Politics thread (USA Elections 2016) - Page 145

On July 10 2019 02:10 Stroggoz wrote: What's the point of saying we could have all avoided this if we lived in huts? There is no way we would go back to that scenario so why bring it up? there are a lot of ways the environmental crisis can be prevented while still maintaining an advanced industrial society, and with population as it is right now and it's projections. There are economists like robert pollin that have studied solutions to this. The solutions are there, like progressive one's being proposed such as the green new deal. Are capitalists supporting this? Overwhelmingly they arn't. overpopulation is again, something that can be curbed to some extent by introducing family planning and women's education in underdeveloped countries. It's a big factor, and it's been done in some places. Incidentily the capitalists could help out with overpopulation but they arn't interested really, yet they have trillions of dollars sitting around. I brought up surveillience because it is becoming the main system for advertising and mass consumption for. Loco, was talking about mass consumption, but we can talk about the system before survillience, it was essentially lead by business and still is. No, actually, corporations made the mass surveillience system, around 2001 was when google discovered the phenoma of survillience capitalism. They did have powerful actors working with the state, and lobbied the state, and the NSA had it's own survellience system and worked with google to create it. But we arn't talking about that. The system we were talking about was mass consumption, which is exactly what silicon valley's entire business model revolves around-surveiling humans, so they can advertise for mass consumption. you're right that we have a choice, one would be to simply subject google to laws and democracy. The government in Spain made some headway into this with their 'right to be forgotten', other governments can too. Asking people to do research on every business is extremely time consuming. I mean there are actually some computer scientists that calculated it would cost the economy nearly a trillion$ if people took the time to read all those user agreements silicon valley put out. Those companies have formed very easy monopolies through the network effect, and human beings in general have become dependent on them for their social and professional lives. A much simpler solution would be to simply run them democratically.

Loco said capitalism caused pollution, I said it wasn't an economic model, it was prosperity (industrialization), I was being sarcastic that perhaps Loco wanted us to stay living in the mud and shit to not pollute.

Of course I also believe it can be prevented while maintaining an advanced industrial society and projected population, its not a matter of what "capitalists" want, its about what the consumer wants, , it is the true democratic system.

How these monooplies were founded and are maintained is a whole new topic, but can we agree that it is the state function to smash these monopolies and it isn't doing anything, but in fact protecting them through lobbying?

the government is like a weathervane that responds to outside pressure and goes in the direction it's pushed, corporate lobbying pushes it in the direction of benefitting corporate power. The banks spent a combined 5billion$ over the neoliberal period in lobbying, (according to a book i read a few years ago) to undo all the regulation that was implemented in the 1930's. They got far more than 5billion$ back from it, as finance makes up 40% of corporate profits in america now. So yes the government can use the state to smash up monopolies-or oligopilies, if it's pushed in that direction, as it has done before. If your interested in the state doing good thing's, there are plenty of movements that are trying to force it into doing good things, like the sunrise movement for example. Private power has done nothing but lobby the government for deregulating corporate power so it can be oligopolistic, so i don't understand why you're in favour of privitization.

By definition "what the consumer wants" is irrational, because wants (desires) are pre-reflexive and unconscious, and they can be created and manipulated so that people are controlled through their wants without them knowing it. So you are saying the most democratic society is the most irrational and vulnerable one. It is a very strange stance to take for someone who claims to care about reason above everything else. Why is it that the culture that cared the most about reason, the ancient Greeks, never said that the maximum freedom individuals could aspire to was through bartering, and that the ideal society was to be realized through consumer choices? Why did those beliefs you hold so deeply emerge when they did instead of back then? Can you trace that history back Baal? I think if people ask themselves "who did those beliefs benefit the most?" they are on track to discovering why those beliefs ever emerged in the first place. Just open your eyes and look around: people have more wants and more access to things that will fulfill their wants than ever before. Does that mean people are now more free than they ever were? Really? Please answer me here if you're going to answer anything at all.

You think I'm denying human nature because I understand life to be in flux and the human animal to be highly susceptible to environmental feedback, all the while your ideology entirely relies on a denial of the true nature of power dynamics and the way they structure and determine our world, including human biology. There are essentially no market forces in your worldview, markets aren't shaped, they are just this natural and neutral thing that emerged spontaneously and that mediates between two humans who are absolutely "free not to trade" with one another. The first part of that is same kind of naive thinking that says that a medium is just a neutral tool that we choose how to use, and that on its own it has no bearing on who we are, how we think and behave. It's the same kind of intuitive but uneducated reasoning that people use to justify flat earth beliefs or the idea that things exist exactly how we perceive them even when there is no consciousness in the world.

