They did? Where?
Yes, I do suspect this is related to their readership. On the other hand, there’s plenty enough antisemitism here — not only in politics, but in day-to-day life — that it’s honestly not much of a distortion.I read the Times of Israel regularly -- there's not enough useful info in French media to follow the Israel-Palestine conflict. But their views on France or French politics are dead wrong... Reading them, you'd think we're an Islamist theocracy.
I don’t understand it either. It probably has something to do with the way they think that ‘leftists’ are the Devil incarnate. (Yes, the Devil may be a Christian character, but I honestly don’t see much of the Judaism I know in the comments on that site.)Perhaps relatedly, French Israelis voters are very far right. What they see in the RN, I don't know.
In French, unfortunately: https://melenchon.fr/2023/10/12/hamas-i ... melenchon/
One thing that bothers me is the impression I get that Muslims are responsible for the antisemitism, and leftists by extension. That doesn't square with my experience; that's anecdotal maybe, but I know first hand that right-wing white people are perfectly capable of antisemitism too. I once got in trouble at work for buying 'from a kibbutz' (ie, buying Israeli software) -- as it happens the guy was, probably still is, a Macron supporter and also anti-Muslim. That sort of thing is alas pretty universal.Yes, I do suspect this is related to their readership. On the other hand, there’s plenty enough antisemitism here — not only in politics, but in day-to-day life — that it’s honestly not much of a distortion.
This is one of those cases where "antisemitism", "anti-zionism", and "anti-Israel" get conflated.Ares Land wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2024 4:37 pm One thing that bothers me is the impression I get that Muslims are responsible for the antisemitism, and leftists by extension. That doesn't square with my experience; that's anecdotal maybe, but I know first hand that right-wing white people are perfectly capable of antisemitism too. I once got in trouble at work for buying 'from a kibbutz' (ie, buying Israeli software) -- as it happens the guy was, probably still is, a Macron supporter and also anti-Muslim. That sort of thing is alas pretty universal.
Wait, the NFP has a platform of its own? It isn’t just the platforms of the individual parties? That changes the situation.
Ugh, yes. I see this a lot from the more far-right segments of Israel, and I hate it. They think Le Pen and Trump are constitutionally incapable of antisemitism even as they rail against the Jews, while the most minor criticism of Israel from a left-wing Jew gets labelled as ‘antisemitic treachery!!!!!’.One thing that bothers me is the impression I get that Muslims are responsible for the antisemitism, and leftists by extension.Yes, I do suspect this is related to their readership. On the other hand, there’s plenty enough antisemitism here — not only in politics, but in day-to-day life — that it’s honestly not much of a distortion.
To be clear, in that particular case, this wasn't about boycotting Israeli products. The guy was simply bothered about buying from Jews. He was offended besides about buying 'from a kibbutz' -- God knows what he was picturing.masako wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2024 5:57 pmThis is one of those cases where "antisemitism", "anti-zionism", and "anti-Israel" get conflated.Ares Land wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2024 4:37 pm One thing that bothers me is the impression I get that Muslims are responsible for the antisemitism, and leftists by extension. That doesn't square with my experience; that's anecdotal maybe, but I know first hand that right-wing white people are perfectly capable of antisemitism too. I once got in trouble at work for buying 'from a kibbutz' (ie, buying Israeli software) -- as it happens the guy was, probably still is, a Macron supporter and also anti-Muslim. That sort of thing is alas pretty universal.
Yes, they are very different things. Anyone that thinks they're the same is being disingenuous or dumb.
Yep. I don't blame you for not knowing that -- the media was more interested in how the evil communists were going to eat us all
Anyone who thinks that there's no overlap between them is being disingenuous or dumb, too.
Animal Farm with Jews, I suppose. (Jews have long got the blame for communism amongst far-right types.)
