this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024

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Smith calls out progressives after Trump shooting (edmonton.citynews.ca)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 153 points 1 month ago

Let me get this straight, it's somehow the progressive rhetoric of universal healthcare and free education that caused a Republican voter to shoot the Republican presidential candidate?

Make that make sense.

[–] [email protected] 97 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They keep saying we need to tone down the rhetoric. But the rhetoric is all true. It’s directly based on what the conservatives do and say. So maybe they should stop doing and saying things that are so horrendous.

[+] [email protected] -52 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

Two things can be true at once:

Yes, they should stop doing and saying things that are so horrendous.

Yes, we should not sink to their level with similarly violent rhetoric thus justifying their "see? The other side is just as violent as we are".

Oh, look at that: Denouncing violent rhetoric on Lemmy gets met with a lynch mob of downvotes. I'm shocked!

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Jokes aside you need to look up the concept of the paradox of tolerance. Only people lacking reason and centrists (but i repeat myself) would see "both sides" as being the same

[+] [email protected] -9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The paradox of tolerance is almost universally misunderstood. It means that we need to have strong legal guarantees of human rights and punish those who violate those rights. It does not mean that we should try to violently or extra-legally suppress the right when it tries to gain power legally.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The paradox of tolerance is not about laws which are distinct from morality. It's not a legal concept at all

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The immorality that it seeks to avoid is the elimination of tolerance. You can achieve that through strong laws without stooping to the level of fascists themselves. I'm not saying it's a legal point, but that it has a legal solution.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well you certainly proved that it's misunderstood

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Why engage someone on a discussion board if you're not actually willing to discuss the subject...

At least you understand now that I wasn't saying the paradox of tolerance is "about laws."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You made a wild assertion defining the thing as something it's absolutely not about while implying I misunderstood it in the same breath, and now I should be charitable in how I interpret you?

Point being: paradox of intolerance is absolutely agnostic to what's legal and sometimes it can mean punching nazis

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The paradox of tolerance says that if you tolerate everything, you will tolerate the intolerant when they take over, which will lead to intolerance.

The solution to the paradox of tolerance is simply to not tolerate the intolerant taking over and instituting an intolerant society. There are many examples of un-punched Nazis who have not managed to manifest their intolerance (because the law protects people), as well as punched Nazis who remain unrepentant and go on to commit intolerant crimes. Famously, the actual Nazi party was engaged in street battles with the Communists in inter-war Germany, and this didn't prevent their rise to power. Their rise was enabled by a complicit populace voting for them, as well as a weak constitution which allowed dictatorial rule (and of course other factors).

You brought up the paradox of tolerance in response to someone denouncing violent rhetoric. But you have never explained - and can't explain because it's not true - how violent rhetoric is necessary to prevent the erosion of tolerance in society.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ok then I think you're saying the paradox of tolerance doesn't necessitate extra-legal action, maybe instead of "misunderstood" you meant "interpreted in ways I disagree with" and that's fine.

It's a classic liberal position, one that liberals often hold as they sleepwalk towards fascism, but I can forgive you for being a liberal.

However, there are many that won't let laws (which are again morally apathetic and can and often are unjust or fascist in nature themselves) stop us from resisting fascism in every possible way as the situation calls for it. I'm thankful for those people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There's a debate to be had about the extent to which society should pre-emptively resist fascism, be that extra-judicially or within the law. But there is simply no paradox.

Calling it a paradox implies that there's some contradiction between being tolerant in the sense of freedom of religion and expression - allowing people to peacefully exist whatever their background or identity - and the necessity (in order to main those freedoms) of resisting fascism. There isn't; there is no fundamental reason why you need to restrict individual freedoms in order to prevent fascism.

It would be much more productive if, instead of using the "paradox of tolerance" as a bit of a thought-terminating cliche, people declared what kind of actions they thought were justified and why. Is violent rhetoric which, for example, calls for the death of Trump justified? I have no idea if you think it is because you switched from the specific to the general so quickly. There's such a vast breadth of actions which people allude to when talking about the so-called paradox that some are bound to find broad appeal while some are bound to be extremist fringe stuff.

Thanks for taking the time to discuss.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I disagree with some of that. Individual freedoms do sometimes need to be limited, for example "freedom" to oppress or "freedom" to deny hiring certain races.

It's considered a paradox because by tolerating intolerance you allow intolerance to occur. And by being intolerant of intolerance you are allowing intolerance to occur.

