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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   31472 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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My thoughts: It's sad that some progressive organizations might be reluctant to bring positive attention to the rebels or the tools they use because it arguably hurts their cause or something.

I mean, it actually can hurt their cause- if a man knows he can just magic up himself a gun, he has a stronger position from which to re-negotiate or enforce a social contract (and fighting against government forces is fundamentally a re-negotiation attempt, as is most targeted violence). For people who have, or aspire to have, the power to unilaterally impose such a contract, this is a problem.

So the establishment needs to show "that protest and resistance works and is good" per their internal narrative, but if they also anticipate (rightly or wrongly) being resisted in the same way (for any reason- human beings generally don't like being forced to do things at gunpoint), it's important not to go into too much detail.

"the most important thing to me is getting these files somewhere where they can't be taken down and where they can be accessed by anyone, because that's the only way for me to help rebels like these. I care about the downsides of making these guns available, but I've calculated things and it is greatly overshadowed by the upside."

This is the same argument pro-gun people use in the US as well- they just believe in arming said rebels up front rather than trying to fix it after the hypothetical dictatorship is imposed in an attempt to make it more difficult to create. Whether or not that's worth the price is... ultimately where the debate lies.

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