A recently released Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) document titled “Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide”* links common protest symbols to “terrorism” — another marker in a common theme of conflating militant protest for social justice with deadly terrorist violence within the United States. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Brennan Center have raised warnings about such documents, citing inadequate protections for people’s constitutional rights.
Protests are nice to look at, but they paint free targets on everyone who participates. Conservatism/fascism has never been defeated by pacifism.
If you are motivated to resist fascism/conservatism, arm yourself and train appropriately. Take classes, join left-leaning gun clubs, survival groups and prepper classes. Exercise and learn to fight.
Conservatives have been prepping for years for a war they insist is necessary. They have decided you are their enemy. You cannot change that by protesting.
As a liberal gun owner, I agree.
I want a world without mass shootings.
But right now, the majority of mass shootings happen against the most vulnerable people. And the majority of hate crimes is happening because a bunch of fucktards are pushing violent messages. And the worst part is nobody in power really gives a shit.
When I was growing up in school there was only one mass shooting at the time and that was Columbine. Kids would drive to school with guns in their racks because they planned on hunting later. The notion to shoot people wasn’t even a consideration. What we have isn’t a gun issue, we have a mental health crisis like nothing we have seen before and we are far too unequipped to handle it. We need better mental health programs and ways for people to more easily use them from a young age.
The Columbine shooters did not use hunting guns. We have better access to mental health care than in the past. We also have greater access to more deadly guns. Countries with strong gun control do not have our problem with mass shootings. Implementing strong gun control has been proven to stop mass shootings. A lot of money has been spent by arms dealers to convince you the the problem is your fellow humans, and not the largely unregulated flow of machines of death supplied for capitalist profit.
Should we have better access to mental healthcare, and intervention programs? Sure. Funny, though, how the people insisting it’s all about mental illness and not about the gun profiteers also usually oppose any public spending on mental healthcare as well.
I mean the problem is my fellow human. AI hasn’t picked up a gun and shot up a school as far as I know.
I am for more efforts to provide mental health care for low income people’s and it should be free.
There are attempts at brain washing on both sides depending on the agenda.
I can agree that military style fire arms do not need to be in the hands of ordinary civilians that haven’t undergone training in weapon safety. I believe it should be required to have yearly training on weapon safety for all fire arms.
The problem with this “both sides” bullshit is that leftist critique is nearly always targeted at systems, as opposed to reactionary ‘brainwashing’ is targeted at minorities
A “radical leftist” isn’t out to murder anyone, they’re out to disrupt the system. As far as I’m concerned, the problem is almost entirely a reactionary politics problem, not a problem of firearm training and not even one of mental health (though they are contributing factors(
Don’t conflate libratory movements with reactionary terrorism
I am honestly loving your take on the subject. It actually made me think a little about what you are saying and the fact you are very respectful in your wording is wonderful.
Can you explain reactionary brainwashing of minorities a bit further?
Many far leftists I have run into have been very controversial or just plain rude so having someone speak plainly and respectfully is a nice change of pace.
I find your lack of irony refreshing, too.
I’m confused by your question though, can you clarify your choice of using the word ‘of’ in the question “brainwashing of minorities”?
It’s so rare to run into a reactionary conservative that’s so curious about left-leaning politics, thank you for your curiosity
I try to keep my perspective unbiased which is difficult because I am human after all. When conversing with someone that brings up interesting perspectives and does not devolve to name calling I try to speak with them further because those are the ones who’s reasoning skills tend to be more developed and make for better conversations over all.
From how I understood what you were saying, there is a reactionary brainwashing of sorts. Perhaps I was incorrect in my belief that you meant of minorities specifically. I may have read it incorrectly.
Such as? Where is this (supposed) “leftist” brain-washing machine supposed to be at?
It often pops up in opinion pieces or news articles just like any other propaganda mean to influence your opinions.
Pretty much the entire rest of the world thinks that the US gun lobby is batshit insane. Have real been brainwashed?
The rest of the world can do whatever they want.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” -Benjamin Franklin
we have a gun issue and a mental health issue.
