Banning a party will not magically make the support they have disappear. When people with fascist views get isolated, we only make them close more and more in their own bubble, which will just create more extremism. It’s the same with people that make fun of flat earthers. You are not going to change their mind, you are just sending them deeper into their delusions.
People still don’t get that banning everything we don’t like is not a long term solution, but makes the problem worse (war on drugs, forbidding prostitution, etc)
It will not magically cure all problems, but it is indeed important to ban them. It will do multiple things, for example they will not receive any EU funding or other support. It will also prohibit them from advertising their views and they will not have a platform anymore in television and radio. Which will reduce the amount of propaganda they can spread and therefore reducing the impact they have on the population and in return reduce the support they have.
I disagree. Trump got elected (twice) with >30 felonies and after having said all sort of things that only few years ago would have made him completely uncandidable. Deplatforminng doesn’t have the impact that it used to have and only make the person look like “they are going against the strong powers”, that’s why the afd in germany keeps getting stronger despite the multiple bans, Trump in the US, the neo-fascists movements in the uk, the neofascists in Italy. What has calling these people “fascists” and isolating them has achieved? Only raising their consent. Also, television and radio are not so meaningful anymore as they used to be, internet has made them completely obsolete and most people take their info from the latter.
It’s counterintuitive, but the political history of the last 10 years has proven this multiple times. It’s very useful to look into how cult works and what’s the best way to unlock them. Isolating the people in the cult is the worst move one can make.
True, but not because they didn’t try, which is my point. The attempt was to make him so much of a monster and demonise him that nobody would have voted him. The point was to isolate him and they achived the opposite, as you correctly said.
I agree with you. When i say demonising i mean from the point of view of maga folks. The democrats wanted to show how shitty and corrupt he is, they ended up making him a working class hero that is fighting the power and then president for the second time. Trump won thanks to inhability of the democrats and the american public at large to understand that times have changed. Trump understood it and made the “persecution” his winning horse. They manage to transform his mugshot in a huge political win ffs.
I’m not sure what you mean by all this. Your assumption is that the perception of Trump by MAGA is entirely based on a distorted view made up by Democrats, and that’s not true. He won a second term because Democrats were unpopular and the exiting president (Biden) left average folks with a piss poor economy, regardless of how high the stock market was at the time. Trump, a populist, just capitalized on that, and the fact that most people have short term memory and forgot how bad the US economy was in Trump’s last year in office.
There’s no “understanding of the new times”. There’s no grand plan. Nothing changed in between Trump presidencies. I would even say that nothing has changed in the past twenty years or so: most voters will take the bait of a populist if they feel like they need to punish the outgoing administration.
Trump is a bug inherent to democracy. Strongmen tend to do well when people are upset but cannot verbalize it or are unable to find the root cause. Saying that Trump’s victory is partly a consequence of how Democrats pictured him is also extremely naive, since the mf has again and again leaned on what he has been accused of.
Your assumption is that the perception of Trump by MAGA is entirely based on a distorted view made up by Democrats, and that’s not true.
No. My assumption is that Trump did very well politically in not trying to defend himself publicly from the accusation, but to stir the focus on him being persecuted because he wants to fight corruption in the governemnt. More he was ridiculed, more his point of being “the outsider that is fighting the big corrupt powers” gained credibility in the eyes of potential voters.
Nothing changed in between Trump presidencies
Nothing? You have as a president a felon suspected of pedophily that has no shame in insulting allies and enemies, who insults journalists and heads of state publicly without consequences and has sent gestapo in the streets. The first time i could have said as well that it’s business as usual and he was just another guy voted with the belly, but now he is openly behaving like he does things because he can. It never happened before. The rule of law has no meaning anymore, he can openly behave as a king with little to no challenge in the US. That’s the opposite of nothing. What is happening now in the US has never happened in the last 70 years.
Saying that Trump’s victory is partly a consequence of how Democrats pictured him is also extremely naive
It’s extremely accurate in my opinion (and not only mine, you’ll find many articles about this subjext on virtually any US newspaper). Half of the merit of trump’s victory is no doubt because of the dems and their inhability to talk to people and to relate to them. Choosing Kamala Harris as opponent, with her patronising tone, inhability to take clear stances on sensitive subject and classic politician way of talking was the nail to the coffin. If this is not understood, get ready for many more trumps in the future.
