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They Thought They Were Free (1955)

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#451

Post by herval »

qcnguy wrote: post #441
thrance wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's well documented that Show us, then. There's nothing as egregious as what the right is currently doing to be found in the archives, and you know it.

Go read the emails the administration was sending to Twitter demanding people be taken down left and right. Or if you want a wider view than just the US, look at what European governments demand from social media companies. It's all censorship of the right by the left, zero in reverse. But it's true that the left does not need to overtly threaten from the top as much because they already purged all the institutions o…

> Go read the emails the administration was sending to Twitter demanding people be taken down left and right.

They used twitter’s appeal process at the time. Twitter was never forced to take anyone down. The emails prove that, in fact. Twitter was a fairly neutral player (as much as social media platforms can be neutral) and tried to abide by US free speech rules plus their TOS (which is what extremists try to misunderstand: companies don’t have to abide by “free speech”, they’re private enterprises and have terms of use).

> look at what European governments demand from social media companies.

European governments follow European laws and require companies operating in Europe to comply. It’s not complicated.

Your worldview seems to be that anyone that’s not MAGA is “the left” and the whole world should follow American laws. That’s not how any of it works. You’re letting your brain be hijacked by fear and identity politics. It’s not healthy for you.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#452

Post by computerthings »

jebarker wrote: post #133
moomin wrote: post #105

I’ve read the book. It’s genuinely interesting. It’s very interesting to see how people misremember the post-war years. It also contains a) passages that are very much quoted out of context and b) an awful lot of stuff about “national character” that is… questionable. I highly recommend actually reading it and understanding what it is and isn’t. Mostly I learned that there’s no simple answers, but also that people an…

> an awful lot of stuff about “national character” that is… questionable. Yes! I recently read this book and was pretty shocked by how much was chalked up to the German character. I came away feeling neither comfort nor increased panic relating to the current US situation. I read the book because I was hand-wringing about how complicit I am just by getting on with my privileged and comfortable life right now. I didn’…

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#453

Post by computerthings »

permo-w wrote: post #343
shermantanktop wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History? Geography? Specific laws? Particular parties in power? There are a lot of things to look at alongside mystical notions of a collective national character of a people, especially now that most of these countries have significant immigration and exposure to ideas from elsewhere.

all of the things you listed make up or result from national character. besides some short interludes, for example, Japan has had the same party in power since 1955. it's a weird thing to deny the existence of. different nations act differently. it's not heresy to make generalisations, particularly in the age of nationalism when many/most people actively try to set and follow their country's norms

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#454

Post by theptip »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #380
theptip wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the president shreds the constitution, there would likely be many in the military opposed to it. While they are actively replacing cabinet positions with loyal outsiders that have little-to-no experience within the organizations they now run (eg Patel, Hegseth), I think it’s reasonable to assume that there remains career leaders throughout that would put country before king. You also need to look at loyalty within…

Hard to say. " About six-in-ten registered voters who say they have served in the U.S. military or military reserves (61%) support former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, while 37% back Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in early September. " from https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/30/military-... The military is not composed of cons…

Agreed, but I do think it’s important to distinguish:

- voted Trump because they believe the constitution protects us from his worst impulses; would support constitution over Trump

- voted Trump and would shred the constitution if they had the opportunity to

I think it’s hard to say how many are in each camp. My fear is many tell themselves they are in the first, but will actually end up in the second under the correct manufactured crisis.

But the stats and polling would need to go into a lot more detail than what you quoted to distinguish.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#455

Post by theptip »

anigbrowl wrote: post #402
theptip wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the president shreds the constitution, there would likely be many in the military opposed to it. While they are actively replacing cabinet positions with loyal outsiders that have little-to-no experience within the organizations they now run (eg Patel, Hegseth), I think it’s reasonable to assume that there remains career leaders throughout that would put country before king. You also need to look at loyalty within…

Ask your conservative friends what they think of Mark Milley and his successor.

What do you think about him?

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#456

Post by mindslight »

ruszki wrote: post #411
mindslight wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a libertarian, I see authoritarianism as the imposition of top-down control, often fine-grained, onto individuals' lives. The reflexive reaching for government/law to solve problems. The war on drugs. Mass surveillance, regardless of its goals or who is in charge. The crushing weight and lack of justice in the criminal justice system. The draconian copyright regime. This makes the Democratic [establishment] bureau…

What you wrote can be even an anarchist view. What’s the difference in your point of view? How should a government solve problems without laws? What other options are there? Besides ignoring, obviously. I’m absolutely not familiar with the tools of an imagined truly libertarian government (AFAIK this never happened).

You can run down the policies of either major party and find topics where they advocate against government intervention, or at least a light touch. So the idea that we could have less government intervention isn't really a unique or rare one.

