Philosophy Now Forum

I've just read that a speech at Berkeley was shut down by a gang of (apparently) Leftist thugs smashing windows and setting fires.

Question:

If men in brown shirts storm though the streets, breaking windows and suppressing dissent, it's called "Kristallnacht," and it's an epic human rights disaster.

If people in black hoodies storm through the streets, breaking windows and suppressing dissent, it's called "Liberal social activism," and we laud it as a gesture of human rights.

Does any of that make sense?

If I were the owner of this forum, I would forbidde a lot of words. I would let people call to others son of a bitch, etc. But "right", "left", "USA", "god", "commie", "neowhatever" (the other day there was a thread about neoconservative people, neoconservative, wiiiii), "paradigmatic", "society", and all that crap...

TSBU wrote:If I were the owner of this forum, I would forbidde a lot of words...

Maybe; but it won't matter to the question here.

Call the two sides the "ups" and the "downs," or the "greens" and the "blues," or whatever you can imagine; so long are there are different political views, the issue is this...

If behaviour by one side is recognizable as morally deplorable, can we celebrate the very same behaviour as wonderful when it's being done by another?

Immanuel Can wrote:
If people in black hoodies storm through the streets, breaking windows and suppressing dissent, it's called "Liberal social activism,"

If you don't like it being called that, just call it something else.

Okay: tantrums.

Immanuel Can wrote:I've just read that a speech at Berkeley was shut down by a gang of (apparently) Leftist thugs smashing windows and setting fires.

Question:

If men in brown shirts storm though the streets, breaking windows and suppressing dissent, it's called "Kristallnacht," and it's an epic human rights disaster.

If people in black hoodies storm through the streets, breaking windows and suppressing dissent, it's called "Liberal social activism," and we laud it as a gesture of human rights.

Does any of that make sense?

Liberals believe in free speech, idiot. The literal meaning of the word root is 'free'. Self-proclaimed 'progressives' aren't liberal. I don't think you would really want to live in an anti-liberal world. 'Progressives' are just as irrational and fanatical as whatever the 'other side' calls itself at any given time. All these labels really are a deliberately-confusing pain in the arse.

Immanuel Can wrote:I've just read that a speech at Berkeley was shut down by a gang of (apparently) Leftist thugs smashing windows and setting fires.
Question:
If men in brown shirts storm though the streets, breaking windows and suppressing dissent, it's called "Kristallnacht," and it's an epic human rights disaster.

If people in black hoodies storm through the streets, breaking windows and suppressing dissent, it's called "Liberal social activism," and we laud it as a gesture of human rights.

Does any of that make sense?

A bit yes. Trump inflames these situations by his rhetoric so you get what you get. For example you get such as you equating a deliberate nationwide pogrom against the Jews by the Nazis with a college protest against a Nazi(even Twatter banned him) that turned violent.

Are they 'Leftists'? I doubt it as you don't really have any over there but you do like to tar your right-wing liberals with, in America, such an inflammatory phrase.

Who's this 'we' who are lauding it? As you don't appear to be for a start.

Is it against Liberalism to stop free-speech, yes. Would you have defended Hitler and the Brownshirts right to speech? I guess so but what if those who preach violence and hate could be stopped by violence, would you support it then?

Personally I think this all hysterical given the amount of violence, death and murder your country accepts annually. Let alone the mass killings.

Arising_uk wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote:I've just read that a speech at Berkeley was shut down by a gang of (apparently) Leftist thugs smashing windows and setting fires.
Question:
If men in brown shirts storm though the streets, breaking windows and suppressing dissent, it's called "Kristallnacht," and it's an epic human rights disaster.

If people in black hoodies storm through the streets, breaking windows and suppressing dissent, it's called "Liberal social activism," and we laud it as a gesture of human rights.

Does any of that make sense?

A bit yes. Trump inflames these situations by his rhetoric so you get what you get. For example you get such as you equating a deliberate nationwide pogrom against the Jews by the Nazis with a college protest against a Nazi(even Twatter banned him) that turned violent.

