AntiFa ate my baby: Today in Tweets

I know it’s a cliche to blame stuff on movies/tv, but I’m wondering if there’s been a trend in the past couple of decades of Hollywood trying to appeal to the teen-boy demographic with action movies, while placating the parents by not appearing to “promote violence,” and thus you get these stories in which there are multiple reels of bloodless fights and explosions, culminating with the hero refusing to actually kill the villain (no matter how many people he’s killed, and how many he gleefully plans to kill) because that would make him “just as bad.” Then the villain lunges at him and falls off the roof, ending up dead without the hero having to dirty his hands.

I may have become irritated by this trope even before the real world began to imitate it.

So are we all meant to just politely watch the Nazis as they commit murder and advocate genocide? Maybe write a few sternly worded letters? Or what?

Well I’m British, so a bit of tutting, some muttered resentment and being unable to sleep or digest for the next 6 weeks due to suppressed anger is the usual tactic.

But actually – sod that. These are people who would deny my right to live as I am, and would deny the right of people I love and respect to live at all.

I won’t sock them unless in self defence but I will block them, mock them, and mess up their plans as much as I can.

I was proud when our local mini fascists, the EDL, held a “march” in my small city. They got roundly mocked and made fun of by (among others) a 6’4″ transwoman arm in arm with the women from the local mosque, a delegation from the synagogue, some silver haired churchgoers and a bunch of teenage werewolves.

They retreated and it turned out the organisers of their little “Don’t want foreigners here!” wnakfest weren’t from here at all, as they all beetled off to the station. I’m told the local taxi drivers wouldn’t accept their custom.

Re:squirmy both-siderism
The white person thing is most visible and relevant in this situation. I think it’s an in-group thing with some connections to rationalizing non-confrontation with people likely to be difficult because they are more aggressive and authoritarian.

I think you see another (male and enabler) version in the way people rationalize lack of confrontation with sexual predators at multiple levels of society, or a straight version with homophobes…it’s hard work confronting aggressive, authoritarian people, but it should be kept in mind that aggression and authority are neutrals. IMO the democratic party shys away from confrontation because there is less aggression and instinct to use/respond to authority (possibly because it is so often only presented as bad), so when when they are needed it’s harder to get the authorities to exert that authority with aggression.

That’s what it looks like to me anyway.

@Alan:
Regarding biomass, in the ‘there’s an xkcd for everything’ column: https://xkcd.com/1338/

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/land_mammals.png

This is only mammals, not all life, so it’s obviously a significantly lower value than all biomass, but it gets you near the ballpark. And the breakdown by species type is interesting. Humans outmass all wild animals on the planet put together… and our cattle outmass us.

Regarding antifa and ‘white people thing’, I’m certainly guilty of not standing up when things were going wrong. But I’m not going to try and argue against those who do. I suppose that puts me in the ‘least I could do’ category. (Major Bloodnok: Oh-oh-ohh, it was the least I could do. A quantity I specialize in!)

Actually, regarding ‘white people thing’ in general, I just ran into this on Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/craftmyoccasion/party-supplies-celebrating-children-of-color
It’s basically a startup creating children’s party supplies with something other than white children on the plates. 12 days left, halfway to the goal.

White liberal racism is a different beast than white conservative racism. White liberals tend to want to see themselves as not racist and they want to be perceived by others as not racist. They’ll say the PC things in large groups or around people of color, but when it comes down to it, they want to live in mostly white neighborhoods and send their kids to mostly white schools and they’re uncomfortable when POC, immigrants, and Muslims stand up for themselves. So they latch on to narratives that give them an excuse to give into their racism without seeming racist. The “antifas and BLM are doing social justice wrong” narrative is a prime example of this.

This is why white liberal racism bothers me a hell of a lot more. A racist conservative tends to dog-whistle loud enough that a typical person can point to him and say “Oh, you’re just a racist shitferbrains.” But the white liberal racist is only just clueless enough to believe themselves above not only racism, but in many cases politics as a whole. This is the kind of dipshit that tosses the phrase “identity politics” around as a dismissal tactic. It just smacks of so much tone deaf privilege that it, and it feels just so forced on their behalf, as if they’re just a single revelation away from realizing how bigoted they’re acting, you try everything you can to break through and inevitably get frustrated.

Alright, for what it’s worth, I have not been talking about both sidesism, but I am against preemptive violence (heck, depending on what you think of Huey Newton’s explanation as to why they chose the black panther, to vent the Black Panthers wereat least initially against throwing the first punch). I’m also not opposed to counterprotests but let’s try to make it more Boston than berkley. I’m not on the other side of this from.most, just a huge disagreement on tactics.

