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Eco-fascist attack in New Zealand

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MisterSwig

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1 hour ago, Grames said:

I reject the idea that a mixed economy is capitalism or a version of capitalism.  Fascism is also compatible with the pretense of private ownership of property, so you can't leap to the conclusion that "here's some capitalism!" because you find some private property there. 

Actually I can. Just because the government could decide in the future to violate my right to private property, that doesn't mean I don't own that property now, or that economic forces are not in effect as long as government leaves my property alone. To the extent that I can exercise property rights, capitalism exists.

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9 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

Actually I can. Just because the government could decide in the future to violate my right to private property, that doesn't mean I don't own that property now, or that economic forces are not in effect as long as government leaves my property alone. To the extent that I can exercise property rights, capitalism exists.

So in your evaluation fascism is a type of capitalism?   I disagree, to say the least.   You might have some freedom by default to the extent that the government decides to go after others' property but a capitalist society is organized around the governing principle of individual rights.  Nor would a society that recognized property rights but no others be capitalist.  

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43 minutes ago, Grames said:

So in your evaluation fascism is a type of capitalism?

No. Are you saying that America is a fascist nation? I don't think we're there yet. And I suspect it'll be crystal clear once a fascist regime takes over. These people are not subtle.

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14 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

No. Are you saying that America is a fascist nation? 

The central bank is the central pillar of fascism.  America has had its central bank for over 100 years now and a lot of toxic shit has spawned in its shadow.  We have the black shirts and political correctness, we have the degenerate popular culture of Wiemar.  We have the race vs. sex. vs religion identity group struggle over control of local and national government. Mass news media and academia is entirely given over to moralizing propaganda of the fascist perspective.  Fascism is here.  It isn't fully manifested yet and isn't fully in control but it is definitely here.   Its going to get worse.

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1 hour ago, Grames said:

It isn't fully manifested yet and isn't fully in control but it is definitely here.   Its going to get worse.

You're showing how fascism has been developing over a hundred years. But so has capitalism. These are positive and negative forces at war with each other. Even in industries once dominated by government, private companies have emerged to replace them in part. Companies like FedEx, UPS, and Amazon, deliver mail packages now. Homeschooling and private education is competing with public education. America has this internal conflict between recognizing and violating rights, due to its confused founding principles. But you'll notice that the immigrants are drawn primarily to industries with relatively little government intervention, often in the underground economy of private housing. This is capitalism bringing them here, not fascism.

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58 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

But you'll notice that the immigrants are drawn primarily to industries with relatively little government intervention, often in the underground economy of private housing. This is capitalism bringing them here, not fascism.

From your link: 

Quote

Broken down by industry, private housing tends to attract the most immigrants with 45 percent of the sector's 947,000 workers coming from overseas. 22 percent of all immigrant workers in American households are unauthorized. 

The unauthorized immigrants have no negotiating power.  The fascists filling the local chambers of commerce over the land just love that.  

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7 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

America has this internal conflict between recognizing and violating rights, due to its confused founding principles.

The founding principles weren't that confused. Perhaps it was confused as far as slavery (and clearly a war started over that), and eminent domain, the principles were pretty clear. I'd still rather be in America than anywhere else, because of that.

If anything, you're talking about everything since Woodrow Wilson, most of the progressive era starting with him. 

9 hours ago, Grames said:

we have the degenerate popular culture of Wiemar

Can you expand on this? You seem to be saying this is an indication of fascism. That doesn't seem to work. Wiemar was certainly far less fascistic (and did not reflect fascist aesthetic)  than the later Nazi Germany. The most I can see you saying is that this would be is a sign of cultural weakness, which leaves room for any kind of force to influence its development ("recovery"). I agree about the economic side of things, and the identity politics conflicts, in American society, but the aesthetic elements of fascism are completely absent as far as I see.

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2 hours ago, Eiuol said:

The founding principles weren't that confused. Perhaps it was confused as far as slavery (and clearly a war started over that), and eminent domain, the principles were pretty clear.

The Founders were very confused about rights. They thought rights came from god, which is why they missed the fundamental of property rights. God doesn't endow you with property. From a quick read of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, here is a list of rights-violating powers originally granted to Congress.

1. Laying and collecting taxes

2. Regulating commerce

3. Regulating the value of money

4. Taxing the importation of slaves

5. Returning runaway slaves who escape across state lines

6. Taking private property for public use

Edited by MisterSwig
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37 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

They thought rights came from god, which is why they missed the fundamental of property rights.

Some of them did, and fortunately they weren't the ones who did most of the work (and in fact comprised more of the antifederalists). Hamilton and Madison are the only ones that matter. I think Jefferson was extremely problematic by forcing the Bill of Rights. Remember, the Bill of Rights was only included to satisfy people like Jefferson. I think most federalists didn't think it was necessary, that the Constitution itself was sufficient. So 4, 5, and 6 were wrong, but they don't exist because the principles were confused. Blame the antifederalists (I don't think it's fair to call them founders) who were far more tolerant of evil.