There are a LOT of people in America that own, or have easy access to fire arms, that shouldnt be allowed within 2 miles of one.
This is an inadequate summation I am afraid. Most of the world right now is experiencing a mental health crisis. A lot of the countries with similar populations and cultures to the US with primarily English speaking approximations - Australia, UK, Canada and the nordic nations… All of them are experiencing massive mental health and economic issues on a systemic level. There is something unique to the United States… The guns. Not just the lack of public safety measures to control guns but the culture of entitlement to weaponry and maintaining the fantasy of utilizing them against other humans in some sort of nebulous future extralegal event when some sort of universal concensus is reached that war is declared on the US government by it’s rag tag highly individualist citizenry.
Unfortunately you cannot divorce the mental health issue from the gun issue in the States but neither can you solve the issue without actually addressing that guns at that level of saturation are a nightmare that causes a unique presentation of crisis. Calling for it to be addressed strictly as a mental health issue will go no where… And it’s designed to go no where because as long as we are having this debate of whether it’s a gun or a mental health problem neither get addressed… And quite frankly there are simply not enough mental health professionals in the field to address that demand. The burnout rate is real amongst professionals.
There were also mass school shootings before Columbine. The Ecole’ Polytechnique massacre for instance in Canada had 22 victims in 1989 and was committed with a semi automatic weapon and it spurred a massive surge in gun regulation and restrictions for automatic weapons and maximum clip size capacity. The US is unique in that it is the only country to experience these mass shootings and yet refuse any wide ranging gun control reforms at a federal level in response.
The problem also spills over borders. 85 percent of weapons found to be used to commit crimes in Canada have been traced to purchases made in the US.
It is not a mental health crisis. At all. It is a radical fascist mediasphere crisis. Centrists have constantky defended the right of radical fascists to spend all day on the airwaves edging the audience to kill for their sponsors.
I actually agree with what you are saying, but I don’t believe it’s so black and white. I also believe the media realized the profits in outrage and terror so that’s why we are constantly hammered with it… which is likely a contributing factor in mental health issues of the country/world.
Columbine was one of the biggest ones ever at the time and a media field day, but definitely not the only school shootings around that time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_(before_2000)
It was the only one I was aware of so I do apologize for my ignorance. I appreciate your candor in the conversation at hand.
The media is a for profit organization that feeds on misinformation, half truths, lies, or propaganda. Reagan did the country a disservice removing the the Fairness Doctrine.
I’d say most of the issues of modern US stem from Reagan era decision making. The us-vs-them mentality took a wild turn from there forward.
Truth
Why does this only happen in the US? The whole world is having mental health issues?
Mass killings don’t only happen in the US. The middle east they use bombs, missiles, and guns. If someone wants to accomplish something they will find a means. Guns are just a tool like any other thing. You can harm just as many people with a nail gun, a knife, a bomb, acid, or fire. Anything can be a weapon in the wrong hands.
I do believe there are definitely people who shouldn’t have a gun but they are typically mentally unstable.
As for assault rifles. I believe that only prior military should be able to poses them since they more than likely have had extensive safety training.
Edit: I also believe that instead of glorifying mass shootings we should mock and demean the person. Too many people have it in their head that they will go down in history for such and act.
Sure. Mass killings occur everywhere but no where with the frequency that they do in the US. Middle east bombs is a terrible comparison though,. Those are acts of war not individuals picking up weapons and going on a rampage. No less awful for that, but not the topic under discussion. You didn’t answer my question. Mental health issues are everywhere in the world. Only the US is racking up mass shootings quicker than days of the year. If it were just mental health, why doesn’t the rest of the world show the same effects?
Apartheid in South Africa was solved politically. The Troubles in Northern Ireland were solved politically. The Berlin wall collapsed and the Cold War ended without violence.
Nelson Mandela was accused of being a terrorist because he was one. The ANC mostly killed civilians, “civilians” that just so happened to be key figures in apartheid politics (well, that was their goal, anyways, and it worked well enough)
Also, just how myopic do you have to be to point to the collapse as the Soviet Union as being “solved politically” while ignoring several decades of proxy wars and an attempted coup?
