My favorite thing is being called a Russian for having political opinions to the left of Bill Clinton. After all, it's impossible for anyone to think that capitalism is bad unless they are a Russian.
Does he really think that “American punch-a-Nazi-ism” is some recent
invention (let alone one cooked up as a Russian psyop)? Americans have
been enthusiastically punching (and killing) fascists since the Spanish
Civil War.
And as a Jew, he should be ashamed of disgracing himself twice in one
short tweet: for denigrating those who fight Nazis, and for offensively
misusing the word “pogrom”.
And extra points for the patronizing “kids’ total historical
ignorance”.
Ge seems to be doing the annoying 'what if we allow random people the power to call others nazis and then they can do violence on them!' Bullshit, forgetting that well, these people were marching shouting blood and soil, shouting about them not wanting to be replaced by jews and do nazi salutes.
Mfucking dumb metalevel reasoning shit.
The problem is that 'Nazi' has become a term that can be used to justify political violence. So if you want to violently assault your opposition, you call them Nazis and then you punch a Nazi.
Was Andy Ngo a fascist? I understand that's just one guy, but did he deserve it?
I would like you to explain to me the utility of Antifa. How do their actions better the world? Political violence is not good branding for the left, assaulting insane right-wingers is like wrestling pigs in the mud and only hardens their resolve and sense of self-importance. Antifa generally discourages journalists to interview them or attend their rallies, so their advocacy isn't generally well represented.
Andy Ngo is not, personally, a fascist (to the best of my knowledge). He hangs out with far-right groups which are, not explicitly fascist but have fascists hanging around them like flies on shit and [openly celebrate murdering leftist dissidents by dropping them out of helicopters](https://twitter.com/letsgomathias/status/1025969475344982017?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1025969475344982017%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2020%2F9%2F8%2F21417403%2Fpatriot-prayer-explained-portland). He has also [personally doxxed random bar patrons assaulted by his Patriot Prayer buddies who had vertebrae broken in their assault](https://ghostarchive.org/archive/mTLjM). Prior to his (first) assault, he had doxxed people attacked by members of Patriot Prayer.
But no, I wouldn't call him a fascist.
> How do their actions better the world?
It's basically intimidation directed at the far-right. [They will, unchecked, intimidate minorities and vandalize targets they don't like](https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/protests/proud-boys-burn-black-lives-matter-flag-from-oldest-methodist-church-in-dc/65-623e8867-e61d-4238-b6d6-06bd754c2636) (which are things like pro-BLM black churches). Doing this strikes fear into the far-right's targets and makes them look more powerful, which emboldens them to do more, and more. Confronted with the threat of physical force, the far-right's members are more nervous about marching in public, have a somewhat harder time organizing, and makes them seem somewhat less threatening (because at least they're being visibly forcefully opposed).
The fact that many have outright infiltrated the police (says the FBI, not exactly a leftist organization) or have sympathizers within them ([20% of surveyed cops on Facebook posted or liked comments endorsing far-right sentiments](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilyhoerner/police-facebook-racist-violent-posts-comments-philadelphia)) mean the cops aren't terribly useful here. And I don't view it as credible that all this is the fault of antifascists somehow inspiring racists to greater acts of violence, because violent racist mobs aren't exactly a new phenomenon in American history. I argue that neo-Nazis are going to intimidate minorities regardless of whether antifascists punch them.
So in light of all this, "antifascist activity, properly done, disrupts the ability of the far-right to intimidate and recruit people" seems like a fairly reasonable argument.
> Political violence is not good branding for the left, assaulting insane right-wingers is like wrestling pigs in the mud and only hardens their resolve and sense of self-importance.
Frankly, I don't think it matters *that* much. I don't think getting into a street fight with the Proud Boys is keeping anarchism (not all antifascists are anarchists, but a lot are and they're usually associated with us in people's minds) from becoming popular; if anything getting into a street fight with the Proud Boys seems to actually make us *more* respected. Yes, I'm serious--the rightwingers in question are so extreme and violent that, "Meh, screw the Nazis, nice move anarchists" seems to be a pretty frequent reaction; r/politics isn't exactly far-left but in my experience they generally sympathize with antifa in these fights. It's not universal, but the Beltway types and the right-wing generally weren't that sympathetic to us anyway.
