banned
functor
25d ago
Gaza is essentially a giant open air prison that is banned form exporting and has severely limited imports. It isn't sustainable for them to have the pre October 7 arrangement. Long term the only future for Gaza is to get a much better deal. Forcing Israel to fight a permanent insurgency is a viable strategy because Israel is going to be stuck in an unsustainable situation. Israel can't be in a constant state of crisis and war.
Dean
25d ago
At that point, limiting Starlink is just a matter of banning its terrestrial assets in the country, which is easy enough.
That's the very hard part. The terrestrial asset of starlink is basically a satellite dish that goes for a few hundred USD, and will generally be indistinguishable from other generic satellite dishes. From the consumer end, the biggest difficulty is to establish a payment link, and there are long established market methods to enable that in ways that avoid general financial system monitoring, such as buying pre-pay cards with cash. And that's if anything is charged at all. There's nothing preventing, say, a government from broadcasting for free.
For a frame of reference, Iran in 1994 banned satelite dishes in general, and actively jams attempts to broadcast into the country. In 2011, BBC Persia was reportedly having around 7.2 million weekly Iranian viewers, which was about 10% of the population. As of 2023, that number is reportedly around 18 million 'in Iran and around the world'.
In short, even in an authoritarian theocracy with extremely intrusive and abusive human rights conditions and active jamming, you're still looking at significant information penetration. Countries with less resourcing of the suppression-aparatus and less will to suppress will do even worse.
How long before authoritarian or neutral countries have their own version of Starlink?
You don't satellite-based internet to access the partions of the internet- you can legally access the Great Firewall of China from across the world already. Even North Koreans can access the internet, if they use the proper protocols / minder programs / etc. Regulatory internet barriers are for keeping people in, and it's the information they want to keep out.
Which brings the question of 'what is the point?' / 'why would you bring a lot of outsiders in?'
A Sino-link that exists to keep law-abiding Chinese in the Sino-web is unnecessary for anyone except the most remote / unconnected people. A Sino-link that brings in any Mandarin-typing outsider is an ideological contamination hazard.
Granted, this might not apply to the current situation, but Musk is playing a dangerous game here by directly incentivizing the creation of competitors.
The creation of competitors is a boon, not a malus, for stopping / rolling back internet partition. If everyone has access to all the different internet broadcasters, and if everyone defends their right to ignore the regulatory pressures of other countries, then no one can enact a regulatory monopoly even as everyone has enhanced access to non-approved media.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
26d ago
With the recent news of X being banned in Brazil, it seems we're entering a new stage of the ongoing battle between major, multinational corporations and governments.
A common talking point on the left is that Musk is making a hissy fit out of Brazil, but has been happy in the past to censor for 'outgroup' countries like Turkey, China, et cetera. While I haven't looked into the truth of these claims, I think it's interesting to take them at face value, and ask why that's a problem exactly?
We have clear evidence that Facebook, Insta, Twitter, etc all heavily and not even secretly censored anti-right wing information (and even just true information) during the Covid pandemic especially, but also around other, more political topics.
So in this case, I suppose the question comes down to - if most people on the left think that censoring information during covid and around the 2020 election was fair game, why is it not fair game when someone on the 'other side' does it back to them?
Now personally I think that the censorship around covid was far more egregious, but again I'm hoping to pose a general question about freedom of speech, especially for these incredibly powerful media tech companies. Are we entering an era where elections are mostly decided based on corporate censorship? Are governments going to just cede power to the technarchs gently, or will there be more and more lawfare against them?
I don't think e.g. Brazil can really pressure someone like Musk much, but the battle between him and the EU, as well as the left side of the U.S. government, is certainly worth keeping an eye on.
Dean
27d ago
And the answer is the same- it's not like you'll be banned / doxed / pursued for such a stance here, as long you're not insulting other posters too much in the process.
Since this is a contrast to large parts of the 'normal' internet, the places you can simultaneously openly express such views without being in an ideological echo chamber are limited. Hence, the Motte gets a lot more of those sort of people than places that actively weed them out.
