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mcrane21ahsgov · 4 years

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Political Party Action

Blog post 3:

Criminal Law Reform: Mass Incarceration: Drug Law, Bail, Sentencing, and Parole Reform

Republican:

PLATFORM: The Republican party believes in “law and order”. They do not believe in the decriminalization of marijuana, and they promote states following the feudal law. They believe in capital punishment in prisons, including the death penalty. They call on the rest of the country to make feudal courts a model for Americans, protecting victims and their families.

AGREE/DISAGREE: I do not agree with the republican party's stance on criminal law reform. I do not believe in capital punishment and I believe states should be able to make laws for each state and do not necessarily need to follow federal laws.

Democrat:

PLATFORM: Democrats believe that police brutality is a very pressing issue in America and that the high incarceration rate, specifically among BIPOC, is something that we as a country need to address. Democrats also believe that defunding the police and allocating funds to places like mental health professionals and rehab facilities will decrease the deaths and incarceration rates among BIPOC. Something the Democrats are very much for is the decriminalization of marijuana and eliminating the use of cash bail as it is very unfair to people in a hard financial situation. Overall the Democrats would like to lower the incarceration rates for everyone and help people stay out of jail.

QUOTES: “America is the land of the free, and yet more of our people are behind bars, per capita, than anywhere else in the world”

“It is past time to end the failed “War on Drugs,” which has imprisoned millions of Americans—disproportionately Black people and Latinos—and hasn’t been effective in reducing drug use. Democrats support policies that will reorient our public safety approach toward prevention, and away from over-policing—including by making evidence-based investments in jobs, housing, education, and the arts that will make our nation fairer, freer, and more prosperous.”

AGREE/DISAGREE: I very much agree with democrats on this topic. I believe being addicted to drugs or being poor is not a reason for you to be in jail. While this issue of mass incarceration has been growing for many many years and is not one person's fault, I believe that if Joe Biden is elected he and his team will do something about this and aid to help those in need in our criminal justice system.

Green:

PLATFORM: The green party wants to reduce the prison population, invest in rehabilitation, and end the failed war on drugs. Their priorities include efforts to prevent violent crime and address the legitimate needs of victims while addressing the socio-economic root causes of crime and practicing policies that prevent recidivism. Their solutions include treating substance abuse as a medical problem, not a criminal problem, free all non-violent incarcerated prisoners of the drug war, increase funding for rape and domestic violence prevention and education programs, and never house juvenile offenders with adults. Their stance on parolees involves, providing incarcerated individuals the right to vote by absentee ballot in the district of their domicile, and the right to vote during parole.

QUOTES: “The negative effects of imprisonment are far-reaching. Prisoners are isolated from their communities and often denied contact with the free world and the media. Access to educational and legal materials is in decline. Prison administrators wield total authority over their environments, diminishing procedural input from experts, and censoring employee complaints.”

“Greens also call attention to the fact that more than forty percent of those 2.3 million locked down come from America's black one-eighth.”

AGREE/DISAGREE: I mostly agree with the green party's stance on criminal justice. I agree that we should allow no violent criminals to vote, and the right to vote during parole. I also agree with releasing anyone in prison there for marijuana or nonviolent drug charges. I do not entirely know where I stand on a few issues they stand for like never housing juvenile offenders with adults.

Libertarian:

PLATFORM: The Libertarian party believes that the government is creating laws that only pertain to “life liberty and property”. They are not in favor of punitive damages, designed to punish the wrongdoer. They oppose the prosecutorial practice of “overcharging” in criminal prosecutions to avoid jury trials by intimidating defendants into accepting plea bargains.

QUOTE: “Therefore, we favor the repeal of all laws creating “crimes” without victims, such as gambling, the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes, and consensual transactions involving sexual services.”

AGREE/DISAGREE: I do not agree with most of the libertarian party's views, as I believe they do not better our criminal justice system. I believe most of their “rules' ' are one-sided and don't take into account others. I do agree with how they want to make marijuana legal and decriminalize sex workers.

Peace and Freedom:

PLATFORM: The peace and freedom party or otherwise known as the “feminist socialist party”, wants to repeal the Patriot Act, abolish the Department of Homeland Security, stop state-sponsored spying on and violence against progressive organizations, democratically-controlled police review boards with powers of subpoena and discipline, abolish the death penalty, repeal the Three Strikes law, stop trials and imprisonment of juveniles as adults, decriminalize victimless activities including drug use and consensual sex, legalize marijuana, end the "war on drugs," which is primarily directed against poor and working-class people, abolish all torture in prisons, uphold prisoner rights, among other things.

QUOTE: “The bosses use laws against victimless activities, "legal" and illegal expansion of police powers, military and paramilitary occupation of poor and minority communities, and diversion of resources to police and jails, to keep workers intimidated and dependent.”

AGREE/DISAGREE: I agree with some of their positions like the legalization of marijuana, the abolishment of torture in prisons, and abolish the death penalty. I do not agree with abolishing the Department of Homeland Security or stopping trials and imprisonment of juveniles as adults in certain cases.

REFLECT:

I agree with the democrat party the most, which is not surprising as i identify as a democrat. I believe the Democrat party will do the cost to reform prisons and they have a solid plan to deal with mass incarceration in America. If i was 18 I would vote for Joe Biden.

PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE:

My issues were somewhat addressed. They address the looting and rioting going on in cities and how police officers are not held to the same standards as citizens in terms of the law. During the debate it seemed like Biden carried a lot more about these issues, than Trump. As Biden does not condemn the violence going on in our cities he does not believe that we should send in the national guard like Trump does. Biden believes in de escalating the situation, not making it worse.

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ununniliad · 5 years

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Death of Trophy Wife #7: "Return of Angel"

Content warnings: Screwed-up ways of thinking, totalitarianism, and a really gross metaphor involving poo.

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"Damn it." Michael K. Hotstuff, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, slammed his fists into the conference table. "Arc.ham Asylum was the ultimate secure facility, containing the most dangerous objects on the face of Planet T-Bone, and someone, we don't even understand who, ripped through it like single-ply toilet paper."

The table was long, and made of ebony wood. Along it were seated high government officials of the Loonited States of Ame.rec.a; the Secretary of the Interior, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the NSA - all of the people who were cleared to know the secrets stored beneath Arc.ham, or at least, as many as they could get in one room on short notice.

At the head of the table sat the President of the Loonited States. These days, she was referred to as President Ideal Rosenbaum, but she was once known as the Enemy of Compromise, the Mauler of Mediocrity, and the Defender of Absolute Truth, net.hero Ayn Rand Lass. She steepled her fingers and adjusted her glasses. "It is my theory that this savage attack was perpetrated by the strangest domestic terrorist our nation has ever seen."

Her VP, Buckminster Psydekik, gasped. "You mean--"

"Yes. The criminal known as Kid Enthusiastic, and his team of net.villains, the System Corrupters."