Now, obviously having your praxis being solely getting into fights with Proud Boys is ridiculous; mutual aid groups are more important. But I don't feel like antifa has been much of a blight on us.
Granted, this is probably in part because we're starting from pretty much zilch--but the only people who blame Andy Ngo getting punched on soc dems and dem socs and normal Dems would spin pretty much anything to demonize their enemies, so it doesn't matter. And tankies are, well, tankies. They're never *not* going to be unassociated with political violence because, well. Stalin and Mao.
I would absolutely say that Andy Ngo is a fascist. He likes to pretend he isn't, and too many mainstream centrists play along with that pretense, but he absofuckinglutely is.
Ultimately, I prefer to save the label for unambiguous cases, and use alternative terms for vicious far-right assholes; it's not like I lack potential rude labels for him.
But ultimately this is a personal preference, and I generally try to be cautious with my words. In the end, I don't think it matters that much whether he's "just" a far-right extremist who hangs out with the "free helicopter rides" people and doxxes victims of far-right mobs; or a fascist. It's different flavors of far-right shit.
>r/politics isn't exactly far-left but in my experience they generally sympathize with antifa in these fights.
/r/politics is not socialist, but they are clearly on the left. If you want to get a broad population assessment of something you won't find it on /r/politics, and honestly you won't find it anywhere else on Reddit. People who have the internet and use this unique online forum are not an accurate slice of the population.
>But I don't feel like antifa has been much of a blight on us.
The problem is that mutual aid stuff does not get clicks, and antifa does. I recognize that's not the left's fault, but it's an emergent result. When the average US citizen thinks of the left, Antifa is in that bubble, and it looks scary, illegal, and against the principles of nonviolence that Gandhi and MLK taught us to prize.
I really don't see how you could think a masked figure with a stick wouldn't be absolutely disgusting for branding.
> /r/politics is not socialist, but they are clearly on the left. If you want to get a broad population assessment of something you won't find it on /r/politics, and honestly you won't find it anywhere else on Reddit. People who have the internet and use this unique online forum are not an accurate slice of the population.
The people who have done polls say that [less than half of the US population holds an unfavorable view of them](https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/social_issues/voters_still_see_antifa_as_more_trouble_than_good). And they admit that negative opinions are decreasing. And that's before January 6, 2021, after which we should expect beating up fascists to look a lot less objectionable (since some tried to overthrow Congress).
People just do not care that much. They might if the far-right could actually make themselves seem sympathetic, but they smear shit on the inside of Congress, tried to install godsdamn Donald Trump as President after he lost, and so forth.
> The problem is that mutual aid stuff does not get clicks, and antifa does.
I admit antifa gets *more* clicks, but I got nearly a million results for "anarchist pothole" and that's just mutual aid from *one* group. I have seen other groups repeatedly covered in local papers over many years. This said I do agree that we need to step up our game with regards to mutual aid.
> When the average US citizen thinks of the left, Antifa is in that bubble, and it looks scary, illegal, and against the principles of nonviolence that Gandhi and MLK taught us to prize.
The average American does not care that much about non-violence. It's something politicians and media figures are very fond of reciting paeans to, but remember that [a huge chunk of the USA felt that the George Floyd protests were justified, after a police station got burned down](https://www.newsweek.com/54-americans-think-burning-down-minneapolis-police-precinct-was-justified-after-george-floyds-1508452).
Also he went along with fascists attacking a leftwing bar, and lied about what happened there. Basically that is what he does about any event, he lies so it makes it look like the left is to blame and the right was doing nothing wrong.
And even Joe Rogan didn't believe his brain damage story.
But yeah, providing aid to a murderous terrorist group is one of the worst things indeed.
Of course you think Russia lost the propaganda war, you live in the west and consume western media. Based on how much they're pushing it to their own people, it's entirely possible that the 'Nazi' justification is convincing to their people.
I bet if the US started calling a country Nazi-like and had similar reasons like Russia gave for Ukraine, a lot of people might believe that and take it as legitimate justification for some kind of violence against them.
