Hey Bernie, go to hell and take all of your Bros with you

[DoggyDunnit]

@SteveG1

This is starting to sound an awful lot like some two year old, screaming, flailing wildly on the floor, and shitting himself because he didn’t get his way.

What’s the Obvious answer? Burn it all down and fuck shit up.

Here’s a hearty STFU with a side of GTFO.

@DoggyDunnit

Damn right. I mean, my username is “DoggyDunnit”, after all. That ain’t random. It’s a reference to a move from the PSX game Chrono Cross, one in which Poshul (a dog) spins around, kicking up a whirlwind of sand mixed with her own piss and shit, and hurls it at the enemy. I didn’t just pluck that out of the air, I got given that nickname by a homie because of my, as Jragon puts it, “accelerationism”. Like Poshul, I am more than willing to help kick up a shitstorm!

That is, “damn right” in response to “burn it all down and fuck shit up”. You can take that tired old “two year old throwing a tantrum” line and flush it down your wiki-waki bowl.

[Alessan]

Say you tear everything down. What’s the next step?

[Paranoid_Randroid]

@DoggyDunnit

That said, Jragon, do be aware that I am a minority. Several of them, in fact.

You keep saying, but that isn’t a debate “get out of jail free” card. Oh well DoggyDunnit is disabled and black and gay – if he throws identity issues into the shredder then I guess we should all be okay with that.

[asahi]

@DoggyDunnit

I’ve already done just that multiple times, backed up with sources who got a hell of a lot of the skinny from a party insider. If that doesn’t satisfy you… sorry, Charlie.

No, you really didn’t. You claimed that Sanders’ campaign was sabotaged without really explaining how he was undermined. Sanders is no novice - he understands how difficult it is to run for president and that many candidates, including Hillary Clinton, Bob Dole, Al Gore, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan (I could go on), run more than once before getting their party’s nomination. Getting a party nomination is a process that involves a lot of preparation, hard work, and patience. And here’s where I’m going with this:

Would you not agree that one of the likeliest explanations for why Sanders didn’t win the Democratic party nomination is the simple fact that Hillary Clinton was better known to most voters in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. Wouldn’t this explain why she won the Mississippi primary 82 to 16%? The African American vote was hugely important to the outcome of the Democratic primaries and the fact is, most black voters who were far removed from New England didn’t know who he was. Most black voters had never listened to him on left wing progressive talk show or on Democracy Now! TV - they don’t typically tune in to those programs. But that raises a question: Bernie Sanders isn’t a young man and he’s not new to politics, so why did he decide in 2016 to run for president? Why hasn’t he been campaigning since 2008? Clinton’s really not that much different from Obama, so why didn’t Bernie run a primary challenge to the president? Was he afraid that Black and Latino voters would hate his guts for potentially sabotaging Obama’s presidency and re-election campaign? Was he afraid that people wouldn’t view him as a real progressive if he were to have pulled that stunt?

And if Bernie wanted to run as a Democrat, why didn’t he join the party earlier, like in 2008 or 2012? Maybe it’s because Bernie’s not above being a calculating political animal himself and realized that being an ‘independent’ is a popular move in politically moderate states like Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island – which is fine. But don’t then expect to be treated like a member of the Democratic party everywhere else simply because you ‘caucus’ with them. What does that mean anyway? It means that Bernie gets to pick and choose when he wants to be thought of as a Democrat, and when he gets to be something else. This might also explain why some voters didn’t really buy into his campaign. If the candidate himself doesn’t really commit to a particular party, then why would he expect voters to commit to him, particularly those who vote down ballot because they believe (rightly) that one party clearly represents their interests over the other? The fact is that Bernie Sanders, popular though he may be in many parts of left-leaning America, isn’t every left-leaning and centrist voter’s ideal Democrat. The further away he goes from Vermont, the more he encounters that reality. I don’t care if you and other Bernie voters don’t want to see it. I realize that a lot of you have contempt for these sorts of voters but your contempt and your spite isn’t going to accomplish anything.

@DoggyDunnit

That said, Jragon, do be aware that I am a minority. Several of them, in fact. But the thing about it is, economics is firmly planted on the front burner for me. Me being black, gay, and disabled (triple play!) is secondary to that. I’m sure I’m not the only one you’ve heard this from, being on the far left as you are; I just ask that you try to understand where us “accelerationists” are coming from.