BahRamYou
28d ago
I remember 8 being hugely contentious. Lots of people were saying it was great, and we "just didn't get it." The main star wars subreddit banned all criticism, to the point where people started a new one "saltier than crait" just so they could complain about it. I worked with nerds in a progressive area, so I was kind of afraid to discuss it with them. I feel like it started with a ton of apologia, and even ardent fans, and now that shit is finally dying away.
vorpa-glavo
28d ago
The justification is simple: sticks and stones may break your bones but words can never hurt you. To which the standard reply is: "but words can hurt too". To which my reply is: "no it can't, because to hurt is to cause pain, and pain is purely a physical sensation.
Okay, but do you believe the opposite of this is true as well?
"Bricks and stones may make our homes, but words will never help me."
Usually, people justify free speech not just on the fact that speech doesn't do harm, but because free speech produces some tangible good in the world through the sharing of information.
But if you don't believe words can cause pain, do you also believe that words cannot produce the opposite of pain - pleasure?
Because if words can't affect bodily pain or pleasure for better or worse in your view, wouldn't it be the same whether the government banned speech or allowed it?
But if words can cause pleasure/produce benefits, then how can you maintain that they cannot ever produce harms?
jeroboam
28d ago
Musk seems determined to go full John Galt here so there's a double-digit chance he'll end up in jail, X will be banned in the U.S., and Starlink will be given to "reliable people" to run.
Dean
28d ago
Why not? It's not like you'll be banned / doxed / pursued for being pro-Russian here, as long as you're not insulting other posters too much in the process.
Which goes for most positions here.
Huge news from South America today.
A single judge in Brazil has not only blocked X in the country, but is requiring Apple and Google to remove VPNs from their phones, and is imposing a $9,000 daily fine (basically a year's salary) for anyone in the country caught using a VPN.
Elon Musk attracted the ire of this particular judge, Alexandre de Moraes, when he posted about the judge's previous autocratic attempts to silence free speech and to jail opponents of the current regime led by Lula da Silva. The legal system is very strange in Brazil, and apparently Supreme Court judges have huge unilateral powers to try cases and enforce laws as they see fit. This particular judge has done so thousands of times.
Now X is banned.
With dissent being silenced, and a corrupt socialist in charge, it seems that yet another Latin American country is set on the path to tyranny.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
28d ago
Cyclist-pedestrian accidents might not be as bad as cyclist/car, but they'd be a lot more frequent. Frequent enough that biking just wouldn't be worth it, and if bicyclists persisted would just get banned (as they are in NYC). Cyclists (especially individual cyclists, or small groups in single file) are not a major problem for drivers if they don't want to be, and one of my problems with bike activists is they often want to be (e.g. they object to cars passing them without giving them a full lane. My ass isn't 8 feet wide, you don't need to give me a full lane, just don't pass so close the breeze threatens to knock me over)
Amadan
You are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.
29d ago
Hello, welcome to the Motte.
Putting cards on the table here, I was a little suspicious of you (not many people just independently "discover" us, and announcing yourself with a username guaranteed to set off a lot of folks here is a little suspicious), but I appreciate the discussion you have generated so far, and I will go with my presumption of good faith. Genuinely, I would like to see more posters like you.
So as you have probably figured out by now, the majority of people here are... not very friendly to trans identities. This ranges from "Thinks trans women are men but don't feel a need to start fights over it" to "Believes trans women are all AGP perverts who should be mocked and shunned and they really want you to know it."
Our rules require everyone to be treated civilly, so no is allowed to directly insult you just for being trans or advancing trans views, but nonetheless you probably will receive some vigorous challenges, so I hope you are prepared for that and have a thick skin. I am being sincere here - I would like you to be able to stick around despite what you will probably perceive as an adversarial environment. Because this is also one of the few places on the Internet where people are allowed to say "Trans women are men" without being banned.
