Fascist anti-Israel demonstrators

[TwistofFate]

Later I told one of them who was standing alone, that his mother was a pig. He fumed a bit and fumbled for his mobile phone. These kinds of idiots are most formidable in groups.

ooh, missed this earlier!

Were you pretending to be Dirty Harry at the time? Perhaps Robocop?

Was the guy the smallest out of the group?

What a brave, muscular, macho person you are.

Did comely maidens lead you oon a petal laden path through the town to celebrate your act of heroism?

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

Hello. Pro-Jew, anti-Zionist checking in here. Any and all of this “kill all the Jews” shit is disgusting and has NO PLACE in demonstrations against the current Israeli military activity. Reprehensible.

[Rune]

@TwistofFate

ooh, missed this earlier!

Were you pretending to be Dirty Harry at the time? Perhaps Robocop?

Was the guy the smallest out of the group?

What a brave, muscular, macho person you are.

Did comely maidens lead you oon a petal laden path through the town to celebrate your act of heroism?

1. pretending? no. 2) no 3) Yes 4) of course

[Rune]

@RedFury

Anti-Semite worthy of a good beating by the tough-as-nails Rune were he alive today…

There you go with the anti-Semite again. I don’t know what’s particular anti-Semitic about screaming “Down with Denmark. Down with Democracy” on the main square of Copenhagen, but I tell you, it gets no brownie points from me even so. But if you insist on framing everything into if it’s anti-Semitic or not, then I guess the Nazi-salute, the “khaybar”-stuff and “Palestine in my blood – Israelis under my foot” (as was another slogan chanted) is borderline and “Kill all Jews” “All Jews should be killed” is undeniable anti-Semitic. Agree? So what has a dead Indian guy to do with shouting “Kill Jews” in Copenhagen?

[Rune]

@jjimm

By your reasoning, to disenfranchise any given cause or protest, all that needs to happen is for some loonies to espouse it too.

Not just espouse it by themselves, but together with the others. I guess there is some invisible point when the loonies become numerous enough and visible enough to spoil it for the rest. I also think often left wing protesters will willingly or tacitly accept one kind of loonie, while completely balk at other kinds of loonies. I would have a very hard time imagining for instance people would silently accept white dressed KKK or Neo Nazis joining such an anti-Israel march, but others with equally distasteful views are accepted or at least tolerated.

[MrDibble]

@Alessan

the Jews, a small, ancient people with a history of non-violence

Not to be an ass, but this is not the historic picture of Jews I get, from Joshua taking Canaan onwards.

[Alessan]

@MrDibble

Not to be an ass, but this is not the historic picture of Jews I get, from Joshua taking Canaan onwards.

True. Lets say between AD 135 and 1920, shall we?

[MrDibble]

@Alessan

True. Lets say between AD 135 and 1920, shall we?

Works for me.

[Derleth]

Mentioning Gandhi is a red herring. He obviously wasn’t living in the same world the rest of us do:

Of late years it has been the fashion to talk about Gandhi as though he were not only sympathetic to the Western Left-wing movement, but were integrally part of it. Anarchists and pacifists, in particular, have claimed him for their own, noticing only that he was opposed to centralism and State violence and ignoring the other-worldly, anti-humanist tendency of his doctrines. But one should, I think, realize that Gandhi’s teachings cannot be squared with the belief that Man is the measure of all things and that our job is to make life worth living on this earth, which is the only earth we have. They make sense only on the assumption that God exists and that the world of solid objects is an illusion to be escaped from. It is worth considering the disciplines which Gandhi imposed on himself and which — though he might not insist on every one of his followers observing every detail — he considered indispensable if one wanted to serve either God or humanity. First of all, no meat-eating, and if possible no animal food in any form. (Gandhi himself, for the sake of his health, had to compromise on milk, but seems to have felt this to be a backsliding.) No alcohol or tobacco, and no spices or condiments even of a vegetable kind, since food should be taken not for its own sake but solely in order to preserve one’s strength. Secondly, if possible, no sexual intercourse. If sexual intercourse must happen, then it should be for the sole purpose of begetting children and presumably at long intervals. Gandhi himself, in his middle thirties, took the vow of brahmacharya, which means not only complete chastity but the elimination of sexual desire. This condition, it seems, is difficult to attain without a special diet and frequent fasting. One of the dangers of milk-drinking is that it is apt to arouse sexual desire. And finally — this is the cardinal point — for the seeker after goodness there must be no close friendships and no exclusive loves whatever.