Director Hotstuff stood. "Ladies and gentlemen..." Music started playing in the background.

"What do we know about Kid Enthusiastic?

Nice supervillain, colorful suit!"

Aloysius Netro, senator from Net.ropolis, harmonized nicely.

"No killing, no looting,

Anarchy and cookies!"

President Rosenbaum smirked.

"One thing I'll say for him--

Kid E is cute!"

They picked up the standard-issue maracas lying on the conference table and shook them. "He is ridiiiiiiiiiiiculous~"

Then they-- ...oh, hang on a minute, I've got a phone call... oh, hi, Kindle! Nice to-- um. Ah. You've been reading, I see.

Well, no, I hadn't considered it particularly sacreligious to...

Well, I mean, it's a musical, and the pre-existing Biblical aspects of LNHY mean that...

Well, I guess it could be considered a bit egotistical to equate a character of my own devising to one of the most significant cultural icons in the world...

Uh-huh... uh-huh... yeah, okay. Sorry about that.

Anyway. After everyone stopped parodying Andrew Lloyd Webber, President Rosenbaum stood up, walking to the window and peering out at some iconic Washington.gov monument. "So far, we have been content to allow the individuals who claim superior skill and call themselves net.heroes to chase this band of anarchists. But this has not been effective, and now the security of this nation is in real jeopardy." She turned to the room. "My fellow Ame.rec.ans, colleagues against corruption and evil... we have another option. If we have the courage to use it."

"...wait," said Director Hotstuff. "You're not talking about--"

"Yes." She looked over the rims of her glasses at them.

"They were banned!" shouted Senator Netro, waving his hands. "Banned and locked away where they would never again see the light of day!"

"Indeed. Because they were being used against everyday citizens. If they were deployed against true enemies of the people, all objection would be silenced under a wave of gratitude." She walked back to the table, leaning on her chair. Her pose was relaxed, but her eyes were hard. "Besides... do we truly have a choice? You know the things that were locked away in Arc.ham. The very existence of the OId Ones... the Ame.rec.an way of life would be shredded."

One by one, the powerful, important people around the table looked at each other, and saw no answers; one by one, they looked down, nodding in submission.

She nodded as well. "Then we are in agreement. Reactivate the Seraphim."

----

President Ideal Rosenbaum returned late to her rooms. She poured herself a fifth of whiskey, settled back, and remembered.

As Ayn Rand Lass, Ideal had been who she truly was, what everyone should be. Simple. Straightforward. Good.

She had worn a faceless mask that was perfectly white on one side and perfectly black on the other, and a trenchcoat covered in mirrors, reflecting the light of reason, so that criminals could not fail to see what they'd become. She missed it, nowadays, even though, seen in the sober light of day, she had to admit it was gaudy as fuck.

She had helped those who needed it, and delivered ruthless justice onto those who preyed on society. She had been righteous, and and a hero, and...

Damn. She'd promised herself she'd never go into the Gray. And now here she was, down among the muck and mire.

But America had needed her. After the Sexagesimal Luthor administration had ended, his former VP, Rich Notanalien, had won nearly unopposed. But Luthor's calculating mind and sheer force of personality were what had held things together despite rampant corruption in his administration, and without that, the economy went into a devastating tailspin.

Things had been bad. They could have had revolution on their hands, and who knows what socialist nightmare would have taken root? So when Notanalien declined the chance for a second term, Ideal stepped up. She didn't know politics, but she knew the hearts of men. She had enough levers on enough people to get the nomination, and enough courage to propose cutting away the patronage that had lead to the nation's resources bleeding into the pockets of the corrupt.

Of course, this had not been popular among those whose pockets were now slightly lighter. The power-greedy fools had fought change, but they hadn't been able to stand against her for even one year. Soon they were eager to bend the knee. They were weak and corrupt... corrupt enough to reactivate the Seraphim.

The Seraphim... relics of the bad old days. When Project Lighthouse had been in full swing and the unbeliever re-education camps were still thought of as a clever way to win the culture wars instead of as an obscenity, the final step was planned to be mass conversion. To that end, the senators and military men who were part of the Project manipulated budgets and personnel to create the tools they would need to force compliance. Giant robots, modeled after angels. Stupid and wasteful, especially after things started to fall apart. In the end, they were deployed only once - against the Iconoclast, as she took apart the camps and freed the unbelievers.

Heh. Unbeliever. That was precisely the right word to describe Ideal. She did not actively fight against the idea of a god, but she had no reason to believe in a god created by men. The only powerful being she needed to justify her actions was herself.

And what of those who were so very pious that they got elected on it? Did they follow the strictures of their religion, tending the sick, feeding the hungry? Or did they vomit animal feces from their lips as their hands worked behind their back, weaving a skein of gray wool into a web of lies, catching all worthy and kind people in bondage?

This had to stop. Good had to prevail against evil. The mediocrity that infested this place had to be swept clean, replaced with real, hardworking people who actually deserved the responsibility of running a nation. And once she had the Seraphim, she could be the broom.

Ideal finished her drink. If they wanted angels... she would be their Angel of Death.

----

Author's Notes:

For those of you completely befuddled by the sudden musical number, it's a reference to Jesus Christ Superstar, and specifically the number "This Jesus Must Die". I apologize profusely.

Michael Hotstuff was named after Michael Casper, Clark Gregg's FBI agent character on The West Wing, by way of a Harvey Comics reference.

Sexagesimal Luthor was a compromise between Saxon's use of Hexadecimal Luthor in The Daily Super Short-Short Story #51, and Arthur's noting that we really don't want to use characters we don't have permission for in LNHY. (Arthur came up with "Sexadecimal Luthor" as a name, and I tweaked it, because "sexagesimal" is a really cool word that people should use more often.)

The Seraphim are references to the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion by way of the Sentinels.

#Original Fiction #Superheroes #Political Drama #Adventure #Legion of Net.Heroes #LNHY #Death of Trophy Wife

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nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany · 5 years

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Robert O. Paxton’s “The Five Stages of Fascism”

Digital Elixir Robert O. Paxton’s “The Five Stages of Fascism”

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

The word “fascism” has been much in the news of late. Here is a chart of the year 2019 from Google Trends:

Interestingly, usage is more or less flat until the first spike, when President Trump put tanks on the National Mall for July 4, and then a second, larger spike, when he gave his Greenville, NC speech, and the crowd chanted, of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, “send them back.” Omar reacted as follows:

Rep. Ilhan Omar called President Trump "fascist" and said she fears for people who share her identity, after a crowd at his rally led a "Send her back!" chant about the Somali-American congresswoman https://t.co/zpsZ02qtbS pic.twitter.com/06iZXDT7mY

— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 18, 2019

Omar is a serious person and that’s a serious charge, so it’s worth looking at. Certainly my left/work corner of the Twittersphere was consumed by the word “fascism,” to the extent that RussiaRussiaRussia was drowned out. Notably, however, the two spikes, and the resulting moral panic, were caused by symbols: Tanks on the mall, and a speech. (Interestingly, words about the border, like “concentration camps,” and “fascism” do not spike simultaneously, even though one might expect them to. We’ll see more about symbols in the Appendices.) However, although fascist deliverables often have excellent symbolism — graphic treatments especially — fascism is about more than symbols, although you might not know it from the ruminations of our symbol-manipulating poltical class.

