Your stated view is that the police who vet, recruit, train and arm the police who enjoy positions of authority over people have no responsibility for the lethal racists they unleash. — Kenosha Kid

I don't know Kenosha, can you look at someone and determine if they're a racist? If someone is actively racist then of course we should get rid of them and if we don't then that's an institutional failure but racism in practice isn't black and white. It's not just a white cop on black victim problem either. Black cops shoot black people at around the same rate.

You're the guy in the theatre standing up shouting 'They shouldn't be allowed!' having sat silently through two hours of violence against blacks. — Kenosha Kid

If someone is committing violence against you you always have the right to stand up for yourself. What you can't do is if one cop commits a horrible offense that he deserves to go to jail for tothen target every cop and start shooting cops indiscriminately. That's not how justice works. Target the actual individuals.

What pisses us off is that, after everything that's happened, after every crime that the right wing has perpetrated, defended, or remained silent on from slavery to George Floyd, you cry 'no fair' when a fascist gets so much as a punch in the teeth — Kenosha Kid

Just curious, are you black? This seems like a larger criticism towards white people. I don't get it. Do you want white people to apologize for slavery? Jim Crowe?

Change 'gay' to 'black' and 'Portland' to 'Tulsa', see if you still feel the same way. — Kenosha Kid

If you're talking about the Tulsa massacre of 1921 of course that was awful. The interesting thing is I'm fine condemning right wing violence, but with you guys I've noticed you're not willing to condemn any left wing violence so I usually just nope out after realizing that.

This is almost what the Antifa manual says. It warns against accepting people who are drawn to it for violence, against allowing violence to be a member's MO, but permits confrontation and self-defence. They seem as aware of opportunistic thugs as anyone. — Kenosha Kid

Great so lets get back to that.

So if Andy Ngo is a fraud and not a journalist do you support initiating mob violence against him? The damage was fairly serious by the way, he did suffer brain damage. You can watch it all on youtube.

Not really a good comparison. The brownshits were assaulting jews, gays, the disabled, Jehovah's witnesses and sympathizer of those demographics, plus others, whom they went on to kill in their millions. 6 million jews and 5 million of those other demographics were killed across nazi controlled Europe. — MSC

Sorry for the brief answer but I'm arguing against 4 other people here... I was referencing the brown shirts in the early 30s, before the wide scale assaults/killings started. My point was that a movement can be violent - as the brownshirts were - before racking up a high body count. This was in response to one of Kenosha's points earlier.

John McWhorter lays out what it is your dealing with in this topic, and why you are wasting your time trying to discuss the issue with them. — DingoJones

It's just a slow sunday morning here. Me and Streelight know we're never going to change each other's minds, it can just be fun to get it out there. With Benkei there is a chance of finding some common ground so who knows.

Would you agree with this statement: Although the stated goals and history of the antifa movement are noble, in recent times there has been some disturbing footage involving seemingly unprovoked assaults on the innocent including business owners and journalists. While fighting fascism is a noble goal, we encourage the antifa movement to show a little more constraint but also to continue to maintain vigilance in regard to fascism.

God, I should just listen to you Streelight because you obviously have all of the facts. In fact, you're so full of facts and knowledge of reality that you don't even need to look into actual details of events or happenings... the reality just follows from your mind, like for instance if we know that anti-fascists can't possibly be bad, then every instance where antifa supposedly assaulted someone is really just fascist propaganda or the fault of the fascist with antifa just defending itself. Thank you the instructive lesson. I feel much better know that I've been cured of my confusion.

If the answer is 'Yes,' a set of what can be called ethical/moral axioms come with it. — Torus34

Not necessarily. Someone could conceive of God in a way outside of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Someone could conceive of God as Gaia or some type of universal mind or spirit in which case a systemic of ethics wouldn't automatically follow.

I don't care if their movement has extensive roots dated back to the 1920s and a heroic history of fighting oppression, the moment dozens of them begin assaulting gay minority journalists (see the andy ngo assault) and random business owners as they did in Portland you're just shit. I don't even care if they label themselves the biggest anti-racist and anti-sexist to ever exist, they're still shit. I don't care what they were in the 80s or 90s or even early 2000s. I'm talking about today's crop.

