For the record, I never said that racists aren't human. I said they were scumbag, that I don't care if they get punched, and that it's not the burden of minorities to change their views. Not once did I say they are "not human". I'm well aware that humans can indeed be trash.

Moreover, this idea that hating racism is "just as bad" as actual racism is so laughable and transparent that I can't even be mad at the gall of it. I can, however, refuse to give a platform for this nonsense on my forum, and so I shall. Especially for alt-accounts on their last legs.


Ehhh? Not saying that every single WW2 German should have been exterminated or anything BUT WW2 Germany is one hell of a weird example to choose from when it comes to how we should handle nazis, dude...

I understand where you're coming from and would generally agree that civilized dialogue and education are the way, but I think that actual Nazis are the exception to that. They're too far gone as far as I'm concerned, and honestly, I don't think I'd ever be able to trust an "ex Nazi", no matter how seemingly honest they might appear.

The German people of those times aren't exactly comparable to, say, the cunts who marched on Charlottesville and the like. We know the circumstances the led to the rise of Nazism back in the day, so there's no excuse to make the same mistakes in our day and age. American neo-Nazis aren't people who are told their families will be killed if they don't go around praising the Reich.

I think you underestimate just how passionately people embraced and supported that ideology back then. It was hardly coercion in most cases.

I don't advocate violence against Nazis* and don't deny that some can and will change, but if you adopted Xlxlx's position towards Nazi Germany it isn't like you would be damning 2/3's of the German population to "otracism, criminalization and utter destruction," as he put it. You're correct that those people were passionate, but their numbers weren't anywhere near a majority; if I remember correctly, the NSDAP never got more than 35% in any of the parliamentary elections in 1932.



*As an historical aside: there was actually a fair amount of violence against Nazis leading up to their seizure of power, and I don't just mean counter-protests turning violent (though there was that too)---I mean NSDAP and SA leaders being assassinated. It didn't stop their rise and in fact hardened their resolve, while granting them sympathy from people.

Well, wouldn't you call a female Trump supporter a Trumpette?

Also, this is amazing and definitely not at all concerning:


Too bad they cropped out the MAGA hat, it made the photo even better!

You can litterally see the stupidity and toxic masculinity iradiate from them, lol. That russian thing is not just in the USA. A lot of far right nutters from France and other European nations seem to really like Putin and Russia. Like Putin really cares about them. Just a bunch of useful idiots. It's ironic that a few decades ago, those same persons would have really hate Russia.

Well, it was the greatest single concentration of actual Nazis the world has ever seen, and it was handled by waging a successful war against it without killing all the Nazis during or after the war. Also, it now seems to be the nation with the hardest line against Nazism in the modern world. Something was done right, although at a huge human cost on both sides.

I'm not sure if any meaningful percentage of neo-Nazis can be rehabilitated, but I do wonder if people are serious about the use of violence against them being all right. As far as self-defence goes, sure, but Xlxlx, for example, seems to advocate actively seeking out of Nazis and punching them. That's the way Nazis did stuff back in the day, and I'd feel very awkward and frankly scared if the world ever turned to that. Unless you can guarantee anyone with power to order such punching will never seek out me, anyone in my immediate family, or a short list of my closest friends. Everybody else, sure, punch them, I'll even join your group if it guarantees not being punched for those on my list.


"I was a member of the Nazi Party only for political reasons!"

I didn't get any of that from his posts. You're reaching.

Back in 2003, a stock response I would receive when criticizing the Iraq War and the Bush administration was "if you don't like it, go to Russia." Most of those people are Putin bootlickers now.

No, Morri, I got that too. I wouldn't say it's reaching. He speaks of needing to take "drastic measures" when analogizing to putting dogs down, how "utter destruction" of a group of people is the ideal, and how such people, even ex-supporters, are "too far gone." These are all-too-common dogwhistles in the English language for the use of violence against another group of people. That's just from the last page. Look into his post history, and it's fairly obvious he has no problem advocating for actively seeking out Nazis and using violence against them, particularly in the context of punching them. He's most definitely an advocate here, and I honestly don't think he'd be ashamed to admit it.