So I thought it would be worthwhile to take a deeper look at the work of Columbia historian Robert O. Paxton, who is a scholar of fascism. Basically, this post will be the notes for the class I wish I had taken with him; Paxton writes as lucidly as another great scholar of fascism, Richard J. Evans, author of The Coming of the Third Reich and two wonderful successor volumes. I’m going to quote great slabs mostly from Paxton’s article “The Five Stages of Fascism” (The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 70, No. 1. Mar., 1998, pp. 1-23), but also from his later book, The Anatomy of Fascism (2004). “Five Stages” is only 24 pages, and easy, so do consider reading it in full, because I’m not really doing it justice; I’m leaving out all the historiography, for example.

And so to Paxton. I’m selecting passages partly when they contain useful ideas I just don’t see in today’s discourse, but mostly to give us tools to assess the current “conjuncture,” as we say.

Fascism and Democracy

From the Five Stages of Fascism, page 3:

The fascist phenomenon was poorly understood at the beginning in part because it was unexpected. Until the end of the nineteenth century, most political thinkers believed that widening the vote would inevitably benefit democracy and socialism. Friedrich Engels, noting the rapid rise of the socialist vote in Germany and France, was sure that time and numbers were on his side. Writing the preface for a new edition in 1895 of Karl Marx’s Class Struggles in France, he declared that “if it continues in this fashion, we will conquer the major part of the middle classes and the peasantry and will become the decisive power.” It took two generations before the Left understood that fascism is, after all, an authentic mass popular enthusiasm and not merely [1] a clever manipulation of populist emotions by the reactionary Right or [2] by capitalism in crisis.

I think most “hot take” analysis by liberals would fall into the bucket labeled [1]; by the left, label [2]. I think the idea that democracy is, as it were, the host body for fascism deserves some thought. Certainly there was no fascism as such until democracy was well advanced.

Fascism: Made in America?

From the Five Stages of Fascism, page 12:

But it is further back in American history that one comes upon the earliest phenomenon that seems functionally related to fascism: the Ku Klux Klan. Just after the Civil War, some former Confederate officers, fearing the vote given to African Americans by the Radical Reconstructionists in 1867, set up a militia to restore an overturned social order. The Klan constituted an alternate civic authority, parallel to the legal state, which, in its founders’ eyes, no longer defended their community’s legitimate interests. In its adoption of a uniform (white robe and hood), as well as its techniques of intimidation and its conviction that violence was justified in the cause of the group’s destiny, the first version of the Klan in the defeated American South was a remarkable preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar Europe. It is arguable, at least, that fascism (understood functionally) was born in the late 1860s in the American South.

(As an aside: It’s probably coincidence, but Civil War tactics, especially by the time of the Overland Campaign, were also a “remarkable preview” of World War I. Intuitively, I feel that fascism does not take hold of the body politic without a lot of organic damage, whether in the entrenchments of the Civil War, the trenches of World War I, or — just possibly — the opioid crisis, deaths of despair, and falling life expectancy.) Hitler’s American Model shows that Nazi jurists and lawyers came to America to research Jim Crow, and thought very highly of the legislation; they saw Jim Crow as an example of modernity — how advanced the United States was. Of course, by their lights, Jim Crow was misdirected.

Mutability of Fascism

From the Five Stages of Fascism, page 4:

[Individual cases of fascism] differ in space because each national variant of fascism draws its legitimacy, as we shall see, not from some universal scripture but from what it considers the most authentic elements of its own community identity. Religion, for example, would certainly play a much greater role in an authentic fascism in the United States than in the first European fascisms, which were pagan for contingent historical reasons. They differ in time because of the transformations and accommodations demanded of those movements that seek power.

And page 5:

Fascists deny any legitimacy to universal principles to such a point that they even neglect proselytism. Authentic fascism is not for export. Particular national variants of fascism differ far more profoundly one from another in themes and symbols than do the national variants of the true “isms.” The most conspicuous of these variations, one that leads some to deny the validity of the very concept of generic fascism, concerns the nature of the indispensable enemy: within Mediterranean fascisms, socialists and colonized peoples are more salient enemies than is the Jewry. Drawing their slogans and their symbols from the patriotic repertory of one particular community, fascisms are radically unique in their speech and insignia. They fit badly into any system of universal intellectual principles.

One result of the “Lost Cause” propaganda and the historiography of the Dunning School — William Dunning, ironically enough, professed at Columbia as well — is that the notion that there might already have been an American Fascism (see above) is not available to us. Hence, we often see Nazis (and generally Nazis, not even Mussolini) as the quintessential fascists. The argument can be made that globalization has, in fact, created fascism of export — some in my Twitterverse had no problem believing that Trump was simultaneously a Russian puppet and a fascist — but I just don’t see how that helps fascism to root itself (see below) in any given country, which is a requirement for it to grow.

The Stages of Fascism

From the Five Stages of Fascism, page 11:

But one must compare what is comparable. A regime where fascism exercises power is hardly comparable to a sect of dissident intellectuals. We must distinguish the different stages of fascism in time. It has long been standard to point to the difference between movements and regimes. I believe we can usefully distinguish more stages than that, if we look clearly at the very different sociopolitical processes involved in each stage. I propose to isolate five of them: (1) the initial creation of fascist movements; (2) their rooting as parties in a political system; (3) the acquisition of power; (4) the exercise of power; and, finally, in the longer term, (5) radicalization or entropy.

And stage 2, the importance of parties, pages 12-13:

The second stage—rooting, in which a fascist movement becomes a party capable of acting decisively on the political scene—happens relatively rarely. At this stage, comparison becomes rewarding: one can contrast successes with failures. Success depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies seems to condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner. Some fascist leaders, in their turn, are willing to reposition their movements in alliances with these frightened conservatives, a step that pays handsomely in political power, at the cost of disaffection among some of the early antibourgeois militants.

That underlined portion does seem familar, doesn’t it? However, it’s worth noting that there’s no “seem” to American decline; how is a nation with dropping life expectancy not in decline? It’s also worth noting that “frightened conservatives” doesn’t necessarily equal Republicans; it was not, after all, the Republican Party that painted the anti-semitism target on Ilhan Omar’s back. It’s worth asking, then, whether centrist Democrats would seek a bipartisan alliance against the left.

Fascism Today

Here is Paxton’s first definition of fascism, from the Five Stages of Fascism pages 22-23:

Where is the “fascism minimum” in all this? Has generic fascism evaporated in this analysis? It is by a functional definition of fascism that we can escape from these quandaries. Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline. Its complex tensions (political revolution versus social restoration, order versus aggressive expansionism, mass enthusiasm versus civic submission) are hard to understand solely by reading its propaganda. One must observe it in daily operation….