Which, bringing this around to my point, is part of the reason even many more moderate folks like myself have become, if not radicalized, then rather more hostile to trans people than we once were. Putting cards on the table again, my own personal opinion is that gender dysphoria is real and I think people should be allowed to live and identify as they wish, but they shouldn't be able to force other people to accept their internal identification as biological reality. More concretely, I think people should address you as "Ma'am" out of politeness and people who go out of their way to "misgender" you are being hostile assholes. But most people don't really believe you're a woman and you shouldn't expect them to feel obligated to update their mental model on demand, nor should you try to sniff out signs of heresy (i.e., clues that they don't actually think of you as a woman, for which you would then try to socially punish them). I am not saying you do this - but many trans people do do this, and that is the cause of the much of the present hostility towards trans people.
In my opinion, until a decade or so ago, most people (at least on the liberal side) were much more accepting of trans identity because trans people sold themselves the way gay people did - "We just want to be left alone to live our lives in peace." Which is no doubt true of most trans people! But then we started seeing increasing pressure not just to accept, but to validate. Increasing demands to proactively affirm that we really, really see you as a woman, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a hateful bigot. Then came trans women who used to be mediocre middle aged male athletes suddenly joining a woman's sports league and crushing lifetime competitors. Trans women who were men until five minutes after their conviction for a violent sex felony, whereupon they discovered their female identity and a need to be housed in women's prisons. Trans women who really want to show off their erections in women's locker rooms and force low-wage immigrant women to wax their female balls. Trans women who transition after a lifetime of being a husband and a father and dress like minimal-effort clowns while representing the US government. Trans women who want you to be fired if you won't put pronouns in your email signature.
These are undoubtedly a tiny minority of trans people. But it doesn't take very many bad actors to cause a lot of disturbance and distress, and more importantly, the reaction from the trans community has been largely, not acknowledgment that there are bad actors and maybe it's appropriate to not assume "good faith" on the part of every single man who suddenly realizes he's a woman in his 50s. Not to allow us to apply some... gatekeeping and to acknowledge that biological sex is a thing and you can let trans women live as women and be polite to them without letting them compete against women in the Olympics. But instead, to double down on all these issues and say "No, a trans woman is a real biological woman and should be able to show off their female penis in front of teenage girls, should be able to beat up women in sports, should be able to share a cell with women in a prison."
And that... is why I personally have lost a lot of my sympathy for the trans movement. I still am polite to trans people I know personally. I would use your preferred name and pronouns in person. Even though I would not actually think of you as a woman. And I would treat you as a very dangerous person to interact with, socially and professionally, on the assumption that a slip on my part would result in you trying to bring down sanctions upon me.
I am interested in your thoughts on this. Do you think the trans community has "gone too far"? Or do you think this is an exaggeration and we just see the worst and most extreme outliers? Do you think people should be required to actually think of you as a woman (to the degree that you can police someone's thoughts)? I won't demand you defend trans women in women's sports or prisons, though I am kind of interested in that, but that's a very familiar discussion we've had before (albeit rarely with trans people actually participating).
1:
Quillette published an article about the verdict, too:
https://quillette.com/2024/08/27/tickle-vs-giggle/
2:
The verdict didn't surprise me because I'm already working from the sad assumption that in the woke West, biological sex is no longer recognized as real by anyone in a position of power. What was once a woman is now a “uterus-haver”, a “pregnant person” or a “chest feeder”, but such people have no collective rights. Those collective rights now belong to those who merely identify as women, even if they have penises and testicles, which means that there is no longer any legal basis for having female-only spaces, online or offline.
What confuses and angers me is that the judge will not even explain that state of affairs in clear terms, instead insisting that this was a case of discrimination based on gender identity. But that's literally impossible! Giggle is an app for women, and Tickle identifies as a woman, so whatever discrimination Tickle faced cannot have been based on gender identity (and it wasn't: it was based on biological sex).
That's also clear from the paragraph here:
The same evidence did, however, support the conclusion that indirect gender identity discrimination did take place. The indirect discrimination case has succeeded because Ms Tickle was excluded from the use of the Giggle App because she did not look sufficiently female, according to the respondents.
Again, the decision was based on the fact that Tickle did not look biologically female, not that they looked insufficiently woman-identifying. In fact, Tickle looks exactly like a male who identifies as a woman. So the Giggle moderators, correctly, clocked her as a male and banned her for that reason. That is sex-based discrimination, which may or may not be illegal, but definitely not gender-identity discrimination.
