I am with you. And maybe a little bit salty about the majority of people. But then again the rise of fascism really has been staring me in the face for a decade. I am an aid worker focusing on refugees. You can imagine the messages I have gotten. Including the most insane, actually copied race purity propaganda leaflet with notes I got through snail mail. In a weird way, you almost have to respect the effort.
Nowyn
joined 2 years ago
While trans rights are at least in the US as much or more under fire, in Europe it has also been refugees. On that front, it has gone from "just" criminalizing and harassing that group but also people who somehow are supporting that group. Which is only really relevant to show how far we are in the journey towards fascism in the West.
It is insane enough that I actually have to weekly remind myself that this is reality.
The issue is that what Antifa actually is and how the public perceives it are two different things. This is why certain people will believe this as much as NSDAP being socialists because it is in the name which makes them leftists unless you really give a history lesson. And from experience that will end up in that they either say that's just your opinion, look at you with glassed eyes or never even listened to you into the end.
Yes, both are historically really incorrect and at the level of a glance funny in inaccuracy. But on more deeper level this (insert the right fallacy or tactic as it escapes me) is a lot more insidiously dangerous. How do you efficiently encounter it in a way that most people will come out of the discussion with the most accurate knowledge?
While I agree with you, maybe edit would make some sense. There is a huge amount of propaganda and misconceptions about antifa which is why it is so easy to take your original comment as truth.
You can also find it in places like Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (which as much as modern antifascism details the history in the 20s and 30s) and Everything Is Possible: Antifascism and the Left in the Age of Fascism (which claims about antifascism creating left is IMO dubious, does a pretty good job in detailing the history of it).
But then again I am also one heavily left-leaning in a heavily left-leaning multicultural friend group who are largely human rights activists which is why these books were on my radar. If you have demonstrated and organized under the umbrella of Antifa you pretty quickly understand a lot of what people tell you about it even here in Finland does not match reality. And if you are like me, that means history and books.
I'm so, so, so sorry. My infraorbital nerve runs through my maxillary sinus and I had really fucking bad 3-month sinus infection that caused nerve pain on that isolated nerve (among a lot of other things). I can't imagine how you are dealing with this even though I do have nerve pain elsewhere.
The thing is that there is no country that really does that. I'm Finnish and while many things are a lot better, that has at least not been entirely true to this country as long as I have had some real concept of the world around me. At the same time, there is some pride not in as I am proud to be Finnish but I am a little bit proud of how much Finland has accomplished on that front. At least I am when I am not entirely pissed off by the majority of the country because of the shit it is doing.
I used to have no concept of pride in my country of birth and I don't still see it as something to be proud of as I did nothing to end up here. But in the past decade, I have worked in places that have taught me how bad things really can be, especially to part of the population. It is a weird dichotomy to see the worst of your country and still see how it can be better than in many places. It really does give me whiplash in my own head.
To be fair to America, I don't think there are any sane countries left. Finland had an actual neo-Nazi as minister and while it didn't last longer than Truss or even half of it, the party that is ministerial party is still there with similar ideas. They just had forethought to not write 14/88 in an old electoral ad. We are tied for first place still in the least corrupt countries and 5th in most democratic countries.
Add me to the list with a side of furiously searching for security and privacy of cloud storage services and figuring out which Linux I want to use. I'm shaking my head at how complacent I got with my services. I always do my due diligence when starting to use anything but I somehow forgot to keep up in the past couple of years.
As mentioned self-hosted Nextcloud is an option but as my ability to keep things from breaking is really limited which is a big reason why I use the cloud, I am moving on Sync. Other cloud services people often recommend are NordLocker and Tresorit.
You are absolutely right that we need to recognize both genocidal and oppressive policies in our countries and where possible restitute people or their descendants, the majority of society usually did directly contribute to those policies. However the case example by the person that answered you is actually more relevant than you would think. While we can't make our ancestors pay for their direct and indirect crimes, oppressed people who make use of horrendous policies should be exempt even in the level of thought.
To give a modern-day example of international law. Asylum seekers can't legally be punished by the mode of entry. Not because it changes it into a good thing but because oppressed people have so few options that are sane.
Reconciling and instituting is also not enough by a mile. We as Western countries need to stop these inhumane policies. I am not American. But mine while being better than most (based on rankings not my opinion) has shit ton issues.
Many converts that convert into Islam use this language. You return or revert to Islam as in you always were Muslim and just didn't know enough of the truth. Not sure if her language indicates this or actually always having been Muslim but based on her earlier statements I would guess it is the former.