WaxedWookie @ WaxedWookie @lemmy.world

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70% of Hamas aren't.

What does this tell us about Israel's goals?

You've said a lot while adding nothing.

Again, the priority is minimising suffering and death - if Fuentes' death amounts to a net increase in death and suffering, I don't support it. If there is a solution to that leads to less net suffering and death, I don't support his death. If it's effective at stopping the deaths of tens of millions of people, I'd support it. My preferred solution would be to escalate charges, censure and imprisonment for his work to advance those genocides.

What I will say is that:

• Silencing the mouthpieces of genocide and the recruiters for genocide helps minimises the chances of the genocides,
• Making contributing to genocide a dangerous affair helps minimise the chances of genocides.
• Asking nicely doesn't do a damn thing to minimise the chances of the genocides.

Political violence is an inevitability - I'd rather it be minimised - sometimes a little violence stops a lot - this is why cops carry guns.

Finally, what you are pushing for is very illegal.

I've already said I'm guided by morality not legality, and I'm not pushing for anything specific beyond stopping about the most heinous act possible. I appreciate your concern, but the rest is noise.

No... Stop... Please? Niiiick? I said pleeeease...

I use morality rather than legality to tell right from wrong. This is why I supported gay marriage a few years ago. My moral first principle is the minimisation of suffering and death. If someone is making headway toward killing tens of millions of people, I believe it's immoral not to stop them, and while the suffering inflicted should be minimised, there's not a lot that wouldn't be justifiable if necessary to stop those tens of millions of deaths and all the suffering.

To stand by and watch something like that play out because forceful intervention is uncivil is to be complicit with those atrocities.

Sure - he might be actively pushing for a series of genocides, and he might be a significant recruitment tool to advance those genocides, but pushing back against the death of millions of people with anything more than colourful language would be immoral.

Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds.

When very charitably, at least 12 of Eco's 14 signs of Ur fascism has been checked off along with the dictionary definition, this is a pretty weak argument - Where do you get your meaning of words if it's not based on the dictionary or on something's traits?

Deregulation and the outsourcing of state power to complicit, newly empowered commercial interests is standard within fascism, and pushing that power from notionally democratic direct government control to undemocratic businesses that have an interest in preserving the government that removed their guardrails and handed them all that power is undeniably authoritarian. Would you make the argument that company towns aren't authoritarian or centralised because it's not government power?

Excessive debt is indeed a driver of authoritatian policy for better or worse, but fascism isn't the only flavour of authoritarianism. Similarly, company towns tend to thrive in small government environments, and are historically incredibly authoritarian. That's not a good thing.

Oh - my mistake - you think you're not supporting fascism... It'd be quaint if it weren't for the consequences.

Fascism is characterised by the merging of state and commercial interests, not a strong centralised authority in a beuracratic sense. Let's run the list, shall we?

"The cult of tradition", characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

Check.

"The rejection of modernism", which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

Check.

"The cult of action for action's sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

Check.

"Disagreement is treason" – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

Big check.

"Fear of difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

That couldn't be Trum- CHECK.

"Appeal to a frustrated middle class", fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

Check.

"Obsession with a plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.

Check.

Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak". On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

Check.

"Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy" because "life is permanent warfare" – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

Ukraine/Palestine - soft check.

"Contempt for the weak", which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

Check.

"Everybody is educated to become a hero", which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, "[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."

Soft check, but that's clearly firming up.

"Machismo", which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold "both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality".

Check.

"Selective populism" – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of "no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people".

Check.

"Newspeak" – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

Check.

I've got bad news for you...

Your defence of your fascist alignment is to concede it's always ended terribly, then point to an anarcho-capitalist example where the goal is to collapse the government because Milei hasn't finished the job after checks watch less than a year?

I get that he's done a fairly commendable job with the economic tailspin so-far, but I'm not sure I see the relevance.

As an example, the IRS returns $6 for every dollar spent on it, and absolutely all available evidence shows that if you remove all the guardrails, things get far worse almost immediately.

Can you point to an example of fascism working? Every example I've seen ended with massive decline in quality of life, rampant waste, and both economic and government collapse - usually with a dead leader through suicide or execution, generally with their corpse being dragged through the streets by an understandably furious populace. It'll all work out this time, though... right?