I don't think collecting taxes is necessarily wrong - collecting income tax (which I think is unequivocally immoral) was not permitted until the progressive era.

2 and 3 are the genuine errors I think, and they weren't so bad that they were essentially the denial of individual rights. 

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On 3/27/2019 at 7:13 PM, Eiuol said:

Can you expand on this? You seem to be saying this is an indication of fascism.

Objectivist epistemology can be extremely fruitful as a method.  The notion that you can't get to a certain abstraction and count it as knowledge without passing over certain logically prior concepts and validating percepts can be given a spatial analogy, that one cannot travel from point A to point B without traversing some path in between.  A society cannot get from being not-fascist to being fascist without traversing some trajectory in between.  I can't predict the future, but we know what Weimar led to.

Its been a long time since I've reread Peikoff's Ominous Parallels, but that is my perspective here.

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3 hours ago, Grames said:

I can't predict the future, but we know what Weimar led to.

That makes more sense. Maybe it wasn't clear about the second part of my question though (we should probably split this thread).

What do you think is degenerate about American popular culture? What comes to mind for me is drug use, especially opioids (which happened in Weimar), and some instances of music (Cardi B in particular), but I'm not coming up with much else. 

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On 3/28/2019 at 6:31 PM, Grames said:

A society cannot get from being not-fascist to being fascist without traversing some trajectory in between.  I can't predict the future, but we know what Weimar led to.

We don't need Objectivist epistemology to realize that "one cannot travel from point A to point B without traversing some path in between." This is ancient, basic knowledge. The issue is whether that path is predetermined.

Peikoff addresses this idea in Chapter 13 of The DIM Hypothesis: "The progression of modes is not a march of reified abstractions propelled independently of worldly events by the dictates of some preordained logic beyond human control." He discusses the importance of triggering events and different, explicit modes that are popular in the nation. Just because some of our culture resembles that of the Weimar Republic, it doesn't mean we are destined for, as Peikoff put it in 1982, "an American form of Nazism." Or, as he put it thirty years later in 2012, "a religious-fascist totalitarianism." There needs to be a national vision of point B before we can accept a trajectory in its direction. Otherwise, we'll split into warring factions.

Personally I think we're still in a stalemate period. It is because we know what fascism and communism ultimately look like that we push back against those visions today. And it's because we don't know yet what 100% capitalism looks like that we hesitate to fully embrace it. We are thus stuck in political limbo, mixing and testing all these identified systems.

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On 3/31/2019 at 1:37 PM, MisterSwig said:

We don't need Objectivist epistemology to realize that "one cannot travel from point A to point B without traversing some path in between."

"Logically prior concepts" is an important epistemological point. It wasn't about specifically the progression of causality. We can form concepts about human behavior and patterns - no one operates randomly. Part of our evidence for such patterns is history.

It's what I assumed he meant though. So I wanted to dive further into how he suggests "fascism is here". Comparisons to Wiemar make sense - but similar conditions can lead to the rise of Communism. There were a lot of communists in Wiemar, and all sorts of other powers. One thing we don't have though is the rampant anti-Semitism and using Jewish people as scapegoats for the decline of a country. And we don't have the completely useless and weak national military that Germany had at the time. We don't have the power vacuum that I think fascism requires. I don't doubt that there is a non-negligible risk of fascism developing though.

Even still, by the very fact that we are in something reminiscent of Wiemar, then we can't also be in a condition of fascism (or pockets of fascism). I wanted to explore socially degenerate culture - whatever that means. It can mean many things. 
 

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18 hours ago, Eiuol said:

One thing we don't have though is the rampant anti-Semitism and using Jewish people as scapegoats for the decline of a country.

It's pretty bad in far-right circles, where they use nasty slurs and invent Jewish conspiracies for practically everything that goes wrong. And the far-left dislike Jews on account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We have the BDS movement and accusations of "dual loyalty" against Jewish members of Congress. There are also a bunch of radicalizing Christians on social media who ride the line between bigotry and reasoned objections. One example is recent criticism of Ben Shapiro for using the concept "Judeo-Christian values." They say that it's an invalid idea, that Christianity and Judaism don't share values, that Western Civilization has nothing to do with Judaism, and that the concept is just a post-WW2 Jewish trick. They also go after individual Jews in Hollywood, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Washington DC and repeat the worst gossip or conspiracy theories about them.

18 hours ago, Eiuol said:

I wanted to explore socially degenerate culture - whatever that means. It can mean many things. 

In addition to drug use, I would include things that spoil or destroy typical human values. Perhaps stuff like bodily mutilation, mental evasion and compartmentalization, obscene language, perverted habits, fake or arbitrary news, mumble rap, industrial rock, nonsensical lyrics, reality TV shows, lip-synched concerts, and malevolent horror films.

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  • 4 months later...

Rather than make a new thread for the El Paso Walmart shooter, I'll post this article here, since the assassin apparently professed his agreement with the Christchurch shooter in a four-page manifesto. The NY Times quotes a line from the essay about getting rid of people (immigrants) to make our way of life sustainable. The Times, however, fails to mention that that sentence comes at the end of a long paragraph that echoes the ecofascist rhetoric of the Christchurch killer. 

