"No Platform for Fascists"

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"No Platform for Fascists"

Postby American Dream » Sat Jan 02, 2016 11:19 pm

http://antifascistnews.net/2016/01/03/v ... ted-media/

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VOICE AND THE VOICELESS: WHAT DOES “NO PLATFORM” MEAN IN THE DONALD TRUMP SATURATED MEDIA?

JANUARY 3, 2016

The media loves a good scandal. Hell, we do too.

Over the months, as the Donald Trump campaign has shifted from bumbling loudspeaker-style racist quips to copy-and-paste fascist political programs, the media response has moved from mockery, to horror, and, finally, to click-bait. Trump’s campaign has rode this wave, which was a “shock/response” model, and the left-leaning media outlets that use a social media business model have been central to its ability to spread through the culture. The “outrage machine” has been very real in that, from identifying a room full of Jewish Republicans as “deal makers” to banning and registering Muslims, his politics have only made their way up the ladder of offense and guttural bigotry. The echo chamber, which has led his message and created the offense-racket that has made him popular with reactionary sectors of middle America, has been driven by this, and it has given his voice the kind of reach that he simply couldn’t have achieved with his own appearances and the standard political news machine.

Trump himself has created an entire media model of exploiting the disbelief in leftist coverage, but he has also been the gate-keeper to mainstreaming an entire narrative that has been developed over the last five years in the annals of web forums and news sites. The Alternative Right, Neoreaction, Dark Enlightenment, and all the other variants of internet-focused and pseudo-academic neo-fascism has been developing a new language for speaking and “critiquing” society that breaks from the two sided coin of neo-Nazis and the Klan. Now they return to race and IQ talking points, critiques of contemporary democracy, attacks on the idea of equality, rejection of modernity, and a range of other simple ideas repackaged in the aesthetics of Continental Philosophy. Backed by the ideas of European New Right intellectuals, much of this resurrects previously fringe ideologues like Julius Evola or the Conservative Revolution, looking to build a strictly hierarchical society and the idea of ethnically defined societies. This is not the posturing that Donald Trump has gained his popularity on, but it is much of the long-term vision that his seemingly casual comments have as their end game. Just as there are “dog whistle” words that use economic rhetoric to signal racial tensions, neo-fascist supporters hope that his reactionary remarks are a “dog whistle” to an open fascist political program.

What the “Donald Trump phenomenon” has done, even more than just Trump himself, is to open the door to the voices of this reactionary movement in that they have a direct lineage between the two. Buzzfeed began publicizing the use of “alt right” as a hashtag on Twitter, which has been used for years up to this point, giving extended interviews to people like Richard Spencer, RamZPaul, and Jared Taylor. Rosie Gray, the Buzzfeed reporter who did the article on white nationalism and the Trump campaign, got pulled into an even more difficult situation when RamZPaul gave one condition to doing the interview: that he could film and broadcast it. What resulted is another one of Paul’s well-known videos, this time where he talks to an understandably timid Gray over an iPhone speaker. While Paul’s rhetoric in the video is confusing and rambling, it still gave him the perfect opportunity to actually draw some of the Buzzfeed crowd to an unedited piece of his own racial nationalist script.

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Richard Spencer got extended time in Vice’s recent “We Asked a White Supremacist What He Thinks About Donald Trump,” which followed a similarly vapid premise as their “We Asked a Fascism Expert About Trump.” Here, again, Spencer’s ideas were given an open platform, not because he is an expert on the Trump campaign, but simply because his politics have now become a relevant part of the discourse. Spencer was additionally interviewed in the New York Times for an article that placed him alongside David Duke and Stormfront founder Don Black, which angered him enough to do a response on the Radix Journal website going through the references to him point by point and discussing how he was misrepresented. This shows a particular character of these internet-focused racialists, who exist in word vomit where they constantly have to ramble at length and can never give up the last word.

These articles are small snippets of dozens of articles in recent months that have shown that white nationalists from David Duke to the Traditionalist Youth Network’s Matthew Heimbach. When interviewed, all parties are allowed a platform to explain very clearly their key points, why we should support Trump, and what kind of vision they hold.

