How I learned to defeat fascism with the power of love:
Chapter one:
Realizing you cannot stop fascism with the power of love.Chapter two:
The power of incredible violence.What would “stopping fascism with the power of love” look like? Do you have a hypothetical example?
A society that values free speech rejects Mustache’s philosophy. He never gains enough of a following in panel 1, 2, or 3 to be able to enact panel 4.
As soon as we allow ourselves to silence someone, Mustache can use the same argument to justify silencing Black Shirt. When we allow ourselves to suppress an enemy of society, Mustache merely needs to suggest to us that Black Shirt is such an enemy.
The insidious part of fascism is that by the time we get to Panel 4, we are the ones carrying Black Shirt to the gallows.
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FWIW, .world had nothing to do with your previous comment
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.world might be sending DMs when your stuff gets removed but that was removed by .ml mod
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You seem to have learnt nothing from history and how fascism manifests itself. Adderaline had many good points but you just don’t want to actually respond to them? There are so many rightwing, fascistic parties in various countries that already use the rhetoric of panels 1-3. And now society debates if e.g. trans people should be allowed to exist or not, if immigrants should be deported or not, if racism is actually a thing or not. We need to define a line where we will not tolerate further discussions. Because if we allow any form of discussion on certain topics, we will again and again get to the point where we argue about someone’s right to exist. And this will result in panel 4. I’m glad for you that you don’t seem to be affected by this. But please listen to people who are. It is very very frightening if people are publicly debating if they should consider you a valuable human being or not. And even more so as right wing and fascist politics are gaining more traction worldwide.
Adderaline did, indeed, have many good points, just not any that were actually relevant. None of my arguments denied the prosecution or condemnation of death threats. As I am not defending threats or other forms of violence, there is no issue under dispute, and nothing for me to engage.
Every fascist movement has attempted to suppress groups they deem undesirable or offensive. Your determination that racists are undesirable does not impress me. Nor your targeting of homophobes, transphobes, sexists. The reason your calls for suppression against these people don’t impress me today is because I have no idea who you are going to be trying to suppress tomorrow.
I take my guidance from Thomas Paine:
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Fascism manifests by constantly identifying new and exciting targets for oppression. I reserve my right to disagree with you in the future, so I must defend against your suppressive acts today.
i really don’t understand this perspective. we aren’t talking about the ability for anybody to silence anyone for any reason, we’re talking specifically about rhetoric calling for the death of human beings. is that not a well defined category of speech we should at least keep an eye on? should we let people actively call for the death of other people, when we know historically that that specific kind of rhetoric can lead to people being put in camps?
like, if somebody’s sole contribution to an platform is doxxing anybody they don’t like, they should be stopped. if they shout death threats in a public forum, they shouldn’t be in that forum. we don’t need to give platforms unchecked power over our lives to put reasonable limitations on conduct for public platforms.
really don’t understand this perspective. we aren’t talking about the ability for anybody to silence anyone for any reason, we’re talking specifically about rhetoric calling for the death of human beings. is that not a well defined category of speech we should at least keep an eye on?
There is a difference between speech and violence. “Calling for the death of a human being” is violence, not speech. The speaker making that call should not be silenced; they should be jailed. And we have a process for doing just that. That process involves far more than someone unilaterally deciding to take away their microphone or ban them from a platform.
That process involves judges, either elected directly, or appointed by elected officials. It involves the community in the form of a jury of one’s peers. It involves open processes and procedures, an appellate process, and a wide variety of protections for the accused.
Banning them from the platform is not a sufficient response to such an act of violence.
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riiiight, because the legal system is the perfect tool to deal with social disputes,
Threats of violence are not social disputes.
The rest of your argument is predicated on this fallacy, so I will ignore it.
oh that’s why you’ll ignore it, huh?
Correct. I am not defending death threats or threats of violence in any way, and I will not allow you to portray me as doing so. Please confine your arguments to forms of speech that do not rise to the level of violent criminality.
Fascism arises when dissent is silenced. Death threats are not dissent.
that’s the thing, we don’t live in a world where death threats and threats of violence are being dealt with in the way you seem to think they are, and community tools like bans are sometimes the only recourse people have that isn’t ruinously expensive, glacially slow, and uncertain to work.
but sure, lets say we aren’t talking about explicit death threats or threats of violence. instead, they just… post the account information of queer tiktok creators, and spend most of their time calling queer people groomers and pedophiles. its not directly a threat of violence, but every time they post something, the accounts they post get harrassed by tons of anonymous followers, one of them figures out where they live, and then start bombarding a real human person with death threats. everybody doing the death threats is anonymous, there’s no way for the legal system to touch them. what do we do? nothing? or somebody’s whole online presence is talking about the great replacement, how the anglo-saxon race is being exterminated, and somewhere down the line we start seeing mass shooters pop up saying nearly the exact same thing in their manifestos. stochastic terrorism. using speech to motivate anonymous observers to take violent action, without calling for violence explicitly. should nothing be done about that? is that not concerning to you?
i think you have a very simplistic definition of what fascism is, and what can or cannot be defined as a threat of violence. there is nuance to what should and should not be considered hate speech, and if you’re defending the institution of slavery, implying queer people are groomers, really doing any sort of bigotry, it can meaningfully cause harm to people even if it isn’t in and of itself a threat of violence. what do we do then? either nothing or put them in jail? because i think that having more than one way of mediating and enacting punishment for misbehavior is a good thing. i think that being able to respond proportionately to assholes without waiting for them to reach the threshold of illegality is a more healthy way of maintaining a community than putting a firm barrier between “dissent” and “actual crime”.
On the other hand, calling for the death of capitalists or Billionaires, and the politicians that enable them should be protected speech. I’d go so far as to say that anything up to with the exception of actually committing physical violence directly upon them and their family should be the most protected speech.
If you are exploiting society so completely, so wantonly that people want to actually kill you, then you SHOULD feel uncomfortable in that society. You should feel the need to hire an army of private security, going outside should be a burden for you because of what you have done.
Careful everyone, comics like these can spread dangerous ideas
Promises…
“free speech” is a thought-terminating cliche for people too lazy to come up with a real argument or plan to stop fascist rhetoric.
So is accusations of “troll”. Around here we prefer that
Its also a convient fig leaf for fascist movements so they can be defended while incubating in liberal societies
Ideology reflects emotion. Angry people adopt angry ideology. Find a justification for anger and somebody to hate.
Cure the anger and the ideology disappears.
Note the nice uniforms. They don’t grow on trees. These guys are funded.
