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To dismantle Racism it must have no believers, or at least few believers. There's no boss of Racism that you can just kick in the shin and expect the whole Racist community to fall apart. You must destroy it's popularity, and it's population.
LSD, how many times will you make the same straw-man arguments against the no platform policy communists have held in regards to fascists?
Again: not allowing a platform for these scum bags isn't about "free speech" (which doesn't, and won't exist anyway), but rather about protecting ourselves (as workers, oppressed nationalities, etc.) from forces that seek our enslavement and/or physical elimination.
"Getting a job, finding a mate, having a place to live, finding a creative outlet. Life is a war of attrition. You have to stay active on all fronts. It's one thing after another. I've tried to control a chaotic universe. And it's a losing battle. But I can't let go. I've tried, but I can't." - Harvey Pekar
I don't see LSD's argument as invalid. To me it looks exactly right.
One of the main reasons marxism/leninism doesn't do well is precisely because working people aren't stupid. It doesn't take them long to realise that vanguards and cadres, regardless of what anyone claims, are just another ruling class. And one, moreover, that sneers at the people.
One of the stupidest things that campus commies do is to shout down rightwing speakers. Most people don't go for the "some are more equal than others" line, at least not after they sober up. If anyone should have the right to speak, everyone should have the right to speak. It's precisely because people deeply, intuitively believe in concepts such as fairness and equality that the ruling class must generate non-stop propaganda selling the idea that down is up and injustice is justice.
Governments frequently abuse the law by denying people, based on theories about ideology, the right to use public services such as the post office. Guess whose ideology is usually the one being suppressed.
It is a BAD IDEA to suppress the civil rights of others, no matter who those others are or what theory you concoct. Because every damned time, the same excuses will later be used against us.
We have something like this in my town. There was a hate crime incident a few years back at a really cool pizza shop and now all the stores downtown have signs that say "Commited to a Hate-Free Zone"
<span style=\'color:red\'>Liberty without Socialism is privilege, injustice; Socialism without Liberty is Slavery and Brutality.
-Mikhail Bakunin</span>
<span style=\'color:gray\'>The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.
-Murray Bookchin</span>
<span style=\'color:red\'>When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions!
-Peter Kropotkin</span>
I think its wrong on many levels. To create a "new class" people can look down is nothing else than still supremacy.
To prohibit blatant racism doesn't change people's minds and there are alot of people who think that they are not racist but in reality they are racist.
White people have to understand that racist and white supremacists are people of one of us and that alienating them will make problems worse
This has fuck-all to do with civil rights. Its a question of self and communal defense. Fascists and racists allowed the ability to organize are dangerous to me, my family, my friends and a whole lot of other people. Why would I let them come to my community and organize without any interference? They are our class enemies, period, and they deserve nothing but boots in the face. Fuck this liberal bullshit the "left" has gotten caught up in.
Oh please, like if we respect "civil liberties," then ours will likewise be respected by our class enemies? Give me a break.
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Uh... why in the hell is it a problem to look down on racists? I don't want bigots to feel welcome, or like they are part of my community.
The only thing that makes racists worse is to ignore them under some hippie-liberal nonsense.
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
Why are they so dangerous? Are you willing to patronise the very people who will be the only hope the world has, the working class, by assuming that they can be won over to the side of some nostalgic hobby fascists through a few unpalatable arguements? And then acting on that assumption by supressing opposing ideas? This isn't so much about civil liberties as it is about making blind, obedient servants out of the people instead of free-thinking individuals. The more the fascists rant and rave and yell about race and eugenics, the more people will have reason to ioppose the idea.
There are many bigots on earth. Let's kill them and we all will be happy. Nonsense.
But people are always willing to find other people they can label. To feel better then them. To feel to have more rights then them. We have to mature and we have finally to learn that hating doesn't stop hate and degradation of others doesn't help to develop a human spirit
It is not about ignoring racists. Again, the only thing what happend due to PC-language was, that racism changed from blatant to hidden. Those 'invisible racists' are those who keep the system of systemic white supremacy alive.
White supremacists are only the most visible ones. But not the only ones.
The average white will agree: Racism is bad. Because for the average white person racism and racists are only the blatant ones.
to all the people who say it limits the freedom of speech and shit of racists, what about the freedom and rights of the people who want to ban them from their shops and who don't want to come in contact with racist people? if someone deserves his/her rights it's those people in my opnion
"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners."
You need two to shake hands, but only one to make a fist...
how do you detect a racist? Do they have a sign somewhere?
nope no sign but when talking to people and they say "i hate niggers" you probably talking to a racist, got it?
you can't recognize them by the looks but if you know someone is a racist you can chose not to hang around them etc...
it's really not that hard :P
"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners."