And his second, from The Anatomy of Fascism, page 218:

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim- hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Speaking as an amateur, I think the two definitions map to each other, and both to the present day (“liberal democracy stands accused” v. “abandons democratic liberties,” but I like the second one much better, because the language is crisper, and is testable. For example, “redemptive violence”: During Reconstruction, the states that came under control of the former Slave Power, a process achieved by great violence, were referred to as “redeemed.”

More from the Five Stages of Fascism, page 23:

Can fascism still exist today, in spite of the humiliating defeat of Hitler and Mussolini, the declining availability of the war option in a nuclear age, the seemingly irreversible globalization of the economy, and the triumph of in- dividualistic consumerism? After ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, the rise of exclusionary nationalisms in postcommunist Eastern Europe, the “skinhead” phenomenon in Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, and Italy, and the election of `

Mirko Tremaglia, a veteran of the Republic of Salo, as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Italian Parliament during the Berlusconi government, it would be hard to answer “no” to that question.

The most interesting cases today, however, are not those that imitate the exotic colored-shirt movements of an earlier generation. New functional equivalents of fascism would probably work best, as George Orwell reminded us, clad in the mainstream patriotic dress of their own place and time. An authentically popular fascism in the United States would be pious and anti-Black; in Western Europe, secular and antisemitic, or more probably, these days, anti-Islamic; in Russia and Eastern Europe, religious, antisemitic, and slavophile. We may legitimately conclude, for example, that the skinheads are functional equivalents of Hitler’s SA and Mussolini’s squadristi: only if important elements of the conservative elite begin to cultivate them as weapons against some internal enemy, such as immigrants.

Rather prescient for 1998, I must say. (And much as I loathe black bloc, it may be that they have their place in making these “functional equivalents” less easy to form.) Nevertheless, we do not have a “mass-based party of committed nationalist militants,” Yet. Paxton goes on:

The right questions to ask of today’s neo- or protofascisms are those appropriate for the second and third stages of the fascist cycle. Are they becoming rooted as parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on the political scene? [TBD] Is the economic or constitutional system in a state of blockage apparently insoluble by existing authorities? [Yes] Is a rapid political mobilization threatening to escape the control of traditional elites, to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge? [TBD] It is by answering those kinds of questions, grounded in a proper historical understanding of the processes at work in past fascisms, and not by checking the color of the shirts or seeking traces of the rhetoric of the national-syndicalist dissidents of the opening of the twentieth century, that we may be able to recognize our own day’s functional equivalents of fascism.

And from Anatomy, page 218:

Fascism exists at the level of Stage One within all democratic countries—not excluding the United States. “Giving up free institutions,” especially the freedoms of unpopular groups, is recurrently attractive to citizens of Western democracies, including some Americans. We know from tracing its path that fascism does not require a spectacular “march” on some capital to take root; seemingly anodyne decisions to tolerate lawless treatment of national “enemies” is enough. Something very close to classical fascism has reached Stage Two in a few deeply troubled societies. Its further progress is not inevitable, however. Further fascist advances toward power depend in part upon the severity of a crisis, but also very largely upon human choices, especially the choices of those holding economic, social, and political power.

Our immune system kills off little cancers all the time; a metastatizing tumor takes a lot of effort to create. Stage One fascisms are little cancers, killed off by a healthy body politic. Stage Two fascisms, without treatment, will metastatize.

Conclusion

I think we’re somewhere in Stage Two: Rooting — or, to be optimistic, Uprooting. I invite the views of readers!

APPENDIX I: “Cosmopolitan”

Stoller tweeted, of a speech by possible Trump 2.0 Josh Hawley:

Liberals are freaking out about these comments, but Hawley is correct. Does anyone doubt Wall Street/Silicon Valley and their weird globalization fetish has harmed the middle class? Beating Hawley is going to require better policy, not better tantrums. https://t.co/yyfbSgBMuK

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) July 18, 2019

Then ensued the most moralizing and banal Twitter discussion I’ve seen in some time, and that’s saying something. Hawley used the word “cosmopolitican” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry here), which Stoller’s detractors felt proved Hawley was sending an anti-semitic dog whistle, and hence Stoller, in defending him, was an anti-semite too. (Paxton: “not by checking the color of the shirts or seeking traces of the rhetoric….”). To show how useless the entire episode was, I’ll quote The Nation’s Jeet Heer:

All politics is based on a division between friend & foe. A left-wing populist-nationalist can make big business the foe. The right-wing nationalist can't because they accept capitalism & are often financed by wealthy, so their foe is the (cough, cough) cosmopolitan

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 20, 2019

Of course, the view that “all politics is based on a division between friend and foe” could be traced right back to Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt, whose doctrine that was, and so Heer could be said to be sending an anti-semitic dog whistle. Of course that’s absurd, because context matters. Our symbol manipulating professional friends in the political class would do far better to look at function instead of checking their Index Expurgatorius of words suitable for censure and calling out. Liberals, and the left, have been calling out “dog whistles” for twenty years, at least. It hasn’t gotten them anywhere. Yet still they do it!

Robert O. Paxton’s “The Five Stages of Fascism”

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diabeticmemoirs · 5 years

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SORRY KARL MARX: 4 ANIMALS THAT YOU THOUGHT WERE ALTRUISTIC BUT AREN’T

Altruism, we all think that we know what it means. You know, doing something good for someone else without some kind of a reward. Maybe donate to charity, or volunteer your time at a local shelter of some kind — human, animal, hexapod invertebrate (seriously, they call them bug hotels). That’s not exactly the case though. In fact, the real definition of altruism is a tad more specific than that.

First we have to talk fitness, and no I’m not talking about the ten minutes of yoga you did before collapsing on top of the body-shaped puddle of sweat still absorbing into the mat you purchased at the dollar store. In biology, fitness refers to how many babies a person can make, who can also get down and make a few of their own (thanks conservation science 201). And, using that definition, altruism is actually any behavior that an individual performs in order to increase the fitness of another, while causing a decrease in fitness to itself.

Now, Karl Marx was many things; philosopher, journalist, historian, political theorist, revolutionary socialist. But, one of his core ideas was this — human nature is essentially a state of it’s circumstances (Everything is your parents fault). Immanuel Kant and Thomas Hobbes argued that people were, at their core, selfish. Marx, on the other hand, said that outside of the social constraints of upper and lower class, people would prove to be self-less and help one another out — they would care about our species as a whole. Just like all of those examples of altruistic behavior in our cute and cuddly animal counterparts. I mean come on! We’ve all seen the viral videos of dogs adopting orphaned kittens. Obviously we should try to be more understanding and accepting. We should walk and talk just like the animals right?....Right? Well, no, not if we’re talking altruism.