Since when has Antifa been active and what do you know of their history? What do they believe according to you? How often have they instigated violence? How often has that resulted in deaths? — Benkei

I don't know when they started, at least 2017. I'm dealing with them in their modern form. The core belief is that fascism ought to be physically fought and the problem nipped in its bud. It's an entirely reasonable belief on the surface because we all think back to Hitler, but it's when we put this into action and expand our definition of fascism is when things get tricky. There is some association between, say, nationalism and fascism but to treat them as the same is not fair and it's what we're often seeing today. Nobody is going to have exact statistics for frequency of violence instigated but plenty of cases have been caught on camera.

You characterised the entire organisation as violent on the grounds of overbroad definition of fascism — Kenosha Kid

no i characterise them as violent based on their beliefs and also actions. antifa is more of an ideology than an organized group. it's the belief that we ought to be quick to be use violence if "fascists" are active because their very presence is a threat. they are very openly quick to violence. no they don't have a giant death count but neither did hitler's brownshirts in the early 30s. would you even consider the brownshirts a violent group before they killed anyone? or was it fine because they were just assaulting some people and doing some marching and chanting?

Come to think of it, class awareness has kind of fallen by the wayside with identity politics/BLM nowadays. I actually find discussions of class to be much more interesting than discussions of race, personally. At least you can do something about class; no one's changing race anytime soon.

And yet one guy diesis murdered during a BLM protest and every anti-fascist is a criminal. The hypocrisy is incredible. — Kenosha Kid

FTFY. I never said every anti-fascist is a criminal either so you're straw manning me now. Strictly speaking I'm an anti-fascist.

Lets start here: Do you believe the group is violent/promotes violence? Also if they're not violent, why in a crowd of hundreds did basically no one step in to stop the assault on Andy Ngo as he was assaulted by dozens of men dressed in head to toe in black?

This is untrue. — Kenosha Kid

It was captured on cell phone video. It doesn't even matter though the guy admitted to it in a vice interview.

The leftists have their own definition of fascism under which mainstream right wing thinkers qualify as fascists.

I mostly agree with you here, I just think each instance where cops kill someone needs to be taken as an individual case and it's not fair to lump them all in as one so I get annoyed when people take every death-by-cop case under one umbrella. In those cases where cops did kill someone unjustly they should face criminal charges, not just be fired.

Was this based on due process? I'm joking. Fascism doesn't do due process. Allow me to rephrase. Was this based on the testimony of people who murder black people? — Kenosha Kid

That's ridiculous If you're going to arrest someone and they pull a gun on you you can't give them "due process."

There are witness reports which seem to back it up, but we're just not going to ever completely know the truth. His murder of Danielson was captured on video.

The organization is very openly violent, Kenosha. You should listen to people when they tell you who they are. Are you really going to make the case here that they're simply violent and assault-prone and not in fact murderous?

Because he killed Aaron Danielson and then drew a gun on police when they tried to arrest him?

Could be he’s pro-fascist and speaks ill of capital as an excuse so that he can wear all black attire. So vain. — praxis

Pro-fascist, anti-fascist.... both love the color black and silencing opposition. Horseshoe theory at it's finest.

a) Antifa has killed. Does the name Michael Reinoehl ring a bell? Earlier there was a terror attack that was stopped.

b) Most importantly where is the condemnation from antifa for these acts? Answer: There is none. Show me where antifa apologizes. Jesus Christ, look to Streetlight who's probably antifa himself. I don't agree with the man but at least he's honest and he follows his beliefs through to the logic conclusions. Ask any antifa protester whether they feel bad for dead cops. They're not going to feel bad. ACAB. You don't get it. If all antifa is about is "fighting fascism" then all of America - myself and NOS too - should join. Come on.

Again, the police openly commit acts of violence against black people and yet, as we've seen, you'd refrain from condemning them. But someone in the internet age calls someone a fascist and that's an enemy worth having. Am I being unfair? — Kenosha Kid

I condemn the policemen/women who commit egregious murder, but it's important we get the facts first before rushing to judgment every time someone is shot. Each case has its own facts. If the officer has committed an offense then of course we should punish them. Policemen have killed white men as well, you just don't hear about it because nobody cares especially if these white men are poor or mentally disabled.