So de facto the situation in Australia is as follows:
- You are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of biological sex.
- You are allowed to discriminate based on gender identity, but only if the disadvantaged party is the one that identifies as a man.
I don't agree that this should be the law, but this is what it is in practice. Then why can't the judge explicitly say so? Is he that stupid? Or is banning discrimination based on biological sex while claiming you are banning discrimination based on self-identification some elite power play that I'm too unsophisticated to understand?
3:
As for normie men increasingly identifying as female for the benefits:
More importantly, and/or ammusingly, normie men are deciding all that male privilege just ain't worth it, or perhaps the Spaniards are just more cheeky than average.
I suspect that a lot of these benefits in practice are only afforded to biological females and to males who make enough effort to signal that they are serious about their gender identity.
The normie dad who changes his legal sex in hopes of getting custody of his children will be sussed out as faking it and will not get the benefits associated with women and real transwomen.
This all reminds me of an old but good article by The Last Psychiatrist, The Nature of the Grift, where (in section IV) he explains that to get asylum because you are persecuted as a homosexual, it's not sufficient to declare yourself homosexual, you have to play the part too. Officially there is no rule on how gay you must act to be considered homosexual, and in practice many people fake such a claim, but it's still a requirement that you fake it convincingly.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
30d ago
· Edited 29d ago
I've been trying to get into the Unreal Engine, as Zorba recommended ages ago. I stopped using Unity last year when the big pricing policy debacle depleted the last of my trust in the company, spent a few months with Godot until I ended up banned from the Discord for very politely objecting to their using the platform for political activism, and so what's left but Unreal or making an engine of my own. Lacking the free time for the latter, I chose the former.
Unreal's system requirements turned out to be unexpectedly manageable though of course noticeably heavier than Godot. I had a lot of trouble getting it to compile anything I wrote without crashing, but eventually I managed to get that settled. Now I need to actually do things with it. I spent the last two weeks on vacation, and the month prior to that in a frenzy of job application processes (including one that had me do an extensive C++/Qt/QML coding task, so I managed to sneak in some relevant practice), but I hope to get back on track in the weeks to come.
Someone please ping me next week to request a progress update, however meager. Peer pressure always works on me.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1mo ago
You say that like we don't do this on the regular for terrorist and criminal organizations. In a lot of countries it's a crime to re-form a banned organization.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1mo ago
That's the nature of politics. Anything that hasn't specifically been banned is in play.
If that was the case, these tactics would be announced loudly and proudly, not done under the veil of plausible deniability.
wingdingspringking
1mo ago
Violence in the "state's monopoly on violence" sense of the word. If the state is physically preventing you from doing something you are otherwise physically capable of doing, that is the state exercising said monopoly. Were the state to do that, we would likely see real violence afterwards.
If the state is merely making it harder to get to polling stations, well, they already do that. Here's a sensationalized news story about how the right is making it harder for minorities to vote by selectively closing polling stations. In actuality, I'm quite sure that both sides do this when they have control over where to place polling stations. That's the nature of politics. Anything that hasn't specifically been banned is in play.
In reality, everything that the EU wants Durov to remove from Telegram is stuff Musk’s X already does remove and is happy to remove if a takedown notice is filed.
That's only if you take the EU and US at face value, that they are just really passionate about fighting pedophilia and terrorism, and don't assume that they are also trying to disrupt dissident political communication and organization. Which they obviously are. Musk made headlines just last month by claiming:
The European Commission offered 𝕏 an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us.
The other platforms accepted that deal.
𝕏 did not.
So the EU is obviously pressuring Musk to remove content which is not already removed, at least according to his perspective.
There has also been a lot in the news about the EU and US pressuring Musk:
Elon Musk is under renewed pressure from the US and EU over his ownership of Twitter, as regulators clamp down on the billionaire’s push to transform the social network into a freewheeling haven of free speech.
The European Commission on Wednesday threatened Musk with a ban unless Twitter abides by strict content moderation rules, as US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen indicated that Washington was reviewing his purchase of the social network.
