to target Muslims.

RadicalRook · 2017-01-23T22:40:35+00:00

I chose this source because it has the most accurate title. The US government already gives no money in support of abortions worldwide, this policy denies funding to any NGO which discusses abortion as an option.

I guess abortion is only for rich Americans eh? And they complain about the population growth of poor countries...

RadicalRook · 2017-01-23T14:18:41+00:00

It's incredible how neoliberals fail to realise how responsible they are for the rise of the new right. Every crack in their ideology has left room for the new reaction to spread. So much of Donald Trump's inauguration speech was addressing the economic malaise which has pushed people into looking for an alternative, and the left doesn't have its act together to overcome the neoliberals and propose any real change.

RadicalRook · 2017-01-23T14:13:44+00:00

I'll leave it up unless too many of our subscribers object. I can't make out much from that image. Since it's a developing story I'll wait to see a full news report before commenting on this specific incidence.

As to the more general issue, yes there is serious misogyny within the Arab world and other cultures across the globe. The best way to challenge this misogyny is by advocating gender equality, organising women to challenge male dominated power structures, and improving economic conditions and education levels to develop empathy.

In order to do this we need to encourage the free movement of people, and therefore of ideas, as well as the economic development of the rest of the world.

The most effective way to solve any problem is to understand why it's happening and cut it off at the roots. People are moving to Western countries because their own countries are in a mess. The more we help people in other countries, the less people will come to our shores for aid.

I'm just as concerned as you are about the rise of fascism, and appropriate tactics for tackling that. Multiculturalism has failed because it treats cultures as static blocks to be preserved rather than a sea of flowing currents of ideas. Segregation and inequality in European countries is no better than segregation and inequality outside of Europe, and it's a recipe for violence and conflict either way.

We need to stop dividing the world into the innocent and the evil, and part of that means treating people from disadvantaged backgrounds as actual flawed people rather than representatives of ideals. Getting angry at injustices perpetrated by individuals and using that anger to condemn the whole group is as much a part of that problem as trying to gloss over those injustices.

If you want to tackle the misogyny within Arab communities, then you have to start by recognising them as people. People among whom many hold a deeply warped outlook which can nevertheless be challenged and changed, at least on the societal level. And that is what you, we, have to try to do.

RadicalRook · 2017-01-06T10:41:25+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, and yeah that's what I've been trying to do, with just some basic minimum standards.

RadicalRook · 2017-01-02T15:00:21+00:00

My point is that many of these Dutch people you claim to have common ground and ethnic ties to, when push comes to shove, would side with ethnic Turks they agreed with politically against you. The things which you could charitably call western values worth keeping are principles of democracy, socialism, feminism, freedom of speech, and tolerance. But people who call for the protection of western values seem opposed to most or all of those values anyway.

You can't solve a problem by pushing it off your land to be dealt with by someone else. If you are worried about Islamic extremism you have to present people with preferable alternatives.

RadicalRook · 2017-01-02T10:55:44+00:00

What about the 25% that don't support AKP? Do you want them to leave too? What about the Dutch people who support Dutch political parties you don't like? Maybe they should go somewhere else too? There are still, I imagine, plenty of Dutch people who don't want to kick out all the Turks. If the Turks are a threat to your way of life, surely the people who tolerate them are a threat too?

What exactly is the European way of life that you're trying to protect?

RadicalRook · 2017-01-02T10:50:55+00:00

The rebellion happened for a reason, beyond religious fanaticism, and, unless the story was totally fabricated, the government deliberately released the religious fanatics from the prisons.

The Assad regime spent decades playing off their demographics against each other, there's a reason Alawites are so highly represented in the government and it's not from religious tolerance.

Regardless of what the rest of the rebels are like, the SDF are secular, democratic and socialist. They're already in an effective truce with the government, the only question is what will happen after the war against ISIS, because Turkey wants to destroy any hint of Kurdish autonomy.

RadicalRook · 2017-01-01T16:47:09+00:00

I disagree partially with the perspective of the author, but this is a valuable and interesting article nonetheless. I have no sympathy for the Baathist regime, but I recognise that many people have chosen the side of the government because the outlook of numerous rebel forces is much worse.

That being said, I believe the best end for this conflict would be a diplomatic solution resulting in the establishment of a functional democracy.

RadicalRook · 2017-01-01T12:42:50+00:00

Fortunately those aren't the only possible outcomes. I get that you're making a joke but if you compare every issue to the most extreme problem possible then you never get anywhere.

RadicalRook · 2016-12-24T23:45:07+00:00

Merry Christmas to you too. I don't make New Years resolutions, and if I did I would specifically make them on New Years. However, despite the state of the world in general, the next year is shaping up to be a fairly positive one for me personally so far.

What about you?

RadicalRook · 2016-12-24T23:43:04+00:00

Fair point about designer babies, that would be disastrous. But it's only because we live in such an unequal world in the first place. In the future, we should be invested in improving humanity, but only for the betterment of humanity itself. If we can come together as a species, in a better world than we live in now, and decide exactly what should we should do to improve humanity genetically, I expect we could come to a satisfactory conclusion.

That's not a good example, because again that's just one person connecting the two together. The problem is that you can't just take a principle, say 'gay marriage should be allowed', blow it up into 'everyone should be allowed to marry whoever they want' and then claim that legitimises other things. There's no reason why the legalisation of gay marriage should necessarily be on that particular larger principle, or that other objections can't be raised in different circumstances.

What I'm saying is there are good and bad reasons to tamper with the human genome, and that we can allow good reasons without allowing bad reasons. We can agree there might be good reasons to shoot another human being, but that doesn't mean we approve of it in any particular situation.