Even for those who are not students of history, there's a pretty clear difference between actual Nazis circa 1939, and today's neo-Nazis.

For one thing, today's neo-Nazis have spent their entire existence in a world wherein Nazism has stood as the ultimate symbol of evil and base inhumanity, and yet they have still chosen to embrace it. I suspect that the overwhelming majority are beyond 'rehabilitation' - they have made a conscious decision to reject modern society, and Web 2.0 has provided them with a platform to consume and circulate nothing but bile from likeminded cretins.

This brings us to what is probably the most egregious aspect of the Trump presidency (assuming he doesn't hit the big red button). His behaviour has emboldened and empowered the worst elements of our society to spout their racist nonsense. In my country (Australia), an elected official gave a speech last week in which he called for a 'Final Solution' on Muslim immigration. While we have a shameful record in regards to our treatment of non-whites, this kind of rhetoric was unthinkable only a few years ago.

This embarrassing clownshow needs to end.

You didn't ask me, but I'll interject a single point: You fucking push them to the side of society. The press has lately made stupid moves getting "two sides of the story" concerning the shittiest people out there and the people trying to stop them. Giving an equal platform to white supremacists as the people trying to stop them legitimizes them. These people are the fringes of society, and they are harmful if given a stage.

It's time to stop giving them a stage. It's time to stop pretending the shitty people have anything to say.

When someone starts talking about "making America white," you shut off the cameras and you walk away and marginalize them.
When someone starts talking about how women deserve rape, you kick them off your social media and shut them out.
When someone starts talking about taking away rights of LGBTQ people, you lock their accounts and perma-ban them.
When someone starts talking about how Earth is flat and vaccines cause autism, you take away their bullhorn and send them home with an elementary school science book.

We need to stop pretending these people are "just another side, just another worldview, just a different opinion." Because they aren't. They are actively harmful, actively causing harm, and actively worsening society as a whole. They are not equal. They are grossly inferior, and to pretend some batshit crazy moron selling rape and racism and creationism and flat eartherism is equal to literally any educated person who wants society to be better is misguided at best, enabling at worst. And unfortunately, enabling with a free platform to spread their bullshit is what happens too often.

It's not that we shouldn't talk about these issues. It that we should stop giving the proponents of it a platform to spread their vile rhetoric. Free-speech is a multi-way street. You are free to believe whatever stupid bullshit you want. Every rational person is free to drown you out and push you to the side so you (general use) don't spread stupidity around.

It doesn't seem to be on the way out; if anything, we seem to be seeing a rise in that racist nonsense throughout the world. In many cases in Europe well before Trump became US President - as is evidenced by the number of right-wing groups that popped up as a result of the migrant crisis there - though it has gotten worse in the West since Trump was elected. Here in Canada, for example, we just elected Trump-lite as the leader of Ontario and will soon do the same in Alberta. Federally, we also had an elected official (this time a popular politician from a major party, not just a minor third party like your senator) who went off on "extreme multiculturalism" and the "cult of diversity" recently. Just the other day our PM was heckled by a racist Quebec woman belonging to one of the province's many far right groups, and major right-wing political parties federally and provincially are embracing what she had to say. The whole "illegal immigration" issue has become inflamed here, and has already seen the rise of right-wing ideology and power across the country. I don't see it stopping anytime soon.

Maybe we've reached the point where a thread like this shouldn't just be looking at the US, but at how politics on a global scale seems to be shifting in this direction.

It's certainly been a problem in Europe for a long time, for reasons that have nothing to do with Trump. However, it's important to acknowledge that a figure like Geert Wilders doesn't really wield much cultural capital outside of his Dutch base. Trump, on the other hand, is a celebrity with global reach, and his behaviour has served to normalise overt racism among both politicians and the common folk the world over.

I suspect that Trump signifies the last gasp of the far-right in America. The demographics of the country are changing, and the fact is it took a confluence of unique factors to propel him into office. Once Trump is removed from office things should go back to relative normalcy (although I am hoping that the American left can show more strength and unity by rejecting both establishment democrats and identity politics). However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't treat Trump with the alarm that he deserves. There were many people in Germany who thought that the whole Hitler thing would blow over...

