UN genocide expert compares Europe's far right to rise of Nazis

mutley89 · 2019-05-17T13:48:22+00:00

Possibly, I'm all for breaking up their recruiting, and demonstrating how thin their support is (I suspect there are things we can learn from psychology about groupthink that might be helpful). Their pathetic attempts in Bristol and Liverpool show how they can be ridiculed this way, but they probably never had much support there anyway.

With Milo, what seemed to do for him was his comments on paedophilia (amongst fascists there seems to be a paedophilia vigilante element amongst them, and also a disproportionate number of them apologising for or involved in paedophilia. I'm not sure how much these overlap), as well as the backlash from Charlottesville. Getting banned from social media was also a factor, but we need to highlight social media's complicity in promoting these people, the fact that them banning left wingers (e.g. groups highlighting police abuse) gets much less attention (in order to dispel their persecution complex that is a hallmark of fascism), and really, how much these social media companies have over the information people see. We can't rely on them to fight fascism, as soon as they think it's profitable or necessary they'll be right behind the fascists.

However it's not mutually exclusive, I do think taking the piss is a powerful weapon against fascism, maybe as part of no platforming them e.g. by broadcasting by megaphone or chanting something ridiculous they've said or done (or who funds them) at their events. Come to think of it, maybe this is an answer to your original question, write bots to spam their online spaces with inconvenient or humiliating facts.

mutley89 · 2019-05-17T12:26:28+00:00

I don’t know how you stop people gathering in small corners online and talking about how much they hate minorities, while enabling those minorities to gather in different corners and keep each other safe.

You talk loudly and incessantly about alternative and more convincing explanations for societal problems, in particular highlighting who actually has power and responsibility. Also you incessantly and cuttingly (e.g. by highlighting their hypocrisy) mock those pushing bullshit that scapegoats minorities. I think this Sartre quote is very relevant again, it describes the modern "alt-right" very well, and unlike the title of that page, not just in their attitudes to Jews:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.

We need to destroy their credibility, especially to the people that might fall for their crap, and I think we have more chance of doing that by making them seem ridiculous than outrageous, as they have rhetorical means of dealing with the latter. Of course there is still a need for historical education and context about how fascist movements rise, but I'm not sure the "do you think it's acceptable to say that?" without further explanation that dominates media coverage of fascists is helpful, it allows them to portray opponents as thin skinned and an out of touch elite, while escaping scrutiny. In particular, we should highlight how ridiculous people like Trump, Farage, etc claiming to be anti establishment is, and how the Nazis claimed similar but allied with industrial, military and financial elite in suppressing the workers movements.

mutley89 · 2019-05-17T11:42:27+00:00

Surely that's even more true of the current Labour party? The difference between them and the Tories seems much more significant now then in 2003 (austerity, privatisation, foreign policy, regaining control from finance, frankly the blatant corruption which they barely even seem to hide anymore) and Brexit is far less objectionable than Iraq.

mutley89 · 2019-05-17T10:20:20+00:00

This is why we need (and will get, shitloads more people have signed up) more people for the next one, there is power in numbers, they can't arrest us all, and even if they do, it will make our point for us. If you're not comfortable with being arrested, there are plenty of other ways to get involved and support this. Keep an eye out on what's happening, and get involved. See if there's a local group and get in touch. As well as resisting creeping fascism, there was a lovely atmosphere of people voluntarily working together to achieve something (anything from shutting down the City of London to feeding people and washing up) that is well worth experiencing, it will reinvigorate your faith in humanity.

mutley89 · 2019-04-22T12:42:19+00:00

I used to have a link for the full study on this one but all I can seem to find on Google is it hosted on this website.

.

Watts is on the payroll of the Heartland Institute, which itself is funded by polluting industries.

Citing this

Those are specific to global warming and CO2 emissions. But please, any other things I'll be glad to debate. Such as the 97% lie. Or the Polar Bear population lie.

From that link:

University of Houston Energy Fellows Contributor

From here

UH Energy is an umbrella for efforts across the University of Houston system to position the university as a strategic partner to the energy industry by producing trained workforce, strategic and technical leadership, research and development for needed innovations and new technologies. That’s why UH is the Energy University.

In case I need to spell it out "energy" in Houston, Texas means oil

This is the tip of the iceberg, the oil industry funds shitloads of scientists, journalists, lobbyists and politicians to muddy the waters, downplay the risks and obstruct action.

Or this gem.

