Banquo wrote:Tommy Robinson is a petty thug, who harasses people and incites violence, he's being prosecuted to the extent of his crimes. Nothing more nothing less. And when last I checked, the various Police Forces in the United Kingdom, weren't left wing organisations. 
so levelling the actions of the Police at the feet of the Progressive Left is hardly fair now is it?
His only crime is expressing an opinion that certain people don't like. By redefining speech you don't like as 'incitement to violence' you have essentially found a loophole through which people you dislike can be prosecuted for what they say while still dishonestly claiming to support free speech.
Banquo wrote:As for hate speech, why you choose to put that in quotation marks is up to you, but when someone uses speech to incite violence and abuse people it is a crime. Only this week, a radical hate preacher named Anjem Choudry was jailed for hate speech in the UK for inciting people to commit terrorist acts. Freedom of speech is fine, freedom to tell people to commit violence against others isn't.
Perhaps rather than jailing Anjem Choudry for his opinion it would be better to have kept him out of the country in the first place? And I don't think Anjem Choudry should be jailed either. As far as I know the only thing he is guilty of is expressing support for the Islamic State. Is his position disgusting; yes, should it be illegal; no. Anjem Choudry should never have been allowed into the UK, but seeing as he is a British citizen now he should be able to say he supports whatever he wants, no matter how abhorrent I or anyone else finds it.
Banquo wrote:You're quite right in saying that the Communists in Russia under Stalin had far more blood on their hands than the Nazis, but as a student of History, I'm also well aware, that this had very little to do with an attempt to achieve egalitarianism or to further the aims of socialism. It was nothing more than a power hungry madman, wiping out any and all opposition. In fact on one level it could be argued that it was his own form of ethnic cleansing, though instead of wiping out people by race or creed, he wiped them out by class or political affiliation. Yet another maniac putting more stock in that which divides us than that which brings us together.
The Holodomor had everything to do with achieving socialism. The communist government felt that the Ukrainians supported the Ukrainian nationalists, and therefore stood in the way of heaven on earth, so had to be disposed of. Such an action could only be justified by belief that starving millions of people served a greater good, namely the utopian communist society the Soviet Union wanted to bring about. A few million people were, in the minds of communist leaders, a small price to pay for egalitarianism.
And could not the same excuse be made for the crimes of Hitler; that they were the actions of a madman eliminating anything that stood in his way? That the Holocaust had nothing to do with Nazi ideology and it was all just a madman wanting power? I'm not in anyway saying that that is the case, only that one could make such an argument just as one could argue that communism's crimes had nothing to do with communism.
Banquo wrote:look [sic] at Israel? Could you elaborate here? Aren't they currently engaged in their own unceasing war of ethnonationalistic attrition with the Palastinians? whatever the rights or wrongs of the conflict, it's yet another case of two sets of people's divided but nothing more than a few lines of sacred text, and perhaps a couple of different shades on the dulux colour chart. Here they are fighting year after year, bringing up children in a world where hatred is commonplace and revenge and retribution are the motivators.
So I ask, where did the concept of ethnonationalisism [sic] ever get the Israelis? Or perhaps more pertinently the Palistinians [sic]...
It got them their own state. It gives the Jewish people a refuge should something like the Holocaust ever happen again. And despite the near constant attempts of the Arabs to destroy everything they have build, the Jews seem to think that it's worth it. Israel is a testament to the power of nationalism and love for one's own people. The Jews moved to a wasteland and made it bloom so their ancestors would be proud and their people would have a future. The Jews fought war after war so their ancestors would be proud and their people would have a future. And still, despite all the hardship, more Jews move to Israel every year. Is there not something beautiful in the determination and strength of these people? Does it not show you the value that people place in their nation, in their ethnicity? If nothing else, it should show you all that a proud and independent people will endure for their nation, and the danger of failing to respect that.
As for the Palestinians, they have had numerous chances to make peace with Israel, yet refuse. They too could have their own state, yet choose to attack instead. I can hardly think of a better example of why self-determination for all nations should be respected by all nations.
Banquo wrote:With the greatest respect. Self determination had the square root of fuck all to do with the holocaust. The Nazis gained power by playing on the minds of the down trodden Germans who had been so ruthlessly treated by the allies after WW1. They did this by playing on their fears about communism, and Jews, and black people, and gays. The Nazis whipped up an angry mob who voted them into power! How's that for respect for self determination? The fact the Nazis eventually removed the right to free elections and Germany became a dictatorship is wholly irrelevant to the holocaust, so please don't obsfucate the situation by pretending otherwise. Eventually they had to make good on their promises to deal with the Jews, so they pushed them into Ghettos, seized businesses etc. Then came the final solution.
The Holocaust was born out of ethnic classification, and the key principles of ethnonationalisism [sic] that fuelled [sic] the Nazi propaganda machine.
Lack of respect for self-determination had
everything to do with the Holocaust. The Nazis refused to accept that the Jews (and Slavs and Gypsies) had just as much right as the Germans to live peacefully as their own people. Hitler could have stopped his expansion after being given the Sudetenland, and he could have let the Jews live as Jews. If he really wanted to get rid of them he could have granted them their own piece of land (cut out of Germany) and encouraged them to move there. The Jews would have had their own state, the Germans theirs and everyone would have lived happily ever after. Instead Hitler refused to accept the the Jews had just as much a right to exist as anyone else, and so he tried to kill them off. The problem was not that the Nazis classified people based off ethnicity, it was that they refused to accept that those people had the same rights to self-determination as the Germans.
I might also point out that WWI was started because the Hapsburgs refused to let the Serbs have their own nation. Instead the insisted on holding their diverse multi-ethnic empire together, by force if necessary.
Banquo wrote:I'm of the opinion that Nationalism is one of the most harmful influences on the world, it's brought humanity to the brink of destruction countless times over the past century. And when that nationalism is narrowed down to ethnicity it becomes something very dangerous indeed. Something foul and insidious that turns pride into hatred and love for ones country or community into a feeling of superiority over those of others.
Do you not feel moral superiority over me? How is your sense of superiority over those who love their ethnicities any less dangerous than the sense of superiority the Nazis feel they had over the Jews. You clearly feel justified in ignoring research and data (to which you have not responded) and suppressing free expression.
And it is really nationalism that causes war? Did the Japanese cause a war when they shut their island off from the rest of the world? Or is it failure to acknowledge right to self-determinations that causes war?