Shit, it didn’t even resolve that well other than independence for the satellite states, it just left Putin in charge in the end to get a million people killed himself.
Yeah and Northern Ireland involved lots of actual terrorism as well. I didn’t claim these were good people. I didn’t claim the results were a perfect world.
The point is the violence, or the threat of violence, is what forced people to negotiate in the first place.
I don’t disagree. The post I was actually responding to implied that protesting was useless and that fascism can only effectively be resisted with guns. THAT is the point I’m responding to.
War is diplomacy when all other means have failed. The same is true for revolution and resistance id say.
Violence isn’t the only resort. It’s the last one. And often unnecessary. Though not always.
“War is the continuation of policy with other means.”
-Carl von Clausewitz
Each side has labeled the other as the enemy, it isn’t just conservatives. It’s just a way for the people in power to make the citizens waste their energy on each other rather than focus on the real enemy. Both the right and the left are just tools to sperate everyone. If the citizens are fighting each other then who’s going to fight the corruption in our government?
BoTh SiDeS
More enlightened centrism bullshit. Then difference is that one side wants people dead for who they were born as.
And the reality is that there really aren’t these nicely defined “sides” for the majority of people… but there is definitely large groups of people who chose their “team”
Well put
This dialogue between the two of you is idiotic. One side is calling for the end of democracy. They are calling for violence against judges and election workers. They tried to steal a term of the presidency that they knew they lost.
How can you be so stupid as to say that is conparable? That these are just two different teams, playing the same sport, sometimes one team wins, sometimes the other team wins? Right now, aside from the aforementioned treason, one “team” wants to ban abortion, gay marriage, I terracial marriage, sodomy, and porn, and then they want to eliminate gay people, trans people, immigrants, and other minorities. That’s a different game altogether from a “team” that wants universal healthcare and a fair top marginal tax rate on the richest Americans. Go fuck yourself.
I think people who think as you do have small lizard brains. You think like that in terms of teams, and so you think that’s how politics are for other people as well. It’s not like that for me. My ideas are my own. Arrived at through years of education and experience, tested with science and debate, peer review.
Unfortunately for the over emotional people that drive their personalities from their side tend to devolve into name calling. Those people typically aren’t worth talking too. I hope the best for you.
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I deleted the last comment since I mixed you up with another name.
You are doing just as I said. Defining sides and creating teams. If you really want to get into this, I will. But can we at least talk about the conversation myself and another person had that you called idiotic, rather than copy/paste internet sentences? It’s always the same and doesn’t even line up with what we were talking about.
Unless you are a troll/bot/or something … since your final paragraph really has me questioning.
I’m a real human person.
… and they have sponsored talk shows to promote that violence against people born that way
I could say that for both sides too. Make one conversation with someone on the left about a different view and someone will call you stupid and someone will dm you to kill yourself. Same story.
I’m trans. I was happy to view those on the right as “just people who I disagree with”…until they started pushing to eliminate people like me.
Eliminate? Like kill? Because I have talked to many Republicans about these issues and they have stated time and again it is either a god issue (which I don’t agree with) or it’s a mental health issue. Never have I spoken to one and they say we need a cleansing or something along those lines.
https://www.project2025.org/
Familiarize yourself or stop making bad faith arguments.
This reads as satire but knowing fanatics it probably isn’t. If this website is legitimate then some people are deluded. However, this one website does not speak for half a nation. It’s more of a sect of delusional people. Delusions of grandeur are still delusions.
Unfortunately trans people are in the early stages of being targeted with genocidal intent. Scary times for us.
Unfortunately it’s similar to the times when homosexuality was targeted.
Absolutely, though there tends to be a lot more visibility, and potential for harm. Not to understate the harm done during the aids crisis. I could maybe be scared back into the closet
jk death before detransition, but transphobia harms cis women too. I shouldn’t know several people who have had to flee their home states due to Republican led legislation, but I do. I shouldn’t know people who lost access to their medication, some people who need it post GRS, but I do.There’s a LOT to be said about the subject. My existence shouldnt fall on party lines, but here we are.
