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[wierd]

You misunderstand the statement entirely.


It is not "They are feral dogs that shit on the floor", it is "They used to be ordinary dogs once; understanding why they are the way they are, is essential to helping them."
(and amusingly, the actual course of action for an abused animal is to show it lots of love and affection, and give it more soft correction until it reforms. The emphasis should be on the now, and not past behavior, or the animal's past. The emphasis should be on promoting a harmonious environment, assuring the animal knows that it is loved and belongs to your group, and that it can be comfortable and relaxed around you and your family. Those things are essential for rescue animals to begin rehabilitation.  Humans are fundamentally social animals as well, and have similar (just more complex) needs.)


Once you jump the shark and become a pretentious and pompous ass, that dictates how things will be, because "I'm in charge", you just feed their cause to go radical.

[bloop_bleep]

Unfortunately, we live in a nation of laws, so you can't just "put down" Trump supporters. Like it or not, those people will continue to exist and they will continue to vote. Telling them they are terrible people and they should just shut up and go away, does not make them shut up and go away. It plays into their hand and reinforces their position. No amount of virtue signaling or posturing is going to change their minds, it simply reinforces the "us vs. them" mindset. Again we are presented with the inconvenient situation that the best way to deal with this is to treat people like people. People are not inherently terrible. Whatever names you call them, they are still citizens with a right and a willingness to participate in democracy. Yelling "you're stupid and bad and you should feel ashamed!" at them from the sidelines like it's going to make them disappear does not fix anything.

Ninja edit: Yes, wierd understands.

Approach people like they are dogs, and they are going to despise you and scoff at you. Approach people like people and they might listen.

[Doomblade187]

I mean, you can totes be nice to people who express willingness to change while nicely ignoring/deplatforming the insistent ones. No need to waste your energy breaking through that shell. Because oh boy it's a thick one.

Or, put simply, don't platform fascists.

[wierd]

The fascists have an ideology that is toxic.  One can show positive social interaction with them, without being complicit in their ideology.  The idea is not to 'rub their nose in it' (which does not really work for dogs either, just so you know.)

The idea is to show them a better way to live. (Because living in hate, is not a good way to live.)

[bloop_bleep]

Fascists thrive off of chaos, discord, and hate. If you're contributing to it you're only strengthening what you claim to be fighting against.

[RedKing]

The fascists have an ideology that is toxic.  One can show positive social interaction with them, without being complicit in their ideology.  The idea is not to 'rub their nose in it' (which does not really work for dogs either, just so you know.)

The idea is to show them a better way to live. (Because living in hate, is not a good way to live.)

Too late. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Again, it's not like I'm planning on going door-to-door to insult MAGAts after the election. But I do expect them to kindly shut the fuck up while the rest of us rebuild.

Another group of armed antimaskers storms the Michigan capitol again? They should not get the warm and friendly treatment they got last time.
Y'all can go out and show mercy, because I'm tapped out. It's gonna take a few years minimum to purge all the hate out of my system.

[wierd]

Ultimately, the fascist mindset is powered by fear. (This is why it has to constantly mentate on being the best, why it has to reinforce itself constantly against all outside forces, because they are all dangerous, evil oppressors, out to stop them--- so, they themselves must stop their oppressors FIRST.)

Oppression only heightens fear.

It is most effectively curtailed by removing the basis of that fear-- That means actually exploring the root cause of their condition, and removing the source of that fear.  Unreasonable fears about foreign people need to be dealt with through gentle coaching and inclusion therapy, so that the fear of the "others" subsides--- etc.


In the cases where there are real forms of harm being done (such as the relentless crusade some people in the left have against gun ownership, which is in and of itself not a vice or an evil that must be stamped out-- the vice is the desire to use the weapon to compel another human to comply-- which exists for a wide assortment of reasons, and is where effort should really be focused-- especially when people do in fact own guns for perfectly legitimate reasons that do not in any capacity involve compelling other humans to comply, that are essential to their daily living), acknowledging that harm instead of being a denialist wank, is essential-- as without that acknowledgement, there is no reform away from the harm.