The warning from Brussels came in a video call between Musk and Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner in charge of implementing the bloc’s digital rules, according to people with knowledge of the conversation.
Breton told Musk that Twitter must adhere to a checklist of rules, including ditching an “arbitrary” approach to reinstating banned users, pursuing disinformation “aggressively” and agreeing to an “extensive independent audit” of the platform by next year.
Musk is also a much, much harder target than Durov. They can't arrest him, but they probably can get away within giving X huge fines or banning it, and they have threatened to do both on many occasions since his acquisition of the platform.
The CEO of Rumble has fled Europe. Reminder that this is the "liberal free world."
So you have TikTok- forced divesture clearly going to be banned. Telegram, founder arrested. Rumble CEO has fled Europe. Musk is battling the NGOs and EU as well. This is not just about illegal content, it's about buckling down internet discourse for good.
2rafa
1mo ago
Most of the content in the leaked quasi-indictment is stuff that is explicitly banned on X to no lesser extent than it is on Facebook.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
1mo ago
An appeal to the dissident right from the Russian opposition about the arrest of Pavel Durov
Just like what’s happening in France today. In 2017, Putin accused Telegram of helping terrorists and pedophiles and tried to pressure Pavel Durov to provide the FSB with keys to decrypt private messages.
But after months of struggle and rallying, we managed to defend Telegram. It still operates in Russia today, virtually free of censorship. Although it’s in an increasingly precarious position.
Since then, Putin opened a criminal investigation against me, and my entire team was forced into political exile. We won the battle but lost the war.
Because back in 2017, we were naive and thought it was a uniquely Russian problem. We actually thought Putin was a backwater dictator preventing Russia from joining the family of free nations. Unfortunately, we couldn’t have been more wrong.
As it turned out, Putin was the trailblazer. He set the example for the rest of the Western political class with his censorship, destruction of privacy, and surveillance. It turned out, the West was simply trailing behind.
I’m now in exile in Latin America, witnessing the same silencing of people unfolding under Lula’s rule in Brazil. Reading about people getting arrested for tweets in the UK, and watching Pavel Durov get arrested in France. Something even Putin didn’t dare to do at the time.
These are not isolated issues. The political class is waging a global war against the people. It’s not just Pavel who came under attack in France last night; it’s our privacy and freedom of speech.
... I implore the global right to apply their resources to support Pavel Durov. We have what it takes to save Telegram and finally start winning.
The founder of Telegram was arrested in France and faces 20 years in prison. The charges ostensibly surround the use of Telegram for criminal activity, but the Guardian notes:
The app was also used widely by far-right agitators plotting anti-immigration rallies in England and Northern Ireland in the wake of the stabbing of three children at a Southport dance class last month.
The anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate concluded that Telegram had become the “app of choice” for racists and violent extremists and “a cesspit of antisemitic content” with minimal moderation or effort from the app to curb extremist content.
At the height of Twitter censorship, probably 95% of the Dissident Right was banned from Twitter and all went to Telegram. The only contingent of the DR left on Twitter were the Bronze Age Pervert-types who extoled "The West" and race realism but otherwise promoted a philosemitic undercurrent among the right-wing. This all changed with Musk's acquisition of Twitter/X and now nearly all of the banned are back on that platform.
Yesterday Elon Musk also gave exposure to the Telegram founder's claim that the FBI tried to recruit one of his engineers to introduce vulnerabilities into the application through open-source dependencies.
It's hard to overstate the fragility of "freedom of speech", although admittedly I mostly care about expression and information-sharing related to the topics that I consider true and important. And those are the political topics which are only actually threatened at this point. The political persecution of Durov not only threatens Telegram, basically what became the last "internet Ghetto" of the Dissident Right, but it puts pressure on all platforms to conform to EU censorship standards, which are becoming more stringent year after year. TikTok is likewise being banned for not sufficiently curtailing speech according to the interests of the Jewish lobby.