The second part on "not trading" allows you to trivialize the inequality of bargaining power with your "voluntaryst" view because you assume that there is this magical power within each one of us that answers to nothing and no one and that can allow us to transcend ourselves, transcend our vices that we were born with, and which have nothing to do with our culture or social and economic pressures. You do this by denying the findings of neuroscience on free will and by denying that the structures that we are brought up in fundamentally affect who we are and what we do at an unconscious level. You decouple desires like greed from the ideological underpinnings of a system that clearly imposes a mindset of scarcity and incentivizes the pursuit of hierarchical dominance over others, and you never offer any reasoning or empirical evidence as to how you can make that decoupling. We are just supposed to buy the just-so story that it is how it is.

On July 11 2019 08:58 Stroggoz wrote: the government is like a weathervane that responds to outside pressure and goes in the direction it's pushed, corporate lobbying pushes it in the direction of benefitting corporate power. The banks spent a combined 5billion$ over the neoliberal period in lobbying, (according to a book i read a few years ago) to undo all the regulation that was implemented in the 1930's. They got far more than 5billion$ back from it, as finance makes up 40% of corporate profits in america now. So yes the government can use the state to smash up monopolies-or oligopilies, if it's pushed in that direction, as it has done before. If your interested in the state doing good thing's, there are plenty of movements that are trying to force it into doing good things, like the sunrise movement for example. Private power has done nothing but lobby the government for deregulating corporate power so it can be oligopolistic, so i don't understand why you're in favour of privitization.

Not really, the government is formed of people (power thirsty people which is a bad start), so many seek self interest, in a country that has legal lobbying this is the obvious the best path for self interest, In México lobbyign is illegal so the path for self interest is different an uglier more corrupt one, but yes the government can do good on its own and can also be forced through pressure to do good, as I said, its made of people.

The ammount of money corporations spend in lobbying is miniscule compared to advertizing, that means the yield for bribing the state is lower than putting up some ad, why? because most de-regulation creates "common good", meaning, equally good to all competition in that specific market, so lobbying helps all the market but you specifically front the costs so it isn't that effective unless you control the majority of the market share (monopoly) that you don't care about helping competition along or that specific regulation actually helps you maintaining/gaining power over the competition and that consolidates monopolies.

Thats why the results of lobbying de-regulating creates monopolies when just blanket-deregulation topples them.

On July 11 2019 09:40 Loco wrote: By definition "what the consumer wants" is irrational, because wants (desires) are pre-reflexive and unconscious, and they can be created and manipulated so that people are controlled through their wants without them knowing it. So you are saying the most democratic society is the most irrational and vulnerable one. It is a very strange stance to take for someone who claims to care about reason above everything else. Why is it that the culture that cared the most about reason, the ancient Greeks, never said that the maximum freedom individuals could aspire to was through bartering, and that the ideal society was to be realized through consumer choices? Why did those beliefs you hold so deeply emerge when they did instead of back then? Can you trace that history back Baal? I think if people ask themselves "who did those beliefs benefit the most?" they are on track to discovering why those beliefs ever emerged in the first place. Just open your eyes and look around: people have more wants and more access to things that will fulfill their wants than ever before. Does that mean people are now more free than they ever were? Really? Please answer me here if you're going to answer anything at all. You think I'm denying human nature because I understand life to be in flux and the human animal to be highly susceptible to environmental feedback, all the while your ideology entirely relies on a denial of the true nature of power dynamics and the way they structure and determine our world, including human biology. There are essentially no market forces in your worldview, markets aren't shaped, they are just this natural and neutral thing that emerged spontaneously and that mediates between two humans who are absolutely "free not to trade" with one another. The first part of that is same kind of naive thinking that says that a medium is just a neutral tool that we choose how to use, and that on its own it has no bearing on who we are, how we think and behave. It's the same kind of intuitive but uneducated reasoning that people use to justify flat earth beliefs or the idea that things exist exactly how we perceive them even when there is no consciousness in the world. The second part on "not trading" allows you to trivialize the inequality of bargaining power with your "voluntaryst" view because you assume that there is this magical power within each one of us that answers to nothing and no one and that can allow us to transcend ourselves, transcend our vices that we were born with, and which have nothing to do with our culture or social and economic pressures. You do this by denying the findings of neuroscience on free will and by denying that the structures that we are brought up in fundamentally affect who we are and what we do at an unconscious level. You decouple desires like greed from the ideological underpinnings of a system that clearly imposes a mindset of scarcity and incentivizes the pursuit of hierarchical dominance over others, and you never offer any reasoning or empirical evidence as to how you can make that decoupling. We are just supposed to buy the just-so story that it is how it is.

