[21]

Why doesn't this also apply the other way?

White supremacists talk about killing jews and blacks, but so far it's only talk. The few which actually did kill somebody, like the car driver, got arrested. So why not let the police deal with the problem at hand instead of talking about how the white supremacists will kill many in the distant future.

Why is it not a slippery slope to say that allowing marches today will lead to genocides tomorrow?

[dragonwriter]

> White supremacists talk about killing jews and blacks, but so far it's only talk.

No, it's not. E.g., http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/06/18/white_extr...

[replaced with non-AMP link]

[chatmasta]

Total non-sequitur, but here's a great example of the problem with AMP. Instead of linking to slate (the original source), dragonwriter linked to google. Slate loses a backlink, and I can't even tell who the publisher is without following the truncated URL.

[dragonwriter]

Yeah, I try to remember not to use the AMP link (I don't see this as fundamentally an AMP problem as a UI problem with using bare hyperlinks in text that is exacerbated by AMP, but we use the message boards we have, not the message boards we wish we had.) I've corrected it.

[mozumder]

It's because Nazis have already declared war on the US and committed to acts of violence. As a response, America literally declared war against them, and killed them wholesale.

Remember, we're talking about self-declared Nazis, not your average racist.

How else would you deal with a group that says "I'm going to kill you"?

Don't be the idealistic engineering nerd that only acts on theory. Be the practical socialized person that knows how the real world works.

[21]

If you want to be practical, why do you think they have such a huge swell of their ranks?

I never in my life had watched a neo-nazi talk before last week. Since last week I've watched about an hour of their talk, first on Vice and then searching for one of the guys on Youtube. Streisand effect. How many vulnerable minds will be turned by this exposure? If they had their little march and the left ignored them, or even better, laughed at them for how silly they look with their nazi flags, they wouldn't be on all TV's and we wouldn't be discussing them.

[dcow]

Not to mention the paid violence anti Trump protests/riots executed by members of the Democratic left. The recent case is in the realm of 3rd degree murder. The premeditated paid violence is far more troubling.

edit

I mean troubling at a social/political level. The death of a non-violent protester is no less sad or serious.

[jacquesm]

You really are way too easily influenced by this conspiracy stuff.

[dcow]

How about you you go back and reassess your bad previous assumption about what book I was referring to. I'm not into conspiracy stuff at all and don't understand how you think a crackpot book about 9/11 is relevant to this thread at all. IMO you're trying to find reasons to vilify me because I'm expressing a dissenting opinion.

[jacquesm]

> Not to mention the paid violence anti Trump protests/riots executed by members of the Democratic left.

Is what I was responding to. As for that other book, you're on your own there.

[dcow]

I mean there's literally undercover video evidence. I promise I'm not into conspiracy stuff.

[jacquesm]

> I mean there's literally undercover video evidence.

Let's see it.

[jacquesm]

> White supremacists talk about killing jews and blacks, but so far it's only talk.

Do yourself a favor and open a history book. Regions of interest: Germany, roughly 1932-1945, South Africa, 1948-1991.

[kabouseng]

South Africa, 1948-1991

Far more blacks died to state (or any other) violence during free democratic South Africa than during apartheid South Africa. It is simply dishonest to categorise apartheid South Africa with Nazi Germany.

[jacquesm]

It's not about who died it is about why people died.

Your argument is roughly analogous to people saying that Hitler had the trains running on time.

Sure under apartheid there was less overt violence and you could easily argue that South Africa was safer and altogether a better place to live back then than it is today. But that would be entirely missing the point of why Apartheid is wrong.

[observation]

I wonder at what point would you say "Yup, that's been a failed experiment"?

Do your ideals have a metric by which they may be considered?

Do you believe the 'lesser of the two evils' to be a false dichotomy for this case?

[jacquesm]

You mean as in when the British were running India it was a better country?

Or when the Dutch traded the occasional slave but Surinam was an orderly place that it was ok?

I strongly believe that there are things that humanity should not engage in, slavery, human trafficking and Nazism are on that list.

There is no 'lesser of two evils' when those are involved.

[observation]

It's not as if I believe in slavery or Fascism myself, however everything should be examined contextually.

The historical alternative to slavery was mass murder. Dan Carlin will tell you that.

> There is no 'lesser of two evils' when those are involved.

There kind of is. It takes no imagination on my part to come up with dozens of historical examples of Bad, Badder and Worse.

[21]

I was just applying their argument against their own logic.

The world is not what it was 70 years ago.

Today when a genocide happens somewhere on Earth the UN quickly intervenes. The US is not some weak-ass state like Germany was in the 30s, even if Trump would order some sort of genocide today it would quickly be blocked at many levels.

[jacquesm]

> The world is not what it was 70 years ago.

Indeed, it is worse in many respects, better in others.

For instance: 70 years ago it took a couple of days to organize something involving ten thousand people. Now you can do that in 10 minutes with a social media post in the right spot.

