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Post by Hordini on Jan 18, 2021 21:13:28 GMT -5
What do you think the preferable cure for bad speech is, if not (more) better speech? It's “denying a platform and then better speech” imo. More specifically, for those that have already been convinced, this better speech would better be one on one conversation, preferably IRL. I definitely agree that one-on-one, IRL conversation is ideal, especially when referring to people who have already been convinced (something else that I think the Daryl Davis example supports).
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Post by tannhauser42 on Jan 18, 2021 22:12:46 GMT -5
It's not really about speech itself, is it? It's about how to stop/fight an idea.
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Post by hatoflords on Jan 18, 2021 22:15:10 GMT -5
"Delete this toxic cancel culture BS." Self-reflection never was their strongest feature, huh? Plus the whole "the only cure for bad speech is better speech" nonsense that ignores the fact that World War Two was a thing. Chamberlain, not that I blame him, should in hindsight serve as a warning of what trying to debate someone arguing in bad faith is like. What do you think the preferable cure for bad speech is, if not (more) better speech? This has apparently been going on for awhile. I'm gonna jump in just to say this;
It's complete and utter bullshit that we are expected to treat bullshit as legitimate speech.
Disagree about the merits/costs of the Keystone XL pipeline? Fine. Fair. I have an opinion on that. Lots of people do. At least we can all agree that the pipeline project is a thing. We can disagree about abortion and its merits/costs. Fine. Fair. I think it's a stupid debate and can say much meaner things about it, but fine. Fair. These things are things we can all disagree about and as heated as they get they are debates that are important to have. We can disagree about them and for the most part the world doesn't risk burning down because of it.
Then comes the insultingly stupid shit QAnon and the Republican party have been embracing the past 4-6 years. They've been pushing and pushing the bounds of 'we can disagree about this' to ever tenser levels, and it has continually been allowed and tolerated on the flimsy premise of 'we can't silence people just because we disagree them them.' And I call bullshit. Yes, we can silence people when things have gone too far. Yes we should silence them because not doing so is actively destroying ourselves. When things reach the point that an entire political party and its voters are convinced that Donald Trump won an election he lost, refuse to provide evidence of this claim, brandy about ignorance as intelligence, and treat the entire concept that 'we can disagree' as nothing more than a buffer zone to spread reckless disinformation as though it were equally valid as truth, we have cross the line from tolerating disagreement to appeasing extremism.
We in fact are not being asked to accept people disagree with us. We are being asked to accept balls to the walls 'we're making shit up' insanity as though it were legitimate thought and not the ravings of people who need medication for mental conditions or imprisonment for escalating snakeoil salesmanship into a constitutional crisis.
The same people bitching about 'cancel culture BS' are the people who apparently think it's perfectly fine to demand their politicians overturn an election because 'fuck you Trump won.'
Silencing democracy is apparently not cancel culture, but stripping extremists of their platform is.
Bullshit.
I in fact resent the notion that anyone expects me to tolerate this banal dialogue.
Fuck the people who make these braindead, baseless, completely beyond the bounds of acceptable disagreement arguments, and double fuck any morally bankrupt toad who wants to throw their enlightened tolerance at me and ask a banal question like "what do you think the preferable cure for bad speech is if not better speech.' This is not an insight. In fact, it is the completely wrong question. The question we should be asking is what do we do when the ability to engage in discourse breaks down because one side of the discussion thinks the world is secretly being run by cannibal pedophiles. What do we do when this batshit insane belief is platformed and amplified into the national mainstream, encouraged nakedly by a corrupt political party and media corporations that seek to irresponsibly profit from that insanity and feed it further toward their own ends.
People need to stop being afraid of calling this what it is.
Bullshit.
We all need to stop pretending that to be tolerant is to be naive.
The answer is that there reaches a point where the disagreement is no longer acceptable and the entire notion that it should not be stomped out is not an argument for a functioning society but an argument for total collapse. No country can function when one half of it believes without any sense of reason that the other is secretly in league with a satanic cabal. People who think this do not care how reasonable or fair you're willing to be they think you're sacrificing babies after diddling them and then going for pizza as desert.