Its not irrational, but plagued with vices and our flaws and yes it can be manipulated (votes/politics can manipulate much more though), you are vegan but would you buy bacon if it was on the first aisle in the supermarket? No, are you a superhuman that trascend manipulation or you just simply care too much to fall for such temptations? that is freedom.

The greeks come on... societies thousands of years ago needed a much different economic/societal system, for starters they required a big organized army or you they get trampled by the persians or dozens of other enemies.

But I agree we are malleable and our structure greatly affects us, certanly not the extent you belielf though, for example at the end you talk as if greed is the result of this capitalist system but greed is as old as man himself, it trascends all species and is observable everywhere in the brutal nature, the rare instances of cooperation are nothing but collective self-interest. I think we have to trascend our nature but to deny its even there is just blindness.

On July 12 2019 02:14 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On July 11 2019 08:58 Stroggoz wrote: the government is like a weathervane that responds to outside pressure and goes in the direction it's pushed, corporate lobbying pushes it in the direction of benefitting corporate power. The banks spent a combined 5billion$ over the neoliberal period in lobbying, (according to a book i read a few years ago) to undo all the regulation that was implemented in the 1930's. They got far more than 5billion$ back from it, as finance makes up 40% of corporate profits in america now. So yes the government can use the state to smash up monopolies-or oligopilies, if it's pushed in that direction, as it has done before. If your interested in the state doing good thing's, there are plenty of movements that are trying to force it into doing good things, like the sunrise movement for example. Private power has done nothing but lobby the government for deregulating corporate power so it can be oligopolistic, so i don't understand why you're in favour of privitization. Not really, the government is formed of people (power thirsty people which is a bad start), so many seek self interest, in a country that has legal lobbying this is the obvious the best path for self interest, In México lobbyign is illegal so the path for self interest is different an uglier more corrupt one, but yes the government can do good on its own and can also be forced through pressure to do good, as I said, its made of people. The ammount of money corporations spend in lobbying is miniscule compared to advertizing, that means the yield for bribing the state is lower than putting up some ad, why? because most de-regulation creates "common good", meaning, equally good to all competition in that specific market, so lobbying helps all the market but you specifically front the costs so it isn't that effective unless you control the majority of the market share (monopoly) that you don't care about helping competition along or that specific regulation actually helps you maintaining/gaining power over the competition and that consolidates monopolies. Thats why the results of lobbying de-regulating creates monopolies when just blanket-deregulation topples them.

totally wrong about deregulation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act

I'm talking traditional consumer/service markets, financial institutions are deeply entwined with the state, they function as mini-federal reserves leveraging loans, that alone breaks any free market rule so they are also incentivized to leverage so much to become "too big to fail" like BoA did in 08 and have to be bailed out, and even after that many banks in Europe keep a 40 to 1 leverage.

They need to be regulated because they were given god-like power, but take away their fiat leverage and there isn't a need for much regulation and you will see the banks shrivel to their normal size like a normal business instead of the masters of the universe they are today.

ANTIFA terrorist attacks ICE facility and gets killed:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-...es-shot-outside-ice-detention-center/

"Here is the final message the anarchist fighter Will Van Spronsen left for his comrades before carrying out an armed attack against the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington on July 13th, 2019."

there’s wrong and there’s right.
it’s time to take action against the forces of evil.

evil says one life is worth less than another.
evil says the flow of commerce is our purpose here.
evil says concentration camps for folks deemed lesser are necessary.
the handmaid of evil says the concentration camps should be more humane.
beware the centrist.

i have a father’s broken heart
i have a broken down body
and i have an unshakeable abhorrence of injustice
that is what brings me here.
this is my clear opportunity to try to make a difference, i’d be an ingrate to be waiting for a more obvious invitation.