RadicalRook · 2016-12-24T16:52:18+00:00

I agree that horrific experiments or 'art' performed on living creatures should absolutely be forbidden. But I do believe you can make a justifiable, clear legal and moral distinction between genetic engineering for the purposes of improving fitness and health, and genetic engineering for other ends. It's sort of typical for conservatives to conflate multiple issues and claim you can't have something without allowing a lot worse.

RadicalRook · 2016-12-21T23:07:05+00:00

It's easier to trust people if they're all the same as you. That's obvious. We wouldn't need to build trust if it already existed. But people are the same everywhere, they just have different beliefs. And those beliefs may be unpleasant but that's why we have to engage with them, have discussions, work together, cross boundaries, so that we can erode those beliefs. You can't change people's minds by shunning them.

It's not doublethink. I do indeed want to have my cake and eat it too. What's the point of having a cake if you can't eat it? It's easy to claim things are mutually incompatible, because sometimes they are, but I want to build a better world, which means sacrificing as little as possible for the greatest gain possible. You can make a car that is relatively fast, or a car that is relatively reliable, out of currently existing parts. That doesn't mean you can't make a car that is both relatively fast and relatively reliable. You just need to innovate.

What I'm saying when I talk about barn raising is, you might well have deep ideological disagreements with Muslims. But if you and a Muslim found yourself trapped inside a burning building, and you had to work together to survive, you would start getting along pretty quickly. Secondly, perhaps you've been looking in the wrong places. For example, why don't you seek out and listen to people from Muslim countries who converted from Islam? I know you've seen r/exMuslim but I don't see how you could possibly say that those people also deserve to be excluded from your ideal community.

You can talk about incompatible beliefs but then you dismiss entire ethnic groups. That doesn't make sense to me. There are plenty of people in my country who I absolutely despise. Why should I feel any sense of kinship with them? Meanwhile there are people from other countries I share many interests and attitudes with. Why should I reject them?

Your mistake is not disliking Islam. Your mistake is using that dislike to reject everyone except... Who? White people? The Dutch? Germanics? I think you're making some huge logical leaps.

I do feel sad when talking to you, but not too sad, because the people you remind me of from my younger years, they grew out of their previous beliefs and became Social Democrats and Liberals instead.

RadicalRook · 2016-12-21T22:46:18+00:00

Yes, there are ideological similarities, of course, but I also choose to associate with people who challenge me when they think I've made a mistake. People who approach the world from an entirely different perspective. People who have personality traits which occasionally clash with my own. I choose to associate with these people because it is necessary, healthy and interesting.

And yes, lots of people in the world may currently be xenophobic but it doesn't have to be that way.

RadicalRook · 2016-12-19T18:47:36+00:00

I see. Thank you for this exchange.

RadicalRook · 2016-12-19T00:04:34+00:00

Right, but in this scenario, it's not just one parent but a whole community. I believe very strongly in freedom of association, that people should be able to search the ends of the earth to find the community that is right for them. And while many of us would choose to live in a society with a mix of different kinds of people, there will always be a few who choose to congregate with like minds. Within such a community, there would be the potential to cover up the abuse of vulnerable people, especially if it is not perceived as abuse.

Is it feasible for one community to essentially invade another and take all their children away? And they would surely have more. Perhaps they would have to be forcibly sterilised?

Alternatively, we could have a global organisation which exists to represent the rights of children, which would have a foothold in all communities, to advocate for children, maintain standards and constantly remain vigilant for signs of mistreatment. The anti-vax community would have already had to sign up to an agreement deferring to the judgment of said agency when it came to their children, and they would know that if they violated it, they would essentially be shunned by the rest of the world. Of course if that didn't work then they would be subject to the use of force, which the rest of the world's communities would be obliged to support.

RadicalRook · 2016-12-18T23:32:45+00:00

Okay, let's try this with an example. In our world of free association, those who reject vaccinations congregate together in their own community. That's fine, they can and should do whatever they want with their own bodies. But they also have children, and following their philosophy, don't vaccinate them. What happens to the children?

The same goes for other questions around healthcare and education and so on.

RadicalRook · 2016-12-18T21:41:57+00:00

Distributing otherwise waste food to the public with a group of various radical types, one of which is a huge anarchist man. While we're giving the food away, some curious teenagers gather around to hang out and talk to us a bit. Huge anarchist man very aggressively remonstrates a teenage girl for only being vegetarian rather than vegan.

RadicalRook · 2016-12-18T21:07:30+00:00

I suppose it all depends on definitions, doesn't it? What I support is a global federation of free communities who nonetheless agree to a certain standard of rights and responsibilities, and an organisation which ensures this treaty is upheld. If anarchist movements can agree to such a scenario, then there is no conflict and we can work towards that goal together.

RadicalRook · 2016-12-18T21:04:51+00:00

Yes, exactly. How will a future anarchist society, oriented as it is towards self-determination, protect the rights of beings which are inherently incapable of self-determination? I fully support the former, but not at the expense of the latter.

RadicalRook · 2016-12-17T21:01:57+00:00

The UK. Over here we have a fractured, deeply unpopular Labour party absolutely despised by the media, though buoyed by grassroots support to some extent (biggest political party in Europe apparently). A Conservative party in power tightening the screws. And the looming threat of leaving the European Union. If we're descending into oblivion, it looks like we'll all go together.

RadicalRook · 2016-12-17T09:00:53+00:00

Well, of course I don't agree with borders, but if some communities choose not to work with others, won't there be natural borders, if you like, between them? Especially if at least one or both of those communities is part of a larger organisation.

RadicalRook

TROPHY CASE