This is quite literally the website that Trump is holding up as his plan if he wins in 2024. So while you’re right, it doesn’t speak for half the nation. It does speak for what could be the people running the country see as their goals though.
Interesting, thank you for bringing this to me. I appreciate the information.
You’re the guy sitting at the Nazi bar.
Interesting and why is that? What is your reasoning? How did you come to this conclusion?
As a biracial man I feel I would not be accepted into such a bar.
I would like to know your methods of deduction if there are any.
Yes. And I don’t care about how people who support Republicans justify their votes or why they’re voting that way. At the end of the day, the Republican Party is pushing to commit genocide against the trans community. It’s like saying “I don’t support murdering the Jews, but the Nazi party is so good for the economy”. It doesn’t matter WHY you support them.
FWIW, the east way to find the genocide is to look for people who support banning gender-affirming care. It would be the equivalent of banning antidepressants for people diagnosed with depression.
Start with the talk show hosts who promote this shit
The media is to blame in part for sure. However I have noticed that people do not use critical thinking for themselves and take the information as gospel rather than an opinion. Through this inability to parse the information provided themselves they become a weapon of misinformation that typically will shout you down or threaten you.
Right. Like I said: start with the talk show hosts who promote this shit.
I partially agree with you, but also with the rest here. Yes, as people, we should be united fighting against the elites which don’t let us live the life we deserve (because we are receiving less than we should considering our productivity, and because many problems can be solved already). We are all on a planet that we need to save, even if only for selfish reasons. We should be together. But the elites have seized the opportunity to divide us with ideologies such as economics, identity politics, etc. If they need an unfair war against a country to exploit it and extract its resources, they’ll say it’s about patriotism or security or something like that, and many people will believe it and support it. Just look how divided we are about current affairs.
The left usually goes against these interests. Thus the red scare, the fake leftists that only makes us look bad, etc. They need to disband the left, and they have an army willing to do so for free. Here’s where these opinions enter. As long as an elite, yes, but also all their supporters go against us and against basic ethical principles, we cannot sit and say: “people, do not trivialize wars on social media, it is not nice”, “oil is cool, but saving the planet is cooler”, etc.
I believe in stronger actions, for example, the sabotage people are doing against the shipping of weapons that are meant to kill civilians in Palestine or the blockages against deep sea mining. These are actions that can save lives without actually hurting others as the economical damages are not going against individuals but big institutions that can manage the losses.
I also believe in dialogue. I actually dislike how we stop listening to each other as leftists: how moderate, often liberal-leaning leftists censor radical leftists such as marxist-leninists (“tankies”) or gender critical feminists (“TERFs”), without listening to them. No, they do not necessarily promote hate and they have valid points that may need further exploration. That said, I believe in the censorship of hate speech, explicit hate speech like the videos circulating about how others deserve to die or deserve to suffer. That’s unacceptable, no matter the group of people you are talking about. Indeed! If we say that we need to kill white supremacists, it is no better than them saying they need to cleanse the population. Still, we need to keep their hate and all hate out of the normal discourse and we need to defend ourselves in case others turn to violence.
In a nutshell, it’s about defending the wellbeing of beings in the most peaceful and civil way possible. It is about defending ourselves while doing that, because the people in power and their supporters won’t often like it.
Do you want a crude example? Read about the people defending the wild life in Mexico. Politicians and organized crime want to profit off those lands. They rob lands from people, often indigenous people; they get into illegal or non-sustainable logging; they enlarge the black markets, hurting and endangering populations; they transform regions, affecting the whole ecosystem. There are people, usually biologists, who warn against this and dedicate their lives to the protection of the forests, rain forests, etc. They end up dead. It is very dangerous to protect the monarch butterflies, the wolves, the big cats… Isn’t that ridiculous and terribly sad?
This is how it has been for a long time. Speak words of freedom in the kingdom and you might lose your head. Stop the machines and they’ll justify killing you. I mean, read Lord Byron’s defense of the luddites and then think about how they dismissed it…
Personally, I do not see rightists as my enemies, I see them as people tragically going against others’ and their own interests. The ones that are in power are blinded by it, and the ones that only follow are blinded by hope: “Someday I’ll be rich, if only I defend the status quo a little longer”.
