Hamas attacks Israel with kit rockets and AK47's... US sends aircraft carrier in support.

[StringJunky]

25 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

I think it is easy to blame the Nazis for Naziism and similar level atrocities, but if we want to avoid becoming part of it it's important to recognize we are all born capable of the same. 

Given the same pervasive, morally-subversive conditions, we each may well potentially think in the same way.

Edited December 11, 2023 by StringJunky

[iNow]

26 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Given the same pervasive, morally-subversive conditions, we each may well potentially think in the same way.

Hell, many guys would do it for a free slice of pizza and a smile from an attractive female. We’re hardly stoics as a culture anymore. 

[StringJunky]

1 minute ago, iNow said:

Hell, many guys would do it for a free slice of pizza and a smile from an attractive female. We’re hardly stoics as a culture anymore. 

Yes, most people are morally transient, according to their perceived needs. 

[iNow]

Code switching is common. We’re social creatures.

[TheVat]

I think of Hannah Arendt's banality of evil when this topic comes up.

Quote

The "banality of evil” is the idea that evil does not have the Satan-like, villainous appearance we might typically associate it with. Rather, evil is perpetuated when immoral principles become normalized over time by people who do not think about things from the standpoint of others. Evil becomes commonplace; it becomes the everyday. Ordinary people — going about their everyday lives — become complicit actors in systems that perpetuate evil.

This idea is best understood within the context of how Arendt viewed our relationship to the world. We live and think not in isolation, Arendt argues, but in an interconnected web of social and cultural relations — a framework of shared languages, behaviors, and conventions that we are conditioned by every single day.

This web of social and cultural relations is so all-encompassing in shaping our thought and behavior we are barely conscious of it. It only becomes noticeable when something or someone doesn’t conform to it....

https://philosophybreak.com/articles/hannah-arendt-on-standing-up-to-the-banality-of-evil/

[CharonY]

Just now, TheVat said:

I think of Hannah Arendt's banality of evil when this topic comes up.

https://philosophybreak.com/articles/hannah-arendt-on-standing-up-to-the-banality-of-evil/

This is also very much the lesson you get, growing up in Germany (well perhaps not anymore, things are changing, unfortunately). But ultimately the perpetrator were the the (great)grandparents of the folks in class. It is trivially easy to understand that Nazis are not something alien and evil. And over the last decade or so we have seen the allure of fascism in the Western world, suggesting that lessons were not learned.

[MigL]

12 hours ago, CharonY said:

And over the last decade or so we have seen the allure of fascism in the Western world, suggesting that lessons were not learned

Do you think the West's flirting with 'Fascism' the past few years is even comparable to that of Germany, Italy or Spain in the 30s and 40s ?
I
I think even the US, under D Trump, or today's Hungary are orders of magnitude removed from the brutality of the Nazis and Fascists.

Let's not lose historical perspective and make light of what really happened 80 years ago, and how reasonable people were manipulated ( or allowed themselves to be ? ) into becoming 'monsters'.

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Do you think the West's flirting with 'Fascism' the past few years is even comparable to that of Germany, Italy or Spain in the 30s and 40s ?

Perhaps I'm wrong but I thought that Germany and Italy DID flirt with fascism prior to going all in and becoming fascist states.

[iNow]

And it started noticeably growing in the late 20s

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Do you think the West's flirting with 'Fascism' the past few years is even comparable to that of Germany, Italy or Spain in the 30s and 40s ?
I
I think even the US, under D Trump, or today's Hungary are orders of magnitude removed from the brutality of the Nazis and Fascists.

Let's not lose historical perspective and make light of what really happened 80 years ago, and how reasonable people were manipulated ( or allowed themselves to be ? ) into becoming 'monsters'.

Many things are comparable and it is dangerous to only focus on the most extreme outcomes. Keep in mind, we have a examples what happened when fascism reigned (in its various forms) and the fact that folks look at it and think, yeah, we want something like that is dangerous in itself. In fact, you could argue that due to the social upheaval at that time (after WWI, oppression of the working class and associated rise of socialist and communist ideals, Russian revolution, Great depression, novelty of democratic systems etc.) it was excusable that folks desired a strong leader type and were susceptible to populist appeals. 