No country should allow, by any measure, the twisting of discourse to become a question of whether or not truth and balant lies are of equal validity. If we're so cowardly and afraid of making a moral stand against lies and saying 'this is too far' then we don't deserve democracy and we will have the inevitable rise of an idiotic demagogue with a bad spray on tan and a tacky comb over turning the nation into a damn sitcom set for his personal gratification. I do not understand how even now, there are people who are not terrified of how close we've come to such an unimaginable reality that it would have seemed pure fiction a mere six years ago.
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Post by Hordini on Jan 18, 2021 22:32:03 GMT -5
Well, that escalated quickly.
To be clear, not sure if that last bit was directed at me or not, but I wasn't trying to ask a banal question or throw enlightened tolerance around. I just get the sense that some of the regular posters here have a different view about free speech and its desirability than I do and I'm legitimately interested in their thought process.
I agree that a lot of the baseless conspiracy theory stuff is making things difficult. But I also think it's possible to have issues with things like "cancel culture," and also be quite aware that silencing democracy is just as much an example of cancel culture as anything else, and understand that baseless claims of election fraud made without evidence are bullshit.
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Post by Emblematic Wolfblade on Jan 18, 2021 22:46:50 GMT -5
Not my intent to change the meaning, so sorry if you saw it as dishonest. My original question was about speech. Malus' response seemed to intertwine speech and actions, and in my two posts I tried to separate the two and focus on the speech part as that is what I'm most interested in and I suspect our points of view on dealing with actions align more closely than our points of view on dealing with speech. I addressed why I thought the action portion wasn't really relevant to the speech portion in my first post. If that changes the meaning of Malus' response such that I'm not mischaracterizing their thought process, I hope they'll clarify because that's not my intent. I'm not trying to debate or score points - I have just got the impression that some of us here have differing views in regards to free speech, and I'm legitimately curious about your thought process. What I posted was me trying to articulate my understanding of the responses so far (with the addition of a few thoughts of my own on the subject), so please feel free to clarify or correct me if I've misinterpreted anything. I believe the two are intertwined for a reason. Again, Malus can correct me if I'm wrong (and please do) but they intertwined them for a reason. Speech causes action and vice versa. Just look what trump and co caused by hyping up their base on the idea that the election was stolen. In regards to extremists dying out - extreme speech has been illegal in places like Germany since after WWII and extremists still haven't died out. I'd also argue that extremism often does run in families, especially if we're talking about groups like the Klan. Those groups also prey on vulnerable communities and have done so successfully since before the advent of the internet. There are much fewer of them however. They've been on the decline until recently. And by "deny them a platform" I don't mean exclusively the internet, that's just their latest recruiting grounds. I mean anywhere. People should run them out of whatever place they're in, owners of the space should deny them any bookings of the area, and excluded them from any sort of community gatherings or sense of community. Functionally ostracize them. In regards to Daryl Davis and his methods - I would agree that I tend towards optimism. I agree that a white person may have less of an impact but a white person is also likely going to be taking less risk overall engaging with extremist groups. But I'm not claiming that the onus should be on minorities to change people's minds - I agree with you that the onus should be on society, but I think a better method is trying to demonstrate why their ideas are wrong. Engaging with vulnerable communities to prevent recruitment is probably another portion of that method that might help minimize successful recruitment - especially considering these groups survived pre-internet, while the de-platform and humiliate strategy will likely slow them down, I don't think it will cause them to die off completely until we as a society address the root issues that cause these kinds of groups to take hold and have influence on vulnerable communities (And I realize that's a big complex problem that doesn't have an easy solution). You cannot demonstrate why their ideas are wrong unless you ARE one of those ideas basically. People are more accepting of others typically when they interact with a wide variety of people, and white people usually just don't fit into that role when engaging with white nationalists. And by engaging in a discussion of their beliefs you are lending legitimacy to their bigotry, and if you do not succeed in successfully de-programming them (which is a massive effort) you may have just reinforced their beliefs and potentially made them into a recruiter instead of just a recruit. IMO, it's better (and safer) to deny them a platform and shame them. By de-platforming them you cut off the major source of their recruits, by shaming them you may cause them to reflect on their actions, or at least not espouse them anymore (i.e., when people get fired from their job, or when they lose some of their friends, and so on). It's safer because the right tends to resort to violence more quickly. Just look at what happened with the BLM/ANTIFA protests vs the literal coup. Trump's terrorists got ahold of a cop and beat them to death. They tried to find and kill various politicians and take hostages of others. These are not people with who it is always safe to interact with. furthermore, but trying to debate them you just open your audience up to their views too. Every time someone famous tweets a reply at them, or makes a youtube video using their footage, they're exposing these views and individuals/groups to another audience. And this may not sound bad, but not only does it help some of these people connect with other like-minded assholes, but there will also always be people in every audience that are vulnerable to their bullshit if not now, possibly later in their lives. This is short-circuited by denying them a platform. This doesn't mean you can't discuss events (i.e. the insurrection) but you can usually avoid talking about specific individuals or using their content to help make your own.