> Of course you think Russia lost the propaganda war,
I never said they lost the propaganda war
> you live in the west and consume western media
isn't your whole point in the above comment that Nazi is a hook-line-and-sinker term used in the West to immediately justify political violence? well, that clearly fell flat for the west's perception of russia in ukraine. turns out people are smart enough to recognize when that's being falsely used as an excuse for violence
Or westerners just recognize it in Russia because Russia has a different cultural context where their message makes sense, and we have our own bubble where different people can be called Nazis.
why does every rationalist do this exact same fuckin thing lol. argue like a dummy whose life depends on inaccurately contorting every argument into some inane debate and then get all huffy when people dont wanna put up with your shit.
op said:
> Does he really think that "American punch-a-Nazi-ism" is some recent invention (let alone one cooked up as a Russian psyop)? Americans have been enthusiastically punching (and killing) fascists since the Spanish Civil War.
obviously, they are talking about how the assertion that anti-nazisim is somehow a modern russian psy-op is absurd.
in response, you said:
> So if you want to violently assault your opposition, you call them Nazis and then you punch a Nazi.
you're saying quite plainly that the historic implications of punch-a-naziism are irrelevant (which is a moronic thing to type anyways because it's entirely tangential to the op who was directly addressing elizier's comment) because, as you attempt to assert, that nowadays you can just call someone a nazi and then punch them and everyone will cheer
to which, i responded:
> ok how did that work out for russia?
now, maybe you're not up to date on current world events, so, you may wanna sit down, but russia is currently attempting to invade ukraine under the incredibly specious guise of "denazification" which is believed by approximately no one in the west. except a small handful of western conservatives, which is interesting, and maybe you should reflect on that in the context of punch-a-naziism and what you have to say about the usage of the word. ty for coming to my ted talk namaste
>now, maybe you're not up to date on current world events, so, you may wanna sit down, but russia is currently attempting to invade ukraine under the incredibly specious guise of "denazification" which is believed by approximately no one in the west. except a small handful of western conservatives, which is interesting, and maybe you should reflect on that in the context of punch-a-naziism and what you have to say about the usage of the word. ty for coming to my ted talk namaste
I understand that context. My point is that you cannot use this to explain why calling people Nazis before you punch them doesn't work, because the west was already going to be against Russia. If you were more sympathetic to Russia, the possibility that you would find such an argument compelling is uncertain, but I think it's really high.
Does that clarify my position?
> Does that clarify my position?
if your position is contingent upon the person being fooled into believing the propaganda already has to buy into the propaganda then it really doesn't make a single fucking difference if you call someone a nazi or a terrorist or any other word.
hope that clears it up for you!
Since the person above deleted before I could reply, my response to their bullshit:
> If you can no longer tell the difference between Nazis, their fellow travelers, and just any random person because someone hurt your feelings by calling you a Nazi in some heated argument, you're enthusiastically idiotic in precisely the way that Russian propaganda finds so useful to exploit. "Watering down the term." Please. You enthusiastically abandon the capacity to form rational judgments on the mere existence of a pejorative.
In my exp people who worry about 'watering down the term' often also have an interest in doing so themselves, look how, non sneerclub target Scott Adams first was all worried about watering it down and then starting calling people who mocked him or pointed out his errors nazis.
While I dont think this Scott is an anti-semite, it does remind me of Sartres quote about anti-semites.
The tell for me is that, of course, I've been called a Nazi, a communist, and any number of things just from being a mod on Reddit alone. It never bothers me because I'm aware that it's a pejorative thrown out like any other, sometimes at some fictional guy in their head, so what bothers others so much about this one in particular? Could it be that they're more conscious of the proximity of their own views to genuine Nazism than they publicly admit?
Sometimes well-meaning people object with a high-minded rationale about "calling someone a Nazi/comparing someone to Hitler" diminishes the horror of the Holocaust.
But if you can't call out people for being Nazis, how exactly are we supposed to stop it from happening again?
> Sometimes well-meaning people object with a high-minded rationale about "calling someone a Nazi/comparing someone to Hitler" diminishes the horror of the Holocaust.
Right, and notice that this response is *not* defensive nor used to license willful blindness. It's that latter reaction that, to me, is a tell of sympathies for far-right extremism, if not also a ploy to motivate while obfuscating it.
