Starker on 23/1/2025 at 09:33
Quote Posted by Jeshibu
Nobody looks at footage of people throwing a middle finger up or doing a bras d'honneur and thinks "Wow what did he mean by that? What was the true intent in his heart? I guess we'll never know. Curious. Concerning."
Same for a nazi salute, especially when he's been supporting nazis and white supremacists the world over.
No, you see, someone extending you a middle finger is actually a sign of respect, as holding their longest finger upwards indicates that they think you are "up there". If accompanied by the words "fuck you", it also means they think you are sexually desirable.
lowenz on 23/1/2025 at 15:55
Question: when the nazi/nazbol/every "national socialist antisystem guy" will realize that Elon is a gatekeeper of the system and not an "enabler" to them.....what they'll do to him? Bannon is already thinking......
RippedPhreak on 23/1/2025 at 17:07
Populist Right people have already seen some troubling signals from Musk, like his support for importing more H1B visa holders to undercut American wages and take American jobs.
Musk and Ramaswany got a huge pushback for those comments over Christmas. You'll notice Ramaswany has vanished, will probably be fired from the Trump admin, and Musk has been very quiet about pushing for more scab labor since then. So yes, he's not necessarily "our guy" at heart. We will be watching him closely to make sure he doesn't take Trump off into things we don't want.
Starker on 23/1/2025 at 17:21
Historically, the resulting anger from not getting what they want has not been directed upwards, but downwards, most often towards some group of people they hate. The more volatile sections resort to terrorist acts, spurred in part by accelerationist ideas. Others try to channel their anger into venting online and egging others on to try to bring about stochastic acts of terror. Yet others stay passive and take a little bit of comfort in the acts of performative cruelty by right wing politicians who might not be radical enough for their liking, but excel at the systematic kind of cruelty that the politics of punching down entails.
Mind you, I have not studied fascism in great depth, but these are my general observations from what has been going on in the more mainstream Nazi circles in US after their messiah turned out to be kind of a dud and their more public outings such as the tiki torch rallies were met with justified horror and revulsion by the "normies".
Fascist organising in the US has some serious structural problems, stemming mostly from the fact that a large part of the audience who is sympathetic to their ideas is actually living fairly comfortably or at least more or less getting by. Hence they are far less enthused by some of the more radical ideas that would bring about the desired change and remain the seething, but still comfortably fat underbelly of the right wing politics in the US.
SD on 23/1/2025 at 18:47
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Can we blame it on being an immature troll?
I think that's exactly what it was. A piece of shit-stirring from someone who isn't a Nazi, but is very happy to trigger certain people into believing he is. I think if you view everything Musk does through the filter of a person who enjoys getting a rise out of the pink hair brigade, you'll understand him much better.
Me, I'm just glad we've decided that Nazi salutes are bad again. Maybe the police will now start arresting the demonstrators who've been directing them at Jews for the last 15 months.
lowenz on 23/1/2025 at 19:03
Quote Posted by RippedPhreak
We will be watching
Because you can't do anything more than that.....
Starker on 24/1/2025 at 13:39
Quote Posted by SD
Me, I'm just glad we've decided that Nazi salutes are bad again. Maybe the police will now start arresting the demonstrators who've been directing them at Jews for the last 15 months.
What the hell are you talking about? Musk is one of the most powerful people in the world with the ability to stop legislation in the US, direct control over regulations and policies in the US, and he is the owner of one of the largest platforms in the world that he uses to respond to and spread anti-semitic ideas.
If you're being serious, you can't even entertain the mere thought of there being a possibility of comparing him to some no name nobody who threw a Nazi salute at a protest somewhere or some edgy kid who's trying to shock people for "entertainment" or "comedy". And you don't then have hordes of people bending over backwards to argue that it wasn't really a Nazi salute when it clearly was.
In fact, ordinary people who throw a Nazi salute widely receive condemnation from all sides and sometimes face quite serious repercussions, such as being fired from their jobs or even being arrested and taken to court, as happened to that Scottish comedian who filmed himself attempting to teach a Nazi salute to his dog and giggling while doing it. You don't see the Anti-Defamation League equivocating in these cases, do you?
More importantly, nobody here (or anywhere else I've seen) is arguing that Musk should be arrested or face some consequences with the law, despite this gesture coming from a position of authority and actual power being far more serious and consequential.
Young Werther on 24/1/2025 at 14:14
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Jean-Paul Sartre, 1946
lowenz on 24/1/2025 at 21:13
Quote Posted by Young Werther
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Jean-Paul Sartre, 1946
Well said, Paul
Tocky on 25/1/2025 at 03:14
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
Login for the first time in years and I see people extolling the virtues of America doing world policing.
What the fuck happened? Back in the day people, including myself, rightfully got the piss taken out of them for that
Now you all unironically endorse the Team America view of the world.
The "Rules Based Order" that Allen Dulles introduced had a huge dark side that consisted of US intelligence and defense resources being used to destroy any government that leaned slightly too socialist or refused to open themselves up for exploitation by US Corporate interests.
From overthrowing Iran's government, to the boondoggle in Vietnam, to training right wing death squads in South America, or funding Genocides in Africa, or helping Israel exterminate the Palestinians I think there's ample evidence that this "Rules Based Order" is a destabilizing force rather than a stabilizing one.
And it was because of this kind of retarded rhetoric that, being too young to know better, I got sucked into being a part of unjust wars myself.
We should know better. I am not a Trump voter but it's pure folly to defend the foreign policy establishment as noble peace keepers.
Goddamnit nobody? Nobody is going to comment on this? AI resurrected an old account and reposted an old response and nobody is going to acknowledge it? WTF? We just accept that Republibots are a thing now? They hacked an old right wing account and reposted an old response. Was it always a bot? I don't know. Maybe ignoring it is the thing to do. But what does it mean as far as future discourse? Are we to just ignore these in the future? What happens when they flood a thread? I just find this absurdly surreal. Am I the only one? And did it pop up because of Elons Nazi mention? Do you not recall how Tony was a Nazi denier when the Nazi salute was a feature in the first Trump presidency? Wasn't that too early for AI? Or was it? Was Tony an earlier version of a rightwing chatbot?
I don't know. Maybe I'm having a stroke or something. I recall arguing with him about a Nazi salute at a Trump rally before Trump was elected the first time. Was I talking to AI then? This is absolutely an old post. It does not even relate to the current conversation. Am I wrong for even pointing this out? Does everyone else already know and I'm out of the loop? Does it even matter? It's Twilight Zone to me.