The point of it is to highlight that intolerance is enabled by being too tolerant. We must not tolerate intolerance, paradoxically, in order to have a tolerant society.

The nuance being in what things are not being tolerated. Anarchist ideology is about abolishing hierarchy and building a completely egalitarian society, part of the work to do that means taking unjustly hoarded wealth away from the wealthy.

That's another example of how egalitarian and tolerant goals require some intolerant actions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It’s considered a paradox because by tolerating intolerance you allow intolerance to occur. And by being intolerant of intolerance you are allowing intolerance to occur.

If your principles of tolerance are, "everyone should be allowed to express their identity, religion and opinions peacefully and calmly, as long as their views do not call for violence" then that allows people to express their view that a certain race is inferior. But it does not result in the end of tolerance (as this popular but wrong summary express).

It's only a paradox if you can only think of tolerance as being absolute, where any level of restriction on what people are allowed to do or express is "intolerant".

Individual freedoms do sometimes need to be limited, for example “freedom” to oppress or “freedom” to deny hiring certain races.

But these "freedoms" are not freedoms any liberal or advocate of tolerance means by "freedoms."

I'd go further than saying this is "the nuance"; this is the whole thing. Mentioning the paradox doesn't give any guidance in what to do; just directly saying "we shouldn't allow people to display swastikas" or " we should allow people to call for the assassination of presidential candidates" will result in a useful discussion.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

This is exactly why it's sleepwalking towards fascism. Letting people openly express intolerant views, educate their children with intolerant views, meet up and shout intolerant views, sign up as political parties with intolerant views.... It leads to fascist takeover of democracy.

Sure they're playing by the rules of the liberals but they're exploiting every single advantage in terms of capital ownership and racial majority in order to "vote" their way to fascism.

There are laws that try to prevent this, but those laws are weak and the legislature is captured.

You fight them before they win the election, and if they do, and after they do.

Otherwise whoever has the most money and influence implements their vision for society, using the "dictatorship of the majority" to hurt marginalized people.

This is how liberalism enables fascism by not opposing capitalism and by not acknowledging that some freedoms need to be reined in

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It leads to fascist takeover of democracy.

But you need evidence, or a strong argument, to determine cause and effect here. Sure, there's a scenario you can imagine in which intolerant views are shared, proliferated, spread among the population, gain support, gain votes, gain power. But there are many liberal democracies in the world, and most are still holding onto their liberal democratic principles. The USA is heading for fascism, which is certainly terrifying, but what about the UK? What about France? All the other countries? Even the far right in these countries is forced to be circumspect in their intolerance due to public opinion, and their probes in the direction of fascist rhetoric and policy are weak at worst.

And if you want to couch this as a "paradox" then you end up with the "paradox of democracy" (it's possible for people to vote for the removal of democracy). What you're saying is not that we need to resist fascism because fascists are violent and a risk to people's lives, but that we should resist fascism because they might be too convincing and get people to vote for them - and hence arguing that we should be less democratic in order to prevent their gaining power. So maybe you do think that's a paradox. But in practice the way democracies solve this is by banning parties which are a threat to democracy and by having a high bar to do so because otherwise that will be wielded against all sorts. It would certainly be wielded against people who "oppose capitalism" (this we know from history).

Once again, we find that there's a route through the "paradox" which neither capitulates entirely to fascists, nor capitulates entirely to the anti-democratic, illiberal tendencies of their most extreme opponents.

There are laws that try to prevent this, but those laws are weak and the legislature is captured.

And so we get to what I said originally: the "solution" to the so-called paradox is to have strong laws, for example a hard-to-modify constitution, which guarantee people's rights. The formulation doesn't have to be explicitly legal in nature to have a legal solution.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think we're at an ideological impasse, you make some fine points and once again there are some nuances I could disagree with here but I can largely accept your argument and I find that it's consistent and valid from an (also valid) perspective rooted in liberal axioms.

I have an overlapping but different perspective that's more rooted in leftists axioms.

There are historical examples and counter examples in either direction.

Although the UK and Europe aren't as on much of a direct path to fascism as the current United States I think we probably have differing ideas on how fair and equal European society ultimately is (recognizing that we're painting very many different cultures and political landscapes with a broad brush). However you're not any less "correct" in your assessment as I am.

