Of course, but it’s there now and they’re happy to abuse it. Call them hypocrites all you want, they couldn’t care less.

This is correct, and also, Nazis don’t care about good faith argumentation. They’re explicitly anti-liberal (as in, liberty, freedom) and will only pretend to have these values to try and point out an apparent contradiction (“You believe in rights to speech and democracy, so why are you censoring us?”)

In this video of former white supremacists talking about how they left the ideology, one brings up that on their Nazi website, it was normal and common to argue for points they knew were garbage, like the Great Replacement theory. It’s about power and results, not liberalist idealism.

Violent methods usually aren’t the preferred way of dealing with Nazis (because it’s harder to get a mass movement to join in and support it, and because it’s riskier, legally, which makes it harder to sustain), but it works. It broke up the BUF in Britain, it’s kept the local turds scared to show their faces or reveal their true thoughts (don’t worry, they still usually get revealed by researchers anyway). Violence works. They know it and we know it. But when they’re the government, their violence is now legal.

Well, I tried looking up videos of this and found one more reason not to: someone brought a bucket of hot water to their car and slipped on the icy driveway, spilling it on their face.

I was clarifying and adding more details, and also restating to make it clear I wasn’t disagreeing at all or trivializing it.

Maybe. It could also be just a general aversion of politics in the workplace, it’s usually not a good place to start (non-work related) political fights.

Is it because of pedestrians, or just heavy car traffic? [edit: just read the road details, looks like it’s a one-way ‘living street’ with pedestrians, capped at 20 mph]

(just posting OSM link for anyone else like me avoiding Google) https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/13526138

For what it’s worth: something I haven’t seen come up (so while this is a pragmatic perspective, don’t pretend I’m dismissing the importance of your relationship and your values! I’m only adding this for variety and discussion)

People can change. Many won’t, but some do. [vid: former white supremacists describing their process of leaving] Whether you think your brother is willing or able to change is your call, and whether it’s worth the emotional and mental strain is your call. You aren’t obliged, but it’s worth considering.

People who have left these ideologies, from what I’ve heard, often come back to two main points - they had someone in their life who cared about them, but was also unwilling to tolerate their bullshit, and they had to want to leave it by themselves. Honestly, I see parallels with people recovering from serious drug addictions and cults like QAnon.

But, again, this isn’t easy and there’s no guarantee of them changing, so do not feel obliged to even try. Your health is more important, and there are plenty of other ways you can help change the world.

Correct me if I’m wrong: IIRC the feds sent back mock pictures to ‘confirm’ the victims were killed, so I don’t know if anyone was assassinated in reality but, as you said, Ulbricht payed to have them murdered.

I have talked to people. That’s how I’ve found fellow socialists at work, alongside some others who are increasingly (and surprisingly) critical of capitalism and systematic issues affecting them.

Obviously culture changes from place to place, I don’t know your circumstances, but I expected my workplace to be especially conservative.

Someone in that thread you linked to posted this short video, I think it’s worth a watch: There are more communists than you think!

Dr. Strangelove is a surprising adept analogue - immigrant from a white supremacist regime who can’t leave it behind, weird and socially awkward, [supposed] tech expert. Maybe I’m stretching it a bit.

‘Accident’ isn’t the word I’d use to describe a famous, clear, unique and repeated gesture. It’s not something one does unknowingly. I’d lean more towards ‘association’, ‘intuition’, perhaps ‘familiarity’, if it weren’t premeditated. It’s no secret that Musk is frequently interacting with and boosting neo-nazis on their social media platform, the most doubt I could possibly give them is they wanted to do a powerful victory gesture, picked the first one that came to mind and they were too damn ignorant to realize even US conservatives don’t like Nazi symbols.

Some people who were in Special Ed report, like, major emotional trauma from it.

Is that with people also in Brazil? Because your experience sounds very different from the cases I’ve heard in some other countries where Special Ed students are isolated rather than given extra classes at the end of the school day.

You know it’s gotten pretty bad when even the anarchist flag usernames are meming about how ridiculous the anti tankie attitude is.

for a service/site/mom-and-pop shop to be sustainable without unending growth.

I’ve been on somewhat niche sites which have lasted decades, with waves of people coming in whenever related sites screw up and trickles of people leaving when an alternative community becomes more popular. It’s a comfy, slow existence, which works for some communities, but not for ones like this which thrive on diversity and chattiness, rather than really well thought-out replies days apart from each other. On reddit-like sites, time penalizes how high a post goes (unlike a forum where years-long threads are very normal to see on a front page) so there is an inherent benefit in having consistent activity. That doesn’t imply boundless growth, but at least sustaining a decent level of activity. We’re not chasing ad revenue, growth for growth’s sake is not what we want or need.

But with that said, a community with no new visitors can only lose them. That can be a slow process, but it’s inevitable. Been there, done that. Again, doesn’t imply that pointless growth is a good thing.

I mean…if the movie is good you should support it

What is ‘it’? The movie is a published work, it can’t be financially supported. Who is being supported with the money you pay?

Vote with your wallet.

Unfortunately, consumer boycott (and conversely, support) usually isn’t an effective strategy at this scale you’re talking about. Unless you and all your friends are voting with a few thousand dollars, it’s hardly going to make a dent in the numbers.

Giving money to your enemy is idiotic tho. There is a class war out there and normies are too busy funding their oppressors

Absolutely. At the end of the day, most of the moral ideals being thrown around are, at the end of the day, nice ideas.

Giant corporations exist to get more money and, history shows, media companies will happily brainwash us and buy oppressive politicians just to push their profits up. Furthermore, they serve as a megaphone for the ideas of the owner class, who are historically the core force behind fascism when society is in crisis.

Giving them your resources is fucking suicidal.

It is always morally acceptable?

Morality is, literally, subjective. There is no universal answer to that question.

I personally consider anything being sold by a distributor to be fair game, no questions asked. If I pay for mainstream music, films or games, most of the time, zero of that money goes to the workers who created those artworks. It just makes rich owners richer, because they legally own rights. I would go as far as to say it’s morally wrong to pay for those things, it’s not neutral, it’s supporting a cycle of abuse at your own expense. So that’s my perspective on your ‘giant corporations’ question.

Digital copying isn’t stealing, unfortunately, because those giant companies deserve to have their hoard of capital expropriated.

[src]

Perhaps there’s a better term, because “communities” already means something else here. Last thing we need is another Discord-calling-groups-‘servers’ mess.

“Homes” could be alright? or even “towns”?

Yep. Socialist orgs are generally public-facing and have no interest in secrecy, we’re not hiding from people. We don’t vet people before letting them see meetings like the neo-nazis and many politicians do, we’re basically the same inside as we are outside. And it pays off: there’s no fake persona to uphold, no paranoia about federal infiltration. Just walk in and have a look around, we’re here to build a mass movement, not some arrogant secret conspiracy cell.