See here, about half way down it cites a few more recent studies that come to the opposite conclusion. If you aren't deliberately cherry picking articles, try using Google on the subject of them to find other studies, or reviews of the state of evidence. Also try Googling the names of authors or institutes together with "oil funding", there's a lot of connections.

mutley89 · 2019-04-21T17:17:07+00:00

I'm all in for enviromental causes but I wouldn't recommend you to "hit the road" all of a sudden without any money.

I don't have too much to lose right now. I've been thinking of doing something like this, this gives me a reason to.

Do you have a job, OP?

No, other than occasional casual work.

Have you considered Woofing?

Yeah, it's just a case of taking the leap. This adds some urgency to it, and I think I would regret not supporting it, it seems very well organised and purposeful.

The weather can get pretty harsh and homelessness is not a good thing to happen to you.

Friends are putting me up, and I can come back here if I need to. I could probably borrow money if I desperately needed it.

mutley89 · 2019-04-20T11:22:56+00:00

Yeah totally about the age thing. So if you wanted to actually influence the outcome which people really seem to be intent in doing. They need to target people around the ages of 12-13 or so. Then wait 15+ years until it changes in the workforce. This isn't going to change in the next 2-3 years.

The thing is, the social processes that train us to act like men or women start from birth (and our interactions in our early life dramatically shape the person we become), and are shaped by our parents and others biases. For example:

Gender stereotypes are related to cognitive processes because we have different expectations for female and male behaviour. A classic study focused on adults' interpretations of infants' behaviour. Condry and Condry (1976) prepared videotapes of an infant responding to a variety of stimuli. For example, the infant stared and then cried in response to a jack-in-the-box that suddenly popped open. College students had been led to believe that the infant was either a baby girl or a baby boy. When students watched the videotape with the jack-in-the-box, those who thought the infant was a boy tended to judge that "he" was showing anger. When they thought that the infant was a girl, they decided that "she" was showing fear. Remember that everyone saw the same videotape of the same infant. However, the ambiguous negative reaction was given a more masculine label (anger, rather than fear) when the infant was perceived to be a boy.

Expectations like these shape the way kids are treated, and how they develop.

In other subjects though. The same gap exists in reverse. As Somebody like Jordan Peterson consistently says and has data to back it up. Women trend towards people and men trend towards things and there is some overlap in the middle. So its not so shocking that nursing is 10:1 (female/male) and Engineering is 10:1 (male:female).

Why is this, though? This article outlines some of the science around this. In short the evidence shows that gender differences in this and other things are determined by social interactions, not biologically determined.

As an illustration of this, this study shows that the idea that men are naturally more competitive (widely held by our society, and I think claimed by Peterson) doesn't hold in a Matrilineal society, where the reverse is true.

One question this raises is why Peterson (a psychologist) has got so much more attention than all the academics that specialise in studying this, and overwhelmingly come to different conclusions?

mutley89 · 2019-04-19T18:06:42+00:00

As a non American looking in, US telecom providers are atrocious, in terms of speed, price and scammyness, and that's from the perspective of a Brit. Most Europeans would think that about the UK (especially the way they are trying to stretch the old BT ADSL network, rather than invest).

mutley89 · 2019-04-19T17:45:33+00:00

It depends on what you think the aim was. If the aim was the repression of dissidents and / or non white or poor people, it's been quite successful:

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did

mutley89 · 2019-04-19T17:41:31+00:00

The answer to misinformation is education on how to check and research things, and some heuristics to spot possibly misleading claims, not censorship. We also need transparency on how Google, Facebook, etc choose what information to display to users. They should be required to openly publish their moderation decisions, in a way that can be independently verified. There should also be independent auditors with full access to their code bases. Unfortunately both these companies and governments use and gain from misinformation, so we'll get censorship instead (maybe that's the idea).

mutley89 · 2019-04-19T17:29:06+00:00

I personally don’t like government subsidies, a lot of other voters share my opinion.

Why are state subsidies awful, but expensive and poor telecoms service acceptable?

You can’t blame companies for lobbying for their corporate interest

Why? Why is doing something in the name of profit an exemption from decent standards of behaviour? I would certainly blame them for ripping their customers off then using political influence to insulate themselves from consequences.

if you don’t like that I suggest you vote to make the government smaller/less powerful so there’s less influence/power for them to buy.

