The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

There are so many lies in this little propaganda War the left and right extremists are fighting.
Sure is impressive that some people, especially in this climate of non stop fabricated propaganda, have developed a distaste for real journalistic outlets, instead drawing their "information" from very questionable social media sources, random youtube videos, open propaganda sites like Breitbart, etc.

I don't know about CNN, but the German quality journalism sources, [1], [2] I tend to trust most actually have like people specifically working on verifying wild stories and claims and only report what turns out to be true.
They also are in the habit of correcting mistakes if they should make them.

Since this discussion is an English one it's not focused on German media, but I suspect big US news outlets also have people working like that. Have people verify things. Retract things that turned out to be mistakes.
In fact I remember from this thread that CNN did retract some problematic thing it had reported. Don't remember what it was, but somebody in this thread used that very retraction as a "see how bad CNN is". Similar I remember somebody had leaked some internal talk by CNN (or some other outlet?) where somebody spoke of the fact that they had a Bias against ... probably the right and again that was attacked. Funny, since it's a pretty damn good thing for a journalist reporting on politics to consider their own Bias when writing text. That helps a lot to stay as neutral as possible after all.

It sure is weird how people turn signs of decent journalism into reasons not to trust decent journalism.

Openly admitting mistakes and considering their own Biases is something certain people on the far right and far left could really try once in a while...

Oh look, Antifa Commies back at berkeley. Smashing up businesses isn't enough to sate their bloodlust anymore. Now they have to openly lynch random isolated people (aka "nazis") with lead pipes. It's not like they were doing this sort of thing in south america since forever. No possible way to have seen it coming oh no.

https://twitter.com/hectormorenco/status/901924604414836736

But hey, drone footage from "questionable social media sources" is obviously "fabricated propaganda" because it isn't being reported by "real journalistic outlets". That devious nazi breitbart is at it again fabricating antifa mobs with photoshop! LOL

It's ok to be skeptical of information, but my god you've truly been brainwashed. Just as the soviet communists only accepted information as true if reported by Pravda. Just as religious fundamentalists only accept information as true if it fits with the narrative of their holy books. If there is any shred of an independantly thinking human being left in you, you should hold onto that for dear life before you lose it completely and become a puppet that can't see the strings tugging him this way or that.

It sure is weird how people mistake the tip of the iceberg as being the entire iceberg.

Oh but they are just violent people who were going to be violent anyway, nothing to do with real socialism ofcourse.

Hrm let's see what r/socialism has to say about their views on peace and tolerance from their own self run surveys. https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/6uxpex/rsocialism_100k_survey_results/

86% We should use all tools at our disposal to fight fascists, we should fight them on the streets.

8% Expressly non-violent only, disassociate from violent protest

12% yes, always

I can keep going

https://twitter.com/shane_bauer/status/901910682030882816

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slat...ntervened_in_the_berkeley_antifa_beating.html

oh that you can

I don't often side with Elodea on this, he's too extreme right, but to be fair, what ABOUT the drone footage, multiple reported injuries and attacks, and various vandalized vehicles at Trump rallies before the election. How many belonged to certified fascists? You're embarrassed to admit it's below 10% of those vehicles vandalized, but maybe this wouldn't happen with due process for ****'s sake.

Again. Police officer. Video-capture scope. Rubber Bullets. Marksman Rifle. Elevated position. Dumping rounds into any violent individual at a peaceful protest. You shouldn't mind if police maintain the peace, and you can't look at their footage and say they're taking shots unprovoked. You just don't want to admit your assholes are also causing problems, that your 6% is fighting the right's 6% and both sides are vandalizing and assaulting collateral innocent bystanders.

You ever wonder why this thread is worthless at changing anyone's minds about anything? Gorbles, Tatsu, Elodea, Mered4, nobody wants to even admit a partial concession toward the rest of the world that isn't them. Well...

elodea ignores the massive evidence of people faking "antifa" attacks, decides to post more things as decided by the right-wing press and uh, well, Breitbart.

Lulz.

There's a reason people don't take most claims of "antifa" violence seriously. Most of them are fakes, and we have more evidence of that in this thread than we do of the contrary.

