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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   37693 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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You guys do terrorist attacks all the time though. Every couple months one of you ODs on 2016 /pol/ memes and shoots up a synagogue or a mosque or a crowd full of blacks and Mexicans.

  • -12

Who is "You guys"?

Speak of specific groups, not in generalities, and if you want to start lobbing accusations of mass shootings and terrorist attacks, you really need to be specific.

"You guys" meaning the category of right-wingers he wishes would take violent terroristic action, using the specific example of mass-killing prominent antifa figures, a category he presumably identifies with (or else why would he be mad they're not doing terrorism?).

A few replies down he says that Anders Breivik made "a fair effort" so it's fair to say he's pro-mass shooting in principle but takes issue with its practice. Real right-wing terrorism never been tried.

Just appalling.

Fc writes the following and this is the guy you mod?

"They whipped themselves into a frenzy over Trump, and now someone has actually tried to kill him, and for many on the left there is no actual way to walk it back, nor ability to recognize the realities of their position. All they know how to do is double-down, which makes further incidents inevitable, which in turn makes reciprocity from the Reds inevitable."

Yes. Talking about what "leftists" or "Reds" do is arguable (if FC wrote "Leftists are terrorists" as a blanket statement, that would not be okay - but he didn't). Directly addressing someone with what "You guys" do is not okay unless you can justify it by explaining who "you guys" are (and if what "you guys" are doing is terrorist attacks, you'd better be very specific).

Given the who he was responding to, obviously "you guys" is referring to a general category of right wingers

That was my interpretation, and saying "You guys" (meaning right wingers) "do terrorist attacks all the time" violates a bunch of our rules.

I understand that you do not agree with my ruling. Such is the way of things.

But saying, leftists perpetrate attacks all the time as fc did doesn't break the rules?

Theres no agree or disagree about it. I Simply do not understand the principle behind this application of the rules. It seems incoherent to me.

"Leftists perpetrate attacks all the time" and "Rightists perpetrate attacks all the time" are both true statements. Saying "You guys" (implying the person being addressed is part of the group of people who commit terrorist attacks) is a different kind of statement. People are modded for making equivalent generalizations about leftists.

If you still don't understand, feel free to elevate your inquiry to Zorba or ask another mod if you think they will give you a different answer.

If the person Mandalay was responding to is a rightist (and I think it's pretty clear he is), then it is a true statement that the person being addressed is part of a group that commits political violence.

What's your actual objection to the passage you've quoted? Where am I wrong?

Mandalay isn't wrong either.

That's chimps running wild with a Glock, not planned political violence. The closest the right ever got to that is Breivik (a fair effort) and McVeigh (absolute "please read literally any other book" retardation)

Where's the White Army Faction that car-bombed blackrock CEOs, disappeared politicians, shot down air liners, massacred a whole country's Olympics team? And then went on to get hidden in safehouses by right wing politicians until their financial backers got them pardons?
That's political terrorism.

I'm curious: what is it about the Oklahoma City bombing that you consider "retardation"? Presumably you're not worried about discrimination given your suggestions; are you making the same objection Pierce did, or something else?

Ashamed to say I haven't read Pierce's comments yet, that book report project is on hold for a bit. I'm guessing he said that it was done too soon, against a target that wasn't strategically important (unlike the surveillance center targeted in the book), nor aimed at destabilizing the regime?

The amazing part to me was that the protagonist of the book even second-guessed their bombing because in retrospect it focused the attention of the regime too early, when the resistance didn't have anything lined up to exploit the brief opening it gave them. The surveillance system was rebuilt with better hardening by the time the war got going, and it was only total economic and social collapse that stopped the regime wiping them out.
I said "read any other book", but honestly reading past the first hundred pages of the book he did read should have made him think twice about bombing symbolic targets without a strategic plan.

That's actually the reason I found the book fascinating enough to write about. It avoids so much of the wish-fulfillment you see in other rebellion stories: most of the characters' ideas don't work, most of their plans go awry or backfire, many of their successes are ultimately irrelevant or sideshows in the larger picture. Pierce ended up writing such a realistic story he had to pull a cabal of hooded supermen out his ass to have it end in any kind of victory.

I'm guessing he said that it was done too soon, against a target that wasn't strategically important (unlike the surveillance center targeted in the book), nor aimed at destabilizing the regime?

The amazing part to me was that the protagonist of the book even second-guessed their bombing because in retrospect it focused the attention of the regime too early, when the resistance didn't have anything lined up to exploit the brief opening it gave them.

I don't think he mentioned the importance of the target, but yes, from what I've heard he said that terrorism's only worthwhile if sustainable.

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