Now with that lesson learned, even inching toward that again, is a huge backslide, especially for the Germans (for historic reasons- heck courts have verified that the leader of the potentially second strongest party is a Nazi).

What we do see is that once in power those parties start to erode checks and balances. Not at the rate nor necessarily as brutally as in the interwar period, but it is like putting your small finger on the hot stove after burning your whole hand and thinking this is so much better.

The reasons are quite similar to a large degree. Fear, misinformation, and the associated desire to be ruled by a strong ordering hand that make things great again. If we only focus on the genocidal aspects, we won't notice the erosion of democracy right under our noses.

36 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Perhaps I'm wrong but I thought that Germany and Italy DID flirt with fascism prior to going all in and becoming fascist states.

Well fascisms was a new thing, but in both countries the groups were originally "just" agitators, and while Mussolini had a rather fast rise and was asked by Italy's king to form a government after they basically incited an uprising. Hitler at the same time was seen more like an upstart and after the failed putsch was seen as a controllable asset for the establishment right. They were wrong, of course. Now today folks still find whatever that was appealing, but aside from a much smaller militant wing most cannot be arsed to perform violent actions. And the nice thing is they don't have to. Instead of firebombing press and political opponents, they can do that now from home on their cell phones (Luegenpresse, anyone?).

Again, the bad thing is not (only) that they are making a comeback. The bad thing is that I don't think we are learning from our past and are also forgetting things at an incredible pace.

[AIkonoklazt]

On 12/10/2023 at 2:23 PM, CharonY said:

Well, it has been described (by Jewish journalists and researchers) as Jewish supremacist and fascist group. That's two for two already.

...that's still not "Fourth Reich," which is anti-semitic.

22 hours ago, TheVat said:

I think of Hannah Arendt's banality of evil when this topic comes up.

https://philosophybreak.com/articles/hannah-arendt-on-standing-up-to-the-banality-of-evil/

All it takes is a lack of empathy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20171017022708/http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/evil/evilP12.html

[MigL]

8 hours ago, CharonY said:

What we do see is that once in power those parties start to erode checks and balances.

Except that the two main places in the world where checks and balances have been totally eroded, and supposedly 'democratically' elected leaders have become rulers for life, are Russia and China, who profess to be Communist.

Both Italy and Spain went directly from Monarchies to Fascism, so the population had little, if any, appreciation for Democracy.
Germany did, for a few years since the end of WW1, but Hindenberg's  Weimar Republic suffered the hyperinflation of the early 20s as well as the Great Depression; couple that with Versailles shame and it's a wonder it lasted as long as it did, even managing to keep going despite the first Nazi 'flirtation', the Biergarten Putsch in Munich, during which about 2000 Nazis marched on the city center, and A Hitler was subsequently arrested, only to much later succeed after winning party status and elections.
Italy, on the other hand, having never been a Republic ( since Roman times ) quickly collapsed into Fascism when B Mussolini's similarly numbered 'black shirts' marched on Rome.

Looking as the US 'flirtation' of Jan 6, I would think the US would have to have some really major problems, and an almost imminent collapse of the economy, for a similar event to succeed.
 

[CharonY]

3 hours ago, MigL said:

Except that the two main places in the world where checks and balances have been totally eroded, and supposedly 'democratically' elected leaders have become rulers for life, are Russia and China, who profess to be Communist.

Sound like a red herring to me. There are more than two autocratic governments and neither of those two actually have a communist economic system. Moreover, there are many good arguments that have argued that Russia is in fact fascist. https://theconversation.com/yes-putin-and-russia-are-fascist-a-political-scientist-shows-how-they-meet-the-textbook-definition-179063

 

3 hours ago, MigL said:

Looking as the US 'flirtation' of Jan 6, I would think the US would have to have some really major problems, and an almost imminent collapse of the economy, for a similar event to succeed.

My point is that because we have all this long history, one would expect that no one sane would ever want to even dip their toes into this mess ever again. Yet here we are discussing trends and nuances and the best we can come up is that it ain't that bad as before? 

 

3 hours ago, MigL said:

Weimar Republic suffered the hyperinflation of the early 20s as well as the Great Depression; couple that with Versailles shame and it's a wonder it lasted as long as it did

Before the Great Depression the Germany economy was in recovery after reigning in hyperinflation. And basically it means that economic hardship (plus threats from black and brown folks in Europe) and we all goose-step right into the abyss.

