Thread of What Is Fascism And Is Donald Trump A Fascist

God just came to me in a vision and said "having this convo for the 80th time will not change anyone's mind"

Hearing the voice of God in a vision telling you to do things is also probably at fault for a lot of the things wrong in this country, too.

i have gone from being completely anti-gun to somewhat neutral after reading octavia butler. however i would have to be a more emotionally stable person to ever own a gun and i'm pretty sure that will never happen, so it's a no for me (also i'm white with a white partner so that mitigates the necessity somewhat). i would like to take some self-defense and/or fighting classes at some point.

I feel like if we've gotten to the point where I need to use a gun, you might as well just kill me. I'm of no use in that world.

i do think there's some value in knowing people "on your side" who are very level-headed and grounded gun owners. in general i think we should be connecting with more people who are anti-fascist and building the kind of support networks where person a is good at something, person b is good at something else, etc.

i have seen a bunch of left-leaning people over the last year concede that either they own a gun, they're thinking about it, or they're cool with other people owning guns now or at least understand it.

i guess i've stated my own opinion on that a million times, so there's no point in saying the same thing

what a shitty world tho

table what would be gained by leftists buying guns and learning how to load them, clean them and hit targets with them?

presumably the idea would be readiness in the face of whatever horrors are to come, not so much active aggression

Yeah, the next civil war won't be "pitched battles of armies in fields" as described upthread, it'll be "kill anyone who tries to get into the house."

Everyone itt should buy as many guns as they can afford and then they should take a boat into the middle of the ocean and dump their guns overboard. If you live near a volcano, that would also be an acceptable disposal site.

it's not perfect but octavia butler's parable series presents a convincing or at least thought-provoking portrait of system collapse and strategies to deal with it.

Nice to see the bunker mentality crossing party lines. Heartening.

DJI OTM.

Individually, there may be a few specific (and horrifying) situations where a personal protection firearm might improve the outcome. There are many more situations where it would just make things worse.

In the aggregate, the cultural right will always better armed. And the cultural right is already tribally aligned with the police and military, who are even better armed.

No thanks, I would rather not get into an arms race with my local police department, let alone the U.S. Department of Defense. I would rather work to defeat that mindset in the political realm, and at least reduce the extent to which it has state-sponsored legitimacy.

ymp otm

I would probably kill myself if I owned a gun, so yeah good idea actuallt

― brimstead, Monday, August 31, 2020 6:28 PM (fifty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I know gallows humour is totally appropriate, but feel like this is a bit of a grim thing to see posted and not addressed in some way

That is not a very rare thing to see posted to ILX (in the context of this recurring conversation), and a much less rare thing to think.

I know.

I wish all the heavily armed bunker-inclined kooks would just head to their bunkers already. I mean, come on! Those MREs aren't going to eat themselves.

Shit, they've already demonstrated that a few months indoors is enough to drive them looney tunes.

They've done the math and would rather turn the rest country into a giant bunker than be stuck in their own.

You all have clearly never had the displeasure and horror of having to actively live and work in an area where many of the people surrounding you want you dead.

I've had meth-crazed Nazi gang members stalk my abode, and I've lived next door to pot-growing white separatists with Confederate flags in their front yard who pulled guns on me and my partner because we dared to drive a little too fast past their property, supposedly 'dusting' their crop. And there's a lot more where that came from, a great deal of it totally unprovoked by anything myself or my partner did.

I want a more peaceful and just world, too. Trust me. That's what I work toward in my everyday life: the abolition of the death cult that is at the heart of this country. But when it comes down to it, I will not die at the hands of some fascist fuck because of moral indignation about guns, because they don't have any morals, and will kill you and your whole family without batting an eye.

i think of my indignation toward gun ownership as practical, not moral. also, if you take this sentence and replace the word "fascist" with "liberal", it's something that a gun-toting fascist would say:

But when it comes down to it, I will not die at the hands of some fascist fuck because of moral indignation about guns, because they don't have any morals, and will kill you and your whole family without batting an eye.

