To Ignore Something Is to Approve of It · 11:51am Jul 19th, 2020
In my last blog post, I said that I actively try to avoid posting overtly personal things on here. But that's the problem, isn't it? That mentality. "You shouldn't speak about certain things. Those things have a place and it isn't here."
But when you ignore something, you are implicitly approving of it. To be silent about an issue is to say that it is not worth speaking up about.
When I posted my last blog post, three people unfollowed me. And to be honest, I was surprised. I figured the number would be a lot larger.
In Portland, these past few days, the Department of Homeland Security sent federal agents in to intimidate protestors. Wearing no markings, not declaring anything to protestors, they pushed peaceful activists into unmarked vans. And then they drove around for a few hours, took them to holding cells. Tried to bully them to waive rights. Then they dumped them out on the street.
Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C.
I can think of a few other times in history, where government agents detained citizens unlawfully. And I can think of a few more times, where the people who were detained never came back.
And this is just one thing that the American government has done, just in the past week. We are now living in an fascist regime. Our government is becoming more and more openly dictatorial with every passing day.
To ignore something is to approve of it. I will always stand against fascism. I don't know exactly in what ways, just yet. But it starts by not ignoring it.
No, it isn't right. It is fascism. Rights are ignored.
It's the scariest shit, and if we let them continue, it won't just be Portland.
Unless opposed, consent is given by default.
"Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."
– John Stuart Mill, 1867
The most frightening thing about all this is that there are a lot of people who support this, because they've bought into what the administration is espousing. I'm certain that it won't get better before it gets worse.
Speaking of "few other times in history where government agents detained citizens unlawfully"
(Not so quick recap: Hebe de Bonafini is one of the founders/visible faces of the "Madres de Plaza de Mayo" collective(s). They are the mothers of those that were kidnapped, tortured, and disappeared* during the latest** military dictatorship in Argentina who are demanding the state -- since 1977, just one year after the coup and while it was still going strong! -- for the return of their children. While her media presence is charitably described as "divisive", esp. for someone outside Latin America, this Saturday she received death threats through her intercom and landline telephone for the heinous crime of publishing an open letter lambasting the Argentinian president*** for meeting/trying to build economic consensus with sectors that supported the coup****.)
*: The legal figure in Argentina for the victims is "detenido/desaparecido" (detained/disappeared), I believe due to this interview fragment to the leader of the first government during the coup.
**: "Última dictadura militar", Castilian doesn't differentiate between "last" and "latest" (the word is "último/a"). I'd love to say "last", but then I remember the effective coups in Brazil on 2015 and Bolivia on 2019, and the proscription/jailing of Lula in 2019
. Be wary of anyone that calls it by the name "Proceso de Reorganización Nacional" ("National reorder process", the name the coup gave to itself) unironically/without any qualifiers.
***: While this does sound really bad, there's little to no indication/suspicion that the national government (either by 'direct' order or by rogue agents) is involved in these threats (the current party in power has consistently acted in favor of human rights organizations, particularly those related to the latest coup). I must however mention that this year there have been many, many police brutality cases (up-to and including disappearance/murder of the victim(s)) in Argentina.
****: Regardless of anyone's thoughts about the timing of her open letter or its possible repercussions in said talks, she's very much not wrong.
Of course the wonder of here is that you can make one account for saying stuff and another for posting stories. Unfortunately I thought of that a bit too late, and the climate back in 2012, 2013 here and everywhere was different.
5314766
I don't understand why young people aren't marching on Washington right now.
5314746
This isn’t only fascism. The concept of secret police can be found in any form of government. They’re a symptom of any authoritarian body of government. The USSR (whose influence still affects Russian mentality) had them. The current Chinese government has them (that would be the CCP, Chinese Communist Party).
We cannot allow it to continue, nonetheless. The further we decline into authoritarianism the harder it will be to pull through somewhat intact.
People who say they're in favor of "small government" (i.e. your average conservative and some of the more backwards libertarians) are also conspicuously silent when it comes to spooky big government shit like this. If government grossly overreaches in a way that doesn't affect them specifically then they're okay with it.
The people of Portland have the right to be heard, and they have the right (or at least they should have the right) to get these fucking spooks out of their city.
5315017
Indeed, Lenin himself approved of a secret police force in the newly communist Russia. He also thought invading Poland was a great idea, so...
Authoritarianism comes in a lot of shapes and sizes.