You need two to shake hands, but only one to make a fist...
Yeah, banning them from shops is the same as killing them, spot on. But you're right, it would be better if we just let them do what they want and not actively oppose them or their attempts to organize, because it would be, you know, really, really mean if we labeled a group of people and wanted others to look down on them, especially if that group were violent thugs who want to commit genocide against billions of people, for starters.
Yeah, maybe if we all hold hands and play with butterflies and flowers the racists and bigots will stop trying to harm our friends and family and join our little drum circle of love.
Uh, yeah, sure pal. Back here in reality, we're dealing with some of the most violent people you can imagine and they're actively threatening us and people we care about, and I'm not about to tolerate that kind of shit. Yeah, people always label each other- it makes social organization and functioning much easier, get over it. You seem to be approaching this as though we're all on some equal playing field, just different teams, and the conflict between us isn't important or something. Sorry, but that's straight bullshit. Yes, I want to label people. I want to figure out who my class enemies are, and I don't just want to "feel better" or "have more rights(
It happened because of PC-language? That's an oversimplification if I ever saw one, but okay. I'll agree that a lot of racism today is more hidden, but that's no reason to go off the offensive on blatant racists. It means we need to increase the struggle against all forms of racism and DESTROY IT.
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
the problem is: YOU simplify racism by putting your fingers only to those who are blatant racists.
Racism = white supremacy. Think about it
i know what you are trying to say but if we can make the most easy to spot racists unwanted, it's a good start, racism is something that will never fully disappear, but that doesn't mean we can't try, and if we have to start off small so be it
"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners."
You need two to shake hands, but only one to make a fist...
Nobody is saying that the only racists are neo-nazi skinhead fuckers, nor that they are the only ones that need to be challenged. We should try and detect and challenge racism in all areas.
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
I never said, that you should welcome supremacists or to ignore the problem. But we have to find more effective ways to combat their hate than knocking them down.
here one link for all who are interested:
http://whgbetc.com/mind/culture-white-sup.html
and an article
White People's Burden
By Robert Jensen, AlterNet. Posted August 31, 2005.
It's time for white Americans to fully acknowledge that in the racial arena, they are the problem.
Editor's Note: This essay is excerpted from The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege, forthcoming from City Lights, September 2005.
The United States is a white country. By that I don't just mean that the majority of its citizens are white, though they are (for now but not forever). What makes the United States white is not the fact that most Americans are white but the assumption -- especially by people with power -- that American equals white. Those people don't say it outright. It comes out in subtle ways. Or, sometimes, in ways not so subtle.
Here's an example: I'm in line at a store, unavoidably eavesdropping on two white men in front of me, as one tells the other about a construction job he was on. He says: "There was this guy and three Mexicans standing next to the truck." From other things he said, it was clear that "this guy" was Anglo, white, American. It also was clear from the conversation that this man had not spoken to the "three Mexicans" and had no way of knowing whether they were Mexicans or U.S. citizens of Mexican heritage.
It didn't matter. The "guy" was the default setting for American: Anglo, white. The "three Mexicans" were not Anglo, not white, and therefore not American. It wasn't "four guys standing by a truck." It was "a guy and three Mexicans." The race and/or ethnicity of the four men were irrelevant to the story he was telling. But the storyteller had to mark it. It was important that "the guy" not be confused with "the three Mexicans."
Here's another example, from the Rose Garden. At a 2004 news conference outside the White House, President George W. Bush explained that he believed democracy would come to Iraq over time:
"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."
It appears the president intended the phrase "people whose skin color may not be the same as ours" to mean people who are not from the United States. That skin color he refers to that is "ours," he makes it clear, is white. Those people not from the United States are "a different color than white." So, white is the skin color of the United States. That means those whose skin is not white but are citizens of the United States are ...? What are they? Are they members in good standing in the nation, even if "their skin color may not be the same as ours"?
This is not simply making fun of a president who sometimes mangles the English language. This time he didn't misspeak, and there's nothing funny about it. He did seem to get confused when he moved from talking about skin color to religion (does he think there are no white Muslims?), but it seems clear that he intended to say that brown people -- Iraqis, Arabs, Muslims, people from the Middle East, whatever the category in his mind -- can govern themselves, even though they don't look like us. And "us" is clearly white. In making this magnanimous proclamation of faith in the capacities of people in other parts of the world, in proclaiming his belief in their ability to govern themselves, he made one thing clear: The United States is white. Or, more specifically, being a real "American" is being white. So, what do we do with citizens of the United States who aren't white?