It would be hilarious if Zn0n and Schop were the same person. In that case Schop would be carrying on long, drawn out dialogues just between himself in order to convince internet people of anti-natalism... a position which if everyone followed there would be no more human race.

The reason I'm more skeptical of antifa is that the far left operates with a different definition of "fascism" than the rest of the country. They'll call Ben Shapiro a fascist. They'll call mainstream right-wing thinkers fascists - and now consider that they openly advocate for violence against the fascists.

Basically anyone whining about people who are anti-fascist but who have nothing to say about right-wing violence is a fuckstick whose opinion is less than worthless. — StreetlightX

This reminds me of people who sidetrack discussions about race or gender with something like "oh but what about unattractive white men? my friend has a big mole on his face etc. etc."

Can anyone tell me how anti-fascists became the bad guys on Cloud Trump? Being an anti-anti-fascist doesn't seem like an obvious recipe for political success. — Kenosha Kid

The name doesn't mean anything. Just because you call yourself something like that doesn't mean you're on the side of justice. Antifa as a movement is militant and they have assaulted journalists, Trump supporters, and burned down and looted businesses. It's a standard leftist tactic that they'll name themselves something nice and then commit atrocious acts in the name of achieving their "utopia."

Amen. I'll respond to the leftists. I won't respond if a response is just total nonsense though, which I have seen here from some users (or maybe just "user" - now that I think about it, I can only think of one that's just been so far our of left field.) There's one left winger who I'm pretty sure is ignoring me though and I'm fine with that.

No. He can't. He never does. He won't start now. — Pro Hominem

He must really feel terrible about all those poor, innocent, infinitely valuable malaria-spreading mosquitoes that have been killed lately. I wonder if he'd consider creating a sanctuary for them.

The instant an hierarchy is developed, we'll have a place in it and I wouldn't count on us being in the upper echelons; somewhere around the lower rungs, maybe. — TheMadFool

Can you just answer the question of what should be done if two "infinitely valuable" life forms are placed into a situation where one must die for the other to live - say, tics on a dog or mosquitos feasting on a human and spreading malaria. We can also go with a tapeworm nesting itself into a human.

It seems to be that the upshot of this is that there are no correct answers because everything is infinitely valuable - so in effect we get moral nihilism here. It doesn't matter if the value is infinity or zero - it's all the same.

be treated by a "superior" being in just the way you treat an "inferior being" and drawing from how humans have treated supposedly "inferior" life, it's defintely not going to be a pleasant experience for us. — TheMadFool

Nobody is saying to treat "inferior" animals like dogs or horses or cats badly. Everybody should be against animal cruelty, but we don't let animals vote or treat them the exact same as humans. We should obviously protect animals and treat them well. Mosquitos are a different story.

Unfortunately, you have to make decisions. Tics attach themselves to your dog. Do you kill the tics or leave the dog to die? Same with leaches on a dog or person. What do you do. These decisions reflect our value system.

Worrying about who's dearer and who's not is distinctly undivine, and by extrapolation, immoral. — TheMadFool

I get it - I was trying to work within your metaphysic. I was saying that the implication is that you can't defend the child from fire ants because they would involve valuing one being over another.

I'm not trying to disprove you here. I'm just running with your system here.

It's not personally something that I would really entertain.... in fact I don't think the vast majority of the planet would entertain it because it leads to actions/consequences which most of the population would consider not only completely absurd but also extremely contrary to human nature and our day to day lived experience.... but if you want to plant your flag on this worldview then more power to you. I just don't care enough to argue with you about it. If you want to consider the life of your child or mother the same as that of an ant or a mosquito then you be you. I take it swatting away or killing mosquitos is again immoral to you because they are infinitely valuable. Enjoy your life with this worldview, it'll be an interesting one.

Racism (again for the slow fuckers way in the back) denotes color/ethnic prejudice plus POWER of a dominant community (color/ethnic in-group) OVER non-dominant communities (color/ethnic out-groups). Whether Hutus over Tutsis, Israeli Jews over Israeli Arabs, Hans over Uyghurs, Turks over Kurds, Kosovo Serbs over Kosovo Albanians, Russians over Chechens, Israeli Ashkenazim over Israeli Sephardim, American Whites over American Blacks Browns Yellows & Reds, etc, this description of racism obtains. — 180 Proof

You can add black south africans over white south africans to this list. I also wonder what's to be said about cities or even states where one group may be more in power than another but that's not reflective of the picture on a national level. How do we define the community?

