How I learned to defeat fascism with the power of love:
Chapter one:
Realizing you cannot stop fascism with the power of love.
Chapter two:
The power of incredible violence.
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
49 points (96.2% liked)
Comics
5885 readers
120 users here now
This is a community for everything comics related! A place for all comics fans.
Rules:
1- Do not violate lemmy.ml site-wide rules
2- Be civil.
3- If you are going to post NSFW content that doesn't violate the lemmy.ml site-wide rules, please mark it as NSFW and add a content warning (CW). This includes content that shows the killing of people and or animals, gore, content that talks about suicide or shows suicide, content that talks about sexual assault, etc. Please use your best judgement. We want to keep this space safe for all our comic lovers.
4- No Zionism or Hasbara apologia of any kind. We stand with Palestine π΅πΈ . Zionists will be banned on sight.
5- The moderation team reserves the right to remove any post or comments that it deems a necessary for the well-being and safety of the members of this community, and same goes with temporarily or permanently banning any user.
Guidelines:
- If possible, give us your sources.
- If possible, credit creators of each comics in the title or body of your post. If you are the creator, please credit yourself. A simple β- Meβ would suffice.
- In general terms, write in body of your post as much information as possible (dates, creators, editors, links).
- If you found the image on the web, it is encouraged to put the direct link to the image in the βLinkβ field when creating a post, instead of uploading the image to Lemmy. Direct links usually end in .jpg, .png, etc.
- One post by topic.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
What would "stopping fascism with the power of love" look like? Do you have a hypothetical example?
A society that values free speech rejects Mustache's philosophy. He never gains enough of a following in panel 1, 2, or 3 to be able to enact panel 4.
As soon as we allow ourselves to silence someone, Mustache can use the same argument to justify silencing Black Shirt. When we allow ourselves to suppress an enemy of society, Mustache merely needs to suggest to us that Black Shirt is such an enemy.
The insidious part of fascism is that by the time we get to Panel 4, we are the ones carrying Black Shirt to the gallows.
i really don't understand this perspective. we aren't talking about the ability for anybody to silence anyone for any reason, we're talking specifically about rhetoric calling for the death of human beings. is that not a well defined category of speech we should at least keep an eye on? should we let people actively call for the death of other people, when we know historically that that specific kind of rhetoric can lead to people being put in camps?
like, if somebody's sole contribution to an platform is doxxing anybody they don't like, they should be stopped. if they shout death threats in a public forum, they shouldn't be in that forum. we don't need to give platforms unchecked power over our lives to put reasonable limitations on conduct for public platforms.
really don't understand this perspective. we aren't talking about the ability for anybody to silence anyone for any reason, we're talking specifically about rhetoric calling for the death of human beings. is that not a well defined category of speech we should at least keep an eye on?
There is a difference between speech and violence. "Calling for the death of a human being" is violence, not speech. The speaker making that call should not be silenced; they should be jailed. And we have a process for doing just that. That process involves far more than someone unilaterally deciding to take away their microphone or ban them from a platform.
That process involves judges, either elected directly, or appointed by elected officials. It involves the community in the form of a jury of one's peers. It involves open processes and procedures, an appellate process, and a wide variety of protections for the accused.
Banning them from the platform is not a sufficient response to such an act of violence.
On the other hand, calling for the death of capitalists or Billionaires, and the politicians that enable them should be protected speech. I'd go so far as to say that anything up to with the exception of actually committing physical violence directly upon them and their family should be the most protected speech.
If you are exploiting society so completely, so wantonly that people want to actually kill you, then you SHOULD feel uncomfortable in that society. You should feel the need to hire an army of private security, going outside should be a burden for you because of what you have done.
You seem to have learnt nothing from history and how fascism manifests itself. Adderaline had many good points but you just don't want to actually respond to them? There are so many rightwing, fascistic parties in various countries that already use the rhetoric of panels 1-3. And now society debates if e.g. trans people should be allowed to exist or not, if immigrants should be deported or not, if racism is actually a thing or not. We need to define a line where we will not tolerate further discussions. Because if we allow any form of discussion on certain topics, we will again and again get to the point where we argue about someone's right to exist. And this will result in panel 4. I'm glad for you that you don't seem to be affected by this. But please listen to people who are. It is very very frightening if people are publicly debating if they should consider you a valuable human being or not. And even more so as right wing and fascist politics are gaining more traction worldwide.
Adderaline did, indeed, have many good points, just not any that were actually relevant. None of my arguments denied the prosecution or condemnation of death threats. As I am not defending threats or other forms of violence, there is no issue under dispute, and nothing for me to engage.
Every fascist movement has attempted to suppress groups they deem undesirable or offensive. Your determination that racists are undesirable does not impress me. Nor your targeting of homophobes, transphobes, sexists. The reason your calls for suppression against these people don't impress me today is because I have no idea who you are going to be trying to suppress tomorrow.
I take my guidance from Thomas Paine:
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Fascism manifests by constantly identifying new and exciting targets for oppression. I reserve my right to disagree with you in the future, so I must defend against your suppressive acts today.
This is like the 3rd or 4th comic from this artist with the same message, same punchline, and same structure. We get it, Jennie.
No, it's literally the same comic being reposted over and over.
Do you (not you personally) though?
Yeah. The ones who are capable of getting it already got it before the comics were made. The ones who don't get it are already lost. Nothing important is being done here. We could all go an entire century without the creation of even more more little bit of trite, sanctimonious political proselytization and the course of human development would be literally 100.0% identical because that's what happens when you shovel your opinion into a hypersaturated market for that opinion.
You should make a comic about it.
Then filter/block her and move on instead of policing what she writes.
Block me and move on instead of policing what I bitch about.
"free speech" is a thought-terminating cliche for people too lazy to come up with a real argument or plan to stop fascist rhetoric.
So is accusations of "troll". Around here we prefer that
Its also a convient fig leaf for fascist movements so they can be defended while incubating in liberal societies
Careful everyone, comics like these can spread dangerous ideas
Promises....
Ideology reflects emotion. Angry people adopt angry ideology. Find a justification for anger and somebody to hate.
Cure the anger and the ideology disappears.
Note the nice uniforms. They don't grow on trees. These guys are funded.