The problematic nature of this coverage often comes directly from its intention to reveal something very real about the Trump phenomenon and its growing far-right affiliations. What these articles are intending to show is that Trump is, first, associated with these types of characters and, by association, tarnish his name. But this does not end up being a straight line since, as much of the neo-fascist rebranding has done purposefully, the alt right bloggers are often prepared to muddy the discussion so as to avoid conventional critiques of white supremacist politics. Reports in places like Gawker and Alternet are then not prepared to counter them, instead simply offering them an open platform that they could never have dreamed of on their own sites. The intended effect, for these people to hang themselves on their own words, is often ineffective.

The issue that liberal anti-racist activists often clash with radical anti-fascists over is free speech. The liberal notion of free speech is to defend even the most vile and erroneous forms, which, in essence, the protections are there for. Antifa organizers then have to propose a counter view, which is not to actually argue for state intervention to criminalize certain forms of speech, but instead to mobilize direct action to stop it cold. The distinction here is based around the use of the state and whether or not empowering its infrastructure will have a long-term positive effect. When the organs of political power shift they could very easily use the same rhetoric and repression used in hate speech laws against us on the radical left, and it is also less than appropriate to further empower a state that is designed to maintain capital and ruling class interests. The “no platform” concept in Antifa organizing is to show the community’s resistance to all the methods by which fascist organizing attempts to gain a foothold. The direct result of every racialist project is violence, inequality, and authoritarianism, either politically or socially, and therefore stopping it at the root is critical. People are free to have any ideas they want, but we are also free to mobilize to stop violence and oppression from becoming an unstoppable wave in our community.

It is difficult, then, to figure out exactly what “no platform” will always mean. An example of this difficulty is with someone like American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor. Taylor has made a name for himself arguing points on the fringes of acceptable discourse, such as concepts like racial difference in IQ, racial disparity in crime, and the “inherent” problems and conflicts in multicultural diversity. Taylor then uses any opportunity, whether it is being brought by controversial student groups to campuses or going on liberal talk shows that use him as an oddity, to pitch his well choreographed lines. His discourse is not meant to outline a clear point, it is to inspire doubt in the listeners. People are generally not up on all the ways that race and IQ correlations have been disproven, or the very well documented explanations for racial disparity in the judicial system. Taylor then uses this as a break through opportunity to then shift a small segment of the viewers into their whole world of “research,” explanations, and narratives.

This presents a conflict, which is often seen in how people respond to him. One could be to simply ignore his work, refuse to debate or comment on it lest actually give it more exposure. This has been successfully done in many Holocaust Denial situations, which is the pattern offered up by people like Deborah Lipstadt and in her book, Denying the Holocaust. This is often the best course of action, but what if the ideas are already starting to spread because an effective counter to them has not been made? This is often while people like Michael Shermer from Skeptic Magazine debated Mark Weber from the Holocaust denying Institute for Historical Review, or when anti-racist author Tim Wise has debated Jared Taylor on several instances. The concept here is that the ideas actually are beginning to grow as the only available narrative is the one provided by the fascist right, and it is important to expose and disprove them.

The answer is actually situational, but if a “debate” or disproval of sorts is going to be in effect, the people have to be prepared to do it. It is not that Jared Taylor is an expert on the sociology of race or intelligence and genetics, in fact he consistently embarrasses himself anytime he moves beyond platitudes to try and actually discuss these topics, but he is completely prepared to debate in sound bites. This is really the entire front edge of the racialist movement, especially in the U.S., which means that those who are attempting to engage them as a means of attack have to be prepared to effectively counter their stylized argumentation. Instead, Buzzfeed and related outlets, who clearly believe that exposure will generally lead to enlightened society expelling the Nazis, have not done due diligence and instead are providing them a platform completely open and uncontested.