Ah yes, a shitty moral equivalence. Again, you've clearly never felt immediate fear for your life because of Nazis.

er...*RECORD SCRATCH* - not that i'm trying to say you're a fascist! sorry! that was very poorly phrased. i just mean that at the bottom of (non-hunting) gun ownership is fear, no matter where you are on the political spectrum. and the reason i don't like guns is because fearful people do not make good decisions, and having a gun in proximity heightens the consequences of those bad decisions

and i'd caution against making any assumptions about how i or anyone else grew up.

people can feel immediate fear for their lives because of Nazis/KKK/drunk cowboys/whatever and come to very different conclusions about guns. being fearful for your life is not some sort of event horizon that eliminates all choices and leaves only violent self-defense as the acceptable option

one person suffers violent trauma and decides to become the champion of mortal kombat; another decides to be a pacifist in response

I'm not morally indignant, I just know I can't survive in that world.

We need civil society

Absolutely. And I don't think any position is better than the other, to be honest. For me, being in the context in which I was living and the political situation at large, as well as direct threats on our lives, being armed felt necessary. Does it feel like that now? No. But now I live in a large city and everything is under lock and key at all times except when at the range.

I'm sorry to have made assumptions about you and your experiences. I know there's no monolith there, and it was unfair.

Treeship, but what is that? I don't think it's ever existed in the US.

oh, it's ok! i mean, i think it's totally right to consider who is at direct, physical risk. i have been at real risk, before, but not every day, and not now, and not merely because of the color of my skin, as an incident that could pop up out of nowhere, at any time. that was a big mistake i made, up to really recently - not taking the time to really think about what that feels like, and how much you'd want to do something to protect yourself. i've said some real dickhead things on ilx, just really ignorant things, by not taking that into account.

so i'm not trying to be so dogmatic with that now. i just think that, even with all that considered, i still come around to what i said above. i understand why some of my friends want guns, now, it makes sense to me. i just feel the need to publicly disagree because i do think it's important and i can't help but still think i'm right*

*pending learning i'm wrong, which is life

*flash forward to a forgotten mech-trench in the war against the machines. john connors yells "MALONE GODDAMMIT, get yr gun and wipe this Droid platoon out, I need it yesterday!!!" malone looks at his empty, pacifist hands in shame*

_I would probably kill myself if I owned a gun, so yeah good idea actuallt

― brimstead, Monday, August 31, 2020 6:28 PM (fifty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink_


I know gallows humour is totally appropriate, but feel like this is a bit of a grim thing to see posted and not addressed in some way

should I be banned under whatever the new banning system is

I am absolutely not saying you should be banned or reprimanded in any way, ftr, am saying that it's very sad that you can say that and have it not remarked upon at all.

I mean, honestly fuck that shit table posted. I’m really angry right now. Fuck this shit. Fuck guns, fuck your constant bragging and posturing, I’m actually done

not you camraderie

should I post other things I might decide to do with a gun?

brimstead, I really wasn't trying to brag or posture, but explain my position. I'm sorry if that's made you feel bad, and I will stop posting about it now.

Here's the way I look at it basically: if we reach a point where the nazi fash squad is gonna come Red Dawn-ing into my home with guns blazing, then I'm pretty much just dead. And if that's the general state of the world at that point, I'm pretty much okay with not being around anymore. Like that's not a world I care to or am in any way configured to inhabit.

Hey brimstead, sorry to hear you're struggling right now. Please feel free to vent, whether here or on 77 – it's also what this bizarre nook of the internet is for, among other things.

xpost But also there's a whole lotta intermediate steps between where we are now and that paranoid fever dream.

I feel the same way about prepper fantasies: if I need to live in a bunker to survive, I'd rather be dead

A thought that has been troubling me lately: did fascism feel like fascism to everyone, on a daily basis, or mainly just to its targets? Like what if I'm the "ordinary German" this time around, able to just kind of go about my business?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWvpvlT9pJU

I should note, too, that I'm neither belittling anyone else's personal experience nor suggesting that bad shit doesn't go down/isn't going down right now. It's the illogical leap from 'bad shit is going down' to 'bad shit of this variety is the norm and I have a perpetual and reasonable fear for my life within my own home such that I need to arm myself' which, (again) beyond individual circumstances where this may be more true, that I would question as a mindset for the left to adopt.

I guess that's where we might split. With fascist militias killing people in the streets with the explicit support of our head of state, it seems that some more paranoia might be in order, IMHO. I know people who've been doxed by these fash, and it is incredibly scary shit.

The fascist militia killings have been sporadic incidents. It’s certainly worrisome—Trump’s rhetoric is worrisome—but I just don’t agree that the time has come to prepare for armed struggle. And it’s feels surreal hearing this on ilx, the messageboard for record shop geeks, you know, sensitive liberal civilians.