domain:eigenrobot.substack.com
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
2hr 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
3hr 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
3hr 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
3hr 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
3hr 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
3hr 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
3hr 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
3hr 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
3hr 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
3hr 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
4hr 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)
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
4hr ago
You're not beating the logs-in-eyes allegations. None of anything you said would reflect on how Arabs would treat Jews in a hypothetical one-state solution.
I actually did in fact mention this exact point already earlier in the thread. It's why I usually bring up that any plausible single state solution would have to involve thorough denazification efforts - and I believe that actually putting the members of the IDF who killed civilians through real, serious trials are the best way to handle it. Most defenders of Israel assure me that the IDF is the most moral army in the world and doesn't target civilians, so I'm sure there wouldn't be any objections to real and serious war crime investigations to pick up the few bad apples who believe things like "There are no innocent civilians in Gaza" or who did things like shoot children or rape prisoners.
The evidence we do have is from the expulsion of Mizrahim from all Arab countries to Israel - a pogrom you blame on Zionism.
If I was a member of a dispossessed tribe with no homeland and a new country showed up in our traditional homeland and announced it was a country for our tribe I would likely volunteer to leave even if my home country wasn't particularly nasty. But for all the claims of a pogrom, I'm not aware of any serious sources that refer to this moment in time as a genocide or pogrom. It took place over a long time, in multiple waves and with multiple motivations from multiple places. Were some of those places expelling the jews for the actions of their co-religionists? Sure, they probably were. Were a majority of them, enough that you could characterise this as a genocide? I don't think the evidence supports that claim, and if you want to make that case I'd be interested in reading it.
That was, undeniably, ethnic cleansing at the least.
If you think that meets the bar then what Israel is doing in Gaza clears it easily. If you're willing to accept that compromise I have no problems agreeing with you.
Why should I trust you accusing Israel of genocide when you downplay the Arab one?
You shouldn't! You shouldn't trust anyone when it comes to accusations like that, and instead do your own research. I don't trust any of your claims without actually looking up the facts behind them, and I think discussions work better when both people do that.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
4hr ago
"Nazi" might be diluted as an insult, but it's not diluted as an ideology.
This isn't quite true. Jew-exclusionary white supremacists are universally called, and often own, the label "Nazi" whether or not they're fascists.
If nobody is suggesting that these guys are members of the NSDAP, an organization which was disbanded long before they were born, then there is no honesty or virtue in trying to tar these guys with the moral connotations of members of the NSDAP by equating them with members of the NSDAP by labeling them as members of the NSDAP. Many people do so, including the OP, who repeatedly insists on this connection and the sincerity of their beliefs on the charge.
Now, if you want to accuse the OP of bad faith, lying, incompetence, or of being an irrelevant minority akin to a lizardsmen constant, by all means feel free to do so. It will not change that the behavior cataloged here is not the behavior of the Nazis who made the term Nazi a multi-generational accusation.
Jokes in small groups are a great way to reach a common understanding that Nazis are not icky. Obviously not everyone who plays along is a Nazi, perhaps some only like the jokes because the SJ people are whining about the Nazis all the time, but it is very much a step in the right direction, moving the overton window where you want it to go.
The overton window moving towards 'Nazis are not icky' is a natural and not particularly tragic development if people want to use Nazi for things other than members of the NSDAP or people particularly like them. Whether people who would prefer it remains associated with the past connation so they can tar their political enemies with the connotation want the overton window to shift in the direction they are actually pushing it is rather irrelevant.
ABigGuy4U
4hr ago
If a leftwing group chat made jokes about the Holodomor, Mao or Pol Pot.
They don’t need to. They can just say that to the entire class of students they teach with a straight face.
ZeroPipeline
4hr ago
No no no, it'll be water under the duck once your bridges are in a row.
hanikrummihundursvin
5hr ago
Your position can only be taken as substantive if one believes that there is some degree of separation between X and Y. No one can demonstrate this because no such separation exists. It's just young people. The only real difference is how the Overton Window is positioned.
ulyssessword
5hr ago
Measuring, maybe, but that's hardly all the legislature does.
I didn't set the standards we're discussing here. The claim upthread is "All political action is violence." If you didn't agree with that, then it would've been nice to know earlier. I don't have any reason to debate the fact that some political action is violence.
cjet79
5hr ago
What is your threshold for being convinced? If you don't have one that's fine, that saves me even more time.
magicalkittycat
5hr ago
I think you have a very sad and hateful view of what men are like if you believe they're all joking about how Jews are dishonest and gas chambers.
magicalkittycat
5hr ago
Well I guess we've proven the group chat's fears that any disagreement = getting called a RINO and lib correct.
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.
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