The second real purpose, at least from an activist standpoint, would be to educate people about these movements and ideas so as to effectively understand and resist them. This, again, has been a problem for reasons that parallel our own, yet miss the mark. The conversations with Richard Spencer in the New York Times, Vice, Buzzfeed, and CBS are especially telling examples of this. He was allowed to put out points of propaganda, very attractive soundbites that are how he thinks people should first engage with his ideas. They did not, however, actually deconstruct those ideas, provide much history, correctly correlate them to their more obvious neo-Nazi counterparts, and discuss what the real threat of them are. This comes, partially, because they do not care what the details are because he is a racist and that is good enough. On a certain level, we certainly agree. Fascists of all stripes think that their specific narratives and sub-ideologies are incredibly important and unique. In reality, to us and for our purposes, they are all really just branches of fascism, an ideology of nationalism, inequality, and anti-democracy. The problem is, however, that we still have to understand them to effectively counter organize, and even to just have a better understanding of philosophy and politics. In this way, we are provided with literally nothing by these articles, which instead provide a platform for fascist organizers while providing us no useful information and engaging in no concrete refutation.

Publicity of any sort can be useful to a fascist fringe, yet it can be on us to continue to create a strong counter narrative. In a certain sense, Donald Trump has actually done this by boiling down the “alt right’s” pseudo-academic drivel to offensive racial sound bites. Creating a strong counter-narrative is the real work that people on the radical left can do in this regard as the mainstream media can and will do what it knows and not what is best suited to anti-racist struggle. This means confronting claims directly, continuing to be open about about the how and why of revolutionary projects, and shutting down public organizing and presence of the radical right in every available opportunity.

Trump and the Alt Right echo chamber provides us with a couple of opportunities, the primary one being the ability to counter organize and openly refute the outright lies. If we cannot expect conventional media outlets to do this effectively, the torch is passed to us, though this can be done without providing any additional power to the voice of the racists. The greatest weapon against their reactionary ideas of race and social divisions is to actually uproot white supremacy in our communities, and this is a project that goes far beyond the fascist framing. As we grow anti-racist struggle, their voices will become angrier, yet we will continue to set the narrative agenda. When Donald Trump makes claims about undocumented peoples, it provides an opportunity to undermine that false narrative and to organize a movement to stand with immigrant rights no matter who the opposition is.

When thinking further about “no platform,” the most important lesson to take into media and propaganda is to not let the racialist fringe set the conversation. Anti-fascists around the world are growing alongside the opposition, and we can together make confronting racial oppression a priority and not just a response to the reactionaries. Avoid sharing their lines, do not link to their blogs, block their Tweets, and generally make unavailable their rantings, while also confronting any of the lies and memes that they are successfully getting into the general culture. It is by walking this line that we are able to undercut the only power they have while eliminating any crossover points they have.

The media is going to continue to use white nationalists as an oddity, but if we know how to approach these daily case studies we can use it to continue to silence and step over their violent impulses.
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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Jan 02, 2016 11:46 pm

we have a Trump thread

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39115


and come to think of it a couple dozen fascist threads also :P
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby jakell » Sun Jan 03, 2016 6:18 am

The statement "we don't provide a platform for fascists" conjures up the image of a gathering with several 'stages' to me.
The fascists turn up one year and are told that the organisers do not have a platform for them (boohoo), the next year the fascists bring their own platform and erect it anyway. The process brings about the realisation that they can build bigger and better platforms when and where they like, and that the self-absorbed organisers are largely irrelevant.
" Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism"
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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby yathrib » Sun Jan 03, 2016 9:03 am

In my view, the "no platform" thing casts its proponents as a reactionary movement in the strictest sense. It makes it appear that they have few or no ideas of their own--at least not any that they are capable of defending cogently in public--and must devote their time and efforts to preventing others from airing theirs. This is especially so when one notes the ridiculously broad range of people and things that are "no platformed" in places where the left is dominant (British universities, cough cough). Are the left's ideas so weak and unappealing that people must be prevented from hearing the alternatives by any means necessary in the fear that anyone hearing them will immediately jump ship? Not merely a rhetorical question.
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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby American Dream » Mon Jan 04, 2016 4:17 pm