Time and time again, people claim that [the golden ratio is the archetype of all beauty](https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_05_07.html) and "demonstrate" this by drawing a spiral on top of parts of a picture. The result is usually no better than, well, [these](https://xkcd.com/spiral/). But once I saw a golden spiral superimposed atop a frame of that video, and I thought, "Yeah, I'll allow it."
Not so very long ago in historical terms Nazis murdered more than
half my extended family. When someone says they want to kill you, you
should take them at their word.
(I’d be happier if they’d take a good look at themselves and stop
being Nazis, though. No need for punching.)
Someone once told me that the reactionary mind doesn't have coherent political or consistent moral philosophies, they're kind of like dogs, in that certain shapes and sounds spook them and they just know that they don't like it.
This tweet is the perfect embodiment of that idea.
Whule I dont like the whole idea of labeling political opponents as irrational or emotional, it is interesting that jimmy concepts tweeted something similar about how mao (as an evil person) labelled things good and bad and environmentalists also label things good and bad.
I personally would be very embarrassed if jimmy concepts, as a crazy person, tweeted something similar to what I said.
Lol, environmentalists in the West have had to be like this to get people's attention. It's a rhetorical method to counter the narrative that e.g, a wealthy country having no plans to move away from fossil fuels is a morally natural thing. Can be unhealthy for *individuals* to get too far that rabbit hole though, and lose perspective
I like being on this sub, because I enjoy being grounded, but EY is absolutely right here no?
Antifascists do engage in very fascist behavior. They dress up in anonymous uniforms and engage in political violence, very similar to the brown shirts. You can argue whether that violence is justified, but it does appear very fascistic.
And you know, those antifascists just won’t shut the fuck up about revitalizing the spirit of the nation through casting off the lies of the Enlightenment and purifying the folk through violent struggle, either.
Aren't a vast majority of antifa communists? Are you sure they aren't looking to cast off the lies of the enlightenment and revitalize the proles through violent action?
Antifa in the black bloc sense you seem to be thinking of has historically been more associated with anarchism than communism, for one. And secondly, no, political ideologies are not a game of madlibs, fascist ideology does not magically become communist ideology by including the word “proles.”
Are you sure politics isn't madlibs? The \_\_\_\_\_ cause all our problems. If we only violently removed \_\_\_\_\_ and took their power, we could live in a \_\_\_\_\_ utopia. It's a timeless human pattern of thought that ideologies fill up with the nouns and adjectives of their choosing.
Horseshoe theory is real. It's why leftists find themselves agreeing with Tucker Carlson, why the CCP has always been super racist, and why the Nazis called themselves nationalist socialists.
Why would you assume that just because I'm part of a certain community that I don't think for myself?
You realize your last two comments have been putting me in a group and then making a prejudicial statement about that group right? "You're a _____, don't you know being a ____ is cringe?"
You just have buckets that you drop people in. It's a flaw you should work on, if you care at all about being a better person.
Read ["Those Damned Nazis" by Goebbels](https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm) if you want to hear from the horse's mouth why Nazis called themselves socialists. They explicitly say that "national socialism" is a redefinition of the word socialism, that has existed since before communists started using it, and their redefinition is directly aligned against Marxism. The use of the word socialism is merely a superficial commonality.
From [Wikipedia's Nazism FAQ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Nazism/FAQ):
> Many political entities have names that can be misleading. Consider, for example, the Holy Roman Empire (a confederation of mainly German territories during the Middle Ages and the early modern period). The usage of the word "socialism" by the Nazis is different from the common usage of the term "socialism" to refer to an economic philosophy involving advocacy for social ownership of the means of production. The phrase "national socialist" was a nationalist response to the rise of socialism in Europe by offering a redefinition of "socialism" to refer to the promotion of the interests of the nation, as opposed to ideas of individual self-interest. But there was no policy of social ownership of the means of production. The Nazis did talk about capitalism being bad, but they defined it as a Jewish-originated economic philosophy based on individualism that promoted plutocracy in the interest of the Jews, at the expense of non-Jewish nations and races. This was put in contrast to the Nazis' conception of socialism, which was done in order to win over people attracted to anti-capitalist and socialist ideas to their cause. They rejected ideas of equality and working class solidarity, instead advocating for social hierarchy and national strength.