[MigL]

LOL
I can't decide whether you're making a slippery slope argument, or if you've become cynical and lost faith in the moral integrity of our fellow citizens.

Maybe a little of both ?

[iNow]

It could be neither of those things. Perhaps it's just an relatively accurate read of the current sociopolitical landscape. Certain flaws in humanity are exaggerating themselves and seemingly trending in the wrong direction. Neither slippery slope nor abandonment of hope are needed to acknowledge that. 

[MigL]

Maybe.
But I happen to think that certain political systems/ideologies are prone to abuse, concentrating power at the top and eventually becoming dictatorships.
I used Russia and China as examples because they are major players, but every country that has tried Communism has suffered the same fate.
We have examples from history about the evils of Fascism, and that system also failed for the exact same reasons; ultimately, a few use the system to control the people and subjugate them.

One could make the argument that pure ( Marxian ) Communism has been 'bastardized' and the unadulterated version has never been tried, and could be a utopia, but one could make the same argument for Fascism; that Germany could become soch an economic powerhouse during the 30s, indicates that the system could be beneficial. 
Too bad A Hitler and his collaborators decided to use that recovery as a war machine for their mad purposes.

I'd be happy to continue this historical and political system discussion in another thread, as I fear we are venturing too far off the topic of Israel's supposed 'fascist' behavior with regards to Gaza.

[CharonY]

7 hours ago, MigL said:

I'd be happy to continue this historical and political system discussion in another thread, as I fear we are venturing too far off the topic of Israel's supposed 'fascist' behavior with regards to Gaza.

We can start a new thread, but I just wanted to mention that the economic model is not what necessarily creates dictatorships (as evidenced that we have basically five countries left that call themselves communist, but far more dictatorships), so I would not be particularly interested in rehashing that argument. One could make a thread discussing the difference between ideologies (which is structured in Marxism, but fairly empty in Fascism) and contrast it to the respective movements (which both were autocratic either from inception or increasingly became thus). But I suspect that neither of us has the background to fully flesh those discussions out in detail. 

 

To move things on topic, a fourth reich or whatever is certainly hyperbole, but there have been active discussions in Israel (prior to the current events) regarding a possible slide towards fascism. Following the election in 2022 some have argued that despite a right-wing slide (far right bloc with 11%, Israel is still lagging behind Europe in that regard with the far  (not sure whether that is reassuring, though) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/08/opinion/israel-election-fascism.html.

Other articles in a similar vein claim that fascist characteristics in Europe are not present in Israel. Conversely, some folks, including former prime minister Ehud Barak have argued that the the government under Netanyahu are indeed showing signs of fascism 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/ehud-barak-govt-shows-signs-of-fascism-mass-non-violent-revolt-may-be-needed/

Also: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/israel-benjamin-netanyahu-democracy-rule-of-law/673469/

I.e. if one focuses on the end points, it is easy enough to find distinctions, and some are probably trivial (such as anti-Semitism). However, looking at the mechanisms, such as dismantling of judiciary systems, the similarities start to show. Not only in Israel, but also in countries with increasingly powerful right-wing populist movements.

It is detrimental to use terms such as fourth reich or concentration camps, as those are loaded and inevitably invite a rather meaningless discussion in semantics. The real questions here in my mind is what happens to democratic safeguards with the rise of populism, what are the reasons for that rise and are the long-term consequences. I do think that this is a global challenge and relying of the relative peace in the Western world after WWII as evidence that all is going to go well forever, is somewhat shortsighted.

To be sure, the events in OP are not necessarily connected to this particular issue, but the jingoist sentiments that put Netanyahu in power and encouraged him to support Hamas to further weaken the two-state solution shows the risks of such sentiments. Peace should not be taken for granted.

[MigL]

10 hours ago, CharonY said:

But I suspect that neither of us has the background to fully flesh those discussions out in detail.

Wait ...did you just imply I don't know what I'm talking about ?

😄 But seriously, we can both have opinions on the matter, n'est ce pas ?

 

10 hours ago, CharonY said:

Peace should not be taken for granted.

I couldn't agree more.
Unfortunately, most of the time, you have to fight for peace.

