Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You've answered the question as to why those people didn't support you I asked no such question. You said: > It's not hard to figure out, the fascists have been more explicitly welcoming to crypto freedom or at least put themselves out there to solicit that vote even if you claim their underlying policies aren't. To which I said: > If you back fascists to promote crypto, your values are fucked. This is not a statem…
1) The question I refer to is the ancestor to which our comments are under. A question under which we are responding, but not a question authored by you. 2) My apologies for not being more explicit -- the specifics of the loss of the "libertarian" "crypto bros" is not a wholistic cause but rather a small fraction of the cause but more importantly also a symptom. A symptom of something that happened in broader society…
Accepted.
> the specifics of the loss of the "libertarian" "crypto bros" is not a wholistic cause but rather a small fraction of the cause but more importantly also a symptom. A symptom of something that happened in broader society of alienated or ignored voters being hoodwinked by smooth talking fascists that showed up with a message more enticing than "we don't want your vote" or "you're a self-selecting bloc of marks" or "your values are fucked." You can hate they're that dumb, or that immoral, or what not but at the end of the day their vote still counts as much as yours.
Yeah, no shit: that's literally how fascism has always worked, every single time. It shows up with simple, tidy, "common sense" answers to complicated systemic problems, because that's the entire product. Fascism is a con that skips the part where you have to be right. We're not going to out-simple that without becoming liars ourselves, so no, I'm not interested in a messaging arms race against people who don't have to tell the truth to win.
And "their vote counts as much as mine" is true enough, sure. But you don't get to hide the content of that vote behind "well they were just susceptible to a good pitch." What was the pitch? Let's actually look at it instead of being coy: the "simple solution" fascists are selling right now is some version of "X group is ruining everything." Trans people (wave) get blamed for the "destruction of the West." Immigrants get blamed for "diluting western culture." These aren't complicated ideas that require nuance to refute, they're stupid on their face, the kind of stupid that falls over the second anyone actually looks at it. And that's exactly why I don't waste breath "engaging" with people parroting it: if your entire platform is just scapegoating, you just want to feed a sacrificial lamb to the volcano to make it stop erupting, I'm not obligated to pretend that's a serious discussion. A human one certainly, and an impulse I understand as it winds through our history like mold in raspberries, but not a serious point to be debated.
Call it a symptom if you want. But the disease was never "we didn't message nicely enough at crypto bros." The disease is that "blame the weird/foreign group" still works on people who'd rather have a villain than an explanation. That's on the people selling it certainly, and also it's on the people buying it: Both things are true at once.