i follow three teachers:
don pritts, my spiritual guide, “love without action is just a word.”
john brown, my moral guide, “what is needed is action!”
emma goldman, my political guide, “if i can’t dance, i don’t want to be in your revolution”

i’m a head in the clouds dreamer, i believe in love and redemption.
i believe we’re going to win.
i’m joyfully revolutionary. (we all should have been reading emma goldman in school instead of the jingo drivel we were fed. but i digress.) (we should all be looking at the photos of the YPJ heroes should we falter and think our dreams are impossible, but i double digress. fight me.)

in these days of fascist hooligans preying on vulnerable people on our streets, in the name of the state or supported and defended by the state,

in these days of highly profitable detention/ concentration camps and a battle over the semantics,

in these days of hopelessness, empty pursuit and endless yearning,

we are living in visible fascism ascendant. (i say visible, because those paying attention watched it survive and thrive under the protection of the state for decades. (see howard zinn, “a people’s history of the united states.”) now it unabashedly follows its agenda with open and full cooperation from the government. from governments around the world.

fascism serves the needs of the state serves the needs of business and at your expense. who benefits? jeff bezos, warren buffett, elon musk, tim cook, bill gates, betsy de vos, george soros, donald trump, and need i go on? let me say it again: rich guys, (who think you’re not really all that good.) really dig government, (every government everywhere, including “communist” governments.) because they make the rules that make rich guys richer.
simple.
don’t overthink it.

(are you patriots in the back paying attention?)

i’m a man who loves you all and this spinning ball so much that i’m going to fulfill my childhood promise to myself to be noble.

here it is, in these corporate for profit concentration camps.
here it is, in brown and non conforming folks afraid to show their faces for fear of the police/ migra/ proud boys/ beckies…
here it is, a planet almost used up by the market’s greed.

i’m a black and white thinker.
detention camps are an abomination.
i’m not standing by.
i really shouldn’t have to say any more than this.

i set aside my broken heart and i heal the only way i know how- by being useful.
i efficiently compartmentalize my pain…
and i joyfully go about this work.
(to those burdened with the wreckage from my actions, i hope that you will make the best use of that burden.)

to my comrades:

i regret that i will miss the rest of the revolution.
thank you for the honor of having been in your midst.

giving me space to be useful, to feel that i was fulfilling my ideals, has been the spiritual pinnacle of my life.

doing what i can to help defend my precious and wondrous people is an experience too rich to describe.

my trans comrades have transformed me, solidifying my conviction that we will be guided to a dreamed of future by those most marginalized among us today. i have dreamed it so clearly that i have no regret for not seeing how it turns out. thank you for bringing me so far along.

i am antifa, i stand with comrades around the world who act from the love of life in every permutation. comrades who understand that freedom means real freedom for all and a life worth living.

keep the faith!
all power to the people!
bella ciao

----

don’t let your silly government agencies waste money “investigating” this one. i was radicalized in civics class at 13 when we were taught about the electoral college. it was at that point that i decided that the status quo might be a house of cards. further reading confirmed in the positive. i highly recommend reading!
i am not affiliated with any organization, i have disafilliated from any organization who disagree with my choice of tactics.
the semi automatic weapon i used was a cheap, home built unregistered “ghost” ar15, it had six magazines. i strongly encourage comrades and incoming comrades to arm themselves. we are now responsible for defending people from the predatory state: ignore the law in arming yourself if you have the luxury, i did.

On July 15 2019 05:21 Baalim wrote: ANTIFA terrorist attacks ICE facility and gets killed: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-...es-shot-outside-ice-detention-center/

lol Loco is like those people sharing suicide bombers jihadists letters online
(read his post above)

On July 15 2019 06:35 Loco wrote: Here is the final message the anarchist fighter Will Van Spronsen left for his comrades before carrying out an armed attack against the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington on July 13th, 2019.

are just you trying to smear Baal by calling this radical leftist antifa terrorist an anarchist? was that the point?

"Italy seizes 'combat-ready' missile in raids on far right"

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48987723








An anarchist who died taking action to disable a fleet of buses that serve the Northwest Detention Center, a private (read: for-profit) immigration detainment facility is definitely much more 'terroristic' than this. Fear the left and their belief in solidarity and their cement milkshakes, but no matter what, do not fear the ascent of fascism.