We understand where you’re coming from - we’re telling you that it’s not productive and you’re not going to accomplish shit. It doesn’t matter your race, gender, sexual preference, or physical ability. The Civil Rights laws of the 1960s were the result of a sustained, disciplined campaign. The Americans with Disabilities Act were made possible through sustained, disciplined campaigning. Labor laws. Social safety nets. All of the things that have made our lives better are the result of building movements up, not burning political structures to the ground and throwing shit and piss in people’s face.

[Paranoid_Randroid]

Consider the civil rights movement. It required civil disobedience; well regarded community members like Rosa Parks willing to break the law even if that meant serious consequences; picketing and boycots and matches.

But laws were made and laws were changed according to the operating procedures that normally obtain.

Would the movement have achieved its goals on such a time scale had they violently rebuffed the aid of every sympathetic but still a little racist white person? Told 'em they’re sociopaths who should be denied the franchise?

I don’t know. But without buy-in from hesitant whites I don’t know how you go from a racist to a slightly less racist society. It’s not at all obvious to me that accelerationism in that case would have accelerated anything. What’s different here?

[SlackerInc]

It’s true that the United States is, if not unique in its strength of free speech protections, close to it. To me that is one of the truly great things about this country. It’s bizarre to me that you don’t realize that a country that can outlaw expressions of Nazi ideology might just as easily do the same for your radical left wing ideology.

Aside from that, which only applies to people on the fringes, John Stuart Mill did a good job of making the more general case for free speech:

Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.

I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being “pushed to an extreme;” not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case. Strange that they should imagine that they are not assuming infallibility, when they acknowledge that there should be free discussion on all subjects which can possibly be doubtful, but think that some particular principle or doctrine should be forbidden to be questioned because it is so certain, that is, because they are certain that it is certain. To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty.

We often hear the teachers of all creeds lamenting the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of believers a lively apprehension of the truth which they nominally recognise, so that it may penetrate the feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the conduct. No such difficulty is complained of while the creed is still fighting for its existence: even the weaker combatants then know and feel what they are fighting for, and the difference between it and other doctrines…But when it has come to be an hereditary creed, and to be received passively, not actively—when the mind is no longer compelled, in the same degree as at first, to exercise its vital powers on the questions which its belief presents to it, there is a progressive tendency to forget all of the belief except the formularies, or to give it a dull and torpid assent, as if accepting it on trust dispensed with the necessity of realizing it in consciousness, or testing it by personal experience; until it almost ceases to connect itself at all with the inner life of the human being.

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[SlackerInc]

Mill, of course, was British. A powerfully eloquent defense of free speech from the ultimate American arbiter thereof, came from the majority Supreme Court opinion written by Robert Jackson—right at the moment, in fact, when we were in pitched battle with Hitler’s Germany (March 1943).

Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good, as well as by evil, men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon, but, at other times and places, the ends have been racial or territorial security, support of a dynasty or regime, and particular plans for saving souls. As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity. As governmental pressure toward unity becomes greater, so strife becomes more bitter as to whose unity it shall be.[…]
Ultimate futility of such attempts to compel coherence is the lesson of every such effort from the Roman drive to stamp out Christianity as a disturber of its pagan unity, the Inquisition, as a means to religious and dynastic unity, the Siberian exiles as a means to Russian unity, down to the fast failing efforts of our present totalitarian enemies. Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.[…]

[W]e apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization.[…]

We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes.[…]

[F]reedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

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[Jragon]

I haven’t read the whole thread, but I doubt DoggyDunnit supports government censorship of Nazi ideology. Anti-fascist actors generally support empowering local communities to shut down speech within their own spaces over state censorship.

Even so, in Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook Bray makes a pretty cogent point:

It’s important to note that the vast majority of people who oppose limiting free speech on political grounds are not free speech absolutists. They all have their exceptions to the rule, whether obscenity, incitement to violence, copyright infringement, press censorship during wartime, or restrictions for the incarcerated.

If we rephrase the terms of the debate by taking these exceptions into accound, we can see that many Liberals support limiting the free speech of working-class teens busted for drugs, but not limiting the speech of Nazis. Many are fine when the police quash the free speech of the undocumented by hunting them down, while they amplify the speech of the Klan by protecting them. They advocate curtailing ads for cigarettes but not ads for white supremacy.

Note that the government (in multiple countries) has a history of shutting down Anti-fascist protests of technically legal fascist rallies. This is a case where, given multiple instances of free speech, the government chooses on its own terms which gets to be heard.

