• 15 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: April 1st, 2022

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  • “Human rights” are a nice idea, but unfortunately, they’re a joke in practice. History clearly shows how quickly even the most basic rights vanish. If you aren’t liberated, if you don’t have the power to defend them (whether collective or individual power), rights are only privileges. So in that sense, I can’t consider it a human right.

    But do I think someone should be free to pursue that goal? I’m not sure. Remembering history is really important in our development and learning. For a more extreme example, if someone, say, worked as a hitman for organized crime, killing many people, and later regretted their decision and requested people forget about them, I don’t think someone who has had such a profound impact on a society should be able to simply demand that anyone, let alone the whole of their society, ignore their past actions.

    I believe people can appeal for forgiveness, or even ask people to forget them, but I don’t believe in a universal right to be forgotten, such as legally punishing people who discuss someone who wanted to be forgotten (I really don’t know how else such a right could be enforced).


    With all that said, the GDPR “right to be forgotten” is a distinct and wonderful thing and I hope more countries enforce it. But again, know it’s only a privilege. A company can literally just make an illegal copy and pass it around like candy, if they believe they can avoid prosecution.


    1. What is their monetization model? If you read the original article defining ‘enshittificaiton’, it’s clear how this factors in. FOSS projects tend to avoid this, and in the occasional cases where they are sold and aggressively monetized, there are usually forks (see: audacity->tenacity). With donation-run but non-open services, you really just have to hope. If it’s unclear or for-profit, avoid wherever possible (unfortunately not always possible).

    That’s the bottom line.






  • So for people trying to get attention, identifying as Antifa […] probably doesn’t help them these days.

    People doing actions for clout are likely to be shunned as opportunistic. A well-known antifascist guide to doxxing Nazis straight up says [paraphrasing] “seeking clout will make people skeptical of your actions, just don’t do it”.


  • Interesting, you picked two brands which aren’t really single groups.

    ‘Antifa’ is a social movement which developed from a red united front organization in 1930s Germany[1] and turned into a general brand we see today. Any group of antifascists can identify as antifa using symbols and tactics. You can find a friend and go be antifa.

    Similarly, ‘Anonymous’ grew out of social justice activism on 4chan and, as the name suggests, is a fluid kind of identity. Anyone can use the name, the original chatroom/group is less and less relevant as time goes on.

    Both collectives are still present and doing things, but antifa groups are far more relevant. They’re just not in the news as often as they were during BLM. Anarchist blogs and media outlets (e.g. Unicorn Riot and It’s Going Down) often have updates on recent antifascist actions, including disrupting neo-Nazi protests and infiltrating+sabotaging their organizations.


  • and am not so sure direct democracy is a good idea at all, anymore.

    Personally, in an ideal world (and it’s feasible to test on a small scale like an organization election), I would advocate a certain kind of mass conditional democracy where everyone has the right to vote but must answer some very basic objective questions to verify they understand (e.g.) the candidate positions and election basics. The answers can all be found in an educational pamphlet published collectively with candidate approval prior to the election. The goal is to allow as many voters as possible, so long as they can demonstrate a basic awareness of the situation.


  • are actually very well defined

    Eh, I can’t quite agree with “very well defined”. Even Nazism isn’t really internally coherent, it’s surprisingly nonsensical, let alone all the variants of fascism straying so far from classical fascism.

    But that’s me nitpicking academically. Fascist organizations are crystal clear about their association, beliefs and what they want. When they heil or wear neo-Nazi symbols in a political context, there’s no longer any need to doubt.

    It is a concerted effort to redefine or undefine them so there is no longer a word to describe them.

    Absolutely. Nazis have been made very aware that most communities reject them on sight and so wolf-whistling and pathetic attempts of plausible deniability are used to pretend they’re just ‘regular’ patriotic nationalists (see: Musk salute, and this related salute overseas a few weeks earlier). But even then, these are paper thin attempts. “You’re the real nazis!” “Oh everyone’s a nazi these days!” “Actually they were a specific party at a specific place at a specific time!”, you just gotta laugh.





  • but nobody can win without being slick and two-faced

    And don’t forget ‘rich’, or more importantly, supported by the rich. A national-scale campaign requires resources that a typical organization can’t gather, and to win without such a campaign is miraculous in most systems.

    So, you’re assuming we’re all American here.

    Nah, like you said it applies to most democracies, even if America is an extreme example of these universal trends.



  • People who self-identify as Nazis, as well as those knowingly in neo-Nazi organizations, are therefore perfectly valid targets of assassination. Historically, Nazi killers are seen as national heroes, so don’t give me that ‘winning people over to your side of history’ junk.

    When it is strategically effective to shoot a Nazi, and it often is, then I advocate you do so without hesitation. Where it is not strategically effective, I advocate the myriad of nonviolent techniques put in use by antifascists. These are preferred, not because of some silly claims that Nazis should not be harmed, but because they’re safer and more sustainable than individual actions.

    Listen closely to what a Nazi wants, yes even the ‘cosplay Nazis’, and think about whether their life is more important than stopping their goal of mass extermination.


  • comfy@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.mldeleted
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    9 days ago

    I don’t know what the culture is where you are, but I don’t give people money for friendly gifts. If anything, that just implies our relationship is transactional and shallow, rather than a community who care about each other more than money.

    What I do is return the favor by giving them free things later, just like they did. Like buying them a drink at a pub.