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Post by hatoflords on Jan 18, 2021 22:48:24 GMT -5
Well, that escalated quickly. To be clear, not sure if that last bit was directed at me or not, but I wasn't trying to ask a banal question or throw enlightened tolerance around. It's more a generalized expression of my contempt for moral and intellectual cowardice, which is how we got to this place and how we'll stay in this place until people grow spines and stop pretending that lies have validity. I'm tired of this bullshit. Sophism is not a productive philosophy, and in politics it's self-destructive. We cannot and should not indulge insanity as having substance and treating this as a free speech issue is falling for the red herrings. Cancel culture is the same as 'safe spaces' and 'special snow flakes'. It's the latest in a long line of virtue signalling buzzwords that are laughably, and increasingly dangerous, in their stupidity. Someone who said Mike Pence should be hanged and got kicked off Facebook hasn't been canceled. They've been removed for advocating violence. And it hardly matters. There's still a billion places they can go on the internet to keep saying that. The phrase is bullshit. This is not a free speech issue. We aren't being asked to stop 'canceling' people. We're being asked to blindly accept the validity of political extremism at risk of some idiot who thinks they're smart making the grand observation of "you have to tolerate my intolerance or you're just as intolerant as me.' This is not an 'issue' where there is acceptable disagreement. 'Cancel culture' is a blatant lie, a facade and a farce, behind which political extremism hides and demands to be accepted or else we're bad for not accepting it. The fact there are idiots indoctrinated to parrot these lies is not a defense of the lie, it's why the lie is dangerous. It's weaponized whataboutism. Don't talk about how the Republican Party amplified lies and conspiracies with reckless disregard and incited the overthrow of democracy, talk about how poor little Ron Paul can't talk on his Facebook page.
It's gaslighting on a national scale. People have a right to speak, but not a right to platform from which to speak from. They certainly don't have a right to break the windows and storm the building when told to leave. Conflating the Republican Party's pandering to political extremists to a free speech issue is bullshit and achieving that conflation is the only goal of the phrase 'cancel culture.'
The only response it deserves is a laugh and a middle finger, and if the paragons of the canceled culture can't handle or learn from that and resort to violence and the overthrow of democracy as an option then they deserve to be silenced and stomped down on because at that point their not in the realm of acceptable disagreement they're in the realm of domestic terrorism.
De-platforming isn't going to make anyone reflect.
It will prevent insanity from spreading unchecked and most important, it removes one of the core drivers of political extremism; profit motive. Fox News doesn't believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Neither does Lindsey Graham, or Ted Cruz, or most of the Republican party. They know that line is bullshit, just like they know the Democrats are not a satanic cult, that Donald Trump did try to blackmail Ukraine into helping him win an election, and that Donald Trump probably didn't actively collude with Russia in 2016 but did benefit from Russian interference.
They say it anyway. Because they can profit from it. These men aren't dumb, they're just morally bankrupt opportunists.