Devaluing another group of people based upon the color of their skin is not in short supply. — creativesoul

But that's the old, boring definition of racism. The new, exciting definition is power + prejudice, so even the most anti-black white south african or american black supremacist can not possibly be racist. it's not about what you believe it's about where you live and whether you' got the good guy (oppressed) or the bad guy (oppressor) skin color.

I myself have always thought that you can judge individuals, but never larger groups of people especially by their nationality, ethnicity, or race (whatever that means), but perhaps that's not the politically correct way to think about things now as denying the importance of race is racism itself. — ssu

You really can't win either way. If you just try to view individuals as individuals and try to make as few preconceptions as possible, you're racially ignorant or even a racist today. On the other hand, if you view race as central to identity while you could be considered "woke" or "politically correct" your actual day to day interactions with people of other races are going to be really awkward but at least you're woke.

So I've stopped engaging in these types of conversations.

I don't see how. — praxis

I was just commenting on your tendency to try to reduce organizations (the state in this case) to the level of the individual. This is a common theme for libertarians, although they tend to do with society and not so much the state, though I suppose the state is possible. Many libertarians, in principle, are against monopolies, pollution and unfair treatment of labor it's just a matter of how best to resolve these things. I don't really feel like getting into a debate on libertarianism here I was more just commenting on something I find a little interesting.

My question is simple: do you want to be included among the sacred or the non-sacred? — TheMadFool

Ok, I will follow along. I want to be included among the sacred! But guess what? Under your metaphysic, everything is infinitely sacred because God is omni-benevolent - and remember that God is also omniscient too he's right about it.

Everything is infinitely sacred. This has some very ridiculous consequences in practical action. If a group of fire ants are attacking a child, are we allowed to swipe them away and hurt the infinitely sacred fire ants? Are you allowed to kill infinitely valuable bugs in your home? Your metaphysic implies that you ought to value your child or parent or brother the exact same as an ant because after all, God does, and God is also right about everything by the way. You couldn't even follow this psychologically speaking is you wanted to so its setting everyone up for cognitive dissonance.

I guess that insight is ultimately an intersectional one, no? You've got enough white signifiers to count as white in most contexts, you'll live absent systemic discrimination in some ways; you're not gonna get racial profiled like a black man will in the US. But you're gonna be lumped in with a global conspiracy that motivates white supremacist terrorists. Being racialised as white doesn't exempt you from being racialised as Jewish and vice versa. — fdrake

Maybe it's an intersectional one? I'm not sure.

Yes, I'll be lumped in with a global conspiracy that motivates some on the far right. According to some on the right/far right Jews aren't even white. They're imposter white people and they fall on the bottom of the racial hierarchy. They attack us by undermining our whiteness and seek to alienate us from other white people.

On the left/far left the Jews get victimized often due to our apparent whiteness and its association with oppression/colonization. In Israel we're often described in left-wing circles as white colonizers brutally suppressing an indigenous population despite the fact that Jews consider themselves the indigenous population and many Jews are not white. Even apart from Israel anti-Semitism is often just seen as "punching up" and "stickin' it to the man" or "speaking truth about power" and this can come from both sides of the political spectrum. See the recent examples with Nick Cannon and DeSean Jackson.

If it falls into the hands of the wrong individuals. This is why democracy is the best form of government for the people because it tends to be resistant to the concentration of power. — praxis

I agree with you on the democracy part.

You're kind of arguing more in line with a perspective associated with the right/libertarian side of the coin here when you describe events more as individuals acting as opposed to groups/organizations. I'm not saying that you're wrong; anyone can describe events in various different ways.

If I were to get audited by the IRS I could describe it that way or I could say "John B. Smith audited me today." Neither is wrong per se.

It is worth noting that Stalin, and likely Mao and also Hitler, didn't personally murder anyone. With Stalin at least it was often done through lists which were then passed down through the ranks, and yes, while the actual executioner was often some low level security forces member it seems a little superficial to me - but not technically wrong - to describe, say, the execution of a Stalinist purge victim as, say, "Yuri Bogdanov, KGB sergeant, shot X, Y, and Z in the basement of a KGB office." Yes it's true but there's no description of the system behind it - the list concocted by Stalin, the show trials by the legal system, etc. etc.

