I think he's sorely underestimating how much authoritarians love the idea of widespread violence, and how it justifies their worldview in a sorta circular way.
this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Conservatives are violent by nature. They are violent when they lose and they are violent when they win. They do not value the lives of others the way normal people do.
Do your part. Train, teach and prepare. Join educational groups like The John Brown Gun Club. Conservatives are not going to stop themselves. Pacifism has never defeated conservatism.
Not nature, no. It's a nurture vs nature thing. I have gotten through to some on occasion, and to do so, you have to try to understand the nurture elements they are responding to, how they got that way. It's not their genetics, or their race, or their gender, or their socioeconomic status. It can be any of those. It's not nature though, it's environmental, usually stemming from abuse without being provided a way to understand it imo.
Additionally, I would point to Indian Independence and the work of Mahatma Gandhi to put forward an example of a very rare case where pacifism defeated conservatism.
It's rare though, and it is good to know how to defend yourself. Even just in general.
I respect the place of kindness your position comes from. I would like to offer counterpoints, if I may.
Ghandi was murdered by conservatives. Pacifism did not appear to cure conservatism at all in his case. Quite the opposite, in my opinion.
Also, there are decades of studies documenting biological differences between conservatives and normal people. But, to be fair, I am not assigning blame for their condition. I am simply warning of its dangerous resistance to treatment and the deadly consequences of not treating it.
Respectfully, this is dehumanizing language. I think we know where that mentality leads, as once we lose all respect for a certain group of people, we become more willing to use warfare against them. Which is exactly what they want, since liberals and conservatives both are capable of transforming into the other, and warfare doesn't tend to make more of us.
Nobody is just a robot executing their programming or something.
Nearly every act of bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, antisemitism and racism ever committed in the U.S. has been committed by conservatives. I don't think I am the one guilty of dehumanizing people. I think I am affording them considerably more respect than they deserve.
Is it different somehow when you dehumanize the dehumanizers? I personally will not employ those methods, though I do understand the anger.
As has been pointed out to me, I think we are finding ourselves in a paradox of intolerance, wherein to resist intolerance, one must be intolerant of the intolerant.
I'm well familiar with that argument. I simply believe its sometimes counterproductive. It can create more, not less, of them. Does intolerance have a long pattern of successful results? Their intolerance, even in places like Russia, has failed to stamp out the LGBT community there. Fear is simply not as strong a motivator as some would like to believe, people do not have to do what it takes to survive. They also experience things like pride, which conservatism even encourages to a large degree.
While strategic intolerance is important, we certainly shouldn't throw intolerance away and do 100% tolerance, I think we need a broader set of methods. That's all. It's that whole diversity thing, utilizing a broad array of methods and styles in the hopes of achieving broader success.
Fair points.
I'm in the USA - is my perception that this rise of authoritarian populism is a global phenomenon correct, or do Americans just pay more attention to that sort of thing abroad when we're worried about it at home? In other words, Trump is a new phenomenon here but are the Trump-like politicians elsewhere new there too or are they more of the same?
It's very much a global thing. It's happening all over the planet, in various EU countries, in South America, across Asia. Even Canada is seeing a sharp rise in right wing extremism. Trump-like politicians are being elected in many places, and extreme right parties are gaining seats in parliaments, and racist, sexist, intolerant civilians are becoming more and more vocal and violent in every corner of the world.
There are other examples of Trump-like politicians; Putin in Russia and Orbán in Hungary come to mind. Trump is kind of unique in explicitly modeling his rhetoric after Hitler's.
explicitly modeling his rhetoric after Hitler’s.
Everything has come full circle. Hitler was heavily inspired by US policy for many of his actions