> Today when a genocide happens somewhere on Earth the UN quickly intervenes.

You do realize that the largest participant in such peacekeeping missions has decided to abdicate?

> The US is not some weak-ass state like Germany was in the 30s

You are significantly under-estimating the strength of pre-war Germany in spite of having been beaten in World War I. In fact, you could easily argue that it was specifically this kind of under-estimation that directly led to World War II.

> even if Trump would order some sort of genocide today it would quickly be blocked at many levels.

It would never play out like that. Trump is not going to order some sort of genocide directly. He'll simply stand aside while others do the dirty work and he'll lament at how terrible it is that they are resisting causing violence on both sides.

One of my theories about why the GOP does not want to throw Trump out is that they are - rightfully - scared of what kind of backlash that will cause and that they hope against hope that they will be voted out in 2018 so others will be seen as responsible for throwing the lit fuse into the armory.

[21]

> It would never play out like that. Trump is not going to order some sort of genocide directly. He'll simply stand aside while others do the dirty work and he'll lament at how terrible it is that they are resisting causing violence on both sides.

I think you'll agree that a systematic genocide like the ones you mention where you go into a city and round people up cannot happen. That would require the police, national guard, army to stand down and allow it.

So we are left with small scale attacks, the kind terrorists do. We need to fight and guard against those, infiltrate the cells and arrest anyone actually planning such thing, but they are not in the category of genocide, especially because in a genocide the killers walk away with nothing happening to them (because they are protected by the state), but in a terrorist attack you either die or are quickly caught.

[jacquesm]

> I think you'll agree that a systematic genocide like the ones you mention where you go into a city and round people up cannot happen.

Oh, but we already have a small precursor to that, the ICE raids on immigrants. There will always be people willing to ride the trains and to man the guard towers, good Christians too.

Let's hope it does not go further than it has already done.

> So we are left with small scale attacks, the kind terrorists do.

I'm not sure of that. The whole 'unite the right' movement is about connecting all the little dots into a wave large enough that it would be hard to put down without the national guard or the army stepping in, who could very well have sympathizers in their own ranks.

> We need to fight and guard against those, infiltrate the cells and arrest anyone actually planning such thing, but they are not in the category of genocide.

Yes, that is exactly what they said in 1933 about Hitler and his merry band of followers.

And then in 1934 the tables were turned and suddenly there was no way back, from that point forward WWII was inevitable.

Edit: I've taken some time to find this article in Der Spiegel, I read it long ago and I found it to be quite informative about Hitlers rise to power:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-fuehrer-myth...

edit2: On another note, please note that Germany at the time was the superpower in Europe.

[21]

> the ICE raids on immigrants

That's not fair. Humanity is not yet at the stage where it can allow anybody to live wherever they want. I also can't move to the US without a visa, not legally at least. And if I do it illegally, I can't complain if I get raided one day. It's not a human right yet to live in the US.

BTW, those kind of raids also happen in Europe. Yes, they make be feel bad, but unless we go for radical taxation and basic income (including for immigrants), I don't see how we could not have them.

[21]

I don't think this article gives weight to your fears.

It says he had total control over the media, and that he had huge approval. Neither is true today. The last three presidents (Bush, Obama, Trump), were around 60% (excluding 9/11) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_app...

Also, what would be the unifying sentiment that the white supremacists would unite the whole country around, like this:

> For the vast majority of Germans, the restoration of national pride and military strength, the overthrowing of the Versailles Treaty and the expansion of the Reich to incorporate ethnic Germans from Austria and the Sudetenland were goals in themselves

[dragonwriter]

> Today when a genocide happens somewhere on Earth the UN quickly intervenes.

No, it doesn't, and it only intervenes, at all, in fairly weak states, or where geopolitical interests of the sole superpower align with the intervention.

> The US is not some weak-ass state

Which is why a violent racist faction rising to power in the US is particularly frightening, globally as well as locally.

[johndough]

If the non-existence of the internet did not stop this, I am not convinced that censoring the internet will.

[jacquesm]

I'm not convinced either so we're in agreement there. I do believe that the Internet can be an accelerator.

[dcow]

Do _yourself_ a favor and read _The Big Lie_. The first chapter alone will really surprise you.

[jacquesm]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11:_The_Big_Lie

That one? You're joking, right?

[dcow]

I'm not sure how you assumed that one. I mean the currently bestselling: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N39W2DI

[pizza]

You think Dinesh D'Souza is reliable? This guy?

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/dinesh-dsouza/statem...

[dcow]

He's a researcher at the Hoover Institute at Stanford.

[jacquesm]

> I'm not sure how you assumed that one.

Because you just mentioned the title and that's what popped up.

> I mean the currently bestselling:

That it is bestselling does not make it true and that particular author has a stench around him you can smell from a mile away. The last thing I'll do is send the cretin my $.

Ironically, and I'm saying this without having read the book as you already know, but I would not be surprised if for once the title actually accurately conveyed the contents of the book.