Concerned citizens educating themselves on the strategies of fascist dictators. Sad!

There was some article on medium I saw linked on Twitter that talked about how 4chan's embracing of loserdom made it even more powerful and enigmatic, like a "labyrinth without a center", and like Donald Trump in a lot of ways. Of course, there are actual economic losers (older Republicans) who are legit being conned by their leaders, as well as younger losers (Anons). But the latter category embraces their loserdom, because they never bought into the system to start with, and knowingly electing a terrible person to be POTUS is actually a form of performance art in their minds.

Then I was reminded of this scene about 'nihilists', and realized that if Nazi ideology were viral encephalitis, /pol is in fact worse--maybe more like a prion.

National Socialism was an "ethos" in the same way that "freefall" is a type of locomotion.

I know a few of those "4chan losers" in real life - by that, I mean the kinds of people who post on pol, and /r/the_donald. The truth is that those people aren't beat-down losers who embrace their loserdom, they're men with perfectly fine lives, normal if not above-average jobs, and normal success with women. The real difference is that they are totally and self-destructively obsessed with the idea of their own persecution.

Well, if I am to believe Dorothy Thompson's 1941 article "Who goes Nazi?", as well as something I almost certainly remember you writing in this thread, Nazi sympathizers were angry bourgeoisie.

Not suffering economically... obsessed with their own persecution... does this remind me of somebody?

There is also that one guy I know who voted for Trump because he is angry at "the government" for banning online poker.

On that note, I recently read a psychiatrist opine that those who would blame Trump's personality problems on a mental disorder are giving mental patients a bad name.

Trump doesn't have a narcissistic personality disorder, but he is a selfish, narcissistic jerk.

If you have a spare moment to oblige my curiosity, do you have anything more to say about this? I watched a talk he gave on Youtube, and his arguments against technology sound familiar from your anti-technology, neo-Luddism.

It looks like he's written some books which I might actually want to read.

I was talking about gerrymandering. Jerry Mander sounds like a swell guy, though.

Weird coincidence.

Can someone tell me what the Trump people think of the whole Sweden thing and the other terrorist attacks Trump pulled out of his ass? How is this handled by Fox? Just another incident trumped up by the Lügenpresse or what?

We are with you, Sweden! In times of trouble, real and imaginary both.

Funny how the entire point is lost because he referred to the problem using a specific time frame rather than a general one. It seems that gaffes by the previous president would have been glossed over and excused. Hell, a debate moderator even lied for him in the middle of a presidential debate by substantiating Obama's false claim that he initially referred to the Benghazi 9/11 attack as a terrorist attack.

Compassionate people are willing to sacrifice their own safety to do what is morally right. I'm pretty sure that's the actual point here.

That's a rather disingenuous and unsubstantiated attack. I'm sure many concerned citizens can be found in Sweden and several other European countries that harbor Muslim refugees and migrants.

I'm sure there are racist Swedes, too. I'm also sure the two groups have an uncomfortable overlap.

TIL it is "disingenuous and unsubstantiated" (?) to point out that people who let fear keep them from helping the unfortunate aren't compassionate.

something, something, Obama, Benghazi

TIL that it is compassionate not to try to limit the amount of terrorists and rapist entering one's country.

something, something, Trump, Sweden

you seriously buy into that Drumpf rhetoric? Oy vey....

nice try, but I don't recall liberals haranguing over anything involving those words in a sentence constantly for the past four years

Apparently this was too much even for CPAC, and he's lost his speaking engagement (and his book deal with Simon & Schuster).

(Also, since when did the first amendment become an excuse for saying stupid **** and whining about it when people tell you to **** off and shut up?)

Are you only now noticing that most people have no idea what a right to freedom of speech/expression actually is?

Freedom of expression means that I have the right to use an existing venue to harass somebody based on their sexuality.

Not sure if it makes sense to make too much bones about this given the source, but apparently Alex Jones is telling the NYT that President Trump has conferred on Jones by telephone on several occasions for fact verification purposes.

To be clear none of my arguments should be construed to imply that I am now a Trump supporter. On this particular issue, I find it dumb that he referred to Sweden the way he did. However Sweden does have significant Muslim problems and that point should not be lost just because Trump is a worse public speaker than George Washington Balloons. I feel that there are two extreme positions with regards to Muslim migrants and refugees. One is the position that there is absolutely no risk to public safety by what should be unlimited access and the other is that they should stay in "their own damn country". Compared to those, Trumps position that certain visas should be paused until vetting can be improved seems quite moderate. I must caveat virtually any statement I make about Trump and any of his positions with the stipulation that I have no idea if he's changed his mind on anything like he did daily, hourly, or even by the minute or second during the campaign. It has appeared to me that he has been much more consistent as president but I only follow this crap quite loosely now.