If the republican party was banned after the first trump presidency, they wouldn’t have recovered fast enough to get a second presidency. Most likely they would have stayed fractured and we may have gotten actual reforms.
I’d love to hear the thoughts of the people that downvoted. If they disagree with what i said, or if stimply they don’t like it and want it to disappear. Unironically, the (very expected) reactions to my comment are proving my point.
They are already in a bubble and it’s extremely hard to pull them out. Their influence is spreading, so clearly current efforts to deprogram them are less effective than their recruitment efforts. At that point containment is the best option we have, even if it’s not the one I’d like we had.
Yes, because current efforts seem to be focused in only trying to isolate the people we don’t like. During pre-internet time might have relatively worked, now it’s clear it doesn’t and saying “it’s the best option we have” is just false. It’s the easier option that people (but not sociologist or social psichologist) keep adopting because it’s very easy, fits with our desire to not have shitheads around us and because people assumed that’s how it worked so far.
Stop ignoring the reality and accept the fact that despite attempts to isolate them, the right is getting stronger everywhere. It’s time to change approach or to start to get used to the new reality. Don’t trust me, go beyond social media and go check what experts of hate and extremism say, not the politician we like this year.
I don’t know if that’s true. Here in Sweden people were deadly afraid of being called racists for a long time. Being a nazi wasn’t acceptable in the public eye. Then being a racist nazi got normalised and here we are.
Giving bigots a platform and visibility serves to normalise them. They should be shamed into nonexistence.
I don’t know if that’s true
Please inform yourself about it then, because that would change the entire discussion. This is an entire field of study, it’s not hidden stuff.
I agree they shouldn’t have a platform and visibility. Definitely shouldn’t be normalised. Shaming them and isolating them is HOW their ideas grew so much. The key is to invalidate their points with arguments, even if they don’t listen, it’s important they are out there and visible to other potential viewers. If you cannot do that because you are isolated from the fascist/flat earthers or whatever, their bubble will grow constantly because they talk to the belly of the people, and these folks will look for the opinions their belly tells them their are right. This is how we got wehere we are now. People saw something they could relate to when they heard these extremists complain about immigrants, corrupted system, secret plots to rule the world. Without access to a counter argument (becuase of the isolation) the spiral started to go deeper and deeper, until full extremization. We have seen something similar with covid.
For example i think banning Hitler’s Mein Kampf, like they do in Germany, is a mistake. The only copies in circulations will be from people that probably simpatize with him and there will be little or no control over the content, which could be altered. This is very dangerous.
If the book is freely available there could be laws that force to have notes on the book, which explain why Hitler was a bullshitter and out of his mind. People will be in contact with this content if they look for that book for any reason, it’s not a small thing. They will still find the “altered” copies, but they will be much less attractive (not fascinating because forbidden and easy to find) then will be much easier to see the alteration and to counter it. I hope my point is clearer now
Letting more and more people radicalise further is no solution either. We’ve seen what happened in the US.
No, the key is general education, deradicalisation for those most prone to spreading fascism, and improvement of life standards.
Restricting immigration is one way, but we should add an article that for all the anti-immigration statements fascists make (even about refugees), they’re forced to live like the refugees did.
What, don’t want to live in a tent in a starved area? Or not have access to medication? Then how about you go improve their life standards instead of sucking oligarchs’, oil and gas industries’ dicks?
What would you suggest we should do, if one day, flat earthers find themselves in positions of power and start demanding their bullshit to be taught in schools?
I’m not suggesting to let anybody say what they want and offering them a platform. I’m saying that if you don’t want these people in power, like you didn’t want trump in power or fascists in the streets, the key is not to do the easiest thing that comes to mind, but to listen to what people that study other people say, and they all say the same thing: the more you isolate shitty people, the more and more shitty they will become, because they will create their own closed community, which history tells us will only grow. What happened when the flat earthers became mainstream and people started to ban them everywhere and threat them like idiot? Their numbers decuplicated and the closeted flat earthers suddenly were public, to the point that athletes, politicians and other public figures came out as flat earthers. The point was to isolate them, they ended up way more and widespread than before.
