domain:pedestrianobservations.com
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
31m ago
Having weak and marginal Jews in your community that paid the dhimmi tax and that you could coerce the beautiful daughters into Islam is nothing like brotherhood,
How much do you know about Jewish life in Palestine or the muslim world prior to Israel? Who was in charge of the government during the Jewish Golden Age?
The Jews don't want to be dhimmi. No one wants to be a non-Muslim subject in a Islamic country if they can help it.
Do you think the Palestinians want to be non-Jewish subjects in a Jewish country? Hell, I wouldn't want to be a non-Jewish subject in a Jewish country.
Even the most tolerant Palestinian wants the Jews to live in a box outside of the holy places and be milked for taxes by the bridge troll.
I think the last century of events has contributed rather heavily to negative attitudes towards jews amongst the Palestinians.
I'm sorry, but your historical read is just wrong. The leftist perspective is simply delusional: too focused, as it were, in the splinters in others eyes to mind the logs in theirs. Your romanticization of Muslim tolerance is historical revisionism at best.
You might want to check up on your history before you make accusations like that - there were multiple times in history when the Jews fled to Muslim countries because Christian lands persecuted them too heavily. The great antipathy between the Islamic world and the Jews in the modern world is in large part due to the establishment of the state of Israel, and there's a wide variety of historical Jewish sources talking about how Muslim rule was preferrable to Christian rule. While you're right that Muslim tolerance was a far cry from the multicultural societies of the modern west, by the standards of those historical periods that tolerance was actually real - the Christians were treating them far worse at the time, and even some of the earliest Islamic documents (see the constitution of Medina) mention this shared connection with the Jews.
The Palestinians were there before Israel was, and we can even directly identify many of the violent terror groups that helped establish Israel like Irgun and Lehi. The Palestinians didn't start this fight any more than the Jews of Nazi Germany started the holocaust.
When I use the word 'attacked,' I do not refer to the crime of existing while being Jewish. I use the word 'attacked' to refer to that thing where you use guns and bombs to kill people.
If the Palestinians were there first (debatable), so what? The German gentiles were undeniably 'there' before the German Jews. Does that mean the German Jews were 'attacking' the German gentiles with their presence? No. By logical extension, the Israelis are not 'attacking' the Palestinians by existing in their vicinity.
On the other hand, last year the Palestinians launched a literal attack on Israel. Lots of people died. It started a war. Ring any bells?
Mass extermination of unwanted brown people to give your society a bit more lebensraum is the kind of gross crime against humanity that gets your nation completely ostracised from the rest of the world. Not only that, the actual human infrastructure of the state would likely have trouble - look at growing number of IDF suicides and imagine how much worse it would be if they were explicitly committing another holocaust without any figleaves. Just nuking them would engender such a hostile reaction from the rest of the world that Israel would simply cease to be a viable state.
Then why are you so concerned that the Palestinians will be 'wiped out'? Since you've just explained why it can't possibly happen regardless of what the Palestinians do, you yourself prove that Palestinian 'resistance' is just a waste of lives. By your own argument there will be no 'wiping out' so what are we even talking about?
In the absence of violent resistance Israel would simply do to Gaza what they are doing with the west bank and take over the land piecemeal. As I've said, they believe that a lack of resistance means they will simply be wiped out and dispossessed - and I think they're right to believe that. I do agree that this conflict is a meaningless source of misery and the world would be a better place if it didn't happen at all, but sadly I'm not in charge of the region.
wiped out and dispossessed
I see. When you say 'wiped out' you don't actually mean anyone will be killed. It's a kind of nonviolent 'wiping out' where people lose landownership in a dispute over whose ancestors stole what from whom, but continue living their lives without being bodily harmed in any way. This is one of those irregular verbs, you know, I'm buying a house, you're dispossessing the native population, he's committing genocide.
So in order to prevent the Jews from metaphorically 'wiping them out' (by existing nearby), the Palestinians must heroically resist (by massacring the Jews). I do not like this abuse of language.
ThenElection
42m ago
The Smithsonian has an evergreen cheat sheet for understanding white supremacy:
- Action Orientation
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
45m ago
I think of these
-
"too strong and too weak" is a stretch (I haven't actually seen much Trumpist rhetoric arguing that the Left is weak - degenerate and doomed in the long run, perhaps,but not weak right now)
-
"contempt for the weak" feels more like outgroup slander as everyone in the US frame has some groups that they value and think the others don't value enough which to them amounts to contempt; probably Trumpists could equally paint "deplorables"/"learn to code"/"flyover states" rhetoric from the Left as contempt for the weak, and it would ring as inappropriate as whatever you are arguing (because I think Eco really intended it to mean contempt for the weak qua weakness: "if you are weak, you suck", not "you suck and you are weak")
-
"selective populism" - are there instances of Trump suggesting that he represents the will of an abstract People, as opposed to just claiming that he represents the will of his followers and his followers are the better people? (This would cover a lot more political movements)
seem like a stretch. I would even argue that the points are about the same level of applicable to the Russian influence/Ukraine narrative - in particular there there is a lot of "too strong and too weak at once", healthy servings of disagreement-as-treason, obsession with plots and cult of action, and a gradual growth on the militarism axis now too.