I would love to see the rise in social democracy and socialism again, but I'm rather doubtful that will happen soon. So many narratives have to shift, especially on the left, for that to be the case. But there is so much potential for it right now with the current state of right-wing politics being so far-right.

Dogwhistles? I thought I couldn't be more obvious if I tried. And no, I'm really not ashamed to admit that I advocate for the active criminalization and, if necessary, brutalization of Nazis. A jailed or dead Nazi is one less vile cunt to worry about.

There is literally nothing else I take this position on. Dialogue and reason are great and I think they're the answer 99% of the time, but what happens when you encounter people who won't speak with you because you're inherently inferior in their eyes? Only fit to be oppressed, enslaved and/or murdered? Reason has no use and no place here. Only active, vicious threat supression.

Thank you. You put it into words much more articulately than I ever could.

It is one thing to be cast into a world of evil and know no better. It is quite a different one to know evil, and embrace it.

You are actually quite correct on this. Trump even campaigned, in large part, on "I'm your last chance to have a white Christian (choke) man as President." He played on the cowards and fear of "the other" to get elected, and the older populations and ever-diminishing Evangelical population clung to him in desperation that he was right. These are paranoid cowards that think Obama was an evil Muslim (despite just being another Christian), and fear brown people coming into "their" country. Religiosity in this country is (finally) starting to plummet rapidly, and Evangelicals know it. When people realize they're dying off, their last desperate gasps are always the most violent.

Unfortunately, there was another huge reason he was elected--because people stayed home. Left-leaning younger voters didn't vote in nearly the numbers they should or could have. As if they wanted to prove the point that for evil to take root, good people have only to do nothing. A little on the nose, though.

They better get their asses to the polls in November if they want this shit to stop.

By the way folks, Paul Manafort has been found guilty on 8 counts.

The jury was hung on 10 counts, but found Manafort guilty on 8 others.

Manafort found guilty AND Micheal Cohen pleading guilty and incriminating Trump!!

What a time to be alive!!

I'm not sure I agree with this.

It's possible that, like many cults now forgotten, once the leader exits from the scene the whole thing will fall apart---that it's more a personality cult than anything else. I think there are many things which speak against that happening here, however. For starters, Trump isn't actually leading anyone or anything. He's not even leading his own White House, really; he mostly lets staffers do their own thing provided they say nice things about him. The various movements within the American right are essentially doing the same thing; they're not taking policy directives from the person they claim is their leader because their leader doesn't understand policy. They won't have a celebrity as "leader" when Trump is gone, but they'll still be there, and they'll keep doing what they're doing now.

As for the demographics as destiny bit...it sounds plausible on paper but people have been saying that every 4 years in this country since 1992. The Republican Revolution of 1994 was "the last gasp of conservatism" until it wasn't, in 2002. The 2002 midterms were a post-9/11 fluke until 2004, which was another "last gasp of conservatism" before "the Emerging Democratic Majority™" would usher in the "40-year liberal ascendancy" that started in 2008 and ended in 2 years, not 40. I remember arguments that the Tea Party protests were the last gasp, and now 2016 is supposed to be the last gasp.

The person most responsible for propagating this idea of demographics leading to a permanent liberal majority has now largely disowned his own theory, by the way.

It's worth noting that the Republicans have lost every popular vote since 1992, with the exception of 2004 (a narrow win for Bush over John Kerry, despite 9/11).Expect that trend to continue as the demographics continue to change. Trump was able to win the last election largely due to the combination of voter suppression in swing states, and general apathy for a historically weak candidate in Hillary Clinton. I wouldn't bank on the Democrats getting their act together and putting forward a genuinely good candidate in 2020, but I do expect that more people will be mobilised to vote in response to the non-stop fuckery of the Trump presidency.

I certainly don't expect 'Trumpism' to evaporate when Trump is either imprisoned or dead. However, I will be surprised if the movement is strong enough to take power again, for the aforementioned reasons.