This is very interesting: I certainly do feel a lot better about them now. Not that it helps — looks like the Nazis won this round anyway.Yep. I don't blame you for not knowing that -- the media was more interested in how the evil communists were going to eat us all
It's also the one platform to actually adress antisemitism (as opposed to blaming foreigners for it).
na, rulership is never absolute: take a cartel-run-town: the cartel rules the town even if there's two or three guys who don't support the cartel and secretly do things against it. and yeah, the us is getting less and less hegemonic. check this out for example.I'm all for the multipolar world Torco claims to support. However, I think that to a large extent, we already have that world. Torco claims that the USA currently rules the world, but if that were true, the Russian and Chinese governments would reliably do whatever the USA tells them to, which is clearly not the case. India isn't always on board with the USA, either, and even the various European countries keep squabbling.
yeah, it's a nasty thing. but it's also nasty to want the entirety of the third world to continue to experience excess poverty, hunger and war, or to get couped whenever people there want to try a different policy line than what the IMF says they should do, or when musk wants cheap lithium, or when the american establishment decides they need some freedom, or when oil is discovered there. preferring any outcome in the shitshow of geopolitics is to prefer some evil outcomes over others, it's just convenient when one supports the status quo that those outcomes can be made to look and feel like they're not outcomes but, rather, naturalized. if preferring fascism makes you a fascist, then the democratic establishment -who has supported fascism in the past not with electoral abstention but through outright giving them weapons etcetera- also is fascist, and it you support, which makes you a fascist too, so welcome i guess? na, that equivalence sounds very pithy but it doesn't work... unless it only applies to fascism in some countries and not others. [/quote]Preferring fascism makes you a fascist. Since I have nothing against Chile, I won't wish for your country the destruction you wish for mine. But if you think a fascist world will somehow stop at Chile's borders, you're not just a nasty person, but a foolish one.
so that's why we should support the country that's always engaged in pointless wars, that's always doing coups abroad, and that's always supporting, funding and training the fascists?
However, deliberately insinuating that they are the same is very often done specifically for political purposes -- those claiming that opposition to the actions of the State of Israel in and of itself constitutes anti-Semitism know what they are doing. Of course, this gets weird when the opposition is coming from left-wing Jews, where you often end up with Jews, or non-Jews who claim to support Jews, claiming that Jews are anti-Semites (cf. the "self-hating Jew").
Yeah, maybe that's why I don't want those things.Torco wrote: ↑Mon Jul 01, 2024 9:22 amyeah, it's a nasty thing. but it's also nasty to want the entirety of the third world to continue to experience excess poverty, hunger and war, or to get couped whenever people there want to try a different policy line than what the IMF says they should do,Preferring fascism makes you a fascist. Since I have nothing against Chile, I won't wish for your country the destruction you wish for mine. But if you think a fascist world will somehow stop at Chile's borders, you're not just a nasty person, but a foolish one.
Making it impossible for either states or corporations to pursue social goods... sound familiar? That is precisely the neoliberalism you are rightfully complaining about. Which makes it doubly baffling why you want the Trumpists to win: it's not just "yay fascism" but "yay neolliberalism."Kapczynski wrote: In the 1970s, mainstream corporations like General Motors, in part pressured by shareholder activists, appointed outside directors to represent “the public interest” and announced new plans to take on issues like racial inclusion and environmental sustainability. Milton Friedman’s innovation was to argue that corporations should not be allowed to pursue aims beyond profit-maximization.
Yeah, Travis already diagnosed this as accelerationism, which is another idea that kind of sounded good in 1848 but has never worked out. The problem is that putting the worst people in control does not get rid of them by Hegelian magic and produce utopia. It can, instead, entrench the worst people for a century or more.WeepingElf wrote:I have thought a bit about Torco's position. I wouldn't say he was a fascist: I rather think that he is the sort of radical leftist who thinks that things have to get a lot worse before they get better.
