CHUDs, TERFs, SJWs, Bernie Bros: Is it okay to insult opponents?

[Thermal]

Originally Posted by ponderingturtle

Just not concerned enough to decry those who vote for them.

Ecclesiastes 1:2

[Mumbles]

Originally Posted by ponderingturtle

Got it voting for a white supremacists for president is not any kind of endorsement of white supremacy and not a character flaw. Despite it being a literal endorsement of white supremacy.

Most of the republican party other than the Lincoln Project seem to be pretty OK with the mainstreaming of white nationalist thought.

There's also the problem where nationalists, combined with goofball historical notions like the "one drop" rule, end up inevitably leading to genocide - if "whiteness" is recessive to the point where any notable nonwhite ancestry renders one "nonwhite", you end up with foolishness like White Genocide/Great Replacement ideas where merely having sex with another race is self-destructive. And people won't stop doing that crap - hell, the loudest proponents expose their...fetishes by using words like "cuck" as insults.

So how do you prevent people of different races from having sex, when "whiteness" is effectively defined as "not one of these other races" and little else? Well, you have to wipe out the nonwhite people. That's the problem with contrasting Nazi wannabes with "other" white nationalists, they're really the same thing.

That's putting aside the fact that at this point, there's little to the GOP aside from personality cultism, political white supremacism, and culture-based fears and insecurities - thus the 2020 GOP platform of "We want whatever Toupee Fiasco does". No shock that they devolved into this mess during two terms of the first black US president, followed by an open white supremacist and malignant narcissist with no real policy ideas from their own party. Or, in other words, the CHUD party.

[Thermal]

The subject of free will and whether we even have it came up on another thread. Some yahoos think we have none, and make no choices. Kind of screws up the blame game here.

[arthwollipot]

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey

Seems to me that way too much importance is given to this whole "deradicalization" narrative than is deserved or practical. Talking KKK members into leaving the movement makes for good day-time television, but doesn't strike me as a high priority solution for dealing with the dangers of a resurgent extremist-right in this, or any, country.

By all accounts from successful deradicalization stories, it requires tremendous effort, time, and emotional labor, on an individual level, to even have a chance of getting these people to change their ways. I very much doubt this is a scalable effort for dealing with the national threat of fascists.

instead of worrying about saving KKK members or Nazis, much better to deal with the huge parts of the population that aren't radicalized and convince them of the need to take up a more stridently anti-fascist (or anti-rascist, whatever) position. It's not about convincing skinheads to leave the movement, it's about convincing ordinary, largely non-political people, to care about the problem. It's about establishing social norms that put a firm boundary that discourage people from falling down the path of right wing radicalization.

In that regards, shining a negative and very public light on these people is a useful exercise. Ostracization is the goal, not because it's a useful tool for deradicalizing these people, but because it's a useful tool for making these people less effective and dangerous in spreading their movement to new members. A nazi getting fired might not change that nazi's mind, but it certainly can have an impact on some nazi-curious person that decides it's not worth the risk.

This may be one of the most cogent and coherent points so far made in this thread, and I thank you for making it.

We often talk when posting on skeptic forums about not arguing to convince the believer, but to convince the lurkers and the fencesitters. It's the same thing here. Problem is, by its nature there is no evidence that it works. We just don't know. We kind of can't.

Also, I'm pretty sure that "radical" is not a binary (where have I heard this before? ). There are some who are fiercely radicalised and absolutely committed to their ideology to the point of literal martyrdom. And then there are those who just bought a MAGA hat and likes beer. The former will require much more effort to deradicalise than the latter.

Did anyone see the full interview between Anderson Cooper and the ex-Qanon guy? I never saw the full thing. What was his story? How committed was he to the Qanon ideology and what did it take to deradicalise him?

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Thermal

The subject of free will and whether we even have it came up on another thread. Some yahoos think we have none, and make no choices. Kind of screws up the blame game here.

Are you taking the nuclear option then?

Instead of trying to argue for why we cannot or should not lump a lot of people together and say they are reprehensible for their views, you now decide to do away with all judgment whatsoever and say we have no free will.

Of course, this is a double-edged sword as it undercuts your own moralizing when it comes to name-calling.

[Thermal]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

Are you taking the nuclear option then?

Instead of trying to argue for why we cannot or should not lump a lot of people together and say they are reprehensible for their views, you now decide to do away with all judgment whatsoever and say we have no free will.

Of course, this is a double-edged sword as it undercuts your own moralizing when it comes to name-calling.

Nah. Just thought it was funny.

Btw, when someone refers to proponents as yahoos, they likely don't share their views. Also, I don't mean to moralize. It's more the childishness that I don't like.

[SuburbanTurkey]

Originally Posted by arthwollipot

We often talk when posting on skeptic forums about not arguing to convince the believer, but to convince the lurkers and the fencesitters. It's the same thing here. Problem is, by its nature there is no evidence that it works. We just don't know. We kind of can't.

That's the rub, isn't it? We really only have the foggiest notion of where these people are. It's easier to look at the overtly political, people like you and me on message boards or red capped freaks frothing at the mouth at some fascist MAGA rally, but we're just the vocal minority.

It's tempting to focus on these people because they are visible and it's easier to tell if there is an impact, but it doesn't mean this is the best segment of the population to focus our efforts on.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

Some people in this thread are arguing that it should be acceptable to dehumanize "those people" because they don't deserve to be treated as human. Some of them have been tap-dancing around advocating that "those people" don't deserve the same legal protections and rights, and that it should be allowable (maybe even morally obligatory) to harass and threaten them... and perhaps the fact that "those people" are so very bad it's even appropriate to pre-emptively attack them in order to silence them.

Example...

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey

Fire up them torches, time for some riots.