I Re—sign

About Unstuck
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… I don’t consider handcuffing someone who is illegally trespassing to be violent…
… Yeah, but robbery is illegal and wrong, eviction is not…

What you are doing is trying to use the same term, ‘violence’ in this case, simultaneously in three different ways… as a term of description (“harm to beings”), in a legal manner (“illegally”), and in a naive moralistic manner (“wrong”). But, of course, “harm to beings” can be variously legal or illegal, depending on where/when/who/etc you are. But, of course, what’s moralistically “wrong” doesn’t have any direct connection to what is legal. But, of course, what you consider “wrong” is just your opinion, man.

I think you really want to argue about semantics for some reason

LOL no. Look back, I was the dude making the positive and friendly suggestion that you stop derailing yourself by… arguing about semantics. Look, I’m on your side with what (I think) you want to accomplish. My point has nothing to do with you being a capitalist pig. I fact, it’s only because you insist on derailing into semantics that you being a capitalist pig becomes relevant.

This is what you are doing…

  1. I think we should have a rule prescribes against “violent rhetoric”.
  2. What I mean by “violent rhetoric” is what Mr. Average Josie thinks is “violent rhetoric”.
  3. Which, I’m sure research would find, would be X, Y and Z.
  4. So let’s have a rule that prescribes X,Y and Z.

Remember my advice… Why not instead say…

  1. So let’s have a rule that prescribes X,Y and Z. Full stop.

Instead… by going on this LOL-tastical, and completely semantic, detour regarding the term ‘violence’, and we get this nonsense. Clearly, and obviously, you have never given any deep thought about how the term ‘violence’, has been used in a political context, has been used as propaganda, historically, or theoretically. Why wade into deep waters, waters where you obviously don’t feel at all comfortable swimming around in… especially since doing so doesn’t help you make your case at all, and in fact does the opposite?

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I’m pretty sure cuse does not want to prescribe violent rhetoric

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I have to assume they can and they either want to drive me crazy until I leave (congrats guys, great job, it’s working) or they know they can’t defend that other stuff in good faith so they have to play this game.

What they can’t seem to understand is why my reaction to something “one of our own” posts would be different to my reaction to something a clear outsider posted. One of them can be used to attack any/all of us, one cannot.

Yeah, I mean, I think edgelording in that regard is to be a form of trolling - the person doesn’t actually support/believe in what they’re saying, the entire point is to get a rise. NBZ is doing it for other reasons, it’s more strategic and/or genuine.

I have an issue with immoral legal violence too, like what the police do. But it’s posts like this one you just made that makes me think a lot of people here are actually in for the support of violence because they view it as morally justifiable.

A lot of you dance around it, but you won’t quite come out and say it. Instead we get defenses of NBZ and fantasy kill lists.

I’m done arguing over this. Everyone here knows what I mean, and instead you want to have a semantics argument. You know what? You’re smarter than me, you win. I went to school for public communications and you still know more about the word “violence” than I do. I must be a total moron! Congrats!

I’ve proposed a specific rule. Repeatedly. In a thread devoted to the subject. Are you trolling me?

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I think you’ve chosen this example because you get that talking about hypothetically doing things 60 years ago is a bit different from calling for violence against contemporary political figures. .

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I mentioned the cruise missile bombing in Syria earlier. There are plenty of other contemporary issues and I think criminalizing drugs and border crossing are also violent and abhorrent - both worse than calling for violence directed at opposing that (like the attack on the immigration detention center). I used the older examples because, although there are plenty of people who would defend them who might conceivably post here, they are things that I was pretty sure Cuse would think were morally bad, but would likely want to tolerate someone who would defend them. If I continue with “supporting criminalizing border crossing” is clearly immoral and offensive or "cruise missles directed at Syrians who are not Assad and people who were not attacking Rojava is clearly immoral and offensive, this argument becomes about whether or not those things are objectionable instead of about whether we tolerate discussion of violence when it’s something that the US considers legal, but not when it’s something that the US considers illegal.

I’m not endorsing Willem Van Spronsen. What he did was unlikely to have done any good and perhaps likely to be counterproductive, but the only concern I would have posting on the same forum as him would be practical (and perhaps cowardly) concern about whether or not that brought attention from the police. Morally, I would have less problem posting in the same forum as him as I would with say, grizy, from 2p2 - an avowed neocon.