"It is not hyperbole to say that the ICE raids are targeting our friends and neighbors, people who have lived and worked alongside us for years or even decades. The vulnerability of long-term undocumented people as a hyper-exploitable class has helped billionaires like Donald Trump to profit even more than they could have by legal means. To put the icing on the cake, capitalists then turn to the other workers they are exploiting and tell them that the poverty and misfortunes they experience are the fault of those who are poorer and more oppressed than them. It’s hard to imagine a more cynical strategy.

The disparity in rights between the documented and undocumented is a construct—just as the disparity in value that the Nazis constructed between Jewish people and gentiles was a construct. Both are mere inventions; they have no intrinsic existence except as a means for a powerful group to justify violence against a less powerful group. Those who justify obedience to the law as a good in itself stand alongside the Nazis whose laws condemned millions to the death camps, not to mention the racists who passed the Fugitive Slave Act and the Jim Crow laws in the American South.

Laws are just constructs. They have no value in and of themselves. They often serve to legitimize injustice that people would otherwise take action to oppose.

The further that the proponents of racist violence are permitted to legitimize invented concepts like slavery and citizenship, the more violence they will perpetrate—up to and including roundups, concentration camps, and mass extermination. We have seen this before, in Nazi Germany and elsewhere, and we are seeing it again today in the United States. The thousands of deaths that take place in the borderlands and the thousands murdered by police are just a foretaste of what is possible.

In this regard, the Jewish people who are carrying out blockades against ICE are engaging in rational efforts to prevent the recurrence of the same unthinkable injustices that were perpetrated against their ancestors—just as Willem Van Spronsen, who grew up in the wake of World War II, made the rational decision that the time had come to fight the rise of fascism just as people did in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

If more people had chosen to take action to fight the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, the Second World War might have been averted, and with it millions upon millions of lives would have been saved. Let no one say it is “violent” to attack the infrastructure of ICE and the mercenaries who maintain it. The real violence is the complicity of the Good Americans who do nothing as their neighbors are disappeared, just like those Good Germans who choose to ignore what was being done to their neighbors in the 1930s.

Every day, mercenaries around the world risk their lives in service to the agenda of the rich and powerful, obeying orders thoughtlessly, squandering their capacity to think rationally, to feel compassion, to take responsibility for their actions. Millions of people kill and die every year simply to increase the wealth and power of the tyrants who manipulate them. Willem Van Spronsen chose to think for himself. He took personal responsibility and did what he could to put an end to what he recognized as injustice. He did not use the Nuremburg defense to excuse his actions the way that every police officer and prison guard does."
- Crimethinc

On July 15 2019 13:32 GoTuNk wrote: Show nested quote + On July 15 2019 05:21 Baalim wrote: ANTIFA terrorist attacks ICE facility and gets killed: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-...es-shot-outside-ice-detention-center/ lol Loco is like those people sharing suicide bombers jihadists letters online (read his post above)

Thank you for taking the mask off completely. Yes indeed, I am exactly like those people who support ISIS, as I am a libertarian socialist. Libertarian socialists are known for their support of ISIS. They certainly do not consist of the overwhelming majority of fighters who fought and defeated ISIS in Syria. Everyone is aware that Trump supporters like you are the real freedom fighters.

Is not making sense a new debate tactic? I don't understand what you mean or what you want to say. Maybe someone else can chime in and explain.

On July 15 2019 06:35 Loco wrote: retarded manifesto.txt i was radicalized in civics class at 13 when we were taught about the electoral college. i am not affiliated with any organization, i have disafilliated from any organization who disagree with my choice of tactics.

The elctoral college? lol taking Trump derangement syndrome to the next level.

not affiliated with any organization except when he literally says I am antifa lol.


Anyway Loco your hypotetical question about if I would allow you to post terrorist propaganda its now not hypotetical anymore lol.

I don't understand Van Spronsen. Couldn't he have gone about this differently? From the Seattle Times article it sounded like he showed up to the detention center with an ar-15 and 4 cops shot him to death. Was he going there to kill cops? What was his motive? If you're going to kill cops why not find some particularly "bad" ones and pick as many off as you can? What can actually be done at an ICE facility? I should do a deeper dive on this subject I'm just a bit foggy from working all day and don't feel like doing it now.

Idiots saying he was antifa. Well, yes, but he said he's not doing it on behalf of any organization including antifa.