Note that antifascists also, generally, entirely support a person’s right to be, well, a fascist piece of shit and express that opinion to others. However, context is extremely important and the consequences of fascist speech can be very damaging. Especially since fascists are extremely adept at organizing ways of turning the Liberal love of free speech against itself by using propaganda masked as “debate”. Anti-fascists generally elect to use tactics at the local level to use their own speech, in the form of contacting event organizers, employers, and so on, down to loud counter-protest, in order to counter this speech.

Again, “free speech” isn’t that cut and dry. There are multiple competing levels of free speech here and the importance isn’t whether free speech should be defended as a concept (it should), but rather the issue being whose speech is being defended and stifled.

I highly recommend Philosophy Tube’s The Philosophy of Antifa which goes over all the arguments I’ve made here more eloquently in more detail, including the Bray quote above (he even briefly mentions Mill). I heavily recommend watching the whole thing, it’s well organized and articulated, not just a droning video. However, if you must the section on Free Speech begins at 39:58 and lasts about 10 minutes.

[Ludovic]

I don’t think that’s a cogent point at all. Detaining illegal immigrants and the war on drugs are many things, but a free speech issue they are not. In fact, I’d say that many liberals want to deport illegal immigrants in theory but in the meantime support policies like so-called “sanctuary cities” that actually support the free speech of illegal immigrants.

[k9bfriender]

@Jragon

I haven’t read the whole thread, but I doubt DoggyDunnit supports government censorship of Nazi ideology. Anti-fascist actors generally support empowering local communities to shut down speech within their own spaces over state censorship.

You don’t need to doubt.

@DoggyDunnit

But hey, I’m not surprised, Mr./Mrs. I Get Along With Everyone. If I gave enough of a fuck to look into it I’d probably find you in a thread about the neonazis/alt-righters/etc defending their freeze peach. :rolleyes: surprisingly, I don’t have such tolerance for people who think I’m subhuman and worthy of the gas chamber because I’m dark skinned, disabled, and like to boink other dudes.

Lol! People who jerk off at night about genocide are just widdle innocent “political opponents” now? You do realize that in more civilized countries that acknowledge the fact that “free speech” doesn’t cover violence and hate, they indeed lock up such people, right? It’s the U.S. that’s behind the curve on that one.

People who advocate hate, sociopaths, et cetera don’t have a place in a civilized society, they belong in a mental-health facility. After all, some of them can be rehabilitated. But the ones that can’t be, keep 'em in there. Not prison, but a psych ward.

@DoggyDunnit

The literal changing of vote tallies is not the be-all, end-all of electoral fraud. The sabotaging of candidates also falls under that category. See cites from earlier in thread about the DNC’s corruption.

Democracy is dependent upon FAIR elections. Sabotaging a fucking candidate simply because he’s not part of the “in crowd”… well, shit, that may as well not be democracy at all.

I don’t agree that exposing Berenie’s failings is the same as sabotaging, and he wan’t just not part of the “in-crowd”, he was part of a different political party.

And for the record, I, personally, am not a small-d democrat, either. The rights to vote and hold office should be contingent upon being free of anti-social personality disorders and having above-average intelligence, amongst other criteria. Someone who lacks the capacity for empathy and/or doesn’t know a quasar from a quacker has no business in a voting booth or on a ballot.

And you would like to have the government set up a department to vet people before they are allowed to participate in the political process? What if they decide that someone who just wants to “fuck shit up” is that of someone below average intelligence with a anti-social personality disorder, and as such, refuse to let you vote? If they decide that someone is willing to let it all burn if they don’t get their way has no place in political

Wowza, I invented the political compass and the dictionary itself? Holy fucking shit, I better tell the guys! Once I reveal I not only invented the muthafuckin’ political compass, but the very concept of words and terms having meaning, too, I’ll be a fucking celebrity!

I didn’t say you did. I said that it has little bearing or credibility, because the people who did had an agenda. Just like any other unsourced memes and opinions out there, your little chart isn’t worth the shit I would waste wiping my ass with it.

To fuck shit up.

I know two things about anyone who thinks it’s a great idea to burn it all down and rebuild from the ashes.

1. They’ve never built anything in their lives.

2. They’ve never been in a fire.

Nah, see, my “political opponents” are the more moderate and more libertarian leftists. Actual social democrats, democratic socialists, anarchists, et cetera. And guess what? We have our disagreements, and that’s fine! More than willing to have dialogue and compromise with them, all in the name of across-the-spectrum unity and the good of all. I’ll happily get along with and be friends with 'em. In fact, I am.