Yep. And this time, the fascists would have the power to ruin the entire planet. We now need immediate climate action, which also means that people need to have the opportunity to vote for candidates willing to enact it, to rally in the streets in order to demand it, and to sue governments that don't do enough. None of these opportunities exist in a fascist state, and the fascists won't do anything out of themselves because they deny that the problem exists. Also, the last time the world was infected with fascism the most powerful nation on the planet remained free, and there was another big dictator who was a sworn enemy of the fascist bloc and could help bringing them down. This time, the most powerful nation on the planet is likely to succumb to fascism itself (though Trumpism is likely to turn out a much milder flavour of fascism than Hitlerism). There is some relief in the notion that Trump and his cronies on one side and the Russian-Chinese axis on the other are likely to keep each other in check in a disastrous trade war that will plunge both sides into a severe economic depression.zompist wrote: ↑Tue Jul 02, 2024 5:32 amYeah, Travis already diagnosed this as accelerationism, which is another idea that kind of sounded good in 1848 but has never worked out. The problem is that putting the worst people in control does not get rid of them by Hegelian magic and produce utopia. It can, instead, entrench the worst people for a century or more.WeepingElf wrote:I have thought a bit about Torco's position. I wouldn't say he was a fascist: I rather think that he is the sort of radical leftist who thinks that things have to get a lot worse before they get better.
Plus, jeez, radical leftists tried it on a big scale in the 1930s: attack the center and ultimately ally with the fascists. It did not produce a socialist utopia.
You're not far off, to be honest. I'm not so much looking at the revolutiontm here, but at a reduction of the international power of the us. it's not accelerationism as in accelerating the downfall of capitalism, but of neoliberalism which, seems to me, is pretty much an american export. the less they can export it, the better.WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue Jul 02, 2024 5:09 am I have thought a bit about Torco's position. I wouldn't say he was a fascist: I rather think that he is the sort of radical leftist who thinks that things have to get a lot worse before they get better
I know, but is it not the case that is exactly what the us has been doing, and that if somehow the international influence of the us were to decrease, those outcomes would be lessened? of course I understand if you don't think a trump result would effect this reduction, or if you think the costs are too high in terms of normalization of fascism etcetera. but, then again...
i think i've said why: i think he and his retinue are incompetent enough, and distasteful enough, to break the apparatus of neoliberal global domination. Like, yeah, guy's absolutely evil, this is just a fact at this point, and it's proper and necessary to say so. a textbook fascist, which is bad. but he and his faction are incompetent: it wouldn't matter, for example, if biden was a vegetable the dems and whatever important allies behind the scenes of the biden faction have a vast pool of talent and expertise to actually run the us administrative state (administer to aims different than mine, of course, but no matter, competence is competence). by contrast, what's trump going to do? proj. 2025 from the heritage foundation? that sounds an awful lot like gutting the administrative state... and countries need those.Which makes it doubly baffling why you want the Trumpists to win: it's not just "yay fascism" but "yay neolliberalism."
That's my view, and hear me out:
You're doing a good job worrying, but I'm afraid Trump II will be far worse than that.Ares Land wrote: ↑Wed Jul 03, 2024 2:07 am I think a likely scenario is that Trump simply applies the standard procedure for Republican administrations, only more so. You get tax cuts for the rich, a few measures for the Religious Right, conservative appointments wherever possible, generally beating up the poor and minorities, foreign policy that involves letting Russia do its thing, letting Likud do its thing, crazy foreign interventions are not out of the question. All of this hurts a lot but won't really affect neoliberalism or the status of the US as a superpower. The US's been there before. Additional likely events: appointments, gerrymandering and supreme court decision that ensures Republicans stay in power more or less forever, or get increasingly hard to dislodge.
Oh, the incompetence is a given. And I'd say, so is foreign intervention, Mexico being a good possibility. Trump doesn't seem to seek out wars... but he was known, when in power, to keep asking "Why can't we just use nukes?" His party is going to find enemies abroad and he's impulsive.Trump II administration turns out incredibly incompetent, seriously threatening the economy or the state stability. This is the most dangerous scenario, because this is where we get into fascism territory. The original fascists and Nazis were very bad at what they did; state power and efficiency was weakened by the constant purges and infighting. Fascists get really dangerous when they start to fail: that's when we got WWII, the Salo republic, the works. Getting back to Trump -- let's imagine the United States turn into a fail state. The state apparatus is breaking down, the economy is in the dumps, there are riots in the streets. They still have the largest army in the word and if you don't think they're not going to invade Mexico to attract attention elsewhere, you're more naive than I thought.