domain:traditionsofconflict.com
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
9m ago
Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals?
It's amazing how this point is brought up when someone defected thinking the other side could do nothing, and then realized they were wrong.
I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough
It really isn't, and we aren't going to have peace anyway. If one side gets to do all sorts of shit and get away with it, and then not only excuse all of it but have the other side punished for doing something which vaguely rhymes, we've still got nothing but who/whom for a standard.
sockpuppet2
10m ago
Again, Scott links to his review of Mussolini's book in the post, using that as his reference for fascism, as an ideology.
sockpuppet2
12m ago
How often are terrorist attacks designed to discriminate between victims based on self-proclaimed ideology? Isn't the terrifying aspect of terrorism that attacks are largely indiscriminate?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
13m ago
I think cjet has the right of it below. The stupid thing these people did was not follow the golden rule of the internet - don't say anything you don't want held against you.
Also question: Is Wayne Hope a nazi? What about Francis Greenslade? Or what about Shaun Micallef, it's his show. Did that clip in anyway make you think any of them might be a nazi? Or did the context tell you they weren't serious, even though Wayne explicitly states that Nazis really are a superior race?
I reflected a bit on this. Generally among conservatives and here on The Motte there are two types of responses, both I dislike.
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“The left started this with Charlie Kirk/Jay Jones so this is fine.” All I can say is that this way lies ruin. Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals? Are we expecting some kind of come-to-Jesus mutual disarmament moment or just escalation until Civil War? If we are hoping for mutual disarmament, how does that happen? Why can’t this be that? Doesn’t someone have to move first?
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“This is different from Charlie Kirk/Jay Jones, that was not okay but this is because reasons.” Here my reaction is to say that you never step in the same river twice. Even though I share the intuition that this is a nothingburger while Kirk was a big deal I have to recognize it is always possible to conjure self-serving reasons why “this time it’s different.” I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough
aqouta
20m ago
On that note, given that the primary justification for the creation of Israel was the holocaust, we may as well shut the entire enterprise down
It's pretty surprising that the justification for the creation of Israel came decades after many jews had already moved to that region for a national project.
Gaashk
26m ago
This is part of why I strongly prefer handcrafts to puzzles. I've been enjoying learning to make wire wrapped tumbled stones. My husband is tumbling them, and I am wrapping them.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
28m ago
Sometimes the politicians order lunch too. Or proclaim today National Northern Hemispheric Penguin Day or some other such thing. But a lot of it is about deciding what acts will now call for state violence against the actor, or arguing about how to divide the spoils from the protection racket.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
30m ago
I believe you'll find the threshold is "just the other side of whatever is on offer".
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
36m ago
Now that we've established that this is not about celebration of evils like the Holocaust, we can talk about what is really going on here.
There is nothing wrong with pushing the overton window. You make the implication that Holocaust jokes are made so that one day we can genocide Jews again, but that's silly. With logic like that, I should have voted against gay marriage so that they wouldn't try to trans the kids next!
Yes, telling jokes are a way to wage the culture war. Since it is quite literally who/whom the entire topic is rather boring to talk about.
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
47m ago
The kind of guy who mentions the Holocaust every day, in a "joking" manner is not joking. He celebrates the Holocaust. I suspect this groupchat does not have a Holocaust reference every day. I wrote this sentence before I read the Politico article in full.
The writer says 2900 pages of chats, and Giunta says 28,000 chats. The article says 251 epithets. These guys were not slinging epithets left and right. It is highly unlikely they are making Holocaust jokes every day, or else the Journalists would have said how many holocaust jokes.
Damned right I am minimizing this. They are joking. Nobody is trying to Holocaust the Jews. I bet these guys don't even support Hamas lol.
07mk
53m ago
I think you have a very sad and hateful view of humor if you believe that someone joking about how Jews are dishonest and gas chambers is something that reflects badly on them.
ThenElection
55m ago
I think nobody suggested that the they should be investigated for conspiracy to commit murder wrt the gas chamber chat. Everyone understands that they were not seriously suggesting that.
Calling for gas chambers. Expressing love for Hitler. Endorsing rape. Using racist slurs. This is not a ‘joke.’
Totally fair politics, for what it's worth, but Newsom is at least pretending to think they were being earnest.
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
57m ago
Kirk is not a saint and it's fine to joke about his death. I'm not sure I've seen many jokes though. I've seen a lot of "he had it coming" and a lot of glee. Those are not jokes because they are being serious.
That posters in this thread are comparing to Jay Jones is ironic and illustrative: he outright said he was being serious! I suppose his irony has more layers than even 4channers, eh? The only joke Jones told was the "2 bullets" joke, but everything else he said was serious.
Wearing an SS-armband would be a celebration of the Holocaust, which is not a joke.
Skeletor
1hr ago
Well, the flip side of this is that with the righty reaction to the lefty reaction to the Kirk assassination, the Right has also thoroughly burned its "it's just banter" card. If the two competing party programmes in the US actually start being perceived as "install a modern version of Hitler" vs. "shoot all Charlie Kirks", which one do you figure will have majority support?
Fuck 'em anyway. Anyone who still wants to go soothe ISIS's concerns about blasphemy at this point will have to do it without me.
Jiro
1hr ago
If the quotes are not very far from what he said in public, the leaks should be a non-story because they would amount to "Thiel says a slightly different version of the same thing he's said a dozen times in public already".