I'm not even going to get started on the necessity of violence vs. actual Nazis. Not racists. Not "mistaken" individuals. Not "lone wolves". Not people "suffering from mental illness". Actual, real, tattooed Nazis.

Their existence is violent, because it is founded on the belief other people need to die. You can pretend this isn't the basic fact at play as much as you want, I don't have time for it. I just wanted to get this on the record. Nazi ideology is inherently violent. If people aren't being protected from this violence, then yes, violence in the opposite is going to occur. If the state is going to protect the rights and relative power of actual Nazis more than it is their victims, people are going to fight back.

Man. Only people on the right can argue that guns are necessary to fight an oppressive government state, as well as simultaneously arguing that oppressed minorities fighting back against literal Nazis is a bad thing. Hypocritical beyond belief

You did post those claims by some random guy that he got stabbed by antifa here.
That guy now has admitted it was all a fabrication.
And you completely ignore that. No word about it. Instead you throw more smoke bombs.

Also I've said multiple times that I condemn any real antifa violence, which you chose to ignore as well.

To say it in your words:

If you want me to take your posts serious at all, please explain to me why I should take them serious after you've posted a clearly fake story before. Do it like the good journalists CNN: Admit your mistakes.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough in the past: I absolutely agree that there are violent elements in antifa and that violence, even when dealing with Nazis, is not the solution. I don't know what else to say?

It's really quite simple @cola_colin. Depressingly-so, in fact.

While you and I could have a reasonable debate about the relative merits of violence, unfortunately here the people shouting the loudest about VIRTUE SIGNALLING and BETA CUCKS and BRAINWASHING are - by all accounts by the posts provided - projecting. Or at least, their ideological bias has rendered them immune to anything but the single-minded belief that if you don't align wholly with their cultural ideological beliefs, you are The Other, and should be treated as such.

I mean this is what they claim of "the Left", or "liberals", all the time, but this simple correlation proves it. The "Left" aren't necessarily "liberals", and "liberals" aren't "the Left". Meanwhile you have the "Right", whoever centrists are these days (I'd argue America doesn't have many of them anymore; everything is too partisan and has been for a generation or two now), the alt-right, the far-right, and so on.

For example, I'm pretty left-leaning, and I'm pretty liberal, by that silly square chart that people like to fill in. Well, it's not silly. Basic. It's basic. I know leftists that are more left than me, and leftists that are less left than me. I disagree with a lot of them on a variety of issues, but that doesn't make them right wing, or anything close to it. Simply means we believe in different solutions to the same problems. Much like how I suspect we differ on violent solutions.

But I'm also British, which comes with a relatively different cultural makeup and background to America. This is changing, though, that gap is closing a bit. Something about the general state of the media, how politics is being pushed to the right, the Overton window, and so on. We still have "centrist" political parties (as ineffective as they've been of late). America doesn't have anything like that, really. The closest you get are independents, which either (in recent history) seem to be outright libertarian, or Bernie Sanders. Even Evan McMullin is conservative in most of his ways, though at least he seems rationally so.

More and more online I've encountered this LEFTISTS ARE SO INTO IDEOLOGICAL PURITY like other demographics aren't also subject to this kind of group bias? We all are, it's how we culture ourselves into groups in the first place.

I mean far better-educated folks have written a lot more words than I could ever walloftext on general psychology and group behaviour, but basically online whoever shouts the loudest (and the most) tends to "win". Which is why, over the years, I've done this kind of eternal wheel-of-fortune arguing as much as I have. But what you're seeing here is the pushback, the culmination of years of Internet media being allowed to pass around half-truths with no responsibility or culpability. People sharing fake stories about antifa violence, while criticising anyone who makes an attempt at criticising literal, actual, Neo-Nazis.

This doesn't happen the other way around.

I have not sat here and gone "yeah sexists on the Left aren't that bad, actually". They're bad. Sexism pervades the entire ideological spectrum. Racism too.

But the whole talking point of the past X pages is various right-wing posters yelling into the void if anyone so much as mentions the inherent issues with nationalism in America (which trends to racism and all that entails). The "Left" has different issues. It has issues, but we're not discussing them. We're buying into the media characterisation of them, based on descriptions from mainly far-right sources. Which is only possible because of how pervasive the Internet has become in our lives.