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Opening paragraph from the murderer's manifesto:
"In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion. Some people will think this statement is hypocritical because of the nearly complete ethnic and cultural destruction brought to the Native Americans by our European ancestors, but this just reinforces my point. The natives didn’t take the invasion of Europeans seriously, and now what’s left is just a shadow of what was. My motives for this attack are not at all personal. Actually the Hispanic community was not my target before I read The Great Replacement. This manifesto will cover the political and economic reasons behind the attack, my gear, my expectations of what response this will generate and my personal motivations and thoughts."

 

PDF (will auto-delete in 2 weeks)

Edited by softwareNerd
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46 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

It's especially weird that he suggests race mixing reduces genetic diversity. The racist motivations look a lot more stronger than the ecological part.

The ecological part is his basic, metaphysical view (overpopulation depletes resources and ruins the environment); the rest is altruistic ethics and collectivistic politics based on that foundational belief. His solution is a two-fold jihad against unsustainable immigration (class/race) and corporations (industry).

Edited by MisterSwig
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3 hours ago, softwareNerd said:

I don't get that from reading his manifesto.

It's in this paragraph.
 

Quote

 

The American lifestyle affords our citizens an incredible quality of life. However, our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly overharvesting resources. This has been a problem for decades. For example, this phenomenon is brilliantly portrayed in the decades old classic “The Lorax”. Water sheds around the country, especially in agricultural areas, are being depleted. Fresh water is being polluted from farming and oil drilling operations. Consumer culture is creating thousands of tons of unnecessary plastic waste and electronic waste, and recycling to help slow this down is almost non-existent. Urban sprawl creates inefficient cities which unnecessarily destroys millions of acres of land. We even use god knows how many trees worth of paper towels just wipe water off our hands. Everything I have seen and heard in my short life has led me to believe that the average American isn’t willing to change their lifestyle, even if the changes only cause a slight inconvenience. The government is unwilling to tackle these issues beyond empty promises since they are owned by corporations. Corporations that also like immigration because more people means a bigger market for their products. I just want to say that I love the people of this country, but god damn most of y’all are just too stubborn to change your lifestyle. So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.

 

Crusius is not a very good writer. His manifesto is hastily and sloppily written. His reasoning is out of order and twisted. But he claims to support Tarrant's manifesto, which more explicitly connected immigration and climate change. For example:

Quote

Why focus on immigration and birth rates when climate change is such a huge issue?

Because they are the same issue, the environment is being destroyed by over population, we Europeans are one of the groups that are not over populating the world. The invaders are the ones over populating the world. Kill the invaders, kill the overpopulation and by doing so save the environment.

What is the primary motive there? To save the environment.

Crusius makes a similar argument. He says "our lifestyle is destroying the environment." He then runs through typical examples, even referencing The Lorax. Like Tarrant, he concludes that "the next logical step is to decrease the number of people." In his view, the choice is either change our way of life or reduce the population to a sustainable level. And since we aren't going to change our lifestyle, we must therefore "get rid of enough people."

At this basic level, both Tarrant and Crusius believe their logic is sound. They are further motivated by racial, economic, and political beliefs that fit with their ecological beliefs. For example, Tarrant believes immigrants have unsustainable birth rates. And Crusius argues that the corporate desire for larger markets drives unsustainable immigration. It's like their other beliefs primarily serve as an aid in target selection. They don't motivate the killing itself.

Of course, this might not be the case with other types of fascists or segregationists, who are less alarmed by man's effect on the environment.

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15 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

His solution is a two-fold jihad against unsustainable immigration (class/race) and corporations (industry).

I wouldn't call it a jihad. It's too generalized and doesn't necessarily call for extermination. The manifesto mentions that he would support segregated "zones" to prevent racial mixing. It seems to me that some sort of purity if viewpoint is involved here - pure earth, pure people, pure harmony. Invaders are those who cause racial mixing by this view. 

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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

It seems to me that some sort of purity if viewpoint is involved here - pure earth, pure people, pure harmony. Invaders are those who cause racial mixing by this view.

It's a combination of Al Gore and Hitler. The title, "The Inconvenient Truth," of course refers to Al Gore's ideas against pollution in nature. Then the anti-miscegenation sounds like Hitlerian ideas against spoiling the blood lines. There does appear to be an intrinsic value placed on a sort of natural purity or order.

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On 8/5/2019 at 2:44 PM, MisterSwig said:

It's a combination of Al Gore

Al Gore is a bad example. Pretty standard global warming concerns from him, of course the thing wrong with him is seeking out regulation. Purity is a concern to an extent, which is wrong, but in the US, environmentalism historically speaking is usually associated with things like national parks. Nothing really shocking about it even if philosophically it's unsound. It isn't wrong to point out that something bad is going on in the environment that is human caused. I don't think there's any comparison to the more politically extreme environmental ideologies. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism

This page is good for some sources.

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