Not that this is totally unbelievable but I trust that fat ****er about as far as I can throw him which in my prime wouldn't have been very far.



So you seriously aren't aware of the terrorism and sexual molestation and rape problems plaguing Europe in particular? Oy vey...

I was wrong to draw a comparison between Trump's rhetoric about Mexicans and the anti-migrant sentiment in Europe. I am well aware that there are a bunch of cases of crime and sexual assault committed by African and Middle Eastern migrants against Europeans.

If you want to characterize anti-migrant backlash as "compassionate", I guess I can't argue with you. Compassion toward fellow whites at the expense of people stuck in Syria is always a virtue.

Maybe Europe should have taken care of its own neighbourhood when Assad was shelling his own people. Their foreign policy has been reprehensible.

Obama seriously deserves blame here as well, but only after the Europeans.

Why is it that Trump apologists (since you don't want me to say 'supporter') always construe his statements in the best possible way, when all evidence suggest we should be doing the exact opposite?



You can use phrases like "seems moderate" or say that something looks good on paper, but is there anything that Trump did that didn't turn to **** (save maybe some personal gain) when he touched it? Build some casinos and hotels?

Nothing I say is going to stop you from wildly mischaracterizing one side of this debate as infantile flower children, so I guess I shouldn't bother.



The US already has one of the most extreme refugee screening processes in the world. There is realistically nothing else the United States could do to make the process "safer", short of dismissing all applicants immediately.

Trump's current position is ZERO REFUGEES. That is not a moderate position. That is an extreme position.

US republicans have been trading liberty for safety since 2001, I don't know why I'm surprised they'd refugee lives for safety too.

lol, another special snowflake scrambling for a safe space.

I mostly like to picture how they plan on explaining their risk calculus to God.

"Well, God, you see, my safety is worth X dead refugees, and..."

Edit: Referring to Germany:

This is bull****. Crime rates are actually lower for immigrants and refugees than for the rest of the population. And I am actually surprised by that because I'd guess many of the refugees would be suffering from PTSD and thus be more prone to lash out.
The most pressing terrorism problem at the moment is right wing terrorism. And it is mostly a problem in areas where there aren't that many migrants to begin with. So, it looks like people getting to know dem foreigners are actually more accepting of them. What a ****ing surprise.

Yes, there are problems. But those problems are more of the where do we put all these people and how do we organise it all nature. Not they are out of control and doing as they please problems. Unless you ask someone supporting the right wing parties who doesn't know migrants or statistics.

****, I didn't want to participate in a stupid political thread.

I just so happened to watch a segment on this subject last night, about refugees in Sweden. Since accepting large numbers of refugees, crime has actually gone up, but not because of refugees, but because they started to record cybercrime in statistics, otherwise crime would be down. There are no big problems with refugees in Sweden other than that there's always people who want to keep the damn foreigners out.

Here in the Netherlands we've accepted a decent number of refugees, and the only mentionable problem we're seeing is that there's a small increase in shoplifting in towns with refugee centres. There's more problems with extreme right wingers rioting and hanging up dead pigs near refugee centres.



Rape problems plaguing Europe? What the actual ****? You must be referring to one particular incident in Germany during New Year in January 2016. Yeah, that is a famous incident. But it's not like refugees are raping and molesting all over Europe continuously. FAR from it. It was just that one incident. This is such a gross misrepresentation of reality, it's not even funny. (I'm guessing you must be watching Fox News exclusively, I know what their reporting is like, we've had threads on that in the past, where they lied about rampant abortions and teen pregnancies in the Netherlands, when the opposite was true, and I showed you the numbers.)

If you want to talk rape problems, talk about India.



Yes, yes it is. If every country in the world would put a stop on refugees because of this risk, refugees would die in impossible numbers. Even if you let in someone who kills a bunch of people in a bombing, you'll still have saved more people.

It's incredibly selfish to leave tons of people to a certain fate because of an uncertain risk that a few of them might be bad apples and do something.

If conservatives really cared about rape, they might not want such a large prison system and harsh sentencing. I guess rape is fine against prisoners, though. We all know conservatives believe they are untermenschen.

I'm not saying I disagree, but I'm curious what European policy you're actually referring to here.

The policy where Obama and Saudis armed terrorists to overthrow a stable government leading to the deaths of tens of thousands and extreme repression along with an escalation of confrontations with Russia. Thanks, Merkel.

I was annoyed that, on last night's Jon Oliver episode, he claimed supporting Assad was "against American values" or whatever. I wish Democrats would stop supporting neo-imperialist foreign policy.

Conservatives are almost literally Quixotic about rape. Instead of taking a reasonable stance and implementing sociologically valid measures to reduce rape, they launch a Quixotic quest to honor Dulcinea prevent women from being raped by windmills Muslims.