Fascinating, really. It is an information war, and sadly the people that project the fake rubbish are winning it. People are more likely to link from Breitbart than they are Jezebel, while both would be considered moderately "far" on their respective political axes.

EDIT

Whups, forgot about Stein, but she had even less of a chance than Sanders did. Just mentioning her now to pre-empt any predictable BUT YOU FORGOT ABOUT THIS MINOR DETAIL THUS ALLOWING ME TO MISREPRESENT YOUR ENTIRE POST style posts that happen quite a bit.

Obviously not from you colin, but enough time in this thread has taught me that unfortunately, nothing is taken on faith.

Elodea posted multiple sources to explain his position, Gorbles goes on a rant, Tatsu is still essentially just posting bullshit instead of joining the intelligent conversation, and Colin is whitewashing actual problems in an attempt to prove the opposite point.

And trophy keeps trying to find a middle ground where none exists.

To recap:

Neo-Nazis are idiots. Antifa organizations are inflammatory idiots
Racism and sexism are bipartisan problems that impact society far less than everyone thinks it does.
Anyone who attempts to legally or physically suppress the opposing opinion is an idiot.
All of us are tilted to our respective positions based on experience and our environment.

Also, Gorbles basically just blamed the Internet for the "far-right" media resurgence, which is interesting. If young people weren't hearing the truth from their parents or peers, where would they turn to find the information they need to make informed political decisions?

That's right. The Internet. Score one for the good guys.

Now. Why not return to net neutrality

http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/26/technology/fcc-rules-net-neutrality/index.html

This is an article from before the FCC voted in 2015 to enact the 'net neutrality' rules. I'd like to point to the lower few paragraphs, where the writer mentions how the Internet survived before these rules. Here's a useful excerpt:

Now, one could argue that the reason the massive telecommunications companies (which are using regulatory measures older than any of us here to stay profitable) oppose net neutrality is that they'd like to skin the fleece off our backs even more than they already do. But the truth is, they don't want a Democratic coalition in the FCC committee to start skinning them alive with the Title II classification when the tide turns in either 2018 or 2020. It's not about squashing competition or screwing the end users like so many seem to believe. It's about the survival of a market that gives free, unaltered information to its users.

The FCC mentions this in its clearly PR-certified essay on their website.
https://www.fcc.gov/restoring-internet-freedom

Here's another interesting note:

This is good, in my opinion. They are attempting to root out regulations with unspecific applications and definitions to prevent government overreach. The argument could be made, of course, that the telecom giants are 'beyond control' and need to be reined in. But government regulations are a slippery slope. It's the same slippery slope, in fact, that we started in the early 1900s with the incredibly vague Anti-Trust legislation that was intended to limit the power of monopolies. Interestingly, no monopolies existed at the time that were created in the free market. All were created by government overreach and regulation, and none exist today that are not enforced by similar laws. The legislation was built to give the government a way to influence the private sector directly, just as these net neutrality rules are built to give the government a way to directly influence the Internet, its content, and its distribution.

That being said, I must stress that that last source is the FCC's PR sanitized version of how this will go down. It's definitely less rosy then I make it out to be. But it certainly isn't the absolute bullshit that is currently being spouted by most media outlets today. The new FCC chair isn't evil, or greedy, or whatnot. What he's doing makes sense, and the idiots on the Internet be damned.

Neo-Nazis are a bit more than "idiots", but your position is so dishonest you might as well be a secondary account for elodea in the context of this thread.

Applying such a reductive lens to everybodys' posts except elodeas, and citing the fact that elodea has provided sources without actually interrogating those sources.

Net neutrality is important. But Neo-Nazis are more important. The bias inherent in online media is also important in shaping peoples' views, and racism is a massive huge stinking issue especially in the USA.

But hey, what else would we expect from someone parroting elodea's views? "racism isn't that much of an issue", is what you've effectively just said, hah

To be fair all that can be said about Nazis has been said for now I think.

You sure did manage to surprise me be randomly showing up after a while again, changing the topic to something more agreeable and then ... show that it isn't something to agree on after all.