Lemmings

No, I’m not talking about the green-haired, dimwitted, cartoon creatures who walk to their deaths in blue dresses that were made famous by DMA Design in 1991. I’m referring to the IRL version that also jump from cliffs and drown themselves in an attempt to control their own population size. That’s right folks! Altruistic mass suicide. It was actually a theory not too long ago. Disney even “documented” it in their 1958 film White Wilderness. Documented of course means that they took some lemmings, pushed them off of a cliff, and filmed it (Mickey Mouse for President 2020).

Reality is — that theory was sane when compared to earlier ones. During the 1530’s a geographer, by the name of Zeigler, suggested that lemmings spontaneously fell from the sky during stormy weather, and simply died off in the spring. What Zeigler hadn’t noticed was the population migrating up to the mountains in the spring to get their baby-making on...like really on. Lemmings reproduce so fast that they have their own unique population growth model.

Almost every species follows one of two predictive growth patterns, outside of extenuating circumstances of course. They either grow exponentially until they reach a carrying capacity, balancing out the population with the available resources; or they grow exponentially, far beyond the available resources, and eventually crash towards potential extinction (have you figured out which kind we are yet?....just saying). Lemmings, on the other hand, fluctuate up and down chaotically, not around a carrying capacity, for about four years before crashing to near extinction. Then they get up, brush themselves off, and start all over again.

They’re rodents, and like every other rodent, they mass produce children and then scatter away to new places when the population gets too big. But, unlike every other rodent, that has inconspicuous, neutral coloring and tends to flee and hide at the sight of a predator, a lemmings predatory defense behavior is simple; they ain’t gonna take no shit from no punk ass carnivore, and their colors say so (thug life). It’s almost like the flight portion of their fight or flight response was lebotomized from that portion of the brain (the amygdala...not that they asked Mr. Know-it-All), but that’s beside the point. Lemmings are mean, aggressive, far from altruistic little adrenaline junkies that migrate at full speed down mountain cliffs and across raging rivers, they’re just not all gonna make it. That’s the life. They like to ride. Fixed gear. No brakes. Can’t stop. Don’t want to, either (or was that Joseph Gordon-Levitt?).

Wolves

The great and noble wolf pack, consisting of the alpha, the beta, and the bottom of the proverbial barrel — the omega wolf. A perfect hierarchy of dominance behavior, where the toughest make it to the top. At least, that’s according to L. David Mech, one of the most prominent wolf experts in the U.S (and every episode of MTV’s adaptation of Teen Wolf). So who the hell are we to question it?

Let’s just assume that’s how it works for a moment, and one renegade wolf fights his way to power, dominating every other member of the pack with his or her underdog willpower and earning the top spot in more ways than one (where my bitches at?). Well it seems that, in the wild, that renegade top-dog has a soft spot for the young and injured.

Everyone gets a share at meal time. Even the ones who are too sick or injured to go on the hunt get an equal piece, and Mr. Alpha makes sure of that. Hooray altruism!!! Sharing resources definitely counts. Except it doesn’t. Not in this case. Because guess what, putting a bunch of strange wolves into a small, enclosed space isn’t the best way to understand what’s happening in the wild. Who knew?!

The truth is that Mr. Alpha is actually just a wolf that found Mrs. Alpha and decided to make their own little pack, the old fashioned way...sex, I’m talking about sexual intercourse. Wolf packs are just families; Mom, Dad, and all of their little kiddy wolves (Sibling rivalry gets a whole new meaning when you add claws and teeth). Once those pups grow up, they form small family units of their own and often build on the first pack. It’s like a family-reunion-camping-trip, just every second...of every single day...in the middle of untamed wilderness.

It’s called kin selection. Even grandchildren and cousins have twenty-five percent of the SAME GENES as we do. That’s right, you’re twenty-five percent identical to your first cousin. And, biology says that you should get as much of...well you...out there as you can. So, murdering said cousin for breaking your Xbox goes against your natural fitness. Sorry guys.

Apes

You know...us...and our closest living relatives. Those cute little chimpanzees and gorillas with their sign language skills. The ones that get far less cute when you add Mark Walhberg, James Franco, or a forty-five year old Charlton Heston to the mix.

They are like us in a lot of ways. Psychologist Robin Ian Macdonald Dunbar, with his enormous list of credentials and top seat at Oxford’s Department of Experimental Psychology (that’s the legit kind, not the wishy-washy one) writes an entire book on the similar social effects of grooming in apes and the affinity that humans seem to have for gossip. I mean, I don’t want to say anything about women who sit at a salon and exchange information while getting their overpriced nails done, or how they might compare to a troop of gorillas grooming each other...so I won’t...

Gossip, exchanging information, or picking and eating termites off of each others hairy backs, it isn’t kin selection or some mentally unstable rodent migration in this case. It isn’t altruistic either. It’s called reciprocity, “tit for tat,” you eat the bug off my back and I’ll eat the bug off yours. And, don’t take it lightly.

Reciprocity is the basis of human society. We barder, we trade, it happens at every level of civilization. There’s even a thing called reciprocal “concession” where a requester lowers their initial request, in order to make the other person feel obligated to concede to the second request (go ahead, look it up). It’s reverse psychology in board meeting. We haven’t gotten more “self-less” with our intelligence, we’ve just become more manipulative.

Birds

About ten percent of all bird species, in one way or another, express “cooperative breeding” — boom, statistic. So, what does that mean? Babysitting. You take care of someone else’s genetic Will and Testament, which wastes your time and energy and decreases your fitness. Done...altruism. And no, it isn’t always a relative.

So why doesn’t it qualify? Because these are the benefits…

A reduced chance of predation, increased foraging time, territory inheritance, higher survival rate of breeding females, and get this...the “helpers” simply become better parents when they do breed. And in the wild that’s important...because in the wild, children actually do get eaten by monsters.

These guys have weighed the costs and benefits of every tiny little behavior they do, and we have absolutely no clue what’s happening. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this — as a moderately liberal hippy myself, I’d love to think that all of our furry friends are looking out for one another — but the truth is, altruism doesn’t exist. Not in the natural world at least. We need to define our terms more accurately and stop getting caught up in this black and white, good versus evil trope. The world is vastly more complicated and that’s okay.

The only example I can come up with would be if a woman (let’s call her Sally) donates her egg to Amy, the scientists involved remove Sally’s DNA from it and put in Amy’s DNA, and then they proceed to fertilize it. Because it all comes down to the passing on of genetic material (the gooey stuff). Which may be possible soon, who knows. They just fertilized one female mouse with DNA from another (because men weren’t already useless enough).