De-platforming's primary benefit isn't that it changes hearts and minds, it's that it removes the core reason for the most corrupt and pathetic human beings on Earth to amplify extremism for personal gain. You can't fix corrupt shit heels, and you can't really stop them from running and winning elections if they're good enough at hiding it. You can discourage them from embracing the most destructive of strategies.
And to reiterate; this is not a free speech issue. It's violent extremism putting on a mask and trying to convince everyone it's a free speech issue to achieve a level of acceptance, and lacking that, vindication for extremist violence. The only way to win this Kafkaesque scenario is to refuse to play and call violent extremism what it is no matter how many catching phrases it tries to dress itself up in.
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Post by squidhills on Jan 18, 2021 23:22:07 GMT -5
Well, that escalated quickly. To be clear, not sure if that last bit was directed at me or not, but I wasn't trying to ask a banal question or throw enlightened tolerance around. It's more a generalized expression of my contempt for moral and intellectual cowardice, which is how we got to this place and how we'll stay in this place until people grow spines and stop pretending that lies have validity. I'm tired of this bullshit. Sophism is not a productive philosophy, and in politics it's self-destructive. We cannot and should not indulge insanity as having substance and treating this as a free speech issue is falling for the red herrings. Cancel culture is the same as 'safe spaces' and 'special snow flakes'. It's the latest in a long line of virtue signalling buzzwords that are laughably, and increasingly dangerous, in their stupidity. Someone who said Mike Pence should be hanged and got kicked off Facebook hasn't been canceled. They've been removed for advocating violence. And it hardly matters. There's still a billion places they can go on the internet to keep saying that. The phrase is bullshit. This is not a free speech issue. We aren't being asked to stop 'canceling' people. We're being asked to blindly accept the validity of political extremism at risk of some idiot who thinks they're smart making the grand observation of "you have to tolerate my intolerance or you're just as intolerant as me.' This is not an 'issue' where there is acceptable disagreement. 'Cancel culture' is a blatant lie, a facade and a farce, behind which political extremism hides and demands to be accepted or else we're bad for not accepting it. The fact there are idiots indoctrinated to parrot these lies is not a defense of the lie, it's why the lie is dangerous. It's weaponized whataboutism. Don't talk about how the Republican Party amplified lies and conspiracies with reckless disregard and incited the overthrow of democracy, talk about how poor little Ron Paul can't talk on his Facebook page.
It's gaslighting on a national scale. People have a right to speak, but not a right to platform from which to speak from. They certainly don't have a right to break the windows and storm the building when told to leave. Conflating the Republican Party's pandering to political extremists to a free speech issue is bullshit and achieving that conflation is the only goal of the phrase 'cancel culture.'
The only response it deserves is a laugh and a middle finger, and if the paragons of the canceled culture can't handle or learn from that and resort to violence and the overthrow of democracy as an option then they deserve to be silenced and stomped down on because at that point their not in the realm of acceptable disagreement they're in the realm of domestic terrorism.
De-platforming isn't going to make anyone reflect.
It will prevent insanity from spreading unchecked and most important, it removes one of the core drivers of political extremism; profit motive. Fox News doesn't believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Neither does Lindsey Graham, or Ted Cruz, or most of the Republican party. They know that line is bullshit, just like they know the Democrats are not a satanic cult, that Donald Trump did try to blackmail Ukraine into helping him win an election, and that Donald Trump probably didn't actively collude with Russia in 2016 but did benefit from Russian interference.
They say it anyway. Because they can profit from it. These men aren't dumb, they're just morally bankrupt opportunists.
De-platforming's primary benefit isn't that it changes hearts and minds, it's that it removes the core reason for the most corrupt and pathetic human beings on Earth to amplify extremism for personal gain. You can't fix corrupt shit heels, and you can't really stop them from running and winning elections if they're good enough at hiding it. You can discourage them from embracing the most destructive of strategies.