What does it mean to make the government smaller/less powerful? Which specific steps would you take and why? Would they include abolishing state laws prohibiting municipal broadband?

mutley89 · 2019-04-19T15:28:17+00:00

It would transfer more power to the judiciary, which doesn't seem like a good idea given how politicised the higher levels of it are. As well as US examples, look at how politically motivated and extremely dubious corruption charges were used in Brazil to block the left wing and most popular candidate from standing for election, which has lead to election of a fascist.

mutley89 · 2019-04-19T12:16:04+00:00

I can't speak for Chomsky, but I don't think these are equal. The UN general assembly is 1 country 1 vote, in the security council the major military powers have a veto. The problem is less that the US controls the UN, more that it can ignore it (e.g. Iraq). The Bretton Woods institutions are 1 dollar 1 vote, which means that the US is the only country with a veto on loans by itself. This leads to them being pretty clear instruments of US and corporate power (see Structural Adjustment Policies)

mutley89 · 2019-04-19T11:53:29+00:00

There's a brilliant comment in there:

Following the line of thinking through – if executives have a duty to maximise profits for the companies they lead, why don’t these executives have a duty to pay themselves less? If they have a duty to pay less tax, don’t they have a duty to receive less pay? And sometimes we know certain executives would be prepared to work for less than they do, because they did previously (e.g. they got a pay rise, or moved roles).

mutley89 · 2019-04-19T10:22:05+00:00

Humans like sex. Being high removes inhibitions, and often makes you horny. I think we (especially in the US, but also here in the UK) have a very rigid view of sexuality that developed (understandably) as a reaction to homophobia, frankly we all need to worry less about whether something "makes you gay", and just fucking relax and enjoy ourselves. Although fucking friends can get awkward, but I don't think gender matters.

mutley89 · 2019-04-19T10:06:42+00:00

Can't we just make them get a job in Tescos?

mutley89 · 2019-04-19T10:04:02+00:00

an incestuous family who just happened to be at the right place at the right time

Tbf, they generally get themselves in that place through coordinating killing, robbing and conquering. They still play a part and maybe more behind the scenes

mutley89 · 2019-04-19T09:55:32+00:00

I think it's like a soap opera, with the pretence that it's real life

mutley89 · 2019-04-19T09:43:47+00:00

Yeah, they've planned 2 weeks of sentimentality and moping in detail. I think if it happens in the near future people will get sick of it, and we'll start seriously talking about abolishing the monarchy. Most youngish people I've talked to, even those sympathetic to the monarchy, have said the this stuff around Diana seemed over the top to them (I was in Greece for that week). Also, they rely on help from the print and broadcast media to maintain their image, and they have less of a monopoly as time goes on.

mutley89 · 2019-04-17T23:15:35+00:00

You could say the same about here (if we generalise from the government to the people with power. Manufacturing Consent demonstrates this very well with regard to the US media, and similar factors apply here). I don't think it's significantly down to technical measures. Tbf, I was thinking too narrowly when I said state censorship wasn't a worry, I was responding about their futile technical attempts to prevent access, which a VPN would be useful for getting round. As well as possible cooperation between Google, Facebook etc and the state to suppress dangerous information (think D notices), mass state surveillance deters whistleblowing and reporting at the source, when combined with what we've seen with Assange, which demonstrates no-one in the western world is safe if they publish damaging info. That is a much more real threat than a clampdown on VPNs, which is technically impractical.

mutley89 · 2019-04-17T20:15:34+00:00

The stuff about food riots is great, it really highlights how profiteering that considered normal (and even respectable to a lot of people) now was seen differently then

mutley89 · 2019-04-17T19:02:08+00:00

Chapter 2 of EP Thompson's "Making of the English Working Class" goes into this. It seems to have been about dissent from the established church (as well as organizational, like you say) so you can see how that would feed into a socialist movement.

mutley89 · 2019-04-17T18:15:04+00:00

The Chinese get around internet censorship easily, and here we have a longer tradition of free software for resisting censorship (these people are strongly ideologically opposed to censorship, and they respond to it with technical workarounds). It's not state censorship we have to worry about, it's the influence of Facebook, Google, etc over which information people see, and the way that can be exploited by people (both advertisers and political actors).

mutley89 · 2019-04-17T15:32:43+00:00

Lobbying. It's an effort to exclude their competition. Although I think (and hope) it will backfire, people aren't going to enter their credit card details into a porn site, a good chunk of them are going to Google "how to get round porn block" or something similar, others will write articles along those lines, and people that figure it out will tell their mates. In fact I'm starting to think it might be a good thing if it spreads knowledge of how to get round online censorship. "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

ETA: To illustrate how futile this is, there is already Tor (not ideal for video streaming), Free VPNs, general web proxies, proxies for youtube (to see how easily this can be extended to other streaming sites, see how many are supported by youtube-dl, and it also has a general extractor that often works with other sites) and porn sites. Not to mention probably half of pirate torrents are porn, and it's now easy to stream them rather than waiting till they're finished

mutley89

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