safe spaces in universities

[vixnix]

Originally Posted by Disco King

Chomsky believes that governments are inhently bad and illegitimate authorities, but that because they allow for at least some popular influence, it is strategically necessary to make use of them to try to protect society from the predatory harms of capitalism. But ultimately, states mostly serve the capitalist class even if they make some concessions to the people, and both the state and capitalism should be dissolved.

Ah right, that's what I thought...that's a pretty standard communist view, in a way? The state is essentially a mediator of class conflict and should be transitional, etc. I feel like a lot of left-leaning people have thoughts somewhat similar to this...

Originally Posted by Disco King

But he also believes in opting for the lesser of evils in the meantime. Even though both parties serve the interests of elites, people should vote for the party with policies that cause marginally less harm, because real people's lives will be effected by these differences. One problem I have with many other anarchists is that they get so caught up in their ideological purity that they refuse to accept the lesser of evils, and disengage from the established political system entirely. Yeah, it's great and all that you didn't vote for either of the capitalist war-mongering pigs, but that's cold comfort for that single mother who would have been able to feed her children better if you voted for the candidate that wasn't for cutting the social services she relies upon.

Yeah, a demoralizing part of growing up is making choices between shitty options, I reckon. A few U.S. citizens on my FB feed mentioned holding their noses while they voted - on both sides. That's a part of democracy too, I guess. It works better with participation, even if it's not the kind of participation you were hoping for.

Originally Posted by Disco King

Part of the popular support for the invasion of Iraq was that the media was totally in the bag for if, even the so-called "liberal" outlets. I suppose I do see similarities in how even "left-leaning" major outlets cover antifa in a way that suggests moral equivalence with fascist terror groups, but I think the fact that the issue isn't as major makes it less likely they they will stoke up enough fear to turn the majority of people against antifa. I mean, I'd wager that the majority of Americans still haven't even heard about antifa, despite the news coverage during the Charlottesville thing. Whether the country engages in another ground war is a much bigger news story, on the other hand.

I agree that it's not such a major issue - the support for the Iraq war was affected by 9/11 I think, and there's no huge traumatic event like that, to prompt support for drastic actions. Chomsky is so old, though - maybe he has lived through enough curtailing of civil liberties for one reason or another, that he thinks it's better to always be cautious with our behaviour. He seems like a cautious sort of guy anyway, when it comes to behaviour - as opposed to publishing opinions. He's lived through things like the Korea and Vietnam drafts, I imagine that changes a person's views on how much you should trust your state to act sensibly...

Originally Posted by Disco King

As for the correct approach to far-right groups, I don't know. Engaging with them in debate can sometimes just give them more attention, making them appear to be yet another position on the accepted political spectrum worth reasoning with. Similar to the way that fact-checking every lie Trump uttered meant that we had to give Trump more air-time, and pretty much fact-check him into free campaign advertising. Suppressing them can also give them more attention, the way that folks like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos pretty much made careers out of having their talks protested and canceled, and then whining on the internet. Chomsky makes an observation that Holocaust denial is more popular in Europe than in America, despite many Europeans countries outlawing it. He says that in America, somebody publishes a denialist book, and it gets quietly ignored as nonsense. In Europe, somebody makes denialist statements, and the fact that they did something so subversive becomes front-page news. More attention, and now we have go seriously discuss Holocaust denial, instead of just ignoring it the way we ignore Flat Earthers.

Yeah, this is really how I feel about it. The stronger our reaction is, the bigger it will become. If Charlottesville had just been a bunch of far right dorks waving flags and chanting, and people had just rolled their eyes and changed the channel, I wonder how much momentum they could have sustained.

Originally Posted by Disco King

But ignoring the far-right also has pitfalls. Lots of liberal elites trapped in bubbles in Boston and New York just thought Trumpism was so absurd that nobody could possibly take it seriously. Of course, we are rational people, like my friends and I, who would never opt for a government like that. There are just a handful of crazies out there that we can ignore. Then they realized that not everybody thinks like them.

This is true, though I think once you know about it, it ignoring them on purpose is not quite the same as ignoring them in ignorance if that makes sense. Following their activities privately while making no public response is what I was thinking of, rather than pretending they weren't there at all...

Originally Posted by Disco King

I honestly don't know what the correct approach is. But it's hard for me to see antifa as being a factor in making fascism more popular. And they do more than get I'm fist-fights with fascists. They organize, help their communities through direct action, defend labour and marginalized groups, etc. They even helped citizens affected by the Puerto Rico disaster.

I think those are all great things to do, and maybe it's a convenient way to ignore the far right, by getting busy doing a lot of work for those who need help.

In terms of antifa making fascism more popular, the thing I wonder about is all these accounts of fascist groups being disproportionately full of young males, and there does (this is a massive generalisation) seem to be an urge to 'fight the enemy' in a lot of young males. A lot of video games and entertainment aimed at males has that sort of theme. And even other leisure activities, like team sports for example, pit one group against another. Having an enemy or an adversary does seem to be something that drives humans generally, but it does seem to have more of a hold on young males than other human subgroups - I guess tribalism/group selection theory would go some way toward explaining it (though I'm aware not everyone thinks group selection is a helpful way of considering human evolutionary psychology), or even posturing for alpha male dominance, otherwise.

There are these human traits that are widely regarded as virtues and there are war memorials in virtually every town and city in the U.S., celebrating their value - things like loyalty, bravery and sacrifice. If you grow up steeped in that rhetoric as many U.S. males do, and you then find yourself in a Team A vs. Team B situation, I think rationalism goes out the window in some sense, and you have a bunch of people (predominantly young males) who all believe, on whichever side they're on, that the greatest thing they can possibly do is commit 100% and be loyal to their team. Any time you hit out at them, I wonder, if there is sort of an equal chance between their conviction faltering or them just embedding themselves a little deeper, because they're fiercely loyal?

Having said that, there are a lot of touching stories of white supremacists and fascists realising that they were wrong, and maybe antifa had something to do with that. I really don't know...

Maybe the reason I think we shouldn't engage with them is actually just because I don't want to engage with them....

[vixnix]

Originally Posted by Elphenor

I don't believe utilitarianism is the be all either

freedom and democracy have inherent worth you can't measure in like a happiness poll

it just happens that capitalism is the chief enemy of both freedom and utilitarian goals

I'm not sure how anything, let alone something that is not tangible or well defined, can have an inherent worth...

Originally Posted by redbreegull

when I say democracy itt, I mean Enlightenment democracy. I think Enlightenment democracy is a system of popular rule based on Enlightenment values such as freedom and equality among all individuals and not just the elite, non-violent transfer of power, a society where the people willfully buy into the social contract, etc, stuff like that.

I would consider mob rule a form of popular governance, but not democracy, but that's just semantics. I think I am thinking along the lines of Aristotle's designations, where polity (except here I'm using democracy) is the good form of rule by the many and democracy (here, mob rule) is its perversion where the people literally rise up and do whatever they want

I'm thinking broader than that - democracy is just the people ruling themselves, as opposed to say autocracy or plutocracy.

I'm left-leaning enough that I think the majority should rule. Enlightenment democracy sounds pretty good, but has it ever existed?

[yo soy el mejor]

Originally Posted by vixnix

Also, I looked up what is known about the 40% who don't vote in the U.S. presidential elections, and it looks like it is disproportionately those who would be supposedly better served by the Democrats.

or so they would like you to think. both parties are defined by cronyism and the trickle down effect of resources. i especially get why people of color have lost faith in the voting system. here, choose between this white elitist democrat and this white elitist republican--they're different, we swear.

(i vote but only to humor myself and in the off-chance it matters)