And to reiterate; this is not a free speech issue. It's violent extremism putting on a mask and trying to convince everyone it's a free speech issue to achieve a level of acceptance, and lacking that, vindication for extremist violence. The only way to win this Kafkaesque scenario is to refuse to play and call violent extremism what it is no matter how many catching phrases it tries to dress itself up in.
You've said what I was trying to say, only far better than I said it.
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Post by Emblematic Wolfblade on Jan 18, 2021 23:26:32 GMT -5
De-platforming isn't going to make anyone reflect. I can only assume this is directed at me (since I was the one who said it), and I agree. It's why I said shaming them would make them reflect, but maybe I wasn't clear on that (and it isn't even a certain thing that it would tbh, just that it's one of the few things I've seen be successful in either shutting them up, or causing them to actually recognize their wrong doing, but certainly not with a 100% success rate).
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Post by hatoflords on Jan 18, 2021 23:31:02 GMT -5
I don't know why this isn't the conversation people are having. Take just one example; Ted Cruz spreading disinformation while collecting donations for the Georgia run offs but the donations go right into his personal campaign account. They don't go to Georgia at all. How the fuck is this man not in prison right now and facing fraud charges on top of inciting insurrection? When are we going to stop indulging this bullshit? The answer is because the Republican Party has spent years sabotaging the FEC, and has only just now, miraculously, decided to fix it. Funny that. They refuse to staff the body tasked the regulation political elections for four years while they were in power and then suddenly rushed to do it when they fell out of power. It's almost like the Republican Party has become a cancer to the nation that should stop being indulged in the name of fairness because fairness isn't what they're offering.
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Post by A Town Called Malus on Jan 18, 2021 23:52:56 GMT -5
Not my intent to change the meaning, so sorry if you saw it as dishonest. My original question was about speech. Malus' response seemed to intertwine speech and actions, and in my two posts I tried to separate the two and focus on the speech part as that is what I'm most interested in and I suspect our points of view on dealing with actions align more closely than our points of view on dealing with speech. I addressed why I thought the action portion wasn't really relevant to the speech portion in my first post. If that changes the meaning of Malus' response such that I'm not mischaracterizing their thought process, I hope they'll clarify because that's not my intent. I'm not trying to debate or score points - I have just got the impression that some of us here have differing views in regards to free speech, and I'm legitimately curious about your thought process. What I posted was me trying to articulate my understanding of the responses so far (with the addition of a few thoughts of my own on the subject), so please feel free to clarify or correct me if I've misinterpreted anything. I believe the two are intertwined for a reason. Again, Malus can correct me if I'm wrong (and please do) but they intertwined them for a reason. Speech causes action and vice versa. Just look what trump and co caused by hyping up their base on the idea that the election was stolen. This. Speech is itself an action. If you use your speech to advocate for fascism, even by entertaining and amplifying the lies that fascists spread to justify their beliefs, then you are attempting to establish fascism just as much as the person storming the seat of your democracy whilst wearing a jumper celebrating genocide. Fascism is an inherently violent ideology. There is no way to ever establish a fascist state without genocide occurring as it is written into the very DNA of the ideology. There will always be an internal enemy to purge and external enemies to subjugate and exterminate. Attempting to establish such a system, whatever the route they take, be it ballot or bullet, is violence and must be opposed as such. Republican claims of election fraud is the modern US's take on Ludendorff's "stab in the back" myth, where the obvious and imminent victory of the German army in WW1 was snatched away by the "elites" who sold them all out and signed the Treaty of Versailles. We've seen how allowing such lies to fester and spread went for Germany and the world. Let's see if it is different when it is the USA which has to battle such myths.