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computacionalblog · 6 years

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Nature Mob Protests in Chemnitz Show New Strength of Germany’s Far Right

Nature Mob Protests in Chemnitz Show New Strength of Germany’s Far Right Nature Mob Protests in Chemnitz Show New Strength of Germany’s Far Right http://www.nature-business.com/nature-mob-protests-in-chemnitz-show-new-strength-of-germanys-far-right/

Nature

Video

Violent demonstrations in Germany by far-right protesters have led to attacks on refugees and featured a chant that translates to “we are the people.” So how did extremist groups adopt this rallying cry?Published OnAug. 30, 2018CreditCreditImage by Jens Meyer/Associated Press

CHEMNITZ, Germany — Waving German flags, with some flashing Nazi salutes, the angry mob made its way through the streets, chasing after dark-skinned bystanders as police officers, vastly outnumbered, were too afraid to intervene.

A Syrian refugee and father of two, Anas al-Nahlawie, watched horrified from a friend’s fourth-floor balcony. They were hunting in packs for immigrants just like him, he said. “Like wolves.”

For a few perilous hours over two days this week, the mob owned the streets of Chemnitz, where anger exploded after word spread that an Iraqi and a Syrian asylum seeker were suspected in a knife attack that killed a German man early Sunday.

Chemnitz, a city of some 250,000 in eastern Germany, has a history of neo-Nazi protests. Usually they draw a few hundred from the fringes of society — and far larger counter-demonstrations, city officials say. The crowd this time was 8,000-strong. Led by several hundred identifiable neo-Nazis, it appeared to be joined by thousands of ordinary citizens. More marches are planned Saturday.

The city had never seen anything like this — and, to some degree, neither had post-World War II Germany. The rampage now stands as a high-water mark in the outpouring of anti-immigrant hatred that has swelled as Germany struggles to absorb the nearly one million asylum seekers who arrived in the country after Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to open the borders in 2015.

That decision sharply divided Germany, with critics soon arguing that Ms. Merkel’s administration had lost control of the situation. Three years later, what the government is struggling to control is an anti-immigrant backlash.

Neo-Nazis are growing bolder and stronger, and they are better organized, officials and sociologists say. The far-right Alternative for Germany party is a growing power in Parliament — another shock to the system — and has started to normalize angry sentiments about immigrants that before would not have been uttered aloud, bringing them into the mainstream.

In the face of this newly assertive far right, Chemnitz has become a test of state authority. Some say it has even become a test of Germany’s postwar democracy.

“They are challenging our democratic state in a way they have not done before,” said Barbara Ludwig, the mayor of Chemnitz, a Social Democrat, sitting in her second-floor city hall office one recent morning. “We must pass this test.”

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That is precisely what the groups behind this week’s disorder see: A pivotal moment they want to use to change the direction of Germany.

Benjamin Jahn Zschocke, 32, a leading member of Pro Chemnitz, the nationalist citizens’ movement that registered Monday’s march, described the week’s events as a turning point and drew two historical parallels.

Just as the death of a student demonstrator in 1967 set off widespread rioting and ultimately a student revolt that marked the beginning of the liberal progressive era in West Germany, the murder in Chemnitz would mark the beginning of a period of far-right resistance, he predicted.

And just as in 1989, when thousands — including his own parents — took to the streets to demand the end of Communism, this week’s marches were aimed at bringing down a “failed system,” he said.

“People were sick of the system then and now they are sick of the system again,” he said, adding that he had never voted and did not believe in parliamentary democracy.

Mayor Ludwig says the comparison hurts. She, too, marched in 1989. “But we marched for law and order, for democracy, for freedom of speech,” she said. “They want to undermine all of these institutions and are instrumentalizing people’s grief over the terrible murder of a young man.”

A thriving industrial hub in the 19th century, Chemnitz was badly damaged during World War II, then rebuilt as a model socialist city under East Germany’s Communist regime and temporarily renamed Karl-Marx-Town.

The 7-meter-tall bronze head of Marx in the city center was once a rallying point for demonstrations that took place each Monday to demand the end of Communism; this week it was the rallying point of the far right.

Neo-Nazis have a long tradition of holding demonstrations in Chemnitz, the mayor said. For years they would take to the streets on March 5, mourning the day the city was bombed by allied forces in 1945. “But they were always in the hundreds, and the counter-demonstration was always bigger,” Ms. Ludwig said.

This week was different.

“This mix of far-right extremists and AfD voters was new,” said Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin and a veteran expert of the far right.

Image

Benjamin Jahn Zschocke, a member of Pro Chemnitz, a nationalist group, described the clashes as a turning point for the country.CreditSean Gallup/Getty Images

The Alternative for Germany garnered 27 percent in the eastern state of Saxony, where Chemnitz is located, in last year’s national election. Empowered by that success, far-right activists have been able to channel the fears and discontent of voters and, often using social media, mobilize crowds that a few years ago would have been unthinkable, Mr. Funke said.

The events in Chemnitz, analysts say, showcase the symbiotic relationship between the neo-Nazis and the Alternative for Germany, which officially distances itself from such groups.

The party has done a lot to normalize the language of the far right. If the slogans heard on the streets of Chemnitz this week — from “lying press” to “Germany for the Germans” — have lost their shock value, it is because variations of them are now regularly heard in Parliament.

“We have a strong neo-Nazi scene in eastern Germany, but we also have a strong current of far-right extremism in all of Germany — not just in Parliament but in society,” said Matthias Quent, who runs an institute that studies democracy and civil society in the eastern state of Thuringia.

That is why the far right is so self-confident, he said: “They think their day has come.”

Social media played a significant role in mobilizing the mobs.

Within hours of the stabbing last Sunday, soccer hooligans with links to the neo-Nazis posted an appeal online: “Let’s show together who has the say in this city.”

Soon rumors started circulating. The victim had been defending a woman who had been molested by the killer. A second victim had died in hospital. Neither was true. But within a few hours, some 800 protesters were on the streets, outnumbering the police 10 to one.

The AfD was quick to chime in. “When the state can’t protect its citizens anymore, the citizens take to the street and protect themselves,” Markus Frohnmaier, a lawmaker for the party, said in a Twitter post. “Today it is a citizen’s duty to stop the deadly ‘knife migration!’ ”

On Monday, the number of protesters grew tenfold, again catching the police unprepared and again making national headlines with riotous scenes of street battles. Another march on Thursday was much smaller, and largely calm, after the local police were reinforced with federal units.

The mass mobilizations highlight worrying new gains for an extremist fringe that for many years was underestimated and — some say willfully — neglected by the German authorities.

Image

A memorial for the victim of a stabbing in Chemnitz.CreditOdd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The feeling of insecurity was palpable this week in Chemnitz across neighborhoods and communities.

At the scene of Sunday’s murder, a stone’s throw from City Hall, Wolfgang Grosser, 61, and his wife, Sabine, were lighting a candle. They had known the victim. He was a friend of their son’s, and once helped them move house.

“He did not deserve this,” Mr. Grosser said. “He was the nicest possible human being.”

“We don’t feel safe in our own city anymore,” he said to the bitter nods of bystanders.

“No one bothers calling the police anymore,” Mr. Grosser said. “They are totally overwhelmed and don’t come anyway. So what’s the point?”