Drawing Lines: Waldteufel and Markus Wolff's Involvement in the New-Right Cultural Movement
1/3/2016

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Markus Wolff with black sun shirt

​As a result of public pressure, local musical project Waldteufel was dropped from the line-up for a Portland show by touring band Psychic TV, who played at Euphoria Nightclub on Saturday, December 12th. Complaints about Waldteufel’s presence on the bill began after Portland band Aradia raised criticisms of Waldteufel’s deep involvement in neo-fascist subculture. After making their concerns known, Aradia--who previously were also on the show’s bill--were dropped from the line-up by the organizer for Psychic TV’s Portland stop. On Thursday, December 9th, Aradia issued a statement on Facebook about their concerns regarding Waldteufel, mentioning that their anti-racist musical project had been knocked off the bill after raising these concerns. The resultant outcry about Waldteufel quickly led to that band also having its support slot pulled.

We believe this was an important decision to keep neo-fascist bands from maintaining and expanding their presence in the Portland music scene. Members of Waldteufel have strong connections to organizations and members of the far-Right. Despite Waldteufel being dropped from this particular show it is still important to expose these connections.

Markus Wolff and Tyr Journal

Waldteufel’s frontman and primary member is Markus Wolff, who currently lives in Portland, Oregon. Wolff was a member of the influential percussive industrial project Crash Worship during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. More recently, Wolff has been a jack of many trades: in addition to being a musician, he is a writer for the journal Tyr and an editor for the magazine Hex (now ceased publication). Wolff is also an artist focusing on pagan-inspired drawings and sculptures that he calls Heidnischwerk, or “heathen works.” He creates organic jewelry for body piercing.

For the last couple of decades, Wolff has also been a constant presence in the “Conservative Avant-Garde” cultural scene. This scene is closely connected to European New Right and thus neo-fascist ideology. (The term “Conservative Avant-Garde” is taken from Markus Wolff’s friend Gerhard Petak of Allerseelen, but is an appropriate description of how a broader circle of artists view themselves. Markus Wolff used to contribute to Sigill, a German-language publication whose subtitle translates as “Magazine for Europe's Conservative Cultural Avant Garde,” again suggesting that “Conservative Avant-Garde” is an accurate label for the scene that Wolff/Waldteufel operates within.) ​

One of the better-known publications Wolff writes for is Tyr, a “radical traditionalist” journal that describes itself as “celebrat[ing] the traditional myths, culture, and social institutions of pre-Christian, pre-modern Europe.” The journal’s editors understand radical traditionalism as an expression of yearning for the “small homogeneous tribal societies that flourished before Christianity.” Tyr is released by Ultra Press and edited by Joshua Buckley and Michael Moynihan. Buckley was active in the violent neo-Nazi group SS of America in the early 90s and later went on to work as a business partner with white supremacist, Klan lawyer, and real estate mogul Sam Dickson in Atlanta, GA. (Buckley currently lives in South Carolina.)

In volume I of Tyr, Markus Wolff contributed a piece on the German poet and radical nationalist Hermann Löns. Löns’ writing expressed a “blood and soil” ideology--after his death in a WW I battle, his work was eventually celebrated by the Nazi party. Tyr is closely associated with the far-Right fringes of the neofolk musical scene, containing interviews with UK fascist activist Ian Read (responsible for the Fire + Ice musical project) , Gerhard Petak of the Austrian project Allerseelen, as well as UK artist Andrew King who opines about the “traditional culture of the West” being under attack by “multiculturalism” and “cosmopolitanism.” Tyr has also featured several writings by the far-Right “traditionalist” Julius Evola (more about Evola below) as well as Alain de Benoist, a seminal theorist of the European New Right and founder of the ethno-nationalist think tank GRECE. (Markus Wolff has praised de Benoist’s book On Being A Pagan as a “groundbreaking work.”)