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Jan 19, 2021 1:08:28 GMT -5
In regards to extremists having already bought the bridge, that can sometimes be true, but in many cases (especially in the case of people who have been radicalized at a young age) it may not be so much that they've "already bought the bridge," but that it's the only "bridge" they've ever been exposed to. Also, let's be clear that sympathizing with someone being de-platformed and believing that de-platforming might not be the best tactic for positive change isn't the same thing. In regards to where the onus should be to deprogram people: Saying that Daryl Davis' tactics were effective (they were) doesn't mean that what he did was his responsibility, or that the onus was on him to do so. Recognizing that those tactics could be effective or more effective than de-platforming also doesn't place the onus on individuals. In addition, if people are truly "programmed" as extremists, they likely can't be deprogrammed without help from someone else. That's not letting them off the hook, but it's a question of how badly do people who aren't extremists want to reduce the population of actual extremists via de-programming. Or, are they satisfied with maintaining the population as it, but be able to ignore the, by pushing them to the fringes (which could be argued is partially how we ended up where we are today)? There are many cases in which people have taken actions in which the onus wasn't on them to do so, or it wasn't their responsibility to do so, but it was still a positive thing to do. But how have they only been exposed to that one bridge, I would guess not many of their parents are fascists. Regarding the deplatforming, I wasn't saying you were showing sympathy. It was more a general comment on how a significant part of Americans seems to have crossed that sympathy line. That is what it is when removing anything is equated to censorship, certain things should be removed or do these people think literally everything should be acceptable. Or do they draw the line right behind fascists posting and no further for 'free speech'? Regarding the programming, this is much harder than you think. The Allies never got the fascism out of WW2 Germans and Japanese. We got to their children, but many still clung to their beliefs right up until their deaths 50-60 years after. Getting to the next generation before they do is vital. Its an exceptionally difficult thing to do even when they no longer effectively recruit. Trying to deprogram on one end while they are recruiting on the other is a lost cause, as there are a lot more gullible people than deprogram specialists. The real question is, how many people did those original recruiters get to as Daryl Davis was slowly converting some back? We just don't know if it was a net positive in the end. That is not to say we shouldn't also deprogram, its not an either or situation, you work at it from both ends. Think about the desired end result of fascist ideology and now about ISIS. Why can one be censored in the US and not the other? What is more harmful about one but not the other?
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Post by hatoflords on Jan 19, 2021 1:26:47 GMT -5
I actually think Imperial Japan is a more poignant lesson than Nazi Germany.
As a point of technicalities, Imperial Japan was not a fascist state. Ultra-nationalist and imperial yes, but fascism I think implies a series of things that weren't true of Imperial Japan.
There's an anecdote I came across in a lecture series that I found very compelling.
After the war and the end of the American occupation of Japan, a professor was asked a question. His students were all very young when the war ended and didn't really remember it on a personal level, but he had served as an aid to a member of the Diet (Imperial Japan's ineffective legislature). These young people, who only knew of the war as a painful time where their country fell, asked this teacher "What did we do wrong?"
The professor sat and considered the question, then answered, "No one would take responsibility."
See the thing about Imperial Japan is that it played to Japanese culture in the worst way. Socially, mutual consent is a big thing in Japanese culture. It underpins many of the trappings of daily interaction, manners, ethics, and hierarchy. The professor explained to his students, that this is what was wrong with Imperial Japan. The country functioned by a very lose, confusing, and almost mazelike sense of mutual consent. No one spoke out against the increasing depravity and recklessness of the military because it would go against the national consent. The military wouldn't even speak out against its own members. It would go against the consent of the general staff. The professor's opinion was that many people knew what was happening was wrong, but no one wanted to speak out against it alone. Because everyone did this, no one felt responsible for the Imperial military's runaway war machine, its brutal actions, or the ultimate failure of the country.
Much of post-War Japan's politics make more sense when you look at the country in this light. To the professor answering this question, Imperial Japan did not fail because it lost a war. It failed because when the government stopped working, no one would take responsibility for it. When the Imperial Army started instigating wars, no one took responsibility for it. When Japan had backed itself into a corner and was effectively an enemy to the world, no one took responsibility for it. Japan was not a nation captured by totalitarian rule, but a runaway ship with no one willing to point out that nobody was manning the helm because it would violate the mutual consent that no one point out there's no one at the helm.
I think we're in that moment right now. We're not facing the fascists seizing power. They tried in the most slapdash of ways and failed. We are facing the risk that no one will take responsibility for what's wrong with this country. You can't move on without justice. Not after the capitol riots and the direct role specific politicians played in inciting it. Not after 4 years of demolishing national norms and standards that guard us from the abuses of power. Unity without accountability is appeasement.