They can't be both shocking revelations and just more of the same old thing.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1hr ago
Your phrasing is very telling. Whatever I did. Because I really do get the distinct impression that whatever Israel does, people will be condemning it.
Actually, you appear to have misinterpreted me - I said "Whatever I did" because I honestly don't know what actions I would take in that scenario. I already know enough about myself to know that I'd kill my commanding officer or myself if I was asked to administer a genocide/ethnic cleansing, and the difference between me as I am now and the person who would actually carry out those orders is large enough that I have a lot of trouble figuring out how this hypothetical me would actually do it.
And you're technically wrong - there are plenty of things Israel could do that wouldn't be condemned. If they dropped the arms and extended a sincere offer of peace and co-existence, the majority of that condemnation would vanish overnight. But at the same time, given the incentives and attitudes in place in the Israeli government, I don't think they're going to change course in any appreciable way. Of course whatever Israel does will be condemned - the specific acts they're taking to implement their ethnic cleansing plan are immaterial when what is being condemned are the goals they're trying to achieve in the first place.
The gigantic protest movements against the country in question had begun in earnest less than a week after October 7th, well before Israel even had the opportunity to commit any war crimes.
Are you going to sit here and claim that Israel has never committed any war crimes prior to October 7th? I've been a committed antizionist since I had to do a study on the Arab-Israeli conflict for high-school. If you're unaware of Israel's earlier actions, please let me know - we have a lot of material to cover if you really want to understand why all these people have been protesting against Israel!
Call me crazy, but it kind of seems like at least a significant proportion of these protests have nothing to do with how Israel's military conducts itself, and more to do with the fact that Israel exists at all.
I'd rather not call you crazy, but as someone who has been to many of these protests that's really not the case. Many of the protestors point at specific actions and deeds - Hind Rajab being the most prominent for the shocking inhumanity on display. It also isn't necessarily the Israeli military either, because it isn't just the military that's involved in what's happening. There are a fair few people who protest against the fact that Israel exists at all, but those are usually the ultra orthodox jews who believe that the creation of the Israeli state is in violation of the Torah.
Jiro
1hr ago
The reason is that historically, most religiously motivated violence committed by Christians were preceded by such accusations.
The word "historically" is doing a lot of work here. If it happened ten years ago, you might have a point. But Christian violence against accused antichrists has been pretty much nonexistent for 80 years. (This is not so for violent jihads, of course.)
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1hr ago
Someone born during the Deir Yassin massacre would be in their late seventies today. You are literally talking about acts committed by people who have since died of old age.
This is a farcically shortsighted take. How do you think the children of those victims feel? The children of the survivors who had their homes taken? Do you think that the passage of time just turns this real violence into meaningless "symbolic" violence when the impacts are still tangible and visible? Do you think that this massacre had no impact on history, that it had no long-lasting effects? I struggle to believe that you would apply this standard to any other conflict.
I actually don't think it's reasonable to retaliate against an entire ethnic group for acts committed multiple generations ago. For instance, I wouldn't consider it justified for England to invade France to take revenge for 1066. At some point you have to let history go.
I agree - luckily, "Israeli" isn't actually an ethnic group so that doesn't matter here. Even if it did, that conflict was actually settled and closed, so there's no need for continuing hostilities.
I see that we are again entering a disagreement about what it means to 'attack' someone. You seem to take a symbolic view. When you say the Israelis attacked the Palestinians, you mean some Israelis attacked some Palestinians roughly eighty years ago.
Under this standard, are you aware that the holocaust is further in the past than the Deir Yassin massacre? The passage of time has meant that the holocaust is just "symbolic" violence so you can't even really say that the Nazis did anything bad to the jews! On that note, given that the primary justification for the creation of Israel was the holocaust, we may as well shut the entire enterprise down. At some point you have to let history go, after all.
I take a more practical view. When I say the Palestinians attacked the Israelis, I mean the current regime in Gaza attacked Israel last year. They are still alive, and they are still in power.
No, you just decide to arbitrarily pick the starting point of the conflict, so you can point to a reprisal and claim that it is an offensive strike. You are choosing an approach that allows you to just arbitrarily decide who is responsible for starting a conflict by deciding that anything before a certain date doesn't count. I have trouble believing that this is your actual position, given both how transparently weak that argument is and that if you accept it you also remove the justification for the entire state of Israel to exist.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1hr ago
I haven't read the novelisations (I hear the RotS one is actually considerably better than the movie), but the movie exchange goes:
Obi-Wan: I have failed you, Anakin. I have failed you.
Anakin: I should have known the Jedi were plotting to take over!
Obi-Wan: Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil!
Anakin: From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!
Obi-Wan: Well then, you are lost!
Spookykou
2hr ago
Interesting link. Does anyone else feel the author writes jokes exactly like ChatGPT?
The difference is that after getting his opinions from (relevant) people on the left, someone went and did shoot all (relevant) Charlie Kirks. And the reaction was mostly (with notable and appreciated exceptions) not a sobering realization of the impact of their words. To compare, no one (relevant) installed, attempted to install or even proposed installing a modern version of Hitler.
That should inform as to which was only banter and which was not.
/* (using relevant here to exclude non-central, lizardman constant people on both sides)
Err, aren't you making his point for him?
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