zoink
48m ago
All political action is violence... or at least the threat of violence. We've put a nice facade over it and depending at what point in history the majority and even the vast majority do not think about this. In my more argumentative days I figured I'd pierce the facade and instead of people giving up violence for petty thing got more "Fine, I'm OK killing you". Since no one wants to be an anarch-capitalist be careful when piercing the facade with unstable people.
Tags: Libertarian "Gun in the Room", Nothing every happens
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
48m ago
The Jews of Nazi Germany didn't attack the Germans. That's literally an antisemetic conspiracy theory invented by the Nazis to demonize the Jews, and I wasn't aware that anyone believed it except a few diehard neo-Nazis. Conventional history tells us that it was actually the Nazis who attacked the Jews.
That is in fact the point of my argument. The Palestinians were there before Israel was, and we can even directly identify many of the violent terror groups that helped establish Israel like Irgun and Lehi. The Palestinians didn't start this fight any more than the Jews of Nazi Germany started the holocaust.
If they believe that then they're simply wrong.
Incorrect. Multiple high-ranking people in Israel and Israeli think-tanks have made it clear that they view the entirety of the region as being given to them by god, and that it should be an exclusively jewish homeland. The Palestinians aren't so stupid as to think nothing bad would happen to them when their homes become the exclusive homeland of another people!
If the Israelis wanted to wipe out the Palestinians they could have done it at any time.
Mass extermination of unwanted brown people to give your society a bit more lebensraum is the kind of gross crime against humanity that gets your nation completely ostracised from the rest of the world. Not only that, the actual human infrastructure of the state would likely have trouble - look at growing number of IDF suicides and imagine how much worse it would be if they were explicitly committing another holocaust without any figleaves. Just nuking them would engender such a hostile reaction from the rest of the world that Israel would simply cease to be a viable state.
If it isn't on the table then the pointless wars are just that - a meaningless outpouring of useless hatred that accomplishes nothing and causes only misery.
In the absence of violent resistance Israel would simply do to Gaza what they are doing with the west bank and take over the land piecemeal. As I've said, they believe that a lack of resistance means they will simply be wiped out and dispossessed - and I think they're right to believe that. I do agree that this conflict is a meaningless source of misery and the world would be a better place if it didn't happen at all, but sadly I'm not in charge of the region.
ThenElection
52m ago
I think most of the time political domestic terrorists don't think that the majority is actually opposed to their ideology. Instead, the logic seems to be that society is stuck in some kind of controlled equilibrium, the majority is aligned but stuck in some kind of Schelling point or false consciousness, and all that's needed is some shock to the the system that will bring about a series of rapid changes to bring the ideology to fruition.
Otherwise, if you believe society is genuinely against you and everything you stand for, it seems like a very visible act of terrorism can only go badly for your cause.
Goodguy
1hr ago
Materialist explanations are sufficient to explain how an entity can react to the environment and think, but it is not clear that they can explain subjective experience.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
I haven't heard that specific one. While it wouldn't surprise me if someone did say something like that, it's not exactly hard to come up with examples that would contradict, unless the revolution is supposed to happen all by itself.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1hr ago
Would it? Is that not just most cases of domestic terrorism?
anon_
1hr ago
But you can use it to hire some Koreans that can check code into a global repository instead of Americans.
The value of the code written by that subsidiary goes into the conglomerate at large.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1hr ago
And Israeli leadership does not coordinate direct attacks on civilians.
For a given value of leadership, sure. But Israeli leadership is such a vague term I don't think this is really worth litigating. SOMEONE gave the order to deploy those bombs shaped like toys in Lebanon, but whether they qualified as "Israeli Leadership" is a mystery to me.
There was enough direct evidence to tie this particular fellow to 5 deaths directly.
In a courtcase that outside observers said was clearly biased. I don't think Trump is guilty of raping Jean Carrol even though a heavily politicised courtroom implied the opposite, and I apply a similar level of scrutiny here.
If you are me, you think he is a terrorist because he and his minions are consistently too cowardly to wear uniforms.
I'm sure the people who shot up Hind Rajab's car were wearing a uniform, but that doesn't really make my sympathise with them at all.
If you think international law is a fiction, then he's just a loser who lost.