I wish these guys would try to go higher up the food chain if they are going to do something like this. ACAB, obviously, but I would wager most cops are decent people making $30k-60k/yr where I live. They are just on the job and this guy just walks in with an ar-15. The article didn't specify who shot first meaning the cops could have just lit this guy up unjustifiably. If so then we hope justice is served but will it be? Should we be killing judges with a track record of heinous judgements? What about CEOs? Politicians? It's not really fair to kill them but we have to do something.

On July 16 2019 01:46 GoTuNk wrote: Is not making sense a new debate tactic? I don't understand what you mean or what you want to say. Maybe someone else can chime in and explain.

He's using sarcasm. You've exposed him as some ISIS guy except for the fact that he is an anarchist, libertarian socialist, anti-fascist. The militias in Rojava (who are anarchist, libertarian socialist and anti-fascist) which he has claimed many times to be very much inline with his ideology has spent much of the last many years fighting ISIS.

It may benefit your narrative to unwisely make connections with anarchists and jihadists but that would be unfair. There are some similarities but many more differences.

I don't wish that he got Trump instead because I don't think Trump deserves to be assassinated but Trump does deserve to be impeached or at least not elected again. I mean really the fair thing would be to decentralize the whole bloody catacombs. I don't know exactly how we do it. I don't have all the answers. I will say one thing Van Spronsen at least took some action even though I don't agree with it whole heartedly.

Do we have to start killing people? Then all these people like CEOs, politicians, judges, generals and places like ICE scale up their security detail. Then what? Then we are in another form of dystopia surely. Show me a privately owned prison and I'll show you some assholes like all of the people I just mentioned getting a cut. These are peoples' lives we are talking about here and there is some judge making x% on each person he puts in prison, there is some politician getting money to turn a blind eye, and obviously the executives of the damn place are taking their piece. Oh, you better believe they are taking their piece. Still, I think most security are just caught in the shitstorm. You gotta go higher up.

+ Show Spoiler +

On July 15 2019 23:22 Loco wrote: "Italy seizes 'combat-ready' missile in raids on far right" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48987723 An anarchist who died taking action to disable a fleet of buses that serve the Northwest Detention Center, a private (read: for-profit) immigration detainment facility is definitely much more 'terroristic' than this. Fear the left and their belief in solidarity and their cement milkshakes, but no matter what, do not fear the ascent of fascism. "It is not hyperbole to say that the ICE raids are targeting our friends and neighbors, people who have lived and worked alongside us for years or even decades. The vulnerability of long-term undocumented people as a hyper-exploitable class has helped billionaires like Donald Trump to profit even more than they could have by legal means. To put the icing on the cake, capitalists then turn to the other workers they are exploiting and tell them that the poverty and misfortunes they experience are the fault of those who are poorer and more oppressed than them. It’s hard to imagine a more cynical strategy. The disparity in rights between the documented and undocumented is a construct—just as the disparity in value that the Nazis constructed between Jewish people and gentiles was a construct. Both are mere inventions; they have no intrinsic existence except as a means for a powerful group to justify violence against a less powerful group. Those who justify obedience to the law as a good in itself stand alongside the Nazis whose laws condemned millions to the death camps, not to mention the racists who passed the Fugitive Slave Act and the Jim Crow laws in the American South. Laws are just constructs. They have no value in and of themselves. They often serve to legitimize injustice that people would otherwise take action to oppose. The further that the proponents of racist violence are permitted to legitimize invented concepts like slavery and citizenship, the more violence they will perpetrate—up to and including roundups, concentration camps, and mass extermination. We have seen this before, in Nazi Germany and elsewhere, and we are seeing it again today in the United States. The thousands of deaths that take place in the borderlands and the thousands murdered by police are just a foretaste of what is possible. In this regard, the Jewish people who are carrying out blockades against ICE are engaging in rational efforts to prevent the recurrence of the same unthinkable injustices that were perpetrated against their ancestors—just as Willem Van Spronsen, who grew up in the wake of World War II, made the rational decision that the time had come to fight the rise of fascism just as people did in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. If more people had chosen to take action to fight the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, the Second World War might have been averted, and with it millions upon millions of lives would have been saved. Let no one say it is “violent” to attack the infrastructure of ICE and the mercenaries who maintain it. The real violence is the complicity of the Good Americans who do nothing as their neighbors are disappeared, just like those Good Germans who choose to ignore what was being done to their neighbors in the 1930s. Every day, mercenaries around the world risk their lives in service to the agenda of the rich and powerful, obeying orders thoughtlessly, squandering their capacity to think rationally, to feel compassion, to take responsibility for their actions. Millions of people kill and die every year simply to increase the wealth and power of the tyrants who manipulate them. Willem Van Spronsen chose to think for himself. He took personal responsibility and did what he could to put an end to what he recognized as injustice. He did not use the Nuremburg defense to excuse his actions the way that every police officer and prison guard does." - Crimethinc

Fucking missiles!?