Don't get me wrong, I love attributing things to individuals and I'm a firm believer in individual responsibility. Maybe this is the beginning of my slow progression to leftism.

Well, if one is to maintain that some form of inequality must exist for value to have meaning then be ready to be discriminated against — TheMadFool

Just because I believe inequality must exist for value to maintain its meaning doesn't mean I think inequality needs to be ubiquitous in every facet of society.

There's such a thing as good arguments and bad arguments, do you agree? Good art and bad art. Good reasons and bad reasons. There's inequality there.

Much of religion can be understood as drawing a distinction between the holy and unholy, the sacred and non-sacred. If everything is equal then there is no sacred. There's no relationship to slavery here.

See this post. Racialisation doesn't have to hold together as a logically coherent story. That misses the nature and history of the phenomenon. When people study race with a historical eye, it's shown to be nonsense, when people study race with with a scientific one, it's shown to be nonsense on stilts. Still, racialisation happens. People are put into racial bins and treated differently depending on what bin they're in. Absent historical and scientific validation, but it still happens. That leaves the messy world of social norms.

Effectively, you're putting me in a position where I have to give you a check list of who counts as what and for what reasons - but the process by which people are put into racial bins just doesn't work like a logical definition of anything. From my position, the question you ask is loaded.

Racialisation works through norms; it's a societal process, a social fact; and it works associatively rather than logically. — fdrake

I understand that and I understand where you're coming from. I agree. However, just because something works a given way doesn't mean we ought to throw our hands up in the air and just accept it. As individuals, we can teach society our own racial/ethnic backgrounds and the cultural nuances associated with it. I understand society might largely see me as white, but this really isn't an adequate descriptor of my racial/ethnic identity (I'm an Ashkenazi Jew). As individuals we need to educate society. Society labels; we fight back.

Also keep in mind that these labels: white, black, etc. are political. They're not simple descriptors. Whether we like it or not whiteness has certain associations.

If you're white or black, you're white or black whether you accept it or not. Those are the breaks. That is the social fact of racialisation. — fdrake

It's really not that simple. If someone is 1/8 black are they black or white? Who is society to deny their blackness? Who is society to tell, say, Ashkenazi Jews, that they are "really" white?

I'll just note that Jews and Muslims don't believe in omni-benevolence in God. I'd be interested to know how widespread the belief is among Christians. I'm not a Christian so I don't know the details. There are parts in the old testament where God sends earthquakes to swallow up people and he destroys entire cities.

In any case, omnibenevolence is the possession of unlimited goodness. It doesn't logically follow from that that every being from a blade of grass to a speck of dust or dirt or a maggot to a human being is valued infinitely, i.e. equally. You're basically destroying the notion of value when try to push that position because everything is apparently valued "infinitely." Value itself is predicated on the notions of "higher" and "lower." You're really just doing away with value here. To say that equality is the basis of morality is also certainly non-biblical.

EDIT: Taken a little further, your interpretation destroys holiness altogether, and places God himself as equal to a dirt.

Firstly, it is to be taken as true that an omnibenevolent god will not play favorites with his creation: maggots, bacteria, fish, beggars, the rich, birds, etc. are all equal in god's eyes. The widely held belief that equality is one of the pillars of the moral edifice should make that easily relatable. — TheMadFool

None of this is biblically supported, and it's not a view that any Jew or Christian would take. I've never heard any Muslim take it as well. I just stopped reading here because you're very, very far out in left field. I don't personally care if you hold this view or if this is your view of God but it's not a normal, accepted view.

Good governance don't cancel out evil, it's like if you had a dad who's a good guy like 95% of the time but the other 5% he's a genocidal maniac and kills millions. It would be stupid to say "oh well he's mostly good therefore we can excuse the rest." Again, I'm not saying that all states are evil but if we do an actual body count of the numbers killed by states and the numbers killed by non-states it's not even close. I'm not saying every state is bad, just that the state - with its centralization of power - is a major, major vulnerability if it falls into the wrong hands.

Could you elaborate? If we're going by the combined death toll of the Maoist government, Stalinist government, and Nazi regime you're gonna need quite a few Ted Bundies to reach those levels. Criminals/murderers don't come anywhere close.