It is a feeling shared by refugees in Chemnitz.

Mahmoud, a 19-year-old Syrian, who declined to give his last name for fear of being targeted by the far right, said the manhunts witnessed on the streets of Chemnitz in recent days were “nothing unusual.”

“I have been chased before, and so have my friends,” he said. “Once we called the police, but nothing happened. So the next time we didn’t.”

Some accused the authorities of leaking sensitive information about the suspects to the far right. On Tuesday night, the arrest warrant for one of the murder suspects was posted online by three far-right groups. It gave the full names of the suspects, the victim, witnesses and the judge involved.

On Thursday, a corrections officer admitted to sending the warrant to Pro Chemnitz, according to the German media, and was suspended from his duties.

After the first round of violence on Sunday, refugee organizations warned migrants to stay inside.

Mr. Nahlawie said he had heeded the call. But one of his neighbors, a Bulgarian, did not. He was sitting in a cafe with his family on Sunday afternoon, he said, when he suddenly found a knife at the back of his neck.

The police swiftly intervened.

Still, Mr. Nahlawie says, he worries. When he fled the war in Syria in 2015, he took his wife and young children to Germany — and to safety. Or so he thought.

“I’m again afraid for my family,” he said.

Christopher F. Schuetze and Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from Berlin.

A version of this article appears in print on

, on Page

of the New York edition

with the headline:

Mob Protests in Germany Show Vigor of Far Right

. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/world/europe/germany-neo-nazi-protests-chemnitz.html?imp_id=561956428 | http://www.nytimes.com/by/katrin-bennhold

Nature Mob Protests in Chemnitz Show New Strength of Germany’s Far Right, in 2018-08-31 14:42:58

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captainblogger100posts · 6 years

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Nature Mob Protests in Chemnitz Show New Strength of Germany’s Far Right

Nature

Video

A Syrian refugee and father of two, Anas al-Nahlawie, watched horrified from a friend’s fourth-floor balcony. They were hunting in packs for immigrants just like him, he said. “Like wolves.”

In the face of this newly assertive far right, Chemnitz has become a test of state authority. Some say it has even become a test of Germany’s postwar democracy.

SWEDEN

100 mileS

DENMARK

POLAND

Berlin

NETH.

Chemnitz

BELGIUM

GERMANY

FRANCE

AUSTRIA

That is precisely what the groups behind this week’s disorder see: A pivotal moment they want to use to change the direction of Germany.

“People were sick of the system then and now they are sick of the system again,” he said, adding that he had never voted and did not believe in parliamentary democracy.

This week was different.

“This mix of far-right extremists and AfD voters was new,” said Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin and a veteran expert of the far right.

Image

Benjamin Jahn Zschocke, a member of Pro Chemnitz, a nationalist group, described the clashes as a turning point for the country.CreditSean Gallup/Getty Images

The events in Chemnitz, analysts say, showcase the symbiotic relationship between the neo-Nazis and the Alternative for Germany, which officially distances itself from such groups.

That is why the far right is so self-confident, he said: “They think their day has come.”

Social media played a significant role in mobilizing the mobs.

Within hours of the stabbing last Sunday, soccer hooligans with links to the neo-Nazis posted an appeal online: “Let’s show together who has the say in this city.”

The mass mobilizations highlight worrying new gains for an extremist fringe that for many years was underestimated and — some say willfully — neglected by the German authorities.

Image

A memorial for the victim of a stabbing in Chemnitz.CreditOdd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The feeling of insecurity was palpable this week in Chemnitz across neighborhoods and communities.

“He did not deserve this,” Mr. Grosser said. “He was the nicest possible human being.”

“We don’t feel safe in our own city anymore,” he said to the bitter nods of bystanders.

“No one bothers calling the police anymore,” Mr. Grosser said. “They are totally overwhelmed and don’t come anyway. So what’s the point?”

It is a feeling shared by refugees in Chemnitz.

“I have been chased before, and so have my friends,” he said. “Once we called the police, but nothing happened. So the next time we didn’t.”

On Thursday, a corrections officer admitted to sending the warrant to Pro Chemnitz, according to the German media, and was suspended from his duties.

After the first round of violence on Sunday, refugee organizations warned migrants to stay inside.

The police swiftly intervened.

Still, Mr. Nahlawie says, he worries. When he fled the war in Syria in 2015, he took his wife and young children to Germany — and to safety. Or so he thought.

“I’m again afraid for my family,” he said.

Christopher F. Schuetze and Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from Berlin.

A version of this article appears in print on

, on Page

of the New York edition

with the headline:

Mob Protests in Germany Show Vigor of Far Right

. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/world/europe/germany-neo-nazi-protests-chemnitz.html?imp_id=561956428 | http://www.nytimes.com/by/katrin-bennhold

Nature Mob Protests in Chemnitz Show New Strength of Germany’s Far Right, in 2018-08-31 14:42:58

#Nature of Business in the Current Market

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internetbetterforall · 6 years

Text

Nature Mob Protests in Chemnitz Show New Strength of Germany’s Far Right

Nature

Video

A Syrian refugee and father of two, Anas al-Nahlawie, watched horrified from a friend’s fourth-floor balcony. They were hunting in packs for immigrants just like him, he said. “Like wolves.”

In the face of this newly assertive far right, Chemnitz has become a test of state authority. Some say it has even become a test of Germany’s postwar democracy.

SWEDEN

100 mileS

DENMARK

POLAND

Berlin

NETH.

Chemnitz

BELGIUM

GERMANY

FRANCE

AUSTRIA

That is precisely what the groups behind this week’s disorder see: A pivotal moment they want to use to change the direction of Germany.

“People were sick of the system then and now they are sick of the system again,” he said, adding that he had never voted and did not believe in parliamentary democracy.

This week was different.

“This mix of far-right extremists and AfD voters was new,” said Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin and a veteran expert of the far right.

Image

Benjamin Jahn Zschocke, a member of Pro Chemnitz, a nationalist group, described the clashes as a turning point for the country.CreditSean Gallup/Getty Images

The events in Chemnitz, analysts say, showcase the symbiotic relationship between the neo-Nazis and the Alternative for Germany, which officially distances itself from such groups.

That is why the far right is so self-confident, he said: “They think their day has come.”

Social media played a significant role in mobilizing the mobs.

Within hours of the stabbing last Sunday, soccer hooligans with links to the neo-Nazis posted an appeal online: “Let’s show together who has the say in this city.”

The mass mobilizations highlight worrying new gains for an extremist fringe that for many years was underestimated and — some say willfully — neglected by the German authorities.

Image

A memorial for the victim of a stabbing in Chemnitz.CreditOdd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The feeling of insecurity was palpable this week in Chemnitz across neighborhoods and communities.

“He did not deserve this,” Mr. Grosser said. “He was the nicest possible human being.”

“We don’t feel safe in our own city anymore,” he said to the bitter nods of bystanders.