My personal enemies are the horrid ideas, feelings, and values that accompany most of these acts I disapprove of. Selfishness, vanity, etc. Some people, many people (I am no exception), naturally tend to them in varying degrees, and I can only feel disappointment for the number of people that embrace them. That leads me to my secondary enemies, the things that make people do not defy them. Cowardice, apathy, dogmatism, etc.
Edit: And I do not have final answers. I do not know if we are in need of a revolution, a reform, an extinction, time… I know very little.
I am very sorry you got caught in one of my rambling, ranting comments. My point is that it is not a situation in which two sides are equally wrong, but a bunch of the population that sides with the tyrants you yourself allude to in your comment. People who still deserve our respect; that respect doesn’t mean passivity when they actively affect others.
You are absolutely right and we need to fight against corruption and many other things, and that’s why I consider myself a leftist: you name it whatever you like. These are my attempts at rationality and correctness, and, while I might be a minority in the details, I know I am in good company in the broader ideals. Many of us disagree in a very trivial way… Sorry, and thank you for reading this far.
Your frustration is heard and accepted. I do not judge those who do not seek judgement but release from the thoughts swirling in the head which can no longer be contained.
A rant is just those feelings and thoughts we keep to ourselves far to long. Words bursting to escape and emotion longing for release. A longing for someone to listen and to have another understand and accept them.
Voting is a better means of enacting change than protesting. If ethnonationalists control government and you try to actively resist then you get crushed. If liberal-progressives control government and they resist then they get crushed. Defend yourself to the fullest extent if the law but voting is more important than protesting. If the excrement hits the rotating assembly of air moving blades then you want those sympathetic to your ideals at the wheel not those hostile to your ideals. The three most important things in real estate is location, location, location and the three most important things in representative government is vote, vote, vote.
Voting has not worked. At all.
You can make the argument that it maybe hasn’t worked enough but it’s just intellectually dishonest to say it hasn’t worked at all. If it didn’t work at all then we would have made zero progress - EVER. Yesterday this article was published about how a school board was flipped after Republicans started banning books. The only reason voting doesn’t work is because not enough people are doing it.
It has worked great for the fascists. Maybe more non-fascists should try it.
A big point of peaceful protesting is influencing elected officials and swaying voters. Voting and protesting to help are not either or. Don’t just vote, and don’t avoid voting.
Both are misguided views that help no one but fascists and naive accelerationists who have similar hero fantasies to race war nazis. Doing violence yourself isn’t fun, and non violent actions like voting or protesting work better the more free and democratic a society is.
The US requires more than a simple majority to enact positive changes through voting, even when there is simple majority rule on paper. Voter disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, and informational manipulation keeps our democracy from working in the best interests of the majority of people. In order for change that goes against the interests of the ruling class to happen, you need much higher margins of support. Fascists only need a big enough minority to win because of how they’ve rigged the system against the poor and minoritized members of society.
Even in the most progressive states, where gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement are the lowest, the wealthy convince people to not vote in their best interests. Democratic candidates court the wealthy before trying to get support from the poor, because wealthy voters are more reliable and can give more campaign donations.
The conservative Dems have an advantage over the left, because leftists have developed learned helplessness with regards to electoral politics. They’ve lost so many times because of previously described efforts by the ruling class, that they have no belief in our current democracy, resulting in a self fulfilling prophecy.
Can we name the resistance Rainbow Riot?
Pride boys?
I like that one, too. Maybe East Coast and West Coast factions?
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The Allies
I’m not clear on what situation I’m supposed to anticipate in which shooting people is the preferred resolution.
I hear they call it the “boogaloo.”
[Sarcasm] Don’t worry, though, there are plenty of minorities to sacrifice to appease them. [Very sarcasm with extra pointyness] If you just throw us all into a meat grinder for their amusement they’ll surely never do anything bad!
Downvoted by 22 doormats so far