Tyr is currently distributed by Counter-Currents Publishing, run by white nationalist Greg Johnson, author of the book New Right vs Old Right. Among the books distributed by Counter-Currents you find themes of anti-semitism (Son of Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies), the war on European cultures (Generation Identity), and glorification of Adolf Hitler (Forever and Ever: Devotional Poems). Johnson has known Tyr publisher Buckley since the late 1990s, when both were living in Atlanta.

Besides being a frequent contributor to Tyr, Joshua Buckley is also the founder of record label Ultra! which released Waldteufel’s albums Berghoch am Walde (1999) and Heimliches Deutschland (2000.) Ultra! also released the compilation CD included with Tyr: Myth-Culture-Tradition vol. 2, which featured extreme-Right music project Allerseelen; Michael Moynihan’s band Blood Axis; Waldteufel; and Changes. (Though not all bands on this compilation are fascist or fascist-leaning, the inclusion of far-Right projects indicates Tyr’s overall political slant.) Founding member of Changes, Robert N Taylor, is an open white nationalist who used to be a member of the Minutemen militia. Rose City Antifascists exposed Allerseelen’s far-Right politics in 2011, when we controversially opposed their tour shows with popular local metal band Agalloch. Others who follow the far-Right have reached the same conclusion about Allerseelen that we have. Markus Wolff is a major supporter of Allerseelen, promoting their tours on the West Coast. We will now turn to Michael Moynihan, the person behind the Blood Axis musical project.

Image
Moynihan on stage with his band Blood Axis


Continues at: http://rosecityantifas.weebly.com/artic ... -new-right
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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 04, 2016 6:21 pm

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby conniption » Mon Jan 04, 2016 7:05 pm

Fascism will
come to
America in the
name of
anti-fascism

Huey Long jr

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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby Harvey » Mon Jan 04, 2016 8:14 pm

Aside from everything else:

Some years ago I was employed by a very well known video game company, the global brand manager of that company confided to me that the bulk of their free downloadable content was in fact padding, their market research indicated that people felt more positive the larger their free downloads appeared to be. In terms of cost free audience satisfaction it was a no brainer. It has the ring of truth about it but they were devious fucks, and tracing rumours was a quick method for identifying leaks.

Anyway more pertinently, at that time a few of us used to laugh about the reviews our game was receiving on social media, it was relatively easy to spot those made by employees, not because they were getting paid to provide positive reviews, some definitely were, but most did it simply because the better the game did, the better their investment of long hours and ruined relationships seemed, not because they had any sales related bonus, they didn't.

If you've invested heavily in blaming everyone else for your own problems instead of looking at yourself, Trump is instant relief from guilt, from shame, from blame. He's a get of of jail free card. The more he's discussed, whether positively or not, the greater that investment in self delusion appears.
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This he said to me
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In return"


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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Jan 04, 2016 10:17 pm

Hey conniption long as you're abusing fontsize for a questionable quote

You can find that one all over the place, and yet I couldn't nail it down definitely that it was Huey Long, or when or in what context exactly. Somehow I'm sure the context wasn't to imply that antifascists are fascists because one of them is bothering you with too many posts about fascists on an (antifascist!) board, as you seem to be saying. Plenty of pages repeat the quote, mostly through Jim Garrison, although I even found a couple that turn Garrison's into Long's original, etc.

Here's how it's given at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Huey_Long and how I actually thought Long said it:

"When Fascism comes to America, it will be called anti-Fascism!"

That's a bit different. Nuance and all.

Also attributed to him but uncertain:

"Of course we will have fascism in America but we will call it democracy!"

"If fascism ever comes to America, it will come wrapped in an American flag."

That's more like it.

Oh wait, here's a much better research dossier with many variants, and it seems to settle who said exactly what in what form at what time - Long, or Sinclair Lewis? And the answer, apparently, but still not certain, was: neither!