Are they 'Leftists'? I doubt it as you don't really have any over there but you do like to tar your right-wing liberals with, in America, such an inflammatory phrase.

Who's this 'we' who are lauding it? As you don't appear to be for a start.

Is it against Liberalism to stop free-speech, yes. Would you have defended Hitler and the Brownshirts right to speech? I guess so but what if those who preach violence and hate could be stopped by violence, would you support it then?

Personally I think this all hysterical given the amount of violence, death and murder your country accepts annually. Let alone the mass killings.

What exactly do you mean by 'liberalism'! ? Why won't anyone define what they mean when they use it? It a fucking good word that has been fucked up by illiterate fucks.

Immanuel Can wrote:I've just read that a speech at Berkeley was shut down by a gang of (apparently) Leftist thugs smashing windows and setting fires.

Question:

If men in brown shirts storm though the streets, breaking windows and suppressing dissent, it's called "Kristallnacht," and it's an epic human rights disaster.

If people in black hoodies storm through the streets, breaking windows and suppressing dissent, it's called "Liberal social activism," and we laud it as a gesture of human rights.

Does any of that make sense?

we don't laud it

the leftist media lauds it

they also said hillary won

-Imp

Impenitent wrote:we don't laud it

the leftist media lauds it ...

You don't have a leftist media but if you did presumably the rightist one deplores all this.

they also said hillary won

I thought they said she won if you count the popular votes but with your electoral system she didn't.

Arising_uk wrote:

Impenitent wrote:we don't laud it

the leftist media lauds it ...

You don't have a leftist media but if you did presumably the rightist one deplores all this.

we do and it does

they also said hillary won

I thought they said she won if you count the popular votes but with your electoral system she didn't.

for a year prior to the election they said she had it in the bag

-Imp

I think it's funny. But then, it's California. It's to be expected.

Impenitent wrote: for a year prior to the election they said she had it in the bag

-Imp

That's the pollsters. The media is pretty much just churnalists now.

They all copying and trying to survive the 'alternative fact' world were no-one hear's anything but what they want to hear.

Who'd have thought that Philosophy can still do it's stuff as you can lay it at the feet of the three amigos, Derrida, Foucault and Lacan I think.

Immanuel Can wrote:I've just read that a speech at Berkeley was shut down by a gang of (apparently) Leftist thugs smashing windows and setting fires.

The national reporting of this incident is sensationalistic because that's what the viewers want to see. And Fox News is all in with the hysteria of course.

These "Black Bloc" morons, as they call themselves, are the ones who show up after dark to break windows and start fires. And grab the narrative. During Occupy, 50,000 people staged a totally peaceful protest at the Port of Oakland all day long. After dark, the "anarchists" came out, broke windows and set fires, and the riot cops came in with teargas. What do you think was on tv the next day?

Berkeley is the next town over from Oakland. The troublemakers take the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and trash the campus. The visuals are great. The story goes worldwide.

That's what 20 or 30 morons can do, the exact same morons and probably a lot of the exact same people I saw at Occupy five years ago. It's a damn shame. They are "leftists" in the sense that they spout all the PC rhetoric. But they're not political. Breaking windows is their politics. It's all they stand for.

That said, I do think the left is at some point going to have to take a stand for civility. The Oakland Black Bloc has gone way over the line and it's time for the adults to stand up and say Enough.

And it's in the left's interest to disown and condemn this violence. Because FOX News LOVES the violence. It undermines the left's cause. If the country has to choose between Trump and morons setting fires, it will choose Trump.

Impenitent wrote:

Arising_uk wrote:

Impenitent wrote:we don't laud it

the leftist media lauds it ...

You don't have a leftist media but if you did presumably the rightist one deplores all this.

we do and it does

they also said hillary won

I thought they said she won if you count the popular votes but with your electoral system she didn't.

for a year prior to the election they said she had it in the bag

-Imp

They knew it was to be the opposite and so