Yeah, shit sucks. A socialist revolution is the answer.
5314766 And if this is the short of shit that the government is doing openly, then I shudder to think at the things they're hiding.
5314788 There are always collaborators and bootlickers in any regime. The scary thing here, is that a lot of this support is born of ignorance and misinformation. It's one thing to be actively supporting something because you mistakenly believe it will benefit you. It's another to support something because every single person in your life is sharing the same delusional lie.
The modern media and the propaganda-centric approach of the Republican party are nothing new. But we're seeing how effective they can be, and it's disgusting.
5314803 Except, that's just an expression of the same problem. Partitioning those ideas makes them less visible.
There is absolutely a problem with giving people with a large audience a platform for dangerous ideas. We're seeing it now with J.K. Rowling and her disgusting ideals about gender. But better to know where someone stands; at least then, you can react appropriately.
5315037 Sadly, most modern conservatives are closer to brainwashed cultists than rational human beings. They eat up the lies told by their leader, and use selfishness and backward logic to justify their behavior.
Literally any time something happens, it exposes the hypocrisy of the right. Just recently, Chuck Woolery—a game show host who posted conspiracy theories supporting Trump—retracted his support when his child caught Covid. There's dozens of stories like that.
Like you said, if it doesn't affect them specifically, then they don't care. And that's the problem.
This is the result of continuous escalation.
I'm really tired of this.
The people who think that going out and grabbing people without identification need to get shut down.
The people burning buildings and smashing shit up need to be put in prison.
People need to knock this crap off.
The anarchists have been a problem here in Oregon for years. Trump is using their antics as an excuse to do authoritarian shit.
It needs to end.
The longer people keep smashing shit up and setting shit on fire, the more support there will be for authoritarian action to end it.
Trump is feeding on this. He wants people to do crazy, stupid shit, so he can be all Law and Order, You Need Me.
That's exactly what the anarchists want as well - they want to escalate things, to try and provoke an extreme reaction, to justify what they're doing, to prove that everyone else is secretly a fascist.
It's the same shit, over and over again. It's standard tactics.
It's so obvious, and I'm sick and tired of it.
5316139 Yes, and that's the problem. Both sides want this. Things have escalated so much and so fast that there is no longer room for compromise. And given the state of our government, it's laughable that compromise or reform was going to happen in the first place.
5316229
I think that the extremists have very loud microphones, but they don't really make up the majority of society.
Progress won't be made by those people, it will be made by everyone else. Doing things like working on getting more police bodycams, reviewing and updating use of force guidelines, and suchlike is stuff that will actually get done, I think.
Some places will do stupid things, but other places will do things that actually genuinely make things better. NYC and Camden have both at various points undertaken various reforms which made for positive change. Really, the US as a whole has done so; things have become a lot better than they were in the 1980s overall as far as policing goes and forensic evidence used in trials and all that stuff goes. It's easy to forget that, I think, in part because a lot of people aren't old enough to really remember what it was like back then.
There's never really going to be some sort of cure-all for it; progress is gradual and happens over time.
It's easy to feel like things are overwhelming when you look at the news and people screaming on the Internet, but in my conversations with random people out in the real world while doing door to door Census work, most people are fairly reasonable in the end, even some folks you wouldn't expect to be.
I don't despair for humanity, even if I am at times frustrated by it.
I think eventually it will just be overwhelmed by other news - it's already happening, honestly, with the coronavirus picking up. That's probably what is ultimately going to put an end to it - there will just be smaller and smaller groups of people going out as other things overwhelm the news about the protests, which will eventually end the cover that the bad actors are using, at which point they'll either stop, or all end up arrested because there aren't enough peaceful protesters around to serve as cover for them anymore.
The morons at DHS are already getting yelled at and sued and so will end up having to behave in a more reasonable fashion pretty soon here, I think, which will help on that end of things.
And to think not a week ago, I was arguing with people on Reddit who thought it was horrible to publish information about people who were arrested and what crimes they had allegedly committed, because it was "an invasion of privacy". People really don't appreciate the importance of stuff like that until stuff like this happens. :\
Before recent events, I'd pretty much never shared any kind of political opinion on Fimfic, beyond one very dumb parody fic that I don't even like now. Kept that stuff to myself, because I just wanted to write about horses.
I would honestly liked if that had remained the status quo, but no. You start openly posting nazi shit, where I can see it? It becomes my problem.