this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2022
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Who's supposed to be the barbarians? There's plenty of those to go around. From an etymological perspective, "barbarian" just meant foreigners in the latin context. From a political perspective, if you mean countries who don't respect basic human rights... well that's pretty much the entire planet (maybe except Chiapas?).
I live in a barbarian country (France) that's imposed its colonial will throughout the world and murdered and exploited dozens of millions of people both here and abroad. Nothing civilized to see here... or in Russia/China/USA, for that matter. It's all the same nationalist shit.
Dehumanizing your political opponents certainly does not help to have a good understanding of the situation. Russia is not more or less civilized than "the west". The whole "we are civilized" trope is what justified the colonial enterprise in the first place ("white men saving brown women from brown men"). We can do better. Of course Russia is an autocracy, just like the west is a neoliberal plutocracy (far from a democracy), but that doesn't mean that Russians are somehow inhuman. This kind of war tropes is racist and reminds me of propaganda from WWI/WWII (where each side painted the other as a kind of gorilla or other monster). After all these atrocities committed by all sides during these wars, we should probably agree that war is barbaric and only the industry profits from it: demonizing an entire population does not help avoid war, it's a tool used to manipulate people into accepting war.
Yes, very much so. I myself have been arrested countless times for political activities. Jean-Marc Rouillan (who spent more than 20 years in prison as a political prisoner) was sentenced to six months jail time for denouncing both France and Daech and refusing to acknowledge State-imposed narrative in that conflict. I know of different activist networks who have been jailed or otherwise investigated as part of a "criminal organization" for their political activities, one person of whom remains in prison and last i heard is starting a hunger strike this week (he's been maintained in isolation since 8th december 2020 and hasn't had a trial, and is accused of thought crimes not an actual crime). France has a strong history of jailing/murdering dissidents, but it's not just France though: the USA has a very similar history. You can lookup CoIntelPro, Fred Hampton, Mummia Abu Jamal, Angela Davis... Julian Assange?
So yes i agree with you, "no civilized country does that". The problem is there is no civilized nation on this Earth as they are driven by power and profit, which are the enemies of human progress.
I'm not saying nazis should be treated gently. I appreciate the importance and cost of struggles, and do believe in the therapeutic values of a punch in a nazi's faith (realizing how much people hate your nazi ideology may help you get connected to reality). But, this being said, i am strongly against dehumanizing nazis as it's not helping them become anything else, and it's not helping us develop an actual opposition to nazism as an ideology/praxis.
Demonization/dehumanization is what the liberal western establishment has been doing to the fascists ever since WWII and where has it lead us? It leads to a superficial (mis)understanding of nazism/fascism where it's not evident why so many millions of people have suddenly become crazy and started slaughtering their neighbors. It does not account for racist propaganda and the "manufacture of consent", authoritarian tendencies and centralized State apparatus, ordinary political repression ("first they came for...").
In the aftermath of WWII, dehumanization is the process that enabled to chop a few heads (Nuremberg trials) and then consider the matter resolved, without any concern for:
On a timeline that's closer to me as a live being, demonizing the Front National here in France has not helped to defeat it. Why? Because while the Front National has (over decades) become slightly more moderate in its discourse, the entire political apparatus from left (PCF) to right (UMP/LR) has shifted to a profoundly racist and securitarian agenda which was justified (in their claims) by the idea that if "immigration" and "security" themes are the monopoly of the Front National, then surely the Front National will rise to power. So by both dehumanizing fascists while at the same time (re)building their own brand of french fascism, they have in essence bolstered fascism and racist discourse in a way that most people (myself included) twenty years ago would have not thought possible.
Fascism, like any structure of oppression, has many facets, some of which traverse all of us. Fascism is a direct by-product and the logical conclusion of capitalism. Pointing the finger at specific manifestations of fascism without looking at the whole picture is feel-goodism to sleep at night, but fails to address the power structures and political/economic incentives driving the rise of fascist discourse in all veins of society.
Fuck fascism. Fuck France. Fuck NATO. Vive la Commune!
It's precisely the result of demonizing nazism without analyzing/deconstructing its narratives and modes of operation. This is why to this day in Europe many people who would spit on a swastika can hold proto-nazi discourse without even realizing it. Antifascism is not a moral position, it's a struggle for emancipation. Only the liberals play the moralizing game because it makes them feel good about themselves while discounting their own mechanisms of oppression.
Feel free to check out my post history. I don't exactly hide my hatred for western empires either. On the other hand, you seem very misinformed about the imperialist history of Russia (both monarchist and bolshevik). I strongly recommend you do some reading on racism and cultural supremacy in ex-USSR territories.