[blitzar]

The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis America is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of America from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with Europe.

Free speech, I fear, is in retreat.

[starspangled]

Looks like the old "they're a private company, they can do what they want" chestnut is coming back around. Who could possibly have predicted this would ever happen?

[techorange]

Are you trying to imply that some group of people you are skeptical of supported limitations on free speech with the defense that they’re a private company they can do what they want, and now a different company is doing the same thing and that was a foreseeable consequence?

[archagon]

Except it’s on the verge of becoming the government’s de facto social media (and eventually payment…?) platform.

[starspangled]

There's n except about it. It was previously on the verge of becoming the governments's de facto censorship and propaganda platform. But apparently it was a private company and could do what it wanted.

People really should have thought a bit harder about that one.

[blitzar]

> People really should have thought a bit harder about that one.

The peole who said it didnt matter if it was a private platform, free speech absolutism is absolute should also have thought about it a bit harder too.

[Hermel]

Free speech is much more restricted in Europe than in de United States.

[knz42]

Whoosh

OP was parodying JD Vance 's comments from last week.

[xyzal]

How exactly?

[orwin]

> What I worry about is the threat from within.

I'm not judging or anything, but this is typically the mythos of far-right movements. Basically "we are superior to our external adversaries, but the internal enemy prevent us from beating them". This is sightly different, but you should really assess your fears and try to see if this "threat from within" is really that threatening. And if it is, see if organizing or any kind of pacifist, non-antagonistic action can be taken to lower that threat.

[johnnyanmac]

>This is sightly different, but you should really assess your fears and try to see if this "threat from within" is really that threatening.

yes, it is.

>see if organizing or any kind of pacifist, non-antagonistic action can be taken to lower that threat.

Being done in real time. Sadly, peaceful protests are not as fast as a bullet. I just gotta keep the pressure up.

[starspangled]

Seems like a typical mythos of most political movements these days, doesn't it? E.g., "the far-right is our greatest threat". And it's said that e.g., Russia themselves is no great threat, they're basically an incompetent tinpot dictatorship with a ramshackle military easily beaten by us / our allies. It is the traitors within who "collude with Putin" who are the real problem.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

Intolerant groups are a special problem for societies that wish to be tolerant. A tolerant society must be specifically intolerant of the intolerant to keep being a tolerant society. It's a required bit of looking within to maintain a tolerant society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

[starspangled]

I wasn't commentating on the rationale behind the thinking or whether it is right or not, just that the idea of the internal enemy is not owned by any one political persuasion.

Though I'm sure right-wing groups believe themselves to be tolerant of one-another and their allies and others with similar aims, and that groups that oppose them are intolerant and therefore must be met with intolerance. The paradox of the paradox of tolerance is that you can't claim tolerance by excusing your intolerance with the paradox of tolerance. Or said another way, one man's tolerance is another's intolerance.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

Nah. The side that actively spouts racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-trans positions is pretty clearly the intolerant one.

This is not hard to see unless one is being willfully blind. Which is especially funny given this conversation is happening in response to giving Grok an intentional blind spot.

[starspangled]

Other side will call them intolerant racists too, it is also pretty clear to them.

[orwin]

It's not though.

The mythos of the liberals is way more personnalized, usually assigning moral failings to people who disagree eith them, something like "those people are dumb enough to be manipulated, we ought to explain thing slower/better" "we are on the reason's side". The fondamental attribution error is probably the fallacy for which liberals (authoritarians liberals especially) are the most susceptible to.

For the leftist movements, the mythos will either go to a marxist or neomarxist "We oppose the billionaire/landlords/owner class, and must struggle together to put it down, educate yourself and those close to you" or to a more generic anti-system mythos.

Furthermore, the left is often egalitarian, and the "traitor in our rank" mythos is mobilized to explain why you are not above X depite being (genetically for nazis, culturally for fascists) superior.

[starspangled]

Those sound like enemies within, but what do I know? Liberals / leftists / whatever have non-personal internal enemies (white supremacists, ultra right wing, nationalists, etc), and right wing have external enemies as well as entirely personal internal enemies too. Right wing certainly talks about moral failings.

Seems really difficult to quantify to the extent you can just say they don't. We can all come up with examples or handwaved anecdotes of any kind of enemy from any ideology really, so what actual metrics are you using to differentiate these things?

[orwin]

My bad, i shouldn't have used "left" or "right", it has different meaning in different part of the world.

I'm not sating paranoia isn't present everywhere, i'm saying one one kind of political ideology use it as a building block of their ideology, and it is fascism.

"We are (culturally/genetically) the best, but right now others seems better/won/took advantage of us. The only reason we are not at the top is because we have internal traitors (jew/blochevics/unionist/homosexuals/whatever float your boat). We have to eliminate those"

Each time something like this is uttered to justify taking power away from court/parliaments, you'll be looking at fascism. Which can be used with capitalism or with communism (as production methods). The "internal enemy" as a reason to justify taking power away from the court/ignoring human right/taking power away from parliement is fascistic. [0]

That's mainly how i differentiate the extreme centre from fascists, their justification. Von Papen/Schleifer removed power from the Weimar parliament because "people are dumb and did not understood how intelligent we are, so we can safely ignore their vote", then Hindeburg installed Hitler, who did the same thing, but stronger, and justified it with the "internal traitor" myth.

[0] Trotsky called that "bonapartism", and argued that Stalinism was another heir of that ideology, but here, i think he is simply wrong (as usual), although it is interesting (where lie the fascism roots?). And now, writing about it, i will have to re-read him and think about it more, he might have a point, is fascism an evolution of bonpartism, with a more rigid hierarchical order? :/ fml.

[starspangled]

Seems too simplistic and centric to one particular country / system / ideology.

Laws and courts can be and are made oppressive and used against the people by a tyrannical government.

Taking power away from [government] is not necessarily fascism. It really depends what and why. If it is a rogue court that is protecting corrupt politicians and human rights abusers? What really matters is the power the government as a whole has over the people.

There has recently been a lot of noise from American left wing about the Supreme Court being corrupt, illegitimate, politicized, etc., etc., and calls to reduce its powers, for example.

You could call that "fascistic" I suppose, but I'm not really here to get bogged down in semantics, my point is that the types of real or imagined enemies of political movements very much run the spectrum.