Don't Be a Sucker

I've recently stumbled on United States Department of War film from 1943 > We must guard everyone's liberty or we can lose our own. If we allow any minority to lose its freedom by persecution or by prejudice we are threatening our own freedom [VIDEO]

A classic. The part when the agitator-clown-carnival barker yells "Folks I'm just an average American but I'm an American American! {{insert-ad-libbed-racist-tirade}}". Good thing we defeated nonsense like this long ago. [VIDEO]

I'm not sure people can't grasp it. But it certainly can't be taken for granted. Perhaps we need to continuously keep making versions of this? [VIDEO] ("Don't be a sucker" 1945)

Yes, IIUC, that was one of the things that mobilized a lot of IMHO positive education/propaganda. It may not have always been for the most noble of reasons (e.g., a very wealthy person not wanting to be disrupted), but the fascism-is-bad messages are still great messages. For example, "Don't Be a Sucker" (long, but worth a watch sometime for anyone who hasn't seen it): [VIDEO]

We agree that the Nazi plan was intended only to benefit (a subset of) themselves. We also agree that Nazis intended to treat slavs as prior empires had treated their Worthy Oriental Gentlemen (wogs, in the vernacular). I'd like to make the distinction on the first point that they marketed[1] their intentions differently. I should have said "sold" instead of "viewed", sorry. And my "benevolently" had not been meant to be taken in a positive light. (If someone tells you they are benevolent, keep a hand on your wallet.) To me it is clear that Goebbels said that the Nazis must protect 2'000 years of Western Civilisation from the Communists (who, you correctly note, were severely conflated with jews in that speech), and that not only was everyone who was not For Them implicitly Against Them, but that it didn't matter anyway, because they were totes going to protect even countries whose governments/intellectuals didn't wish such protection[2]. Would it help if I translate the parts I left in german into english? (I hadn't because I think the original translation pretty much got it right, but will try if you'd like fresh phrasing.) As to sheep, dogs, and pigs, they're from Animal Farm [3], repurposed to fit one of PG's recent essays[4]: Concrete groups: pigs - animals who seizing power for animals from humans. (aggressive unconventionals / Nazi leadership) Somehow the benefits from this change of power don't extend much beyond pigs. At the end of the book, the pigs and the neighbou

It wasn't a racist tirade. It was a tirade against everyone who the fictional person felt was different from him as a method of identifying who he believed to be taking away his opportunities - just by those people existing. See the consequent side-conversation here, [VIDEO] . The crowd rejected him, the more he spoke. Today's news is full of exactly the same attitude displayed by this person. Why are people not rejecting this today?

The gangs who are promoting coronavirus comment spam create two kinds of victims. (1) are the people whose free speech is impaired by relentless toxic comments (2) are the posters themselves who will be increasingly isolated by their behavior and feeling persecuted. It is like the cult member who is driven into evangelism not to recruit new members but to become convinced that the outside world is corrupt. These will become increasingly radicalized and over the next few years will be recruited into more violent attacks and other forms of exploitation such as spending their income on scam alt-health supplements. The most difficult problem in all of this is the the type (2) victims and many observers will insist that their disingenuous communications be taken at face value which is absolutely exhausting for the the type (1) victims who really ought so say that we don't want to hear about their dog pills. [VIDEO]

Yea, I hear you, that's certainly possible. But I'm not reasoning top-down from liberalism's unpopularity, but rather bottom-up from the inability most people have to grasp the components I mentioned. Some of them are much simpler concepts than liberalism, and are applicable in many cases that people have more direct stakes in. And yet, in my experience, vanishingly few people are capable of grasping them to any reasonable degree. > Perhaps we need to continuously keep making versions of this? [VIDEO] ("Don't be a sucker" 1945) We're drowning in anti-racist and anti-fascist material. I don't think it's particularly relevant: clearly it's not difficult to nominally support these beliefs while still being extremely illiberal. That's what's so insidious about illiberalism. It can (and does) poison any ideology, even "good ones", because once a sufficient number of people are bought into it, it hardens into dogma and leads easily to "why should we protect those that disagree with our holy belief system?". To use an example that we have no trouble recognizing as illiberal, from our modern perspective: Christianity on paper is a very liberal tradition, full of exhortations to love thy enemy and spread peace and love. I don't doubt that this deeply resonated with many early converts. But after a thousand years of spreading to the masses and ossifying into institutions, the medieval Church resembled every other illiberal institution: here's the dogma, and if you don't like it, well t