[snip]

The autobiography leaves it uncertain whether Gandhi behaved in an inconsiderate way to his wife and children, but at any rate it makes clear that on three occasions he was willing to let his wife or a child die rather than administer the animal food prescribed by the doctor. It is true that the threatened death never actually occurred, and also that Gandhi — with, one gathers, a good deal of moral pressure in the opposite direction — always gave the patient the choice of staying alive at the price of committing a sin: still, if the decision had been solely his own, he would have forbidden the animal food, whatever the risks might be. There must, he says, be some limit to what we will do in order to remain alive, and the limit is well on this side of chicken broth. This attitude is perhaps a noble one, but, in the sense which — I think — most people would give to the word, it is inhuman. The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.

[snip]

But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question [how to save the European Jews] in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer’s Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi’s view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler’s violence.” After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered even so warm an admirer as Mr. Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives to be lost in some other way. When, in 1942, he urged non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several million deaths.

Gandhi lived just at the very end of the era when his methods could be useful against a determined enemy: Stalin’s Soviet Union or modern China wouldn’t even notice his tactics and the world would never hear of those who put them into practice. Therefore, mentioning him in a modern debate is pointless.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Derleth

Gandhi lived just at the very end of the era when his methods could be useful against a determined enemy: Stalin’s Soviet Union or modern China wouldn’t even notice his tactics and the world would never hear of those who put them into practice. Therefore, mentioning him in a modern debate is pointless.

I would have considered the Klan and the segregationists to be a determined enemy, but that’s neither here nor there.

[WF_Tomba]

@Derleth

Gandhi lived just at the very end of the era when his methods could be useful against a determined enemy: Stalin’s Soviet Union or modern China wouldn’t even notice his tactics and the world would never hear of those who put them into practice. Therefore, mentioning him in a modern debate is pointless.

I’m not sure it has much to do with modernity: brutal and vicious regimes are not new. The tendency of the British to make peace with their former imperial provinces is somewhat exceptional.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@WF_Tomba

I’m not sure it has much to do with modernity: brutal and vicious regimes are not new. The tendency of the British to make peace with their former imperial provinces is somewhat exceptional.

The tendency of the British to “make peace” with the colonies wasn’t due to some wellspring of goodwill- it was largely forced on Britain by the loss of economic and human resources resulting from the two World Wars.

[WF_Tomba]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

The tendency of the British to “make peace” with the colonies wasn’t due to some wellspring of goodwill- it was largely forced on Britain by the loss of economic and human resources resulting from the two World Wars.

I’m not saying it’s because they’re such nice people. But for whatever reason, they gradually gave up political control over North America, Australia, and other parts of the world–and this process began well before the World Wars. More significantly, they managed to do this without developing much of a political grudge against the territories they had lost. Compare this to the way Russia and China interact with what they consider their historical spheres of influence.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@WF_Tomba

I’m not saying it’s because they’re such nice people. But for whatever reason, they gradually gave up political control over North America, Australia, and other parts of the world–and this process began well before the World Wars. More significantly, they managed to do this without developing much of a political grudge against the territories they had lost. Compare this to the way Russia and China interact with what they consider their historical spheres of influence.

That’s not really a fair comparison; Russia and China border most of their former possessions, while Britain is half a world away from most of its own.

The aftermath of Irish independence was not quite as grudge-free as the others, mostly because of the Northern Ireland question.

[WF_Tomba]

You have a point there. And that geographic distance might be counted as a factor explaining Gandhi’s success.

[Derleth]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

I would have considered the Klan and the segregationists to be a determined enemy, but that’s neither here nor there.

And they were defeated by the National Guard, the police, and the Government What Has Guns, not King. King only prodded the Government into doing what the Constitution said it would do.

[FinnAgain]

@Derleth

And they were defeated by the National Guard, the police, and the Government What Has Guns, not King. King only prodded the Government into doing what the Constitution said it would do.

To be fair, the Decons for Defense also did a hell of a lot in the areas in which they were active.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Derleth

And they were defeated by the National Guard, the police, and the Government What Has Guns, not King. King only prodded the Government into doing what the Constitution said it would do.

The police colluded with the Klan as much as they fought it. Possibly more.

[Derleth]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

The police colluded with the Klan as much as they fought it. Possibly more.

That’s why I mentioned the National Guard and the (Federal) Government. The Civil Rights Era was as much about rooting out post-Reconstruction local corruption as it was about modifying the de jure relationship between governments (Federal, state, and local) and minority groups.

[mswas]

@Rune

There you go with the anti-Semite again. I don’t know what’s particular anti-Semitic about screaming “Down with Denmark. Down with Democracy” on the main square of Copenhagen, but I tell you, it gets no brownie points from me even so. But if you insist on framing everything into if it’s anti-Semitic or not, then I guess the Nazi-salute, the “khaybar”-stuff and “Palestine in my blood – Israelis under my foot” (as was another slogan chanted) is borderline and “Kill all Jews” “All Jews should be killed” is undeniable anti-Semitic. Agree? So what has a dead Indian guy to do with shouting “Kill Jews” in Copenhagen?

There was also the chanting of ‘Hitler, Hitler, Hitler’.