It's not a matter of imagining some "truly libertarian" government, as that is an artifact of US "Libertarianism" which is itself fallacious (it mostly just renames "government" to "corporations"). It's a matter of which ideals to strive towards.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#457

Post by Jensson »

LevGoldstein wrote: post #309
nosianu wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this. I don't understand mentions of "civil war" in the public lately (there's even a Hollywood movie about it). There is only one party controlling the armed forces. I also doubt that any high-ranking officers would take the troops they command out of the command structure and then even order them to attack the government and other troop…

> Armed civilians with their puny little guns and little organization are right out as soon as any part of the military joins a fight, that's why I only mentioned the latter to begin with. We have several recent real-world examples of that not working out for the military. Assuming like minded people wont self-organize is a bad starting point, and jets and tanks have a tough time doing things like enforcing curfews.…

> We have several recent real-world examples of that not working out for the military.

Only when the military is not serious since they are not fighting for their own lands and the civilians are backed by another country. When the military is fighting civilians in its own homeland the civilians stand no chance unless they get massive help from foreign powers.

> Besides, I've always hated this argument, because why fight the military when they can just target the politicians directly.

Even if you do that its still the military that gets to decide the next leader, killing their leader does not lead to democracy. Nazism didn't end with Hitlers death, it ended with the country being taken over. Oppressive Communisms didn't end with Stalins death etc. There are always enough likeminded people that you can't end a horrible reign just by killing the leader.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#458

Post by Jensson »

gopher_space wrote: post #285
nosianu wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this. I don't understand mentions of "civil war" in the public lately (there's even a Hollywood movie about it). There is only one party controlling the armed forces. I also doubt that any high-ranking officers would take the troops they command out of the command structure and then even order them to attack the government and other troop…

Law enforcement and security aren’t really set up for scenarios where random members of the general public want to attack you.

What do you mean? That is exactly what they are trained for, you just do the same thing but even more aggressively. US cops are already pretty aggressive but you can dial that up a lot, they are already trained for this.

Tell the cops that they can shoot anyone looking aggressive and not get questioned and they will happily go out and quell any resistance, don't you think? Tell them they can put people in prison without lawyers getting in their way, that they can torture people to speak without anyone stopping them etc.

US police is very close to a fascist police already so very little has to change. Remember that the US police culture roots came from policing slaves.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#459

Post by nerdponx »

brightball wrote: post #114
nerdponx wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line of reason is actually becoming more frequently used to justify things. For years, the right wing propaganda machine has been establishing the concept that conservatism and America as a whole is besieged by authoritarian leftists and their smug out-of-outch enablers the liberals. THEY are the authoritarians and they are seeking to destroy America. WE are its defenders, and in the face of existential threat,…

Similar to calling everyone Nazi’s and fascists who has an opposing point of view? When you take a step back it becomes very clear that this escalating messaging is being push onto both sides of the political isle to create these feelings. I remember in the span of two weeks seeing almost identical posts urging people to train because you are going to have to fight. The wording was almost identical only one post said…

> My only question who is pushing the messaging and who does it benefit?

You get 0 "both sides gotcha" points for this one because there is a clear answer when it comes to right wing messaging, and it has been the same since the 19th century, long before modern conservatism existed. It's big business owners and anyone else who stands to gain from an oligopoly economy backed by an authoritarian state that punishes and suppresses anything that could destabilize said oligopoly. There's no conspiracy theory here.

Meanwhile who is pushing the horrible left wing messaging that racism is bad? A bunch of professors and kids on social media?

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#460

Post by Jensson »

UncleMeat wrote: post #110
roenxi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, key difference, the people pushing green sky or flat earth narrative don't get deplatformed, fired, yelled at or called Nazis. I still haven't seen anyone attempt to do a cost-benefit on whether the COVID lockdowns were a net good. I do note we had a big social and economic disjunction and since then it has been pretty much nothing but war and trouble. The part where they were shutting up people with PhDs on You…

Professors have been publishing papers advocating for legal bans of gender affirming care for ages. They've been publishing papers on gender dysphoria and the medical impact of transition for ages. Heck, there are law professors on topics like "against civil rights." For covid, there are not only oodles of papers on the topic you describe here, but entire books written by academics on the topic. These people remain e…

> Professors have been publishing papers advocating for legal bans of gender affirming care for ages

Tattoos are banned on anyone under 18 for good reasons. Protect the children, parents shouldn't have the freedom to ruin their kids lives, kids have a right to grow up with a healthy body and not get experimented on.

Kids can't even consent to sex, changing your sex has much bigger consequences than having sex, why should you be allowed to transition before the age of consent?

Parents has way too much influence over kids for kids to be said to be their own, its only when they become adults that they should be allowed to make these kind of life altering decisions.

I don't think there are many books written about banning gender affirming care for adults, just for children, and for children it makes sense, all other such body modifications are banned for kids.

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