Fascism and idiots - I couldn't name a more iconic duo - though I do agree with you point... Trump is exceptionally stupid, and has surrounded himself with gibbering idiots like Musk and RFK.

...that said, when Trump's heart inevitably explodes, Vance will almost certainly have competent (evil) advisors, and they'll get (horrible) shit done.

The Hitler lasted from July 1932, and Hitler killed himself in April 1945 - 13 years.

Mussolini lasted from 1922 to his execution in 1945 - 23 years.

Stalin lasted 1924-1953 - 29 years.

Fascism inevitably implodes and crates untold suffering along the way, but you might have longer than you think.

Yeah - it's the FDA and CDC that are the true money pits in the US government... Let's eliminate the IRS and EPA while we're at it - really smash those guardrails and let the altruistic market fix it - that always works..

Ohhh look - we're cutting taxes for those that need it least again - but that's responsible spending - it's all been accumulating for over half a century, so it's got to start trickling down any day now, guys.

If you can avoid the dark ages, you should probably consider that a win right now...

So we should deport Israelis because Israel backed Hamas' displacement of the secular moderates with predictable results?

Don't pretend your hatred is principled.

I think it's pretty straightforwardly reasonable to say that we should above all else, remove their ability to continue to do harm. There's going to be a range of views on exactly what that should look like - mostly based on your view of how punitive we should be. Options would include confinement, exile, medication, lobotomy, and execution.

Personally, I think ending someone through death, lobotomy, and the like is unnecessarily barbaric. Confinement in one form or another seems like the most reasonable option, and I think consentual alternatives are debatable.

Had a friend that took the conspiracist road to Nazism, and this isn't an exaggeration - the dictionary is a Jewish plot, so is any empirical evidence, the existence of qualified experts, observable phenomena...

The small mercy is that the idiots and monsters that voted for Trump and the dipshits that couldn't be bothered to vote to stave off fascism will drown in the river of shit alongside the well-meaning folk that did their best (or anything at all) to stop this.

Christ - because it's not as though the media contributes massively to voter suppression.

Journalistic malpractice is one of the main causes - if not the main cause of this result.

A war of aggression started in October by Hamas.

Yeah - history started 13 months ago, and the genocide being committed in Palestine is actually a Hamas war of aggression. Is it because it's all Israeli territory and therefore that genocide is justified?

Once again LBGTQ+ individuals would be killed, jailed and persecuted even without the current conflict with Israel.

You don't get to weaponise the LGBTQ+ community, who Israel is exterminating at a far quicker rate than everyone else in the region combined to justify the extermination of those LGBTQ+ people, their families, and everyone they care about.

Once again Lebanon is an active war zone.

Yes - Israel invaded them.

Simple Israel is fighting a war that was thrust on it by Hamas in October. Nazis fought a war of aggression. The fact that you can’t tell the difference is sad.

That's probably less defensible than the argument that the Jews were sabotaging the German economy in defence of the Holocaust - it's definitely less defensible than arguing Hitler had no choice but to start WWII because of the economic carve-up following WWI.

Congratulations - you're just as genocidal as the Nazis and use even stupider arguments than they do. The tankies can go fuck themselves - but my prescription for you would defy TOS, Rudolph Jitler.

Yawn

History started 13 months ago (but only as it relates to the genocide Israel is committing) - but you'd better not pay attention to who has been killing the most LGBTQ+ people (and straight people, civilians, children...) in the region.

I'm the one brushing aside reality, eh?

You don't ever look at the fact that you're defending a genocide and question yourself? That you're weaponising the Palestinian LGBTQ+ population whose extermination you're actively supporting exterminating to justify that extermination?

...nah - better to just say I'm off my meds.

You wouldn't have to tie yourself in bizarre knots to defend a genocide if you simply decided not to defend the indefensible. You don't have a moral framework, you don't have a logical framework - you have "Israel gud, so genocide gud."

Hooray for courts stacked with sycophants and partisans, and liberals enabling fascism because meaningfully opposing it would be uncivil.

There's slim hope that Trump losing the election along with his viability as president or leader of the GOP would see his protections make way for consequences, but even that seems unlikely.

Your prescription seems to assume that either:

1. Everyone can be rehabilitated, which no society has ever achieved.
2. That it's preferable to push a well understood risk to people's lives back into the community than it is to keep that risk in the care of the state where they can't kill more people.

...but you strike me as too sensible to prescribe that kind of thing, so what have I missed?