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That was definitely not my point. It’s that I don’t think you base your stances on morality. Rather, they seem based on fear of potential consequences, for yourself. You’re worried about your image, about how things reflect on you, about long term consequences to your future political career, about negative attention from the right, about the law.

Are there any issues where you would be willing to take a meaningful stand even if it meant significant personal sacrifice? Is there anything you would take a shot of pepper spray to the face for? Or an ass beating from a bunch of alt-righters? Get arrested for? Do prison time for?

This isn’t an abstract question. I believe a huge part of the reason for our current political situation is because the answers to those questions for most people is “no”. And as long as the answer remains “no” there will be no meaningful change in this country. At least not until the next major economic downturn, large scale terrorist attack, or whatever the fuck else it takes to shock the country out of its lazy-ass complacency. Then there will be change, and then there will be violence. But it sure as shit won’t be the change any of us want, and it won’t be the violence you wrongly think I’m advocating for. I’m terrified of political violence, because the only political violence this country does is to people like me and those I want to fight for. I’m not trying to cause it, I’m trying to prevent it.

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The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then–no,
it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps
too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was
just ONE person to whom he could transfer his punishment–ONE body that he
could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically,
over and over.

‘Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do
to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!’

He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from the rats. He was
still strapped in the chair, but he had fallen through the floor, through
the walls of the building, through the earth, through the oceans, through
the atmosphere, into outer space, into the gulfs between the stars–always
away, away, away from the rats. He was light years distant, but O’Brien
was still standing at his side. There was still the cold touch of wire
against his cheek. But through the darkness that enveloped him he heard
another metallic click, and knew that the cage door had clicked shut and
not open.

So there is no place for me among you braves?

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idk, can you cook?

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No, but I can cower.

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Surely you have some marketable skills for the revolution. What role would Hemingway have you play?

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Any of the matadors gored at the periphery of the bull ring

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That’s not so bad. At least old pithy prose took the time to mention you.

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Speaking of Orwell, nonfiction though

I have no particular love for the idealized “worker” as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.

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I’m not sure why you persist in this bad read of me, unless this is your way of trolling me. If I push the boundaries of good taste, it is because I think that decorum is the cudgel that centrism wields against the left and I feel no need to cater to those sensibilities. I’m not trying to be extreme. I believe what I write. Ask me and I will probably follow up with explanations of what I believe and why. I’m going to try to do less Twitter-esque drive-by snark and more long posts, perhaps verging into tl;dr masque de Z territory, when I mention violence. Of course, you’d probably just accuse me of trolling people by manufacturing walls of text.

I think that areas where people disagree with me are more interesting than areas where there is widespread agreement. I am not looking for an amen corner to make me feel better. I don’t crave affirmation. I’m looking to develop an ideology and political philosophy that has been decades in the making. If I get to the stage of writing a book about it, I’ll probably dedicate it to y’all.

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You need more Orwell quotes (and Twain quotes).

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

Err, maybe not that one

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

That’s better

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

Bingo

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.

Ya burnt.

Those who ‘abjure’ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

Hey, enough of that, you’re not helping

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.

incrementalism?

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

ouch

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Man, good luck recruiting volunteer mods if this is what’s expected of them. Goddamn, some of us just want to talk about politics and shoot the shit, that’s what this community’s always been about. If you guys want to be the vanguard of #The Resistance, maybe this isn’t the right venue for that.

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You ever read this?

also this

The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.

and what he understood democratic socialism to be is really socialism, but democratic rather than totalitarian - more or less Anarchism and the groups he supported in Spain (where he fought). He was wary, but not an incrimentalist reformer.

If you want to understand his quotes in context you should. Also, Homage to Catalonia is awesome. Should read Down and Out in Paris and London while you’re at it - also awesome. Both better and much more clear an understanding of Orwell than you get from 1984 and Animal Farm.

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we need a thread for this… just riffing on language, writers, philosophy, ideas and perspectives, word associations with their meaning lol… not that I mind this derail one bit

protean kaleidoscopic

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Orwell probably didn’t say this.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/07/rough-men/

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Of course he “said” this, though in a work of fiction and it was out of the mouth of O’Brien. The context is as an indictment of totalitarianism and authority much more than of revolution per se.

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