The thing to remember about "last gasps" is that the rhetoric works on conservatives who are people whose lives are ruled by fear and cowardice. Tell them they're about to be replaced, and they panic. Tell them brown people will overtake them, and they run screaming to the polls yelling racist slurs. Tell them you're the last chance for them to have a "a white evangelical man" in the White House, and they panic and support you no matter how much you differ from them--as I noted in my post above the one about Manafort being found guilty on eight counts. Trump literally campaigned on this exact rhetoric and conservatives fell for it. That was the carrot needed to lead them into his polls. And that, along with their favorite brand of racism and general bigotry, are why evangelicals continue to cling to Trump despite him being effectively the opposite of what Christianity generally tries to teach.

In reality, the religious right, evangelical conservatives actually are a dying breed. It's not going to happen overnight, and it's highly unlikely to usher in some long-term change (in the sense of Democrats holding the government for decades. Long term change in that Republicans will either be replaced or will adapt to progressive change will happen). A lot of stubborn sacks of shit need to die first. But younger populations are increasingly non-religious, increasingly against evangelical mindsets, increasingly against the "teaching" and "morals" of American Taliban conservatism. It's slow. Christians are still a majority and too many of them in power are still willfully shitting on the Constitution in favor of their hateful theocratic garbage.

Frankly, I think the sudden and horrifying return of such hard rightist viewpoints in politics across the planet are the desperate acts of a dying generation. People filled with fear about how much the world has changed around them, and mentally too weak to understand or adapt to the changing world. The failure of the left has been complacency in allowing these people to gain too much power in their death rattle.

When Trump was elected, a lot of people on social media were suddenly talking up Orwell's 1984. Trump is bringing the dreaded super-state of population control. It's a dictatorship. And so forth. But people ran to that because it's popular dystopian fiction, not because it was accurate or relative. A much more apt novel is It Can't Happen Here, a title which essentially the defined the complacency of the left (globally) that has allowed so many of these monsters to get so much power in an era where we all should've fucking known better. It can't happen in America. It can't happen in Europe again. It just can't happen. We all know better. Too many of us said that and did nothing to actually stop it, so yes, it is happening here. And sadly, everywhere.

You'd think people would maybe have started paying more attention that things were in danger of going down a dangerous road when Greece elected a few too many people from the Golden Dawn party--and their flag is a fucking modified Nazi swastika.



Subtle.

The biggest obstacle for beating Trump in 2020 is that the Democratic Party is going through a full-blown identity crisis right now. There's a literal schism between corporate (moderate) dems and progressive (radical) dems happening this very minute. Just look at the democratic primaries, where roughly half of the progressives won out when they ran... albeit often with razor thin margins. There's no way in hell this will be resolved by 2020, so between the two most likely and emblematic candidates of the two halves of the party (Bernie and Biden) there's going to be a lot of angry voters when only one is picked.

And for his part, Trump has done a decent job corralling most Republicans to march in lockstep behind him or face consequences. And if it came right down to it, even the small handful of Republicans who continue to condemn Trump (folks like David Brooks, Steve Schmidt or John McCain) would still rather vote and shill for Trump than for someone like Bernie.

I really don't see 2020 going well. I hope I'm wrong.

Resident_Hazard is on the money.

It Can't Happen Here is not as entertaining as 1984 or even Brave New World, but it is remarkably prescient. I also agree 100% with R_H's assessment of the current political landscape. It's also worth pointing out that Trump's victory in many ways vindicates claims that traditional conservatism was on its way out, because Trump's campaign was largely a rejection of traditional conservatism as well as neoconservatism. The party has since gravitated towards Trump, with traditional conservatives either losing influence or being pushed out altogether - hence the term 'Trumpism' to describe ideology that the most committed Republicans now subscribe to.

I share your disdain for the Democrats - but I will eat my hat if Trump makes it to 2020.

Democrats need to understand that they need to adapt to this "team identity" in 2020. The bullshit where many of them voted for Trump out of spite because Bernie didn't get the nod needs to fucking stop, or they're going to end up with 4 more years of this insanity. This shit is exhausting. Trump needs to be stopped.