You have the EU censorship regime, the international NGO apparatus like ADL and Hope not Hate which put enormous political and financial pressure on platforms and governments to censor this speech. The current state of Internet discourse is also proof positive of Elite Theory. Only someone like Elon Musk could do what he did with X and (for now) get away with it. Musk himself has related growing scrutiny and lawsuits by the federal bureaucracy against his businesses as retaliation for his "free speech" policy in governing X, and I think he's almost certainly correct.
It really is, at this point, one man standing against the impending total-internet censorship of the Dissident Right. People were making fun of Musk for overpaying for X, but it's an important lesson, a lesson already known by many, that you can't put a price on memetic control over the collective consciousness.
The main two issues with women politically are:
A) Feminism. Enough women as a block converge politically and feel entitled to preferential treatment. Additionally, they prioritise careerism over motherhood, and sympathize with the general liberal and progressive framework. Women like other demographics, including non female liberals, have become entitled and dogmatic.
I believe it isn't all in biology but there is an effect directly related to the way liberals (and supposed right wingers who in practice compromised with progressive liberalism) pander to a group and then that group becoming receptive of this pandering. That ideology and way it frames things about how "we women" (and blacks, Jews, etc) need to fight for women rights and against misogyny, creates a radicalized entited mentality. But this isn't just a woman problem, but also a problem of other identities pandered, and of the ideologues who buy into this. These people are never going to compromise, but deny and deflect the unreasonable privilidges and society destroying aspects of the dogma, and play up the weakman/strawman of any alternatives.
It is a good thing to be hostile to people biased in a feminist and anti male direction.
An aspect of this is going to be persecution of dissent, which in Britain might include imprisoning people for non feminist speech.
What we need on such issues is to abandon these dogmas and seek for workable complimentary and wise ways to sort relations between groups. Which is impossible to do under the liberal paradigm.
And also prosecution for treason totalitarian progressive extremists in power (which includes powerful Non Govermant Organizations who play a role in this) imprisoning, or generally cancelling people for not sharing this dogma, and suppressing this faction in general, in favor of what I mentioned.
People trying to solve the problems that come from the general questions and from the feminist and general progressive supremacist paradigm specifically in both inter group relations, and in a specific society. Like birth rates, or dating rate, or whether the system works well for families, or whether it is unfair towards men and/or women.
Suffice to say people like Dread Jim represent the opposite extreme in my book. So I am not suggesting that female interests are treated as of no consideration. Just not prioritized above male interests and above common good, like what kind of societal arrangement leads to successful families and strong societies, nations, even stable international order and additionally, no reason to treat female interests and the way they are framed in the feminist perspective where careerism, abortion, are prioritized.
All this requires a break from liberal/progressive orthodoxy and even from those who claim to be in opposition of it, but actually are dogmatists for it. Authoritarianism, fanaticism, support of unreasonable and false aspects and unwillingness of compromise are the pervasive aspects of not a few kids of college, but of a broad liberal faction and of feminists in general.
B) What I call "Gullible Conformism". Women are more willing to unquestionably buy into unreasonable politics that are framed under the "I am a nice person" perspective. There is also the fact that women know less facts than men as shown in various studies.
To blame only women voters will neglect the influence of a network of activists who captured power in media, corporations, goverment, control powerful activist NGOs. We now have a female voter problem too, but historically the timing was more of these types of elites coordinating first and trying to influence women. Without them, the issue with women would had been lesser. And to be fair, women had played a role in this by taking part in the feminist movement.
But in the current situation it does exist. However with different ideology being promoted a decent % of women would distance themselves from feminism.
In regards to voting, I have entertained the idea of limiting the vote to people who pass a test that examines both their knowledge and capability to prioritize the common good. Obviously if implemented today in countries run by the far left, it would result in banning all non far leftists from voting. But in an ideal way, it would mean selecting people who understand key facts, and share some key important moral principles and demonstrate wisdom.
Which isn't apolitical but goes directly against cultural marxism/ modern far left, which is mainstream liberalism. For example there would be a question about whether "Do our people have a right to continue existing by restricting the right of foreigners to immigrate and settle on our lands, or we shouldn't have that right, because it should be considered racist and prioritised above it". Same in regards to feminism and affirmative action were the concept of excessive women rights should be put under consideration with the common good. Include some edgier questions that put in the recepient the threat of being thought as not being nice, or associating with extreme movement, but the correct position would be to do just that.
