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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
A Palestinian man was found dead in a park in the Belgian city of Antwerp with his hands and feet tied, leaving the cause of his death a mystery amid authorities’ suggestion that it may have been a suicide.
“Suicide.”
“There is no such thing as a ‘lesser evil’ when the result is genocide”
“Yes there is”
Eventually you are the evil, and that moment passed a long time ago.
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Yes, we are all familiar with the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Congratulations on passing your high school history class.
Now would you like to answer the nice person’s question? Would you prefer more or less genocide. Very simple.
And no, I’m not a fucking moderate.
That this is the choice our “elected representatives” are asking us to make is sick beyond measure. I actually want to just thank you for cutting the bullshit and just asking the question directly so I can respond to it in the way any sane person should, by rejecting the premise that these are our only options. The answer is no, not more or less, none. I acknowledge that the third option of no genocide is not achievable through electoral means, which is why I support the protests, encampments, and uncommitted delegates.
Yeah definitely. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?
But that’s not reality. We have to live in reality. And in reality, we have two choices in November.
Electoral politics are not the only way to change things. In fact, it’s a very poor way, as evidenced by the fact that genocide is now the only option. Every bit of progress that’s been made has been achieved through mass movements; protesting, coalition building, engaging in direct action or civil disobedience… until the politicians are forced to appease them in order to keep hold of their power. Would electoral politics have ended segregation, were it not for the civil rights movement? Would women have been granted the right to vote, were it not for the suffragette movement?
You would not recognize the reality we’d be living in today if everyone from back then thought like you that all they can do about injustice is vote for the “lesser evil.”
Cool.
But we’re talking about the election here, so…
Why are you so intent on keeping the conversation about the election? I’m trying to tell you your time and energy is better spent on other things. It’s unproductive to respond to people complaining about how all our candidates support genocide by basically telling them to shut up and choose.
do you want more genocide, or less genocide?
Do you regard the Soviets and the Nazis as equally evil?
I’m not too sure how constructive this question is. They have different characteristics for sure and this is enough for me, in terms of analysis.
It’s very constructive. Soviets and Nazis both committed genocide. But anyone with a shred of morality should have no hesitation, if it’s down to the wire and only the two of them to choose from, which one should side with. The Soviets, if that wasn’t clear. The Soviets, awful as they were, and even though they were quite literally genocidal - on multiple occasions, on a massive scale - are very much the lesser evil compared to the Nazis. The idea that there is no ‘lesser evil’ when genocide is involved on both sides as a matter of general principle would necessarily imply that the Soviets and the Nazis are equally evil, which is fundamentally absurd on its face.
It’s a hollow argument trotted out to make “LIBERALS BAD FOR FOREIGN POLICY” sound more profound; it’s not a sincerely held principle, and the inability to answer that challenge displays that.
Wait untill you hear about what happened to the indigenous Americans.
Or, indigenous Australians.
Or, pretty much everywhere the British “discovered”.
What does that have to do with my point?
I entirely misread your argument the first time.
I actually agree with you.
I was initially dismissive because of the old “are X as evil as Nazi’s?” As that’s usually a disingenuous argument. Selecting the Soviet Union as another “evil” is almost always American anti-communist nonsense too.
I shall go and correct my other comment.
No worries, it happens. I went to Nazis because no one worth taking seriously disputes that Nazis are both genocidal and some of the worst scum of the earth to ever disgrace this planet, so it avoids an argument over whether Side A is REALLY that bad. The number of cretins as vile as the Nazis is very small - and so frees Side B to be a legitimately evil, yet indisputably less evil, contrast.
Depends on your lens. Both were violent authoritarians really into hierarchical power. The Nazis stood by that, owned it (Führerprinzip and everything), while the Soviets coated the whole thing with “worker’s rights” paint, keeping the soviets around as mouthpieces of the Nomenklatura. Arguably, owning your shit is better than being shifty about it, so the Nazis were better.
…not to say that Nazis can’t be shifty they constantly are now that you get punched in the face for calling yourself one but the 3rd Reich didn’t hide its ambitions.
Then you can use even more different lens. Number of victims. How they went about it. Whether you were required to send birthday greetings to the leader when you’re in a KZ/Gulag. The list goes on and on and on, if you want to be partisan you could portray things selectively either way, and that’s where you throw up your hands and say “They’re comparable only in so far as they are both incomparably evil”. The Red Khmer killed way fewer people than Nazis or Soviets, yet they’re very much in that “comparable because incomparable” category due to the sheer insanity and ultimately randomness of the policy.
…
what
If you’re sitting between the Soviets and the Nazis and saying “Well, I can’t say which is the lesser evil”, you’re no one I would sit at a table with.
If you’re sitting at a table with the Soviets saying “Well, I can say they’re better than the Nazis”, you’re no one I would sit at a table with.
At some point the evil is so bad that lesser evilism doesn’t work, you have to fight on both fronts, sooner or later, anyway. Ask Makhno. Best you can do is play them against each other.
Not to mention that the Soviets and Nazis were fucking allies.
So you wouldn’t sit at the table with the Western Allies in WW2?
The right outcome of that war would have been both Germany and the Soviets getting rolled by everyone else for invading Poland. But authoritarians were appeased, and thus we got the Soviet-Western alliance.
So, no, I wouldn’t have because the need would never have arisen.
It looks like we see things quite differently. For me all Genocides are evil. I believe it is important to study their differences so they do not reoccur in any way, shape or form. Obviously as humans we haven’t worked on this properly (for many of reasons) and one more is currently happening to Palestinians. In that sense comparing randomly any two of them as to see which one is worst, it honestly doesn’t make sense to me.
It’s not about whether a genocide is right or wrong. All genocides are wrong, and should be prevented when possible. The point is that if there are two sides to choose from, realistically speaking, the fact that both engage in genocide does not make them equal. There is generally still a lesser evil, and oftentimes by a large degree.
Again - if it comes down to the wire, between the Nazis and Soviets, is there a lesser evil there?
As I briefly explained above, I don’t see a point to this hypothetical question and I was not convinced by your arguments, so I will not engage to answering it.
I very clearly explained the point, and you’ve very clearly demonstrated an inability to answer the question.
It’s not constructive, it’s what-about-ism and disengenious rhetoric.I entirely misunderstood the parent comment.
“There is no such thing as a lesser evil in a conflict where both sides are genocidal.”
“[pretty indisputable example of both sides being genocidal but there very clearly being a lesser evil between the two]”
“Whataboutism!”
???
Someone tried to argue with me that Kamala will genuinely try to make a ceasefire happen, right after she banned Palestinians from talking at the DNC rally.
His evidence that the “uncommitted voters” supported Kamala was that they backed her campaign in their speech… which was the one banned from being presented because it was pro Palestinian…
I still haven’t replied to that thread because I genuinely don’t know how to explain to this person that their candidate lied to them, and clearly has no interest in ending the genocide.
Who should Americans vote for president in November?
Fascism, because that will allow online tankies to feel better about taking a reactionary “AMERICA BAD” position on every issue.
My take? Vote your conscience, or not at all if that’s where your conscience leads you. I can’t bring myself to fault anyone for refusing to vote for a “lesser evil”. At the end of the day, electoral politics just isn’t worth the amount of time and energy people give to it. That time and energy is better spent engaging in direct action, community building, and just general activism. I have long been disillusioned that electoral politics can bring about meaningful progress.