Are you aware of the context that this discussion is taking place in? Do you think that calling Marwhan a loser who lost is in any way a convincing refutation of the point being made? Yes, the person that wants peaceful co-existence rather than armed struggle is rotting in an Israeli prison in order to make sure there's no peaceful resolution. How is that in any way worth mocking? Was Gandhi a loser who lost when he was arrested for advocating peaceful resistance to the British?
ulyssessword
1hr ago
Bitcoin went up 500x in the last ten years. Are you worried about getting taxed on 100% of its value instead of the (right and proper) 99.8%, or am I missing something about how it works?
sockpuppet2
1hr ago
In fact I’m having trouble imagining someone that would agree with his first premise, that most Americans are fascists, without believing political violence was acceptable.
Political violence against the majority would be novel.
sockpuppet2
1hr ago
He really didn't want to put out any concrete examples of what he considered 'fascist'
He linked to his review of Mussolini's book, though the review, itself, is paywalled.
sockpuppet2
1hr ago
Cult of action.
I thought action was an example of white supremacy?
Sunshine
1hr ago
The only explanations I can come to are that it was the Russians
I can think of another explanation: Explosives factories sometimes blow up and Fox News doesn't cover everything. Industrial accidents aren't exactly sensational reporting, and they probably take a lot more legwork than reporting on Trump's tweets or whatever. I'm not surprised that not every media outlet is covering it.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1hr ago
I don't see the conspiracy angle here and I can see from the other posts that I'm not the only nooticer who feels that way. But you clearly aren't alone in your assumption either! Is this a case of different cultures inculcating different pattern matching behaviours? It does make me think - the closest this came to triggering my 'that's retarded' impulse is it made me think 'reeeeaaally?' Meanwhile I feel like I spend most of my time on X thinking 'well that's retarded'. And part of that is of course that I trust you and your judgement more than some X rando and thus extend you more charity, and similarly I don't want this to be false for political reasons (although I try not to let that influence me anyway), but there is more to it than that. I guess the 'that's retarded' impulse gets triggered when someone's pattern matching behaviour doesn't just not align with my own but aligns against the patterns I have internalised. This is probably obvious to most people but it just clicked for me.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1hr ago
Where has it been done successfully and without significant atrocities performed?
The partition of Czechoslovakia?
daguerrean
1hr ago
Just as a sanity check let’s run the same test cases against wokeness. By my count these apply.
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Rejection of modernism. Obviously wokeness favors alternative “ways of knowing” and rejects objectivity, rationality and the scientific method as white supremacy.
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Cult of action. The motto “Punch a nazi” is certainly proudly anti-intellectual, elevating the propaganda of the deed/direct action above any intellectual debate.
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Disagreement is treason. This is too easy, wokeness considers silence as violence and obviously disagreement is violence.
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Obsession with a plot. White supremacy is behind everything. Bad test scores? White supremacy. Crime statistics? White supremacy. Every institution is full to the brim with hidden, covert racists.
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Enemies simultaneously too strong and too weak. Trump is simultaneously a fascist dictator but also a bumbling, senile buffoon.
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Newspeak. Control and redefinition of language is one of wokeness’ defining traits.
The selective populism and appeal to the middle class are basically free squares that can be applied to any ideology
EvanTh
1hr ago
Nothing special indeed; FDR's New Deal checks about half the boxes too:
- The cult of action for action's sake
- Disagreement is treason
- Appeal to a frustrated middle class
- Obsession with a plot
- Enemies (the rich) are at once too strong and too weak
- Pacifism (after WWII started brewing) is trafficking with the enemy
- Selective populism
- Newspeak (in tons of agency and program names)
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
Frankly, MAGA has a lot more in common with fascism than being right-wing nationalist.
Taking Eco's definition
Most left wingers have a lot more in common with fascism, if you take Eco's definition.
ulyssessword
1hr ago
Frankly, MAGA has a lot more in common with fascism than being right-wing nationalist.
Taking Eco's definition, I would argue that MAGA checks about half the boxes.
That's nothing special, so does Social Justice:
- The rejection of modernism
- The cult of action for action's sake
- Disagreement is treason
- Obsession with a plot
- cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak."
- Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy
- Selective populism
- Newspeak
Either those summaries are too broad to be useful, or some traits of Fascism have become broadly entrenched in our society, regardless of what we call the groups that embody them.
Shrike
1hr ago
Trump is term-limited, there will be no vote on whether or not he leaves office absent a Constitutional amendment (which is extremely far-fetched).
US elections are also held at the state level, so there's no real way for him to rig the elections via the federal bureaucracy (unless he's using the CIA to hack the voting machines, or something). I suppose he could attempt to stage a coup of some variety, but I agree with you assessment of the federal bureaucracy there.
I think they're basically all free squares; the list is just a toolkit for anytime you want to coordinate the masses into some kind of political action.
If you tried to form a political project that was the exact inverse of what the list describes, you get a kind of bloodless, nebbish classical liberalism. Which is nice, but it's not something a movement has ever been made from.
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