It really shouldn't be that surprising. That's about the highest fascists can really go on the violence dominance scale so obviously they are going to go there. At least YET. Although, Trump dog whistles fascist shit all the time so who really knows? Fascists will get away with as much as they can. It's an idea virus that needs to be contained and eradicated as best as possible. That's why I am unsure if what Van Spronsen did was actually in the best interest of the movement from a tactical standpoint but you know what he took action in something he believed in. It just saddens me that it seems more like a suicide wish that could catch a lot of backfire rather than a tactical wager. It has gotten me thinking a lot though and I am sure it has gotten a lot of other people thinking.

Antifa is not an organization. You can be a friendless Egoist and simply remove Nazi stickers from your neighborhood and that makes you antifa, i.e. someone who partakes in anti-fascist action. There are no memberships or requirements to be affiliated with anyone. Showing up to a protest doesn't make you a "member of antifa".

Interestingly, the same people who call this man a terrorist think of Julian Assange as a (cyber-) terrorist too. So, I guess Baal was the first one to openly defend a terrorist between us two. It's just another instance of inconsistency from him, he is not self-aware enough to realize he is weaponizing this word like war-mongerers and fascists do to incite hatred against other people who believe in human freedom as their highest ideal. I also remember Baal downplaying the acts of the mosque shooter who killed 50 people because his manifesto was supposedly "full of memes" and because, apparently, "the left" had created him. It was somehow relevant to mention that for him, but it wasn't relevant for me to post a manifesto as-is without any added commentary.


Let's see.

Definition of terrorism
: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion

Definition of terror
1 : a state of intense fear
2a : one that inspires fear

That man did not inspire fear in me or anyone I know, but I understand how he inspired fear in the eyes of a bunch of authoritarian bigots who are in favor of caging people and letting them suffer and die from preventable causes for arbitrary reasons.

I don't understand Van Spronsen. Couldn't he have gone about this differently?

The media is not reporting what he did accurately. He was standing on the other side of the detention camp, where there are busses. He wanted to destroy the vehicles that ICE does their raids and bring people to the airport with. There are surely a lot of things that he could have done other than this, but he made up his mind that he wanted to do that. He lived according to his principles and he didn't hurt anyone on his way out. Crazy to think we live in a world where there are shitheads who equate the far left and the far right like Baal who will attempt to convince you that such people are the greatest threat in the world right now.

The greatest danger, as I see it, is not even the far-right itself, but the context in which it is allowed to flourish by those who are downplaying it, normalizing it. It is neoliberal psychopolitics and its grasp on the human mind through Big Data, gamification, the mass media and internet echo chambers. They are incredibly powerful in manipulating and steering the average person who was not taught to think critically. These forces are in the process of removing human rationality from society at an alarming speed, and they now turn what once would have been a passive people into active participants in disinformation campaigns that are intended to distract and serve the interests of an elite few.

-antifa isn't an organization that has membership
-doing antifascist things makes you antifascist
-going to an antifascist protest doesn't make you antifascist

On July 15 2019 23:22 Loco wrote: + Show Spoiler + "Italy seizes 'combat-ready' missile in raids on far right" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48987723

not really much you can do with an air-to-air missile in a box but yeah luckily if far left terrorists aren't anything to be afraid of it's only because they have the competence of the far left

On July 16 2019 08:09 Loco wrote: That man did not inspire fear in me or anyone I know, but I understand how he inspired fear in the eyes of a bunch of authoritarian bigots who are in favor of caging people and letting them suffer and die from preventable causes for arbitrary reasons.

"khalid sheik mohammed didn't inspire fear in any true followers of allah I know but I understand how he inspired fear in the eyes of a bunch of subhuman and immoral infidels who want to live blasphemous lives of decadence while protecting the jewish cockroaches in israel"