Another issue that goes beyond voting, is that a democratic regime as any textbook claims, should be about more things than majority decides. The far left conveniently either supports or tolerates far left extremism, and opposes people opposing it, but either opposes or tolerates opposing as unconstitutional the implementation of even reasonable politics which they consider to go against the red lines of the left, and associate with far right extremism.
People implementing the agenda is to disenfranchise, and treat as second class citizens or vilify, the groups progressive dislike, should be treated as people engaging in illegal and unconstitutional activity. And all organisations of this agenda should be banned. People who have done this, should be prosecuted for the crime of stripping groups from their rights, and in various cases for treason.
For example, if leftist ideologues in the police, goverment, start discriminating against the native people, you can and should imprison them. Or if they imprison people for not real crimes. There needs to be an overton window that closes and doesn't tolerate agendas that is sufficiently far to the left, including the cultural left.
Ideally, countries should not be run by oikophobes, who act as foreign occupation goverment in their mistreatment of their native people and their disallowance of existence as a community. Amd neither by extreme nationalists, not in the way the liberal/far left/"conservatives" who compromise with it define it, but those who are acting in a very parasitical and destructive manner to other nations. Same applies to other identity politics.
So the solution to this is to treat mainstream liberal ideology as an illegitimate extreme ideology, and try to promote something both more moderate, and therefore more conservative, and directly seek to solve social problems that will remain denied, treated as conspiracies, or treated as non problems, under the liberal dogma. Obviously if you aren't sufficiently conservative you can never be a moderate.
While simultaneously, pressuring groups like women to not be feminist, and stop putting women above men, in addition to promoting this ideology in the broader society. The ideology that progressive supremacy is an extreme destructive ideology, is the way forward to stop both the problems caused of it, but also the problem it cause of inter group conflict by stirring an entitled tribalist hateful attitute from pandered groups, and from people who become extreme tribalists for groups that aren't their own, and disrespectful of legitimate rights of other groups.
Of course, another problem of this ideology that we would benefit when it is suppressed, and it appears in this discussion by people indulging in this behavior, is the huge levels of bulverism and vilification and reality denial. People on the right can't have legitimate problems and oppose things, but must be nazis, incels, and all sort of boogie labels whose grievances are wholly illegitimate. This behavior, not only very dangerously leads to tyranny, and allows lies to foster, and has been key element to some of worst atrocities by far leftists in 20th century, but makes it impossible to rationally examine any issue.
Frankly, even among those ideological groups on the right which I have differences and find too extreme (referring to groups that are large enough to have some influence), who are fewer than those who claim to be on the right and compromise with far left, I very rarely if ever find any of them who have mostly illegitimate grievances against the left and leftist outgroups. It is just ridiculous propaganda. The typical type who I would say go to far, has legitimate complaints about legitimately bad behavior against the left and tribal groups associated with the left, but what they want as an end point, goes too far in a cruel and sectarian tribalist direction for my taste. That's it really. The leftist propaganda of insane far right extremist is it self promoting an insanity, and doing it often strategically maliciously so that the right can be losers, by treating their whole grievances as illegitimate.
The underlying message being that to prove you are not incel/nazi/far right be self destructive and betray your causes for the lefts. People who buy into this, will compromise with a subservient position for men and other demographics, and a subservient relationship, promising to be more subservient towards the far left.
So yeah, this type of perspective being absent from our discourse, would allow us to actually implement better gender relations that under the feminist paradigm and the bullying tactics of go along or you are a misogynist incel red piller man rights activst blah blah.
I think an important point of deradicalizing society, and I would expect with the right people in charge of the media the majority to pass the tests I entertained as an idea, would be for people to develop an active thick skin against these manipulation tactics. To become wise to this movement. Where they and the magic words no longer work anymore, and where people turn against those who will implement such tactics.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1mo ago
No mod actions in the last week! Aside from a couple outright deletions (which I assume were for bot/spam comments or something similar).