Why do you think they wouldn't be against Marxists? I'm saying they are very similar, not that they're aligned. Soviets and Maoists opposed each other, and revolutions have been met with counterrevolutions. If leftists had a nation, killing other leftists would be the national sport.
And I don't see an extreme relabeling of socialism in Goebbel's text.
>The bourgeois is about to leave the historical stage. In its place will come the class of productive workers, the working class, that has been up until today oppressed.
If I asked someone whether a Nazi or a Marxist wrote that, they would tell me that it was clearly written by a Marxist. Even you would if you didn't know the origin.
I don't care what some idiot on Wikipedia says about a hotly debated issue. If I have a primary source I'm not going to look any further, and the primary source makes it pretty clear that the core of socialism is still there. If you want, I can write up a Wikipedia FAQ detailing my exact position and send it to you if you think that makes it more credible, but you probably wouldn't.
Your """primary source""" supports your conclusion as much as the bible supports opposition to gay marriage.
As for it being "hotly debated"... lol. Tell you what, I'd like to see you "debate" this on /r/askhistorians. It would be a fun read for me at work.
i thought you were trolling, wielding a quote in defense of a much more sweeping conclusion is normally something conservatives do.
ok, if /r/askhistorians isn't working for you, i'd honestly read any faq you put on wikipedia that is researched enough to stay up for a week - i hear they have some pretty obsessed editors over there.
The black shirts and brown shirts were the paramilitary arm of their respective political parties, and this is important context for their activities.
If they weren’t, they would have been doing terrorist violence, but not aimed at consolidating formal political power.
None of what you said makes anything in EY’s post “right” by any stretch, but you did manage to be extra wrong yourself, so congrats!
There are other ways of being bad than being fascist, and fascism isn’t even just about consolidating political power, but yeah, not all political violence is fascist. Fascism is a particular ideology concerned with (putatively) nativist/populist rhetoric and protection of/strengthening the homeland?
It feels like I could commit political violence in ways that you would consider fascistic, without being a paramilitary organization associated with a political party.
I would say that a group violently blocking people of a certain race from voting would be fascistic.
If you agree with that, then you have to come up with a different standard for what makes political violence fascistic then "being committed by a paramilitary organization associated with a political party."
It feels like you made that qualification up just to disqualify Antifa from being fascistic. I don't think it's a standard that anyone else would independently come to if I asked them to explain what would make political violence fascistic.
I think that independent from this conversation, if I asked you to give an explanation of what might make political violence fascistic, you would not say: "being committed by a paramilitary organization associated with a political party."
Going by a brief run-in with him I had on twitter yesterday, he seems
to have brought wholesale into the “peaceful Nazi demonstrators being
attacked by black-clad antifa” narrative that dominates a certain sector
of the American mass media.
(I didn’t ask for confirmation of this, I baled on the conversation
immediately at that point. It’s like he hasn’t seen all the national
security org reports about right-wing extremism being the main terrorism
threat these days, let alone asked who’s behind the wheel of the trucks
being driven into peaceful demonstrations …)
Antifa has used the "I'm against fascism, therefore anyone who opposed me is a fascist" as justification to attack journalists and truly innocent people.
EY, comparing hatred of someone for their alleged racial inferiority
with hatred of someone for threatening racial violence: “Yep, that’s
hatred alright.”
It's literally not about the hatred at all. I'm certain if we were comparing people who hate black people with people who hate people who hate black people, EY and everyone else would prefer the latter. The pivotal part is implementing political violence.
> I'm certain if we were comparing people who hate black people with people who hate people who hate black people, EY and everyone else would prefer the latter.
You are really going to try to tell me that mister hail victory spencer is not a neonazi and hates black people? Tedious. Go look up all the people/groups who attended that fatal rally in Charlottesville and are still around, organizing, and passing out copies of the turner diary.
What would happen if you've decided to extend this very generous good faith mind reading of EY to "American punch-a-Nazism" as well?
Lets go with "punching Richard Spencer."
Do you think independent of that act, EY would like Richard Spencer, or a random person who dislikes Richard Spencer? I think he would prefer the not-racist person.
Are you a strict pacifist? Is Yudkowsky? There's many more violent things in the world compared to a simple punch. If Yudkowsky was serious about opposing violence he would probably write about stopping the US military-industrial complex and other things like that.