I sympathize with liberal ideals and that's probably why I'm ideologically more of an anarchist than just a more general socialist or communist (I say that but pragmatically and in my day to day life and in terms of political action I'm far from it on account of how far outside of the Overton window it is, which makes it difficult, and I'm not "noble" enough to disadvantage myself within our existing systems to live out my ideals, at least not yet without sufficient financial safety and the quality of life guarantees it provides).

However, I'm far more of a collectivist than an individualist as I get older, and personal freedoms and personal justice interest me less than freedom and justice for all. That's where the crux of our differences might be.

This turned out to be a thoughtful conversation, thanks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Thanks yourself, I have a similar view of your position :)

I am undecided on collectivism versus individualism, and have been conflicted since a young age. As I get older I suspect both can produce good societies and bad societies and that, while I actually tend towards collectivism being the ultimate ideal, I don't see inconsistent approaches as being particularly viable, which is where current western collectivist politics tends to sit - there's no point, for example, in introducing rent controls. Either collectivise housing completely or work within the system to improve housing provision. Ultimately I think there are small advantages of (well-regulated) privatised housing (better choice), and small advantages in (well-managed) nationalised housing that are more significant, and that since the differences are fairly small, it's not worth trying to push through a poorly managed middle-zone in the hope of achieving the ideal when that looks unlikely.

This was a digression but it was easy to explain and is similar to my thinking on other things...

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago

Smith is quoted here as saying:

"Have you not looked at the headlines about how Pierre Poilievre is described as dangerous?" the premier said. "How the leader of the Opposition in Alberta has described me as dangerous? When you start using that kind of rhetoric, that ends up creating an elevated risk for all of us."

She's complaining about being called "dangerous". That's hardly violent rhetoric and certainly no worse than the language they use to describe their opponents.

Sure, there are some individuals on the internet spreading violence, but you cannot equate the non-conservative media rhetoric with the violent and dishonest rhetoric coming out of conservative sources.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago

at least we didn't stoop to their level right?

gets repeatedly clubbed for talking in the labor yard

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Point out the elected democrat official who was openly calling for violence against republicans? What rhetoric are they even talking about? Us calling them an existential threat to our democracy? If it wasn't true, we wouldn't say it. Saying that isn't calling for violence, and proposing that it does is engaging in the same whataboutism that republicans always do. It's BS. Republicans shooting republicans and somehow it's progressives fault 🙄

[–] [email protected] 85 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A proviolence right wing nutjob was shot by a proviolence right wing nutjob and it's the "anti-gun" left that did it?

I'll give you a hint: people without guns aren't the ones shooting people.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

And decided to save on education and mental health care.

It's like leaving dynamite and matches everywhere and being shocked when stuff blows up.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

This country will using anything as a reason to tell progressives to stop being progressive.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Which country?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Take your pick honestly. Like many things it's worse in American though.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes, America is a dying Empire, and the Capitalist class is desparately trying to maintain it's grip.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is a story about Canada

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's also a story about America, unless for some reason Trump is running for Canadian Presidency too. Plus, Canada faces much of the same issues as the US.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago

I don’t disagree. I probably should have replied to the OP instead of you.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago

The very premier who wanted Tucker Carlson to put a minister in his crosshairs? That one? The same premier who called other politicians radicals?

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They’re just really surprised a shooter came for them instead of a Democrat first. That’s the only thing they’re surprised about. They’ve been trying to make something exactly like this happen since Trump exhorted the “second amendment people” to “do something about Hillary” before the 2016 election.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

One of those was for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords who later on was shot in the head…

Immediately after the list was posted, the front door of Giffords' office in Tucson was smashed. Asked about Palin's map, Giffords said at the time, "When people do that, they have to realize there are consequences to their actions.”

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

It's a hard line to ride in describing my hatred for this vile, shit stain of a human being.... Whilst also not being put on an RCMP watch list because of what I believe she deserves.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

What are the odds that smith isn't a dip shit conservative?

former columnist and media personality who has been serving as the 19th premier of Alberta and leader of the United Conservative Party (UCP) since October 2022.

Less than 0% lol

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

Pot meet kettle

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Thanks, Karen.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Smith: I always stay focused on issues

Reporter: Smith says she only meant that Guilbaut (?) should be fired...

So, no capability of self-reflection or consistency. Stereotypical populist.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Free speech, amirite.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Is there a link to a transcript or what they actually said? That "article" is 2 sentences and doesn't detail it.

(I realize there's a video. Not everyone can/wants to watch it, plus you can't skim or copy/paste to quote anything.)