So you're on the side of Comcast and co. basically? xD

Well as long as it is only the US economy shooting its US customers into their feet I don't mind watching I guess?
I mean they are your feet, not mine.
I am just the guy telling you it'll hurt from a save distance. Don't mind me.
My Internet is gonna stay unfiltered, unmetered, full speed at not even 30$ a month...

No, no they are not. Neo-Nazis are not more important than Net Neutrality.

If you need to sacrifice liberty, for safety, you deserve neither. ~Benjamin Franklin

Furthermore, Net-Neutrality affects the 98%. Not the rich, Hillary Clinton can afford a private server with prioritized connectivity.

Nazis, are a >1% population, they pose no significant threat on a large scale, and are by far the easiest people to prosecute for individual crimes given their scarce numbers and severity of offensive crimes.

When was the last time a Neo-Nazi killed someone? That Charlotte Vehicle Assault? Okay, what about before that? How many a year? As a Fermi-Estimation, are we talking [1], [10], [100], [1000]? How many do they kill, injure, or property-damage value, compared to let's say, some other low demographic like Islamic Extremists? Twice as many? Half?

By percent OR by number, does white-racism based crimes, of assault, murder, or vandalism, even come close, to the percent OR number of crimes committed at an unrelatedly higher rate by black-Americans? You're basically saying "white racist neo-nazis are causing more oppression, than any other group in America", and they are a tiny unloved group of bastards, NOBODY like Nazis, but we have due process here for ****'s sake, we can't lynch people on the spot without a trial, even if Antifa COULD be trusted to only assault proper fascists as their targets and no other collateral.

So, yeah, **** you and do us all a favor and never influence our government ever. Net Neutrality, priority. Neo-Nazis, ignore and they'll go away. Rape, Murder, Assault, Theft, continue to prosecute, you'll eventually scoop up those Neo-Nazis you were ignoring if they offend you on those 4 basis. If they don't break those 4 crimes, then ignore those Neo-Nazis. They can't even win a respectable vote among the Libertarian Party of Florida, which is proof that they can be defeated peacefully.

BTW, Colin seems to agree with net neutrality, and with the violent divisive stance between both political sides in America. He's obviously not who I'm talking about here.

Did you read what i said? Net neutrality rules were put into place in 2015. The current FCC chair is simply reversing that decision. Before 2015, it wasn't the Wild West on the Internet. The FCC used regulations already in place to enforce the same rules net neutrality claims to enact.

In other words, net neutrality isn't necessary to keep the Internet free of artificial paywalls and illegal slowdowns of competitors. It's just a power grab by the government so that, down the road, they can treat telecom companies like their bitch under the Title II clauses.

Also, really Gorbles? Dishonest? You really need to step up your game.

When you trundle into a topic and degrade everyones' positions barring elodea's, I get to call you dishonest, yes. Because your actions are obviously intentional, and you have no difficulty in both phrasing or understanding English. Ergo, I treat you as someone fully aware of their actions, and the consequences of such.

For additional reference, dropping a statement on the existing thread and then suggesting a new topic to avoid any possible counterarguments is also a lame, dishonest move. But popular, given that appearances matter the most online.

@cola_colin

All that can be said, might have been said. But that doesn't mean I let people get away with commenting on the topic before throwing up a smoke bomb of their own. It's a play right out of elodea's book.

@thetrophysystem

I don't influence your government, but I still think Neo-Nazis are the bigger problem. Reducing things to statistics is an awful way to process any issue relative to any other, but predictable from a man who obviously has nothing to fear from said demographic. Neo-Nazis kill people. Net neutrality doesn't. This automatically places them higher up the list for me.

Is Net neutrality important? Sure. Are libertarians like yourself prone to going completely silly about it because it's MUH FREEDOMS and MUH LIBERTY despite the fact you're perfectly happy with rules, regulations and threats of violence imposed on other people and demographics? Also yes. Go and pontificate elsewhere, you'll get no sympathy from me. You're suffering from the definition of first world problems, here.

Keep up the swears though. Makes it all the richer when you whine that I'm calling you names

If you ARE WILLING to SACRIFICE LIBERTY, for safety, then YOU DESERVE NEITHER! ~Benjamin Franklin

No. Nowhere ever, has the libertarian party ever shown in action, that they were ever perfectly happy with threats of violence imposed on other people and demographics!

