How far is too far?

There is and has been for a while much heated debate on this board, and on other boards, on what is necessary to do what one believes is ultimately right. It doesn't matter whether you are left leaning, right leaning, or what specific flavor of said leanings you identify with- even if you find someone who agrees with you in terms of ideology, what inevitable cruelty results from such conflict and upheaval will always be controversial.
I don't care what you are fighting for, such discussions from my point of view are ultimately trivial- but what I am interested in is your opinion on where the is line drawn, and why? Are prisoner camps full of disheveled, starving dissidents okay? Are they not okay? Are they only wrong when the enemy decides certain populations must be culled in order to maintain order? Is execution and exile (and whatever such means of silencing) of those you deem "wrong" ultimately justified as long as your grand dreams are ultimately achieved?

Other urls found in this thread:

libcom.org/history/1970-1990-the-war-of-counter-insurgency-in-el-salvador
youtu.be/s0Kwz45n6Ko
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Whatever the cost. Capitalism is unbearable.

shove your horseshoe theory up your ass

I've been thinking about the usual dehumanization of the rich that usually occurs and wondering if it's counterproductive, and how different it is from Holla Forums's dehumanization(other than Holla Forums does it to the majority humanity).
I think it's better to try to convince the average rich folk about the errors in their lifestyle and show them a more beneficial system, and save the gulags for the real 1% who actively promote exploitation. Otherwise we'd be no more different than the William Pierce's or so who think complete and utter genocide is the only way to go.
The rich are different from race and other groups, so I'm not sure if I'm missing something.

Some might be inclined to believe that totalitarian rule is unbearable.

I do not believe in Horseshoe Theory, nor is this post an attempt to play Devil's Advocate. But you don't need to be a history major to know that it doesn't matter what ideology you're fighting for- as long as there is conflict, bloodshed and injustice will inevitably be the result. No regime is safe from it, from Dicators to Democratic Republics, from Fuhrers to Freedom Fighters- all kill their enemies to ensure their continued survival, as our more primitive ancestors did, first as individuals, and later on as tribes, then as Nations… And now that National identity is dying, we have begun to kill as tribes again, with no real, faction-based "other" for the current global hegemony to compete against.

The difference between the left and the right was that there was no renouncing your jewishness for the Nazis
The rich can join us in an instant

If those prisoners where ultra rich elites, who lived their entire lives in luxury, and pleasure, while those that they exploited lived stacked & packed like cattle, then yes, I'm completely fine with it. In fact those that protect the rich, and thier property (Private security, and certain others), deserve far worse than the labor camps…

Even if you don't care about race, those who record history have a habit of noticing certain… Demographic trends. Suppose you get your wish, and suppose, as Holla Forums often parrots, that the vast majority of those people you put away are Jewish. Would it not be better to find another way, lest you risk being labeled by history as nothing more than an embittered anti-semite? I don't often agree with Right wingers, or anybody for that matter, but you are right to take from them the most important lesson they have to give- in matters of racial politics, the only winning move is not to play… By anybody else's rules, at least.

Not to seem petty, but… *their.
Also, from what system of morality do you derive your verdict that such persons are "deserving" of anything? Why do you believe other people should agree? (Or do you not care?)

There are two main groups of the rich, both with their own reasons for not doing so. The first are internationalist- like you, they couldn't give less of a shit about identity, they are only concerned with continually gaining and maintaining economic wealth, and you're asking them to forget about all of that. Comfort is the greatest addiction of mankind, and you will find that it is quite hard to quit. The second don't really care about the money, it's a means to an end, that end being stability and survival, which, in their minds, are all intrinsically linked to Identity. It's the cornerstone to everything they know and love, and you want them to toss aside generations worth of toil and bloodshed for an ideology that, more often than not fucks them over, if not killing them outright, and on top of all this, more often than not fails in it's aims of an egalitarian, post-scarcity society.
I'd like to know how you would convince another person to do this- or even better, how you might convince yourself to do that.

I was hoping to see an interesting discussion about the consequences of a revolution and not memes. I have no more patience for these fairy tales about Jews. The ones that are rich will get what they deserve, if not, then they have to decide what side they are on. Go talk your nationalist friends down first and then come nag at us about who has moral resignations faggot.

This doesn't seem to have been an issue historically. I don't think it's worth worrying about. Unless you are going out of your way to target a certain demographic and not others, it probably wont be an issue. Theoretically maybe, but in practice I doubt it.

A bigger problem is the collateral damage of a revolution like mentioned in OP. At which point it's not even an issue of being controversial or not. The issue is not enough are so desperate to think the loss of life or the risk of their own life is worth a revolution at this point in time. I know a lot of people like to talk about an actual violent revolution, but they forget they have to put their own life on the line as well as consider that they will have to carry a gun and shoot people. Easier said that done if you have the option to live half-decently in peace. This is no longer the industrial age after all. Even if there are some few "true revolutionaries", most of it is LARPing, not enough have the balls for it. And the ones that are ready today are probably antisocial fanatics who are unhinged, the kind of lone wolf types who go postal.