The issue with the current situation, is that both sides "KNOW What's WRONG!".  They both have agreed that "It's the other people!!".  There is no dialog. There is no common ground. There is no discourse, there is no DESIRE for discourse.

As long as that remains true, there will be no healing. Only further division, fear, and hate.


Are you going to be a part of a workable solution, or are you going to contribute to the problem?

[RedKing]

Anyways....rather than belabor debating whether I've crossed the moral event horizon (I probably have), let's talk Election Night camraderie, before the civil war starts.

Is anyone setting up a livechat, and would people be interested in doing the electoral map challenge for bragging rights?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You don't have discourse and healing with fash. Fash don't believe in those things. As Sartre put it, they use words because they know you believe in words. They delight in the bad faith interaction with others, as to corrupt the entirety of the use of words, which is to their favor. But what they believe in is force. Power. Subjugation.

Fascists are only ever defeated when they are defeated in the terms they believe in - terms of power. The Golden Dawn, in Greece? They I am quite certain will not be a problem again for some time, until some far-off day where their descendants have forgotten the lesson they were taught. We don't need to have another World War, or at least I hope we don't, but we do need to treat fascism in the only way it can be cured - by force.

[nenjin]

But if the only language you speak is force then...doesn't that turn you into the fash? I mean it's far easier to just beat people into the mode you want than talk it through. If you only believe in words to the degree that it works outside of force, then doesn't that effectively make you a fascist as well? Wouldn't a fascist also say they tried words until words proved ineffective, so they used force instead?

My point being that it makes for a catchy phrase, but you can't sell that to everyone. Just people that already agree with you.

[wierd]

MSH:  A gentle, but FIRM hand, yes.

There is no capitulation with their ideology.  You very much are out to stamp it out.  The issue, is that you have to do it by approaching the root of the mindset.  WHY do they only respect force?  Start there.  You are NOT compromising with them; you are rehabilitating them.  You don't help a person in drug rehab by sneaking them small doses of crank.


See also, the rehab video documentary about a certain evil little girl.

Pure love does not work. (and it did not work for the girl in the doc either.)  what DID work, was a gentle, but FIRM hand.

[feelotraveller]

The South Africans managed to deal with their fascists without subjecting them to overwhelming force.  At least once the fash were out of power.  And it seems to have worked out pretty well, overall.

[WealthyRadish]

It's possible to delineate between personal relations and political strategy. Not being a jerk is a pretty good approach generally, person to person. But the actual political situation involves dealing with bad faith actors that share very few of your objectives (in fact having no objectives other than preserving the status quo, or worse) where there is no advantage at all to cooperating.

[bloop_bleep]

The thing is, the majority of people aren't poeer-hungry sociopaths. Most people don't believe solely in force and subjugation. Sometimes people may gravitate towards thinking of using that, as you have. But for fascism to work you need normal folk as collaborators, to work for the sociopaths. The solution is to remove the socioeconomic situation that leads to fascism becoming appealing, before the fascist feelings fester. Leave the sociopaths without their fascist minions.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

But if the only language you speak is force then...doesn't that turn you into the fash? I mean it's far easier to just beat people into the mode you want than talk it through. If you only believe in words to the degree that it works outside of force, then doesn't that effectively make you a fascist as well? Wouldn't a fascist also say they tried words until words proved ineffective, so they used force instead?

My point being that it makes for a catchy phrase, but you can't sell that to everyone. Just people that already agree with you.

I do not speak in the language of force. I find force disgusting and repulsive, and most of my political opinions are about the dissipation of forces. However, much like fascists make use of words for practical purposes when what they really intend is force, I will advocate the use of force for practical purposes when what I really intend is words.

This state of affairs does not please me - I would much prefer we could all read philosophy and proceed by way of physical reality. But as we live in a world where people believe in magic, that's just not always possible. History proves that ideologies are not broken unless they are broken in the eyes of their believers - what fash believe is that they are the master race, or the Real America, or what the fuck ever makes them superior. Their worthlessness must be exposed, not to us, but to themselves.