Libertarians are not anarchists! They are not Pro-Rape, Pro-Murder, Pro-Theft, OR, Pro-Assault. THEY ARE NOT! I CANNOT MAKE THE TEXT BIG AND BOLD ENOUGH TO CONVEY THIS ENOUGH.

If neo-nazis do this type of ****, they're swept up in existing laws, without witchhunts for them being necessary.

It's exactly like saying, we don't persecute witchhunts or enforce religion, because if those led to murder/rape/assault/theft, then they'd already be prosecuted. If wiccan-practice isn't illegal, then why would we make literally any special effort to target any group, when we can just enforce the law even-steven and sweep up violators anyway?

It is in practice precisely what fucks up the whole program and divides people, when you feel the need to lynch and special-regulate things that already were 100% illegal for good reason prior.

If Neo-Nazis do only bad evil things and have only bad evil ideas, they will fail on their own and break existing laws against mankind. You form common ground, when you decide that any human being caught committing rape/murder/assault/theft, should be prosecuted equally. They don't just have to be white, they simply have to commit victimization against someone, and no we can't pre-crime them.

I wouldn't mind if a police officer did in fact pick a speaker out of a crowd and arrest them if they said anything about killing or euthanizing living people of any type. If they were black, arrest them, and if they were white, arrest them, because even a neo-Nazi vocally-suggesting committing a crime such as murder, should be arrested for conspiracy to commit.

Nobody is supporting their protection to conspire to commit crimes. They're protecting their assembly and speech, up until the point a crime is committed, and quite frankly they're not even SUPPORTING their assembly or speech, they're unwelcome on the public level and nobody likes these groups.

You're sacrificing other peoples' liberty by ignoring the threat Neo-Nazis pose to them. Justified by statistics. Franklin's (often misused) quote applies to you as well, sorry

Which means, by definition, you're more okay with Neo-Nazis killing people than you are Net neutrality. You're a libertarian. Who is fine with actual violence, nevermind threats of violence, imposed on other people by Neo-Nazis. Because you're rather complain about net neutrality.

The law doesn't magically always work. And even when it does, it works after the fact. The killings still happen. The killings are likely to always still happen, because you can't prosecute for something that hasn't happened.

But that still means that the threat of violent death is more important than whether or not you can find the porn you want properly. Neo-Nazis, for me, rank higher. For you, perhaps not. But recognise this is a personal opinion, and not a fact.

He's not ok with Neo-Nazis killing people. Noone is. What concerns us is that you keep trying to find people who support them so you can crucify those people on your cross of self-righteous bullcrap. No one supports them. No one likes them. They are idiots.

So because you see me as having an opposing opinion to yours, you start these ad hominem attacks? The hell is wrong with you?

I'm suggesting a new topic because we are all on the same side on the old topic. Neo Nazis and their sympathizers are stupid and not worth wasting time or breath worrying about because they do not have the resources or the support to cause significant damage. Net neutrality rules, however, could drastically affect the way information is distributed, and is a much more nuanced topic than some idiot with a swastika tattooed to the back of his head.

EDIT: Also, trophy is right here. Being overly concerned with idiots with big words who may have killed a few people and claiming we need to step up our laws to combat this is hilariously short sighted.

What ad hominem attack? An ad hominem is only such when used as an excuse in of itself. Calling you something in addition to any other points made is not an ad hominem.

You're making excuses for folks more than capable of talking for themselves. I don't need you to speak for them. If they're so obviously against Neo-Nazis, I think we're far past the time where we're due a post that unequivocally slams Nazis, nobody but Nazis, and explicitly Neo-Nazi actions in recent events.

Or did you miss elodea's massive spiel about the "antifa" stabbing attack that turned out to be a hoax? Which they haven't admitted to being wrong about, and has completely ignored evidence of. Which you then defended, and then accused me of being on a rant. Something something fallacy.

I mean, if we're indulging in fallacies, I never made the statement about law stepping up about anything. You put words into my mouth, there.

I'm also capable of caring about more than one problem at once. I'm not going to just discard Neo-Nazism in an age where the world's leading superpower has a government that seeks to appease and even encourage it even if Net neutrality is something that also needs to be fought over.