People need to stop acting like they aren't responsible for their country. Refuse to take a stand when things have gone too far, and the country will be lost. One way or another.
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Post by hatoflords on Jan 19, 2021 1:32:45 GMT -5
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Jan 19, 2021 1:51:40 GMT -5
I actually think Imperial Japan is a more poignant lesson than Nazi Germany. As a point of technicalities, Imperial Japan was not a fascist state. Ultra-nationalist and imperial yes, but fascism I think implies a series of things that weren't true of Imperial Japan. There's an anecdote I came across in a lecture series that I found very compelling. After the war and the end of the American occupation of Japan, a professor was asked a question. His students were all very young when the war ended and didn't really remember it on a personal level, but he had served as an aid to a member of the Diet (Imperial Japan's ineffective legislature). These young people, who only knew of the war as a painful time where their country fell, asked this teacher "What did we do wrong?" The professor sat and considered the question, then answered, "No one would take responsibility." See the thing about Imperial Japan is that it played to Japanese culture in the worst way. Socially, mutual consent is a big thing in Japanese culture. It underpins many of the trappings of daily interaction, manners, ethics, and hierarchy. The professor explained to his students, that this is what was wrong with Imperial Japan. The country functioned by a very lose, confusing, and almost mazelike sense of mutual consent. No one spoke out against the increasing depravity and recklessness of the military because it would go against the national consent. The military wouldn't even speak out against its own members. It would go against the consent of the general staff. The professor's opinion was that many people knew what was happening was wrong, but no one wanted to speak out against it alone. Because everyone did this, no one felt responsible for the Imperial military's runaway war machine, its brutal actions, or the ultimate failure of the country. Much of post-War Japan's politics make more sense when you look at the country in this light. To the professor answering this question, Imperial Japan did not fail because it lost a war. It failed because when the government stopped working, no one would take responsibility for it. When the Imperial Army started instigating wars, no one took responsibility for it. When Japan had backed itself into a corner and was effectively an enemy to the world, no one took responsibility for it. I think we're in that moment right now. We're not facing the fascists seizing power. They tried in the most slapdash of ways and failed. We are facing the risk that no one will take responsibility for what's wrong with this country. You can't move on without justice. Not after the capitol riots and the direct role specific politicians played in inciting it. Not after 4 years of demolishing national norms and standards that guard us from the abuses of power. Unity without accountability is appeasement. People need to stop acting like they aren't responsible for their country. Refuse to take a stand when things have gone too far, and the country will lost. One way or another. I think its easier to refer to it as a form of fascism then to explain it for what it is. Similar to when you say fascist people think of Nazism but not necessarily Italy. I agree that its not actually the case, but for the programming part its a decent enough comparison. I think what you're saying regarding responsibility is very important with a view of the post-war Japanese government and educational system, which is what I was slightly touching on. A sizeable chunk neither feels responsible or remains ignorant for the terrible things that the Japanese Army and Navy committed overseas. This is the case for people born and raised decades after 45. I got my MA in history and now work at a Japanese company in my own country. The amount of people who are perfectly unaware of their own country's history or have been taught it with an incredibly slanted view are jaw dropping. The worst was an employer in an executive position, born around 1970 asking us (the other nationality) if "We helped them during the war right? Supported the Japanese by building fortifications." That was how they referred to POW slave labor, they were educated to believe this two generations after the war. Which ties in to deplatforming them not only from the media, but also in the education system. These people would love to try to re-attempt a glorious [insert nation here] in the future, but for now they settle for capturing the next generation. Finishing off, I should have just used views and teaching about the civil war instead of Imperial Japan, much more recognizable for the American audience...
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Jan 19, 2021 1:54:44 GMT -5
I have a really hard time believing someone would be so utterly stupid, but we will see. Feels like most of it was just mindless theft without considering the world didn't end once they breached the capitol and they still had to go home to their families and work.
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