What happened? Have all the troublemakers simply been banned at this point? Or have the topics under discussion become more anodyne? I would have thought that things would be heating up with the election approaching.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
That’s a terrible idea.
- It doesn’t erode the 2A so much as demolish it.
- Same for the 1A, which has made the government awfully reluctant to assign penalties to party membership.
- It’s strategic suicide for any coalition which cares, at all, about centrists and swing voters.
- It’s literal suicide in the sense of telling bad actors “come oppress me!”
- Registered Democrats are already less likely to own guns, so they’re getting diminished returns.
- The tribal part of our monkey brains sees it as a humiliation.
Seriously, I initially read this as a straw proposal, written so you could call your outgroup hypocrites for not eating the shit sandwich. Since you’re apparently genuine, though, I can only propose a more mild alternative.
Let’s set up zones where guns are heavily restricted. To minimize the Constitutional damage, we’ll make them inconvenient rather than outright banned. We won’t tie it to party, either, dodging 1A objections. Because the zones are limited, we get to keep our coalition; the moderates can just migrate elsewhere. We’ll try to mitigate the crime incentives with alternative policing or, when that fails, harsher state action. The federalized nature of these zones lets registered Democrats choose to live in places with fewer (legal) guns without trampling everyone else’s rights quite so badly.
What do you think?
Amadan
You are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.
1mo ago
I mean, I genuinely believe it is likely to have an impact on Gun crime since most of said crime occurs in cities that Democrats govern, anyway.
So would going full Orwell. I too can imagine many modest proposals that would reduce gun crimes. Am I supposed to take your proposal seriously but not literally, or literally but not seriously?
...Yes? That sounds absolutely like a step in the right direction that they would accept?
Seriously? You actually believe Republicans would sign off on "Abortion is banned only for Republicans"?
Have you even tried asking the question to the pro-life brigade? That wouldn't stop them pushing for more but its surely something they'd agree to!
Well, no, I haven't, because it would never occur to me to propose such a non-starter of an idea, but I welcome the input of our pro-lifers here as to whether they would regard this as something they would buy into. It sounds like taking the old pro-choice line "If you're against abortion, don't have one, simple" literally.
I suppose some people might say "Sure" with the understanding that they expect it to lead to an abortion ban for everyone. I doubt very much anyone would agree to it if they know it will only ever be applied to those who are against it in the first place.
So would your proposed "Gun ban for Democrats only" be fine with you if you know that those who agree with it are going to use it as a first step in banning guns for everyone?
More generally, "people who propose laws get those laws applied to themselves and themselves only" is just not how things work.
Like, this is the question of "Okay, we'll ban abortion, BUT, we'll require the males to be held financially accountable for their children" question. Conservatives would hit that button so fast it'd make your head spin.
Sure, but that's not the same proposition at all, because both conditions would be favorable from their point of view. "Enforce a more conservative policy on men and women? Yes please!"
I mean, I genuinely believe it is likely to have an impact on Gun crime since most of said crime occurs in cities that Democrats govern, anyway.
First, not all Democrats are anti-gun.
Then they can simply reject their party affiliation and maintain their rights.
Easy. They're not going to be inconvenienced in the least if they care about gun rights.
Second, those who are mostly don't want an absolute prohibition on firearms ownership.
I don't care what their proposal is, I'll accept any sort of gun control policy if it applies to registered Democrats only.
Find me one THEY will accept on those terms. Call it a 'compromise' position, which is how they always describe their proposals.
"Republicans say they want abortion banned. Therefore, we will hereby ban abortion, but only for registered members of the Republican Party. Clearly, this will have the desired effect of reducing abortions, and it's what they say they want. Sound fair?"
...Yes? That sounds absolutely like a step in the right direction that they would accept?
Have you even tried asking the question to the pro-life brigade? That wouldn't stop them pushing for more but its surely something they'd agree to!
Like, this is the question of "Okay, we'll ban abortion, BUT, we'll require the males to be held financially accountable for their children" question. Conservatives would hit that button so fast it'd make your head spin.
Quality of life in the Palestinian territories in general pre-war was not substantially below that of other (non-petrostate) Arab nations and communities.
More options
Context Copy link