Banning a party will not magically make the support they have disappear. When people with fascist views get isolated, we only make them close more and more in their own bubble, which will just create more extremism. It’s the same with people that make fun of flat earthers. You are not going to change their mind, you are just sending them deeper into their delusions. People still don’t get that banning everything we don’t like is not a long term solution, but makes the problem worse (war on drugs, forbidding prostitution, etc)
It will not magically cure all problems, but it is indeed important to ban them. It will do multiple things, for example they will not receive any EU funding or other support. It will also prohibit them from advertising their views and they will not have a platform anymore in television and radio. Which will reduce the amount of propaganda they can spread and therefore reducing the impact they have on the population and in return reduce the support they have.
And this is just one aspect.
I disagree. Trump got elected (twice) with >30 felonies and after having said all sort of things that only few years ago would have made him completely uncandidable. Deplatforminng doesn’t have the impact that it used to have and only make the person look like “they are going against the strong powers”, that’s why the afd in germany keeps getting stronger despite the multiple bans, Trump in the US, the neo-fascists movements in the uk, the neofascists in Italy. What has calling these people “fascists” and isolating them has achieved? Only raising their consent. Also, television and radio are not so meaningful anymore as they used to be, internet has made them completely obsolete and most people take their info from the latter. It’s counterintuitive, but the political history of the last 10 years has proven this multiple times. It’s very useful to look into how cult works and what’s the best way to unlock them. Isolating the people in the cult is the worst move one can make.
Trump was not deplatformed, if anything the total opposite of that.
True, but not because they didn’t try, which is my point. The attempt was to make him so much of a monster and demonise him that nobody would have voted him. The point was to isolate him and they achived the opposite, as you correctly said.
Reporting on his crimes and policies is not demonising him.
I agree with you. When i say demonising i mean from the point of view of maga folks. The democrats wanted to show how shitty and corrupt he is, they ended up making him a working class hero that is fighting the power and then president for the second time. Trump won thanks to inhability of the democrats and the american public at large to understand that times have changed. Trump understood it and made the “persecution” his winning horse. They manage to transform his mugshot in a huge political win ffs.
I’m not sure what you mean by all this. Your assumption is that the perception of Trump by MAGA is entirely based on a distorted view made up by Democrats, and that’s not true. He won a second term because Democrats were unpopular and the exiting president (Biden) left average folks with a piss poor economy, regardless of how high the stock market was at the time. Trump, a populist, just capitalized on that, and the fact that most people have short term memory and forgot how bad the US economy was in Trump’s last year in office.
There’s no “understanding of the new times”. There’s no grand plan. Nothing changed in between Trump presidencies. I would even say that nothing has changed in the past twenty years or so: most voters will take the bait of a populist if they feel like they need to punish the outgoing administration.
Trump is a bug inherent to democracy. Strongmen tend to do well when people are upset but cannot verbalize it or are unable to find the root cause. Saying that Trump’s victory is partly a consequence of how Democrats pictured him is also extremely naive, since the mf has again and again leaned on what he has been accused of.
No. My assumption is that Trump did very well politically in not trying to defend himself publicly from the accusation, but to stir the focus on him being persecuted because he wants to fight corruption in the governemnt. More he was ridiculed, more his point of being “the outsider that is fighting the big corrupt powers” gained credibility in the eyes of potential voters.
Nothing? You have as a president a felon suspected of pedophily that has no shame in insulting allies and enemies, who insults journalists and heads of state publicly without consequences and has sent gestapo in the streets. The first time i could have said as well that it’s business as usual and he was just another guy voted with the belly, but now he is openly behaving like he does things because he can. It never happened before. The rule of law has no meaning anymore, he can openly behave as a king with little to no challenge in the US. That’s the opposite of nothing. What is happening now in the US has never happened in the last 70 years.
It’s extremely accurate in my opinion (and not only mine, you’ll find many articles about this subjext on virtually any US newspaper). Half of the merit of trump’s victory is no doubt because of the dems and their inhability to talk to people and to relate to them. Choosing Kamala Harris as opponent, with her patronising tone, inhability to take clear stances on sensitive subject and classic politician way of talking was the nail to the coffin. If this is not understood, get ready for many more trumps in the future.