Those are not opponents, those are allies. That you treat allies as opponents, and opponents as enemies to be arrested if not killed, is a bit of an issue, if we are actually trying to have civilization, rather than just anarchy.

Where people like you fail is in understanding that political ideologies that advocate genocide, racism, letting the poor die for lack of necessities, other sociopathic mess, et cetera have no validity.

What people like you fail in understanding is EVERYTHING.

You want the government to go out and arrest those who are saying things that you disagree with. That’s not the type of society that I want to live in.

An option to BUY that pony from a state-owned company rather than a private one.

See, and this is where you show that you don’t understand the slightest thing about economics. While I would agree that nationalizing or creating public options to ensure everyone receives necessities, you want the govt to get into ensuring that you have access to every luxury you want.

Tell me, if the govt gets into selling ponies, what is the point of that? Are they selling them for less, using taxpayer dollars to undercut the private market? You do realize that if I can buy a pony at the govt pony shop, the private enterprise pony stores will go out of business. Then you no longer get any sort of development or improvement in pony technology. There is no incentive to be an entrepreneur in that space.

[SteveG1]

Like I was sayin’

“Either I get my way, in all its ignorance and absoluteness, or I destroy everything.
And then blame YOU for all of it.”

Bullshit.

[Jragon]

@Ludovic

I don’t think that’s a cogent point at all. Detaining illegal immigrants and the war on drugs are many things, but a free speech issue they are not. In fact, I’d say that many liberals want to deport illegal immigrants in theory but in the meantime support policies like so-called “sanctuary cities” that actually support the free speech of illegal immigrants.

Detaining and deporting people is, by nature, inhibition of free speech. Not allowing felons or non-citizens to vote, for instance, is limiting their speech. The incarcerated in general are not allowed to freely organize, associate, assemble, or speak. Now you may argue that this is absolutely reasonable, and it may well be (non-citizens not being allowed to vote being more reasonable than felons, IMO), but it absolutely is a limit on free speech.

Laws that allow people to be evicted, deported, or arrested in general are by nature state-sponsored violence and suppression of assembly and speech. Again, they may or may not be reasonable limits, but they are limits.

@k9bfriender

You don’t need to doubt.

Okay, well I condemn detaining political dissidents in mental facilities. However, I remain highly suspect of the abuse of free speech I see fascists doing, and support measures to oppose that. Even (perhaps especially) if not by the state. I agree with the general notion that denying fascists platforms is good, even if I disagree with state-level suppression.

[Ludovic]

@Jragon

Detaining and deporting people is, by nature, inhibition of free speech. Not allowing felons or non-citizens to vote, for instance, is limiting their speech. The incarcerated in general are not allowed to freely organize, associate, assemble, or speak.

There’s nothing inherent in deportation or incarceration that means that felons cannot vote or communicate. Many liberals are not only against the racially-biased war on drugs but are pro-rehabilitation of the franchise. They weren’t the ones who questionably purged Florida’s voting rolls.

I’m against non-citizens voting so I guess that point is technically true, but being pro-deportation is not necessarily in conflict with that. I can see a reasonable position being in favor of voting if your status is being fought. Once you’re actually deported you can no longer vote just like I can’t vote in Alaskan or Guatemalan elections.

[Jragon]

@Ludovic

There’s nothing inherent in deportation or incarceration that means that felons cannot vote or communicate. Many liberals are not only against the racially-biased war on drugs but are pro-rehabilitation of the franchise. They weren’t the ones who questionably purged Florida’s voting rolls.

I’m against non-citizens voting so I guess that point is technically true, but being pro-deportation is not necessarily in conflict with that. I can see a reasonable position being in favor of voting if your status is being fought. Once you’re actually deported you can no longer vote just like I can’t vote in Alaskan or Guatemalan elections.

Incarceration is inherently a prohibition of free speech as a punitive measure for some action (or no action, if you were wrongly convicted), it regulates who you can assemble with and communicate with, as well as where and when.

Also, given that voting is speech, saying I can’t vote in Alaska or Guatemala is, technically, a prohibition of speech. It’s eminently reasonable, but it is limiting peoples speech.

[Alessan]

Voting isn’t speech, it’s power. When a judge issues a ruling, when Congress passes a law, when the President issues an executive order, is that speech? Voting is the same thing, albeit at a much smaller magnitude. It’s a way of compelling the government to bend to your will. Calling it “speech” misses the point.