Honestly the Russian use of “Nazism” as a justification for the
invasion of Ukraine just strikes me of taking the piss out of the US.
Who would it possibly be designed to influence?
> the Russian use of “Nazism”
Russia has long touted it's instrumental role in winning WW2 as an monumentally great thing it did for the world, at great cost. Since then it has often conflated any undesired western influence or criticism with Nazism, whether that's anti-communism, pro-LGBT rights, whatever. So this narrative makes sense, or is at least familiar, to the domestic Russian audience.
I wouldn't think invoking the Nazis would be very effective in Asia?
Occasionally a restaurant or cafe or bar will open somewhere in Asia, with a Nazi theme:
Article from last year: [In Japan, why are Nazi-themed bars still opening?](https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/3153374/japan-why-are-nazi-themed-bars-still-opening)
Other propaganda strategies may be in use for Asia.
yeah, even if they don't have the same cultural baggage, they do get that real life nazis are bad. Just as people roleplay as star wars stormtroopers even if they existed irl they would be horrible fascists.
(And then there is also the non-asian group of crazy tankie leftwingers who swallowed this 'they are nazis' shit whole, the greyzone people, and the 'it is only imperialism if it comes from washington else it is sparkling warmongering' people).
(Sorry forgot to react to this a while ago)
Plausibly, other parts of the world, maybe, say, some of the parts in, I don’t know, Europe, also care about what happened during World War Two? Just a guess.
I think the Russians are referring to the Azov Battalion which is indeed a fascist regiment within the Ukrainian army.
e.g.: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/02/15/defend-the-white-race-american-extremists-being-co-opted-by-ukraines-far-right/
The problem with this idea is that it excuses actual russian abuses, like how they (mostly, slightly changed the last 6 months) turn a blind eye to russian cybercriminals as long as they dont target russia.
And the stories about the whole trollfarms https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
Iirc it is even a sort of strategy of them to just spew as much information as they can out there so nobody can tell what is real anymore. (A different strategy than just creating fake news)
Yes im metaing yuds meta worry here.
I'm well aware of all that. I know that paid Russian trolls likely do participate in internet forums (including Reddit) with the goal of spreading general chaos and extremism (though I strongly suspect the overall effect of this is extremely low).
My point is that liberals take it and run straight into uncharted territory where there is no evidence whatsoever, and repeat unverified claims with absolute authority and confidence -- exactly what Qanon does. I can't even count how many times I've heard Redditors say that Russia created and controls Qanon -- a ludicrous claim for which there is zero evidence. And if you call them on it, they accuse *you* of being a Russian shill -- which is, again, what Qanon does.
Ow yeah, you are right, I assumed you meant it like that, I just wanted to point out the exception.
I do like that there are now qanon creation myths. I liked the one where it was actually started by some esoteric leftwingers (due to some weird references in the early work).
And I wonder, as there is a sort of spiritual fervor behind qanon (e: well good timing [of posting that nytimes](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/us/christian-right-wing-politics.html)), if the 'russiagate liberals' feel it the same way. Basically I wonder if you could setup a 'it was russia!' convention for liberals. (Which is a very very bad idea of course, dont conjure up that which you cannot put down).
You're not wrong about liberals and Russia, but comparing it to QAnon, an actual cult with a body count and representation in congress, is going a bit far. And Russia actually exists and does do _some_ of the things they're being accused of, while the QAnon worldview is completely divorced from reality.
No, no, no, not at all what I'm saying. I'm not talking about war.
What I'm saying is that for the last six years, liberals, especially on Reddit, have been ascribing all manner of magical powers to Russia, making extraordinary claims about their influence, with no evidence to back it up. They think every person on Reddit that says something they don't like is a paid Russian troll, they think Qanon is a Russian invention, they think Russia controls the GOP -- in other words, they see literally anything happen, and they conclude "Russia did it!" Which is reminiscent to me of how Qanon people see the world.
There's also things like the polonium and novichok poisonings in the UK, Russian agent Marina Butina sleeping her way through Republicans in Washington and making friends in the NRA, etc, etc.
Russia's military has been wrecked by the rampant corruption turning government spending into yachts and London flats. On the other hand, they've been pretty successful running spitting and influence operations in Europe and the US. I suppose there's less money to be skimmed from those sort of things.