[joigus]

I was going to drop out of this discussion, but I can't leave it at this:

On 12/9/2023 at 6:38 PM, zapatos said:

Correct. Some people manage to come and go. Again, you make it sound as if Gaza cannot be compare to a concentration camp if some people can leave, or if people aren't starving. 

Well, you can compare it if you want. If it is, it's a very peculiar concentration camp, where the "inmates" apparently spend billions of dollars in weapons to make their life more... bearable? One of the borders is also sealed (by Egypt) but for some magical reason that border does not contribute to making it a concentration camp? And when Egypt occupied the land in the past, that was no occupation. No, no, no. But when Israeli settlers build irrigation systems, that's an occupation. And even after they pack their bags and go, they were still occupying the land!!! (According to this Albanese person from the UN.) With their minds, I suppose.

In other words, it's simply a metaphor, and a very bad one at that. Metaphors, comparisons, and hyperbole are the favourite rhetorical tricks of demagogues. And they use them to great effect. You just remove the word "like" and it works its magic. "That thing" becomes "the other thing". It's not that reminds you of the other thing, which seems to invite lots of questions. It just is the other thing. And critical thinking just shuts down.

And sure, let's not mention that big, scary, monstrous, barbaric, medieval, inhumane, irrational, unmentionable thing that we don't want to mention, lest we finally understand somehow what we're really dealing with here.

On 12/9/2023 at 6:38 PM, zapatos said:

Like many others, you seem to have reached a conclusion first then found arguments to support it.

I'm sorry that you feel that way. From where I stand, it looks like a thankless task to study for years and years and years, without getting anywhere, and thinking all that study time could have been spent in something more productive, more constructive, more beautiful. It feels like Sysyphus.

[dimreepr]

22 minutes ago, joigus said:

It feels like Sysyphus.

There's a reasonable argument that Sysyphus was actrually in heaven.

+1 for the post.

8 hours ago, MigL said:

Unfortunately, most of the time, you have to fight for peace.

But you don't have to kill anyone to achieve it.

[J.C.MacSwell]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

 

But you don't have to kill anyone to achieve it.

On what planet?

[dimreepr]

5 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

On what planet?

Why not on this one?

[J.C.MacSwell]

25 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Why not on this one?

Because here, although we have evolved to have the capacity for peaceful coexistence, we have also all evolved to have the capacity for instinct to take advantage of those that demonstrate excessive pacifism.

When not sure we tend to poke the bear to find out...

[zapatos]

4 hours ago, joigus said:

One of the borders is also sealed (by Egypt) but for some magical reason that border does not contribute to making it a concentration camp?

Of course it does. If there were no sealed borders it would be more like any other country.

4 hours ago, joigus said:

And when Egypt occupied the land in the past, that was no occupation. No, no, no. But when Israeli settlers build irrigation systems, that's an occupation.

I have no idea how that ties into whether or not you can compare Gaza to a concentration camp.

4 hours ago, joigus said:

Metaphors, comparisons, and hyperbole are the favourite rhetorical tricks of demagogues.

You mean like the following?

4 hours ago, joigus said:

And sure, let's not mention that big, scary, monstrous, barbaric, medieval, inhumane, irrational, unmentionable thing that we don't want to mention, lest we finally understand somehow what we're really dealing with here.

 

4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

But you don't have to kill anyone to achieve it.

You seem to be divorced from reality.

[TheVat]

I'm astonished that there can really be so much debate as to whether Gaza is a place of inhumane confinement or not.  Numerous posts have documented this reality.   Few people could leave, except for maybe half a percent who had work permits (also a feature of some prisons).  Food and water constantly rationed.  Normal trade and economic opportunities blocked.  Every few years, jets pass over and destroy part of the infrastructure and housing.  Who gives a FF what it's called, it is still inhumane and strips people of basic sovereignty over their own lives. 

Weird that members here who could easily grasp the miseries of places like East Berlin or the Ghetto of Warsaw, find it difficult to empathize with the 99% of Palestinians who are not Hamas militants and are simply trying to survive.  

Both Israel and Hamas are at fault, each feeding the endless cycle of vengeful hatred and reprisal, each dominated by an illiberal and miltant faction in a part of the world where liberalism is most sorely needed.