That's the question for which this country has never quite found an answer: What do white "Americans" do with those who share the country but aren't white? What do we do with peoples we once tried to exterminate? People we once enslaved? People we imported for labor and used like animals to build railroads? People we still systematically exploit as low-wage labor? All those people -- indigenous, African, Asian, Latino -- can obtain the legal rights of citizenship. That's a significant political achievement in some respects, and that popular movements that forced the powerful to give people those rights give us the most inspiring stories in U.S. history.
The degree to which many white people in one generation dramatically shifted their worldview to see people they once considered to be subhuman as political equals is not trivial, no matter how deep the problems of white supremacy we still live with.In many comparable societies, problems of racism are as ugly, if not uglier, than in the United States. If you doubt that, ask a Turk what it is like to live in Germany, an Algerian what it's like to live in France, a black person what it's like to live in Japan. We can acknowledge the gains made in the United States -- always understanding those gains came because non-white people, with some white allies, forced society to change -- while still acknowledging the severity of the problem that remains.
But it doesn't answer the question: What do white "Americans" do with those who share the country but aren't white?
We can pretend that we have reached "the end of racism" and continue to ignore the question. But that's just plain stupid. We can acknowledge that racism still exists and celebrate diversity, but avoid the political, economic, and social consequences of white supremacy. But, frankly, that's just as stupid. The fact is that most of the white population of the United States has never really known what to do with those who aren't white. Let me suggest a different approach.
Let's go back to the question that W.E.B. Du Bois said he knew was on the minds of white people. In the opening of his 1903 classic, The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois wrote that the real question whites wanted to ask him, but were afraid to, was: "How does it feel to be a problem?" Du Bois was identifying a burden that blacks carried -- being seen by the dominant society not as people but as a problem people, as a people who posed a problem for the rest of society. Du Bois was right to identify "the color line" as the problem of the 20th century. Now, in the 21st century, it is time for whites to self-consciously reverse the direction of that question at heart of color. It's time for white people to fully acknowledge that in the racial arena, we are the problem. We have to ask ourselves: How does it feel to be the problem?
The simple answer: Not very good.
That is the new White People's Burden, to understand that we are the problem, come to terms with what that really means, and act based on that understanding. Our burden is to do something that doesn't seem to come natural to people in positions of unearned power and privilege: Look in the mirror honestly and concede that we live in an unjust society and have no right to some of what we have. We should not affirm ourselves. We should negate our whiteness. Strip ourselves of the illusion that we are special because we are white. Steel ourselves so that we can walk in the world fully conscious and try to see what is usually invisible to us white people. We should learn to ask ourselves, "How does it feel to be the problem?"
http://alternet.org/rights/24745/
Yep, that's exactly what the fascists say. I hardly needed to change a word.
No, we should respect civil liberties because politically it's the right thing to do.
And it has the knock-on benefit that they can't later use our behavior as a precedent.
Then they should go into some business that doesn't involve serving the public.
Their rights, in their role of shopkeeper, do not and must not include refusing to trade with people.
I think we need to approach the problem of racism with a number of tactics. One of those is certainly "knocking them down," but we must go beyond that as well and attack it systematically.
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What a brilliant non-response. Using similar language (as most political groups do- gasp!does not make the ideas equal. Of course the fascists will say similar things about leftist groups- its true. We are a threat to them, and there's nothing wrong with that. That doesn't make them less of a threat to us, or mean that we need to temper our response. This isn't about have the "moral high ground" or "civil rights-" its about defending ourselves and those we care about, and destroying this rotting heap of a society for an egalitarian, free society. To do that, we need to oppose fascists. Period.
Why? For one, civil liberties are something given out by governments, not individuals. The government shouldn't deny the fascists the right to speak- I couldn't agree more. But I am certainly going to do everything in my power to shut them the hell up. Its simply self-defense, and that makes more political sense to me than playing friendly with people who want to murder me out of some mystical adherence to pointless morals.
If you think they need a precedent, you're completely out of touch with reality. In any case, as revolutionary leftists, we're diametrically opposed to this society and its rulers and we are going to come in to open conflict with them and their thugs should we ever gain sufficient ability to do so, and that will be all the "precedent" they need. You can't be opposed to capitalism and the current state and want them to be fair with you. It simply doesn't make sense.
'heavens above, how awful it is to live outside the law - one is always expecting what one rightly deserves.'
petronius, the satyricon
I agree that for example, when there is a rally that others block such rallies. To let supremacists know that there is a voice against them.
The more difficult problem is to educate and organize the average white to come to terms with what racism=white supremacy (as a system) really is.
The next step is to convince them that it is important to fight this system, to undermine this system.
Yes, we can wait for 'the revolution', lol, and this will probably change exactly nothing as long as people don't mature.
All are equal but some are more equal, this is what will come out of any 'revolution' without great masses standing behind it and also without understanding that it is our search for classification and class, which makes it almost impossible to create justice