If the republican party was banned after the first trump presidency, they wouldn’t have recovered fast enough to get a second presidency. Most likely they would have stayed fractured and we may have gotten actual reforms.
I’d love to hear the thoughts of the people that downvoted. If they disagree with what i said, or if stimply they don’t like it and want it to disappear. Unironically, the (very expected) reactions to my comment are proving my point.
If you can’t neutralize a toxic spill you contain it instead.
Exactly, but seems that we have been proven multiple times that banning/shunning/shaming only achieves the opposite.
They are already in a bubble and it’s extremely hard to pull them out. Their influence is spreading, so clearly current efforts to deprogram them are less effective than their recruitment efforts. At that point containment is the best option we have, even if it’s not the one I’d like we had.
Yes, because current efforts seem to be focused in only trying to isolate the people we don’t like. During pre-internet time might have relatively worked, now it’s clear it doesn’t and saying “it’s the best option we have” is just false. It’s the easier option that people (but not sociologist or social psichologist) keep adopting because it’s very easy, fits with our desire to not have shitheads around us and because people assumed that’s how it worked so far.
Stop ignoring the reality and accept the fact that despite attempts to isolate them, the right is getting stronger everywhere. It’s time to change approach or to start to get used to the new reality. Don’t trust me, go beyond social media and go check what experts of hate and extremism say, not the politician we like this year.
This is already an improvement over the previous policy of shooting Nazis.
I don’t know if that’s true. Here in Sweden people were deadly afraid of being called racists for a long time. Being a nazi wasn’t acceptable in the public eye. Then being a racist nazi got normalised and here we are.
Giving bigots a platform and visibility serves to normalise them. They should be shamed into nonexistence.
I agree they shouldn’t have a platform and visibility. Definitely shouldn’t be normalised. Shaming them and isolating them is HOW their ideas grew so much. The key is to invalidate their points with arguments, even if they don’t listen, it’s important they are out there and visible to other potential viewers. If you cannot do that because you are isolated from the fascist/flat earthers or whatever, their bubble will grow constantly because they talk to the belly of the people, and these folks will look for the opinions their belly tells them their are right. This is how we got wehere we are now. People saw something they could relate to when they heard these extremists complain about immigrants, corrupted system, secret plots to rule the world. Without access to a counter argument (becuase of the isolation) the spiral started to go deeper and deeper, until full extremization. We have seen something similar with covid.
For example i think banning Hitler’s Mein Kampf, like they do in Germany, is a mistake. The only copies in circulations will be from people that probably simpatize with him and there will be little or no control over the content, which could be altered. This is very dangerous. If the book is freely available there could be laws that force to have notes on the book, which explain why Hitler was a bullshitter and out of his mind. People will be in contact with this content if they look for that book for any reason, it’s not a small thing. They will still find the “altered” copies, but they will be much less attractive (not fascinating because forbidden and easy to find) then will be much easier to see the alteration and to counter it. I hope my point is clearer now
Letting more and more people radicalise further is no solution either. We’ve seen what happened in the US.
No, the key is general education, deradicalisation for those most prone to spreading fascism, and improvement of life standards.
Restricting immigration is one way, but we should add an article that for all the anti-immigration statements fascists make (even about refugees), they’re forced to live like the refugees did.
What, don’t want to live in a tent in a starved area? Or not have access to medication? Then how about you go improve their life standards instead of sucking oligarchs’, oil and gas industries’ dicks?
What would you suggest we should do, if one day, flat earthers find themselves in positions of power and start demanding their bullshit to be taught in schools?
I’m not suggesting to let anybody say what they want and offering them a platform. I’m saying that if you don’t want these people in power, like you didn’t want trump in power or fascists in the streets, the key is not to do the easiest thing that comes to mind, but to listen to what people that study other people say, and they all say the same thing: the more you isolate shitty people, the more and more shitty they will become, because they will create their own closed community, which history tells us will only grow. What happened when the flat earthers became mainstream and people started to ban them everywhere and threat them like idiot? Their numbers decuplicated and the closeted flat earthers suddenly were public, to the point that athletes, politicians and other public figures came out as flat earthers. The point was to isolate them, they ended up way more and widespread than before.