It's well worth looking at as a lesson in research in the land of everyone just quotes whatever the fuck they like and pretends it's true.

http://bibanon.org/everything-shii-know ... _flag.html

Of course, in some future someone may actually doubt this was a direct quote:

HE WILL CUT THE HEAD OFF ISIS AND TAKE THEIR OIL.
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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby conniption » Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:14 pm

"You're a very strange man and I
thank you, Master Jack"


Four Jacks and a Jill - Master Jack - 1968

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN9bcuIK70s
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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:30 pm

I don't care who said it...sounds about right to me


Fascism will
come to
a board in the
name of
anti-fascism
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby jakell » Tue Jan 05, 2016 4:38 am

Excellent lyrics to that song, First impression is that it is a bit naive and simplistic, but that it is a false impression.

I looked into the origin of them.. South African Apartheid etc, but the application seems wider and into the 'guru' thing that was prevalent at the time of the song. This impression probably came to me via listening to some Jethro Tull recently:

" Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism"
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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby Sounder » Tue Jan 05, 2016 5:38 am

Excellent reply to Jack's pedantic prevarications conniption. :sun:

Reminds me of the time when a friend was out with his new child in a stroller. A passerby proffered a compliment, where upon my friend corrected the sentence structure of the stranger, to which the stranger replied; 'But oh dear, the poor child is going to have to grow up with a pedantic father.'

My friend, an English (lit) teacher, then was forced to consult the dictionary because he did not know what pedantic meant!

Unconsciousness rules.

At any rate George Soro's and his ilk provide the best 'platform for fascists' that money can buy, just look at the clowns and their putsch in Ukraine or the 'White Hats' in Syria and so many more. Really, it's pretty easy to see who the serious fascists are, despite continual attempts to keep the lens of examination focused on bit players. Just look at what people do and not what they say.
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby jakell » Tue Jan 05, 2016 6:28 am

Sounder » Tue Jan 05, 2016 9:38 am wrote:Excellent reply to Jack's pedantic prevarications conniption. :sun:

Reminds me of the time when a friend was out with his new child in a stroller. A passerby proffered a compliment, where upon my friend corrected the sentence structure of the stranger, to which the stranger replied; 'But oh dear, the poor child is going to have to grow up with a pedantic father.'

My friend, an English (lit) teacher, then was forced to consult the dictionary because he did not know what pedantic meant!

Unconsciousness rules.

At any rate George Soro's and his ilk provide the best 'platform for fascists' that money can buy, just look at the clowns and their putsch in Ukraine or the 'White Hats' in Syria and so many more. Really, it's pretty easy to see who the serious fascists are, despite continual attempts to keep the lens of examination focused on bit players. Just look at what people do and not what they say.


All this so-called 'nuance' that arrives on your forum in horse doctor's doses via poker-faced copypasta is nothing of the sort anyway.

It purports to examine these grey areas of fascism, but the upshot is that there are no grey areas. If it's grey, then it's really black, no excuses.
" Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism"
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Re: "No Platform for Fascists"

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue Jan 05, 2016 3:44 pm

yathrib » Sun Jan 03, 2016 8:03 am wrote:Are the left's ideas so weak and unappealing that people must be prevented from hearing the alternatives by any means necessary in the fear that anyone hearing them will immediately jump ship? Not merely a rhetorical question.


While it's easy enough to frame it like so -- and gratifying, too! -- I think it's actually quite pragmatic. "No Platform" is a motto for people with goals, one which is conveniently stated right there in the motto. "No Platform" is autoimmune response as policy.

Consider the recent Flat "I'm Just Asking Questions!" Earth thread here. That was a waste of fucking time, yeah? Fortunately, RI is not a very mission-driven watering hole, so no real loss there.

Consider the classic Cointelpro documentation that was being passed around in the aftermath of Bernie Sanders getting his platform hijacked by BLM's of dubious origins. There is a playbook of techniques at play here, it has existed for decades at least and "No Platform" is an effective defensive measure.

Also, consider the fact that "the left's ideas" have been shaping the world for a century and, if anything, gaining momentum, which is why we're going to keep seeing more reactionary sentiment on the bloody road to Utopia. Their ideas are hugely popular -- Coca-Cola doesn't need to tell you why you should drink it. They just tell you to enjoy it.
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