Yes, the Democratic party needs to get their shit together. No argument there.

At the same time, Democratic voters also need to get their shit together. Oh, your guy didn't get the nomination. That's too bad. Welcome to politics. Now support the team you want to stop the shit you need stopped.

I went on a tirade about this on a Libertarian page on Facebook because they put up a moronic meme indicating that the "Democrats were afraid of Libertarians running because UH OH THEY MIGHT WIN YOU GUYSSSZZ Fucking idiotic. The reason Democrats are worried is because in 2016, many 3rd party and Libertarian candidates garnered just enough votes to fuck things up for Hillary and help hand the presidency to Trump (along with the other noted issues--too many younger voters stayed home, evangelicals rallied, etc.). They aren't worried about losing to a Libertarian. They know that they have arguably a 95% chance of easily getting more votes than the Libertarian candidate in any race.

They are concerned about the numbers gap that could take away from Democrats and hand more Trumpists positions they don't deserve. In any other election, I'd welcome 3rd party fuckery. None of them were as risky or as volatile. None of them carried the risks of putting white supremacists in government seats the way this one does. George Bush v John Kerry? What's the difference? Obama and Mitt Romney or John McCain? I would have sided with Obama far more, but let's face it, none of these people carried the risks to freedom we're seeing now. This shit is too important.

And Libertarians and third party voters like to sit there smugly, arms crossed, going, "don't blame me, I didn't vote for Trump guy." No, we can totally fucking blame them--because they didn't vote to stop him.

Democrats need to get their shit together for 2020.
Democratic voters need to get their shit together, too.
And so does everyone else who is concerned about the damage Trump is doing.

Coincidentally, reading something like this on Election Day is what made me vote for Trump over Gary Johnson back in 2016. Don’t think that just because someone prefers a third party candidate means they were somehow a lost vote for your preferred party. And looking back at your vilification of free speech earlier on this page, I stand by my decision.

Resident_Hazard, I strongly disagree with your blaming Libertarians for contributing to Trump’s win. Nowadays the Libertarian Party is much more focused on its economic right wing, than on its socially liberal wing. I would bet that for most people who voted Libertarian, the Republicans were their second choice, not the Democrats.
That aside, the whole concept of strategic voting, when it becomes warped into the “see what happens when you waste your vote on a third party!!!” reaction to which you subscribe, is appallingly anti-democratic. The only people to blame for Donald Trump winning the election, are those who voted for Donald Trump. Because yes third party voters did vote to stop him - it’s not their fault that most people tried to do that with the Dems instead.

https://www.metal-archives.com/board/vi ... 1#p2646881


Let's face it. You were always gonna vote for Trump. Gotta own the libs after all. That's your shtick, you've always been a sociopath little shit after all. Both a moron and a piece of shit, I'm just not sure of the ratio of each.

Hilarious, though, that when you were called out for defending Trump, your constant defense was "no no I don't support Trump I will totally vote Gary Johnson plz believe me".


Nah. Voters had one job. There was only one way to stop Trump from being elected, and that was voting Clinton. One really easy job, no excuses. That was the reality. Deny the reality all you want if it makes you feel principled or whatever the fuck, but that won't change the facts.

You're right about one thing though, Libertarians were always just Republican-lites who wanted to smoke weed.

I gotta say I find it funny that the basic arguments and sides are the same in every election and every country. I'm from Poland and I heard the same stuff here:

"Your only job as a voter is not to let those guys (Kaczyński) in! No other job! Even if it goes against your every belief and principle!".

Same shit, different day I guess.

My statements don’t invalidate each other, Morri. I was going to vote for Gary, and I was convinced my vote would be better spent elsewhere based on anti-third party rhetoric. To be completely frank, I recall it being one of your own posts.

I’m not anything approaching a sociopath, but fiscal conservatism isn’t my “wiggle” point. The policies in periphery are negotiable. Most of our problems will remain reparable as long as a meritocratic system is maintained. I strongly disagree with a lot of what Trump has done regarding tariffs and subsidies, but strongly agree with removal of TPP and tax cuts. Gotta take the good and the bad with the compromise candidate.