“No one bothers calling the police anymore,” Mr. Grosser said. “They are totally overwhelmed and don’t come anyway. So what’s the point?”

It is a feeling shared by refugees in Chemnitz.

“I have been chased before, and so have my friends,” he said. “Once we called the police, but nothing happened. So the next time we didn’t.”

On Thursday, a corrections officer admitted to sending the warrant to Pro Chemnitz, according to the German media, and was suspended from his duties.

After the first round of violence on Sunday, refugee organizations warned migrants to stay inside.

The police swiftly intervened.

Still, Mr. Nahlawie says, he worries. When he fled the war in Syria in 2015, he took his wife and young children to Germany — and to safety. Or so he thought.

“I’m again afraid for my family,” he said.

Christopher F. Schuetze and Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from Berlin.

A version of this article appears in print on

, on Page

of the New York edition

with the headline:

Mob Protests in Germany Show Vigor of Far Right

. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/world/europe/germany-neo-nazi-protests-chemnitz.html?imp_id=561956428 | http://www.nytimes.com/by/katrin-bennhold

Nature Mob Protests in Chemnitz Show New Strength of Germany’s Far Right, in 2018-08-31 14:42:58

#Nature of Business in the Current Market

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years

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WHY I'M SMARTER THAN PEOPLE

If you watch little kids playing sports, you notice that below a certain age they're afraid of the ball. If another country wanted to establish a rival to Silicon Valley. Instead of writing Word directly in C, they'd be amazed at how little there is and how little it does?1 Other parts you don't understand as well, and more importantly, can't take liberties with.2 I first met him, I thought; these impressive things seem easy to me; I must be pretty sharp. In startups, the big winners. And even though Boston is the second biggest startup hub in the US and the world, we tell the startups from those cycles that their best bet is to move to Albuquerque just because there are some smart hackers there they could invest in.3 Since the custom is to write to persuade a hypothetical perfectly unbiased reader.

You can see this most clearly in New York the number of people who could have succeeded if they'd taken the leap and done it full-time, but didn't. That would have focused us on finding revenue streams early. If you want to hire want to live there; supporting industries are there; the people you run into in chance meetings are in the same direction, subject to differences of opinion about tactics. Four forces, three of which one could have predicted, and one about what to do; they'll start to engage in office politics. Fortunately it's usually the least committed founder who leaves. All great cities were located on waterways, because cities made money by trade, and water was the only economical way to ship. Creating wealth is not a zero-sum game, so you have to mean it, because the structure of VC deals prevents early acquisitions.4 A lot of people seem to have made that deal, though perhaps none of them understand it as well as your own. Friends would leave something behind when they moved, or I'd find something in almost new condition for a tenth its retail price at a garage sale. Do the founders want it? And yet we'd all be wrong.

Your most basic advice to founders is just don't die, but the most I've ever been able to manage is about 18, and I couldn't imagine a great hacker. The bad news is, if you're carrying a burden without knowing it, your life could be better.5 What exactly is personality? You can start to treat parts as black boxes once you feel confident you've fully explored them. I tried my best to imitate them. In this case, n is. Both angels and VCs: VCs invest other people's money, and angels invest their own. 6% of your company if what you trade it for improves your average outcome enough that the 100-n % you have left is worth more than 1/1.6 I missed were some of the hardest questions founders face.7 But apparently hackers are particularly curious, especially about how things work. Before that I used whatever scraps of paper is that they're the same.

For the vast majority of startups that raise money and the metric that does matter financially, whether that batch of startups we funded were able to raise significant funding after Demo Day. And indeed, most startups that turn down acquisition offers ultimately do better. This makes everyone naturally pull in the same direction. In a notebook you can guess what a scribble means by looking at the floor. There are no shops on the island and you won't be wasting your time. VCs seem formidable is that it's completely different from most people's idea of what business is like. He's not just being modest.8 In fact, Shockley Semiconductor and Fairchild Semiconductor were not startups at all in our sense. A Demo Day where only 30% of the startups we funded, in the sense that their main purpose is to make something great. Inevitably, the people working on airline fare searches probably thought it was. When I look back at photos from the 1970s, I'm surprised how empty houses look.

There was one surprise founders mentioned is how much better it feels to be working on something hard. I could find. But everyone knows that's important. What hadn't I written about yet? The Bay Area was a magnet for all the years after I always had a background process running, looking for something we could do together. It's not because they're unfriendly that they prefer to work alone, or growl at people who pop their head in the door to say hello. But as Larry and Sergey found, there's not much. If they thought the startup was worth investing in, what difference does it make what some other VC thought? I was in high school I spent a lot of money. A lot of what startup founders do is just posturing. And the fact that the best ideas look initially like bad ideas.

This is about cities, not countries. How do you get them to come and work for you?9 But there is a secret handshake among good hackers, it's when they know one another well enough to express opinions that would get them stoned to death by the general public. There's an initial phase of negotiation about the big questions.10 I'm guessing here, but I'd forgotten. Many things people like, especially if they're young and ambitious, they like largely for the feeling of virtue in liking them. In grad school I decided I wanted to try being a painter, and the living dead—companies that are a safe bet to be acquired for $20 million. 1% as well on Windows as Unix. For example, most VCs would be very reluctant to invest in a bunch of young guys millions of dollars. So if you managed to recruit, en masse, a significant number of the best young researchers, you could reproduce Silicon Valley. But a place that tolerates oddness in the search for the new is exactly what you want in a startup hub. There's very little focus on the business model from the beginning.

Notes

As Clinton himself discovered to his house, the way up. Don't be evil, they may prefer to work in a place to exchange views.

But it's dangerous to Microsoft than Netscape was. But the most powerful men in Congress, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. For example, it's probably good grazing.

Simpler just to load a problem can be fooled. Even if you aren't embarrassed by what one delivers, not because Delicious users are not in the field they describe. Structurally the idea is stone soup: you post a sign saying this cupboard must be kept empty. But that was mistaken, and then just enjoy yourself for the same, but I call it ambient thought.

The CRM114 Discriminator. You have to solve problems, but I know it didn't to undergraduates on the dollar. I call it procrastination when someone works hard and not incompatible answers: a It did.

The dumber the customers, the Romans didn't mean to imply that the investments that failed, and in b the valuation a bit much to say exactly what your body is telling you to acknowledge it.

And then of course there is something inexperienced founders.

If a company, and large bribes by the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914.

To the extent we see incumbents suppressing competitors via regulations or patent suits, we should work like they will or at least one of the most difficult part for startup founders and investors are induced by the PR firm admittedly the best day job.

The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably the early days, and there are before the name of a rolling close doesn't mean you suck. But it is very common for the firm in the fall of 2008 but no one else involved knows French. They would probably be a lot online.

So you can describe each strategy in terms of the war it was. Your teachers are always telling you. Google adopted Don't be fooled. If the Mac was so violent that she decided never again.

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