But I don't think Russia's military strength/competence was ever a big issue with liberals? It was just assumed to be sufficient that we (NATO) wouldn't want to get into a fight with them. Because of their nukes, we still don't want to get into a fight with them.
Okay, sure, there is a truth tangential to what liberals claim about Russia. And qanon is, objectively, bespoke whole cloth batshit. So yes, these belief systems are different.
But what I'm comparing is their *actions.* Liberals love to make fun of Qanon for believing things that aren't true, simply because those things confirm biases and provide deep, emotional satisfaction. And yet, if that doesn't also describe liberal hysteria about Russia, then I don't know what does. Yes, organized Russian trolling exists. But to claim that Russia created Qanon, or owns and operates the Republican party, or has somehow infected the minds of leftists and controls them like remote zombies -- all of which I hear every single day on /r/politics, and all of which is backed by **zero** evidence -- and to do so with absolute confidence, without a shred of insecurity... I'm having a hard time seeing a functional difference between that and Qanon.
I think the site is long gone now, this is the post [which announced its creation](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2X6zJwWTrMbf73q5R/link-more-right-launched) (LW seems to create a lot of themotte style spinoffs (and silly people at moreright, reactionary content doesn't work unless it makes people angry or feel smugly superiour, as somebody said, it is e-girls for nerds who want to be angry at their computer not horny)), and here are some of the submissions [to the orange site](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=moreright.net). Not much there however.
Pogroms… against… nazis… 🤔
“Could it be that American anti-fascism has nothing to do with the Russian government’s fabricated justifications for war crimes?”
“…No, the leftists must be working for Russia.”
don’t make me tap the sign
Does he really think that “American punch-a-Nazi-ism” is some recent invention (let alone one cooked up as a Russian psyop)? Americans have been enthusiastically punching (and killing) fascists since the Spanish Civil War.
And as a Jew, he should be ashamed of disgracing himself twice in one short tweet: for denigrating those who fight Nazis, and for offensively misusing the word “pogrom”.
And extra points for the patronizing “kids’ total historical ignorance”.
this is what he thinks was a Russian psy-op/pogrom, I guess?
so crazy to see people work so very hard at believing absolutely nothing, having no convictions, no principles, no purpose.
Going by a brief run-in with him I had on twitter yesterday, he seems to have brought wholesale into the “peaceful Nazi demonstrators being attacked by black-clad antifa” narrative that dominates a certain sector of the American mass media.
(I didn’t ask for confirmation of this, I baled on the conversation immediately at that point. It’s like he hasn’t seen all the national security org reports about right-wing extremism being the main terrorism threat these days, let alone asked who’s behind the wheel of the trucks being driven into peaceful demonstrations …)
first they came for the “Nazis”
Segment Ranking: 1. “It’ll now be less excusable to call for pogroms against Nazis” 2. “American punch-a-Nazism” 3. “kids’ total historical ignorance”
Overall score: 9/10
You may not like it, but this is what peak rationalism look like.
EY, comparing hatred of someone for their alleged racial inferiority with hatred of someone for threatening racial violence: “Yep, that’s hatred alright.”
Thanks, man. Some great insight.
Which phase of history are we at, again? Farce or self-parody?
99% sure wanting to commit violence against the violent is a pretty old thing
When literally every bad thing that ever happens needs to be filtered through your personal lens of “the left is evil”
United States: [sends soldiers over to Europe, kills a bunch of Nazis]
Yudkowsky: clearly this is a retrocausal Russian psy-op
Won’t someone think of the nazis??
I’m going to invent a goddamn time machine so Karl fucking Popper and I can go on a “shaking some dipshits by their collars” tour.
Little does yud know that he himself is one of the kids
The post
He looks like someone trying to hit on a 13 year-old by bragging about how many NFTs he owns.
Gotta protect those poor innocent fascists from their potential victims. I mean, oppressors.
*alt right
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never been prouder of being blocked by EY on twitter
Honestly the Russian use of “Nazism” as a justification for the invasion of Ukraine just strikes me of taking the piss out of the US. Who would it possibly be designed to influence?
I have unfortunately had to say this many, many times lately. Way too many times to count. But, here goes: “Russia did it!” is Qanon for liberals.
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