It will be the same here next federal election too. If you're left leaning and you vote for the NDP instead of the Liberals, especially in what will be battleground Quebec, you could risk the Conservatives getting a minority or even a majority versus the governing Liberals. This next election is not the election for third party principles. Unfortunately our electoral system sucks for that. First past the post can FOAD.

The problem with Poland is that each of the parties "worth voting for" is more-or-less walking hand in hand with the Catholic Church. The Church is still a force to be reckoned with in Poland. The conservatives like to paint the picture of the left not being in harmony with the Church but the truth is they all are. All of them had been in power and nobody did anything to break the Concordat we have with Vatican. Some of our taxes go to "church fund" (majority of which goes to the Catholic Church anyways) - this means a part of my money is going straight to those people.

In this case I would rather not vote at all because there are standards of what I am willing to vote for. Everybody that lies with the Church can go FOAD.

I can't speak about Polish politics, but I am obviously talking about an extremely high-stake election such as Trump. Trump isn't just a stupid blowhard making stupid tweets; the harm his policies and his presidency has caused is immense, world-wide, and has ramifications for decades to come (such as policies on climate change, SCOTUS appointments, etc.).

Not all elections are comparable, and not all elections have the same amount of consequences. To compare every election directly like that is disingenuous. Not saying you're doing this, but it's worth keeping in mind.


Considering you clearly have zero empathy (at least for people who aren't like you), and everything else I know about you, I'm going to disagree. Either that, or you're the dumbest motherfucker still posting on this forum.

Or maybe, just maybe, having a history of supporting racist policies and having herself run a racist dogwhistle campaign in 2008 that she refused to apologize for makes it rather difficult for those people to get excited about supporting the objectively less-racist candidate.

Well said, darkeningday! I’m getting really sick of Democrats pointing to everyone and everything as reasons for their loss, except for the obvious: their candidate was a dud. All the Party had to do was offer somebody more likeable than a crass boorish narcissist; and they couldn’t get that done.

I just really hope they've learned from 2016 and won't run a dud in 2020. They should not have lost against Trump of all people in 2016, but they did. If Trump wins in 2020, that will be a really sad day for America (and really for the world, too).

But there's not much we can do except cross our fingers and hope the people running the Democratic Party recognize that and have learned from their mistakes in the last election. It's frustrating feeling so powerless compared to the unnamed folks running the party and deciding on its future.

Hasn't Rand Paul become one of the more vocal Trump acolytes in recent times?

K. Now enjoy the actually, explicitly racist politician (who, in addition to that, is also incompetent, stupid, misogynistic, xenophobic, knows nothing of governing, knows nothing about trade or the economy, knows nothing of anything really) who ruined your country and the world for decades to come because of your purity tests.

I mean you do realize that literally NONE of what you wrote changes my point, right? If your current reality is to choose between 2 candidates*, the worst one of which is absurdly objectively worse than the others, and you have the power to stop it by doing the one and only thing that could have stopped it but failed to do so, you're an idiot and complicit in letting the bad thing happen. It's. That. Simple.

* Third parties, in the current reality, have not just zero chance, and aren't even actually better candidates than Clinton was. In fact they were objectively worse, so it's not like voting for Johnson or Stein, had they had a chance, would have been a smart decision regardless.

Yup, despite once calling him an “orange-faced windbag,” he's gone so far as to vociferously praise Trump's performance at Treason Summit 2018 and basically defend, apologize and even cover for him constantly. I've disagreed with Rand on almost everything through the years but at least respected him for being relatively consistent and generally way more thoughtful than most Republicans. Won't make that mistake twice.


Hey, don't look at me, I voted for Hillary.

My questions are:
1) why did the Hillary campaign fail to visit Michigan and Wisconsin, the two states that basically cost her the election (along with Pennsylvania ofc)?
2) why did almost 1 million black people who voted in 2012 not show up in 2016, a number that if it was closed by simply half could easily have secured the win for Hillary?