Re: comparisons to nazi Germany. In the short term this is alarmist as the Weimer Republic did not have really any public institutions nor history of democracy while the US has some which at minimum lengthens the process to do this.

My civil war comment was more along the lines of get ready for it, not back down. The right is going to start one regardless of what we do. And right now the two views of reality in the US arebetween the political death cult known as Trumpism (their reality is whatever Big Brother, er Trump tells them it is) and the broad Church of the left (which is directionally reality though we have difference s).

Also, Alan Robertshaw, wasn’t the truth of Chamberlain slightly more complex as that agreement was less “we’ve settled things with the Nazis” and more “I’ve bought time to get my country prepared for the war to come as my generals claim we can’t win if it happens now”? I believe I can find the links backing this up if necessary.

Sorry if I missed anyone’s comments on mine.

@ jenora

Humans outmass all wild animals on the planet

Wow, that graphic is amazing. And the implications are quite staggering. I’m still trying to process it all.

Wonder what happens if you throw sea life into the mix. Would blue whales even register? And what about microbial life? I keep thinking though how much water and food is needed to sustain that agricultural animal population and how small a reduction would be needed to eliminate global malnutrition and deaths through lack of clean drinking water?

But thanks for digging that out.

@Alan:

Wow, that graphic is amazing. And the implications are quite staggering.

Randall Munroe does a lot of interesting visualization work; it seems to be one of his fascinations. He does things like the Radiation Dose Chart (which includes the fact that you get more radiation living near a coal plant than a nuclear plant).

And what about microbial life?

He actually addresses that one in the mouseover text for the image on the site, which reads: Bacteria still outweigh us thousands to one–and that’s not even counting the several pounds of them in your body.

how small a reduction would be needed to eliminate global malnutrition and deaths through lack of clean drinking water?

The answer to that is probably ‘no reduction at all’. Feeding everybody on the planet isn’t really a production problem, it’s a distribution problem. Which in many ways is worse, because distribution is a lot more political, and there’s likely no way to fix it without meddling in national affairs in ways for which there are good historical reasons not to do.

Of course, even in developed nations, food deserts are a thing. (Hmm, the Wikipedia page says the first official usage of the term was by a UK task force.)

From a pretty far outside perspective (I’m not in the US, that is) I don’t get a whole lot of the hand-wringing and nuances here. Talking about how “violence is only justifiable in self-defence” and getting angry because people on whatever side think you’re as bad as the fascists just seems like you’re pissed because you’re on your high horse and are upset that your moral superiority isn’t being recognised.

So… Fuck the high horse. Get off it. Be as violent as the Nazis – it’s the only way to get them to go back into their holes. You’re going to get “both sides” bullshit anyway, so why not be as effective as possible in destroying the actual Nazis? If they know stepping out in their polo shirts and tiki torches is going to get them beaten to a pulp every time they do it, they’ll stop stepping outside. Look at how they’ve cried about facing the most minor consequences to their hateful actions – they’re cowards.

If it helps, think of it as pre-emptive self defence. If the Nazis win, they’ll have no compunction about killing you.

@ scildfreja & jenora

Well I’m going to make friends with earthworms, and possibly microorganisms . Just in case it all kicks off.

Ah, whales. Taiji starts today. And in a way it’s related to our broader discussion as to permissable tactics and perception. I guess you know that Sea Shepherds have had to suspend anti whaling operations because of the way international anti terrorism laws are being used against them.

Water and food security is a fascinating topic. A friend was heavily involved in that and I used to help her write her reports (mainly by topping up wine whilst she typed). A lot of tension and skirmishes arise from inequitable water distribution. Even when there’s major underlying issues like in Israel/Palestine, it’s often something relatively minor like diversion of water supplies for agriculture that acts as a flashpoint for actual conflict.

What a world eh?

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/drawing-distinctions-antifa-the-alt-right-and-black-lives-matter/538320/

I will say this, though: As someone who is Antifa in the broad sense, I think Berkeley was an enormous fail. The Alt-Right came to stir up optics of violent Black Bloc while, for their part, staying restrained. And it worked. They got their optics, and it worked for its intended purpose. We make fun of the Alt-Right, but there’s a lot of savvy people there who understand how to win in the court of public opinion, and thereby recruit. And they understand the left better than the left, in many cases, understand them. We have to be smarter. I’m not opposed to Black Bloc, but if you’re willing to fight, you also have to have the wisdom to know when not to fight.

I enjoyed XKCD’s radiation chart, partly because he defined a “Banana equivalent dose”, being the amount of radiation emitted from an average banana (due mostly to environmental potassium being very slightly radioactive).