AmoshiasJan 26

@c_change I mean, if it tells you all you need to know, that tells me everything I need to know about you :-)

the world is not purely a black and white affair. does it change anything for you if you were to learn that the reason freedom of speech, for example, was not originally enshrined in the Constitution was because the opponents of the Bill of Rights said "this amendment is unnecessary because the Constitution gives the government no power to restrict freedom of speech"?

Show threadAmoshias

@c_change at least some of the people who thought the Bill of Rights was unnecessary disagreed with it explicitly because they thought that the existence of a Bill of Rights implies that the government has implicit powers to do things, and they did not want the federal government to have any powers not explicitly delegated to it.

I strongly suspect that learning this will not change your opinion of anything in any way :-) but I'll ask the question - does it?

Jan 26 at 5:20pmWeb
Show threadAmoshiasJan 26
@c_change lol. It says so much about someone when you present neutral, factual information in a way which would cause them to rethink something they've said and their response is to block you:-)
Show threadCharles ☭  is a GreenJan 26

@Amoshias @c_change

This line of 'logic' is a somewhat alarming escalation by the far right. I mean, ignoring the bill of rights is necessary to meet their goals, I just have never seen anyone try to make any arguments supporting that until now.

Show threadAmoshiasJan 26
@celesteh @c_change is the guy who I was responding to on the far right? I assumed he was a tankie saying "the country was rotten from the founding!"
Show threadCharles ☭  is a GreenJan 26

@Amoshias @c_change

I a lot of american tankies weirdly get ahold of far right logic. For a while, they were watching RT, but now I think there's just a lot of weird chatter floating around their milieu that originates from hostile actors trying to influence them.

I know what this sounds like, but I saw a _lot_ of bots on twitter and there's absolutely no reason to imagine fedi has any defence at all against influence campaigns.

Indeed, when the US left goes off on a purity politics thing, I think that may be evidence of how much unfriendly influence they've endured for decades.

Just to be clear, horseshoe theory is (obviously) generally bunk, although, equally obviously there are highly volatile groups and individuals that do move from one extreme to another, seeking an authoritarian framework that suits them.

Show threadCharles ☭  is a GreenJan 26

@Amoshias @c_change

Also, the country was rotten from the at least as far back as the Mayflower Compact, but one needs to think of likely outcomes when deciding on strategy. Now is clearly not a good time to attack the bill of rights, so anybody doing so is either hostile or wildly misguided.

Show threadRinaldo NaldiJan 28
@celesteh @Amoshias @c_change
Show threadAmoshiasJan 26
@celesteh @c_change I mean... I don't know that the horseshoe theory is bunk. most tankies I've talked to would be just as bad as the fascists in charge now - the only difference being they have no power and therefore no ability to act on their fascist instincts.
Show threadTobin BakerJan 26
@Amoshias @celesteh @c_change I mean, your interlocutor has the tankie insignia in their bio...
Show threadMidgePhotoJan 26
@Amoshias @celesteh @c_change
It takes more than one, or two, dimensions to describe politics.
Show threadTobin BakerJan 26
@celesteh @Amoshias @c_change if you spent as much time on twitter as I did monitoring the English-speaking pro-Russian side after the invasion of Ukraine, then horseshoe theory might seem more plausible: it was literally nothing but tankies, trollish alt-right types, and chauvinist Orthodox Christians.
Show threadCharles ☭  is a GreenJan 26

@tobinbaker @Amoshias @c_change

The 'analysis' of the west=bad has made tankies hugely vulnerable to manipulation. Also, large numbers of USians seem to be entirely unaware that the soviet period is over. People who should really know better somehow don't. Its completely bizarre.

Again, there are individuality and groups who have horseshoed themselves. This isn't unique to this moment. The UK's Revolutionary Communist Party is none of those things now. Oswald Moseley started as a leftist. Even many of the British suffragettes went fascist. I think this is what happens when one wishes to be radical but is posh and doesn't have a good class analysis / solidarity.

The US version of this failure mode probably fails to account for race. Allies of Putin in Ukraine are extremely comfortable with antisemitism.

I've been going to rallies to support Venezuela, which is uncomfortable because all the Trotskyites really love dictatorships. I thought they were against that sort of thing, but everybody is a tankie now, I guess.

Show threadMarc TriusJan 26
@celesteh having spent many years insisting that the Horseshoe Theory is bunk, I not find that it is unfortunately often an accurate description of reality for the simple reason that it's easy to have the same substance with different rhetoric.
@Amoshias @c_change
Show threadCharles ☭  is a GreenJan 27

@alter_kaker @Amoshias @c_change

Everybody wants to reject liberalism. Nobody wants to look at whether any part of it was ever good for anything. ... Except, like Karl Marx, but who needs to look at his writing?