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@silverwizard I'm hoping it gets applied to "punch a terf"
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@silverwizard I find the threat of violence against women for expressing a particular point of view quite negative in my day to day life.
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@strypey @silverwizard I am yet to see a gender critical or abolitionist feminist condone or call for violence against against trans people
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@strypey @silverwizard though... I did listen to Richard Spencer speak, and I must say, I did get the urge to punch him.
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@silverwizard I disagree with you and feel marginalized by your views. I guess I better get to work finding out where you live... ;-P
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@silverwizard rule of law stops fascists from rounding up and killing anarchists and stops us doing the same to fascists for the same reason
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@silverwizard do you really want to make an argument for suspending rule of law? Because that's exactly what real fascists want ...
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@silverwizard ... it frees them to attack and kill political opponents, instead of having to be involved in arguments they can't win.
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@silverwizard rule of law is the only thing stopping the cops from stepping aside and letting fascist death squads run riot.
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@silverwizard I can't understand the strategy of driving soft nationalists into the arms of fascists, and then going to war with them all.
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@silverwizard considering that the security-industrial complex would side with the fascists and we would be ridiculously outgunned.
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@silverwizard I've beaten up by neo-nazi skinheads, and believe me I understand the visceral desire to hit back. I do.
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@silverwizard but as an organised response, it's the sort of dangerously bad strategy that led to Franco's victory in Spain.
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@strypey @silverwizard A militarized response to fascism in the US I think would be a big mistake. From Trump's point of view the Charlottesville tiki crew and people like Spencer are "the nice people". If those people come under serious threat then Trump will use the power of the state to defend "his people", and then it's game over.
So I think most of the project is counter-hegemonic - to stop fascism from spreading further. To ensure that the Overton window doesn't go anywhere.
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@bob @silverwizard exactly. Anarchists claiming a "right" to beat up nationalists is heading into *dangerous* paramilitary territory #Narcos
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@silverwizard you seem to be using "rule of law" and "the state" interchangeably. IMHO this is a serious misunderstanding.
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@silverwizard the rule of law is the concept that agents of the state are bound by exactly the same system of law as any other citizen ...
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@silverwizard more broadly, rule of law says that all citizens have the same rights and the same access to systems of resolution (eg courts)
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@silverwizard .. even in an anarchist society in which all states had been abolished, the concept of rule of law would still be important.
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@silverwizard rule of law is needed to prevent both "tyranny of structurelessness" and "kangeroo courts" in a post-revolutionary situation
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@silverwizard the solution to a lack of consistent enforcement of laws is not to abandon the rule of law for escalating vigilante justice
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@silverwizard also, you haven't engaged with the strategic question about the wisdom of pushing soft nationalists into the arms of fascists
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@silverwizard here in Aotearoa we've focused on pulling soft nationalists towards more progressive form (eg opposing global corporate rule)
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@silverwizard with the result that our new government is a centre coalition of organised labour, the green-left, and the nationalist-left
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@silverwizard when the left demonize and attack nationalists, the result is a divide-and-rule in which global corporate fascism wins
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@silverwizard yes, a state can uphold or undermine the rule of law. But so can the actions of communities. Mob justice harms the rule of law
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@silverwizard do I suggest people allow themselves to be beaten or killed to uphold the rule of law? Absolutely not. Self-defence is a right
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@silverwizard but self-defence can be nonviolent
http://qttr.at/1zfc
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@silverwizard community self-defence can be creative, even fun , which makes it more inclusive
http://qttr.at/1zfd
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@silverwizard most importantly, it works. Events here in Aotearoa show that mocking fascists demobilizes them ...
http://qttr.at/1zfa
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@silverwizard ... while masking up and attacking them increases both their sense of importance, and fear of the left they use for recruiting
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@silverwizard Hitler claimed that the Germans were a vulnerable population defending themselves against a powerful, global Jewish population
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@silverwizard is there an objective measure of "vulnerable" we could use to distinguish "necessary" defensive violence from the ideological?
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@silverwizard I guess what this whole discussion shows is that debating global ethics is fairly abstract.
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@silverwizard given a specific situation, and a range of realistic tactical options and consequences, no doubt I'd debate very differently
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@silverwizard I'm going to have to wrap this up for now. You've raised too many complex points to respond to properly in 140ch chunks
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@silverwizard it's horses for courses. I'm using a #birdsite style server that's good for sharing links and shortish comments ...
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@silverwizard if we were debating on #Diaspora, #Huzbilla, or even an email list or #UseNet, I could go into more detail more easily
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@silverwizard ... but I don't think the status messages format really lends itself to complex debates, even with longer char limits
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@therealpennyfortheguy 1) at the time I was a teenager and a committed pacifist, and would rather have been killed than hurt someone ...
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@therealpennyfortheguy 2) I was drunk and got attacked from behind. My first instinct was to run away and get to somewhere safe.
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@therealpennyfortheguy 3) some of my scrappier friends wanted to start up a posse and take revenge on the boneheads. I asked them not to ...
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@therealpennyfortheguy ... because even at that stage I'd seen gang wars escalate and I couldn't see how that would benefit anyone
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@therealpennyfortheguy ... as a chess player, I know what happens when you attack on impulse without a strategy for ending the resulting war
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@silverwizard how do I find you on #Friendica?
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@therealpennyfortheguy yup. After getting gang bashed by some drunk punks who hung round with the local left ...
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@therealpennyfortheguy ... I decided its ok to use force in direct defence of oneself or vulnerable others (eg children or elders) ...
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... but even the use of force in self defence is not something to be valourized or celebrated. It's a sign of an earlier failure of strategy
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@davidpgil @silverwizard I don't think it's an either/ or. For me it's about communication bandwidth. Voice has more bandwidth than text ...
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@silverwizard @davidpgil ... video chat has more again and face-to-face in real space has the most. But there are variations within text ...
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@silverwizard @davidpgil debates via blogs or email have more communication bandwidth than social media posts (even with long char limits)
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@silverwizard @davidpgil ... but text has advantages over live (voice/ video/ F2F), like the persistence of the comments after the fact ...
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@silverwizard @davidpgil ... and despite its limits, social media has its advantages too, such as the ability for others to watch or join in
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@therealpennyfortheguy 1) underestimating people is a really good way to get beaten. Every identifiable group has at least some strategists
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@therealpennyfortheguy 2) have you played chess against people who don't care about strategy? They are still dangerous to your pieces ...
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@therealpennyfortheguy ... in a situation where each piece represents one of your friends, good strategy becomes more important, not less
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@therealpennyfortheguy I'm not sure what is gained by indulging in this kind of hateful rhetoric