I don't expect any kind of revolution in my lifetime, and as technology improves it will become less and less likely.
Maybe in another country, but not where I live.

We should holder ourselves to a higher standard, I agree. But we also shouldn't be naive of what capitalists are capable of when their profits are threatened.

But we also shouldn't care too much if we deviate from our self-imposed standards. After all, why do we kill murderers, even though murder is wrong? Do we not often make exceptions to our principles for those who do not share our principles?

No mystery why so many organized crime syndicates are ultra-nationalists. These guys operate just like gangsters.

Only states with medieval "justice" systems think murder is an appropriate response to crime. To answer your question, it is because those systems of punishment are based upon feels > reals and are not backed by any evidence that it improves things or any system of ethics saying it's good.

I have to balance my non-violent ideals with the unfairness of holding the perpetrator to a different standard.
A part of me says that revenge is bad, but a part of me says that our enemies should not have a monopoly on violence, and that they should be made to suffer proportionate to their crimes, at least to make a lesson for those in the future who would attempt to do the same heinous things again.

What do you mean?

What does that accomplish other than add more suffering to the world, and to an individual who has probably suffered plenty?
That type of reasoning has been proven to simply not work.

Zizek has an interesting bit about this.
youtu.be/s0Kwz45n6Ko

Basically he argues that the type of violence you describe is only possible with some grand objective in mind, and it's precisely in putting your own spontaneous morality in favor of that grand objective, that makes it possible for every terrible act to be done

So I am distrustful of anyone who places stupid fake ideas ahead of the concerns of people. Which is hard to determine since often "the people" is that fake idea!

Any leftist system is going to be better than capitalism. The real horrors will be in the revolution, and the onus will be on the revolutionaries to make sure the ruling classes bear the brunt of those horrors. Specifically, early on any porkies the revolution captures would have to be brutalized, the affair broadcasted for the world to see. This would be for the purpose of demoralizing the others, scaring as many as possible into surrender. The more who surrender - the fewer who fight - the fewer working people will die fighting the class war. And to that end the porkies who do not surrender should be given over to the most creatively sadistic people the revolution can find.

Consider the following- the opposite, in this case, may be true as well. Rather than scaring your opposition, you may very well galvanize them into acting against you, especially regarding those who are on the fence about such topics.
Your mistake, in my opinion, is that you see your enemies as monsters, rather than people. The same mistake that the Right makes with those who would potentially do them harm- criminal, hostile migrants (which, while a very small part of the migrant population, do, in fact, exist) and extreme leftists. They will be scared, sure, but they will be much more angry, and much more willing to see you and your associates as the very sort of inhuman, brutal monster you believe them to be. As such, you may find yourself being subject to the very same treatment- stripped of all your basic human rights and murdered like an animal. And in their eyes, it will be okay- after all, the more brutal they get, the more scared that their enemy (your fellow revolutionaries) will be to resist, and so the cycle goes, ad nauseum.

Isn't full-scale war the point though? There are many many more working class people than ruling class people. In an all-out brutal slaughterfest, the odds are stacked in the favor of the People. The armies of the bourgeoisie are also regular people. If they attack their enemy like you suggest with the comparison to the alt-right and immigrants, then they are only going to highlight the class conflict. Pushing more people to join the revolution would be necessary. And as things are now, capitalism is doing just fucking fine brutalizing the working class (particularly the global working class) without any such excuse.

This reasoning literally never works. When ISIS beheads someone or lights them on fire, they don't make their opponents too scared to fight, they make them angry, more willing to fight, and absolutely unwilling to give up or surrender.

Wars are simply won by having your enemy stop fighting. This can be achieved through destroying them all, but that has always been a really shitty strategy. It is infinitely better to make your enemy unwilling to fight, and you're not going to achieve that by acting like ISIS.

It works if you are a civilian in the middle east

That's why you don't do it to the ones who surrender. You do it to the ones you capture in a fight, the ones who sent people to die for them. The ones who surrendered would have to be treated as decently as anyone else. It's hard to blame someone for acting in their interests under capitalism, but when the tide is turning and they can see that they need to either get on board or get run the fuck down.
That's not what I'm saying.

If you went by sheer numbers, then maybe. But it's about logistics, too. Some forms of leftism have been proven to function (as in, producing mostly stable, but generally unproductive) societies throughout history (Zapatistas and other various communes around the world- lovely to look at and fascinating to see in action, but they're sure not known for, you know… Doing shit, really.) But, and I really hate to break this to you, to the majority of the "working class" in countries that are actually relevant to this conversation, are doing relatively well thanks to Capitalism in some way shape or form. I'd much rather be a dirt poor fuck in America (and I am) than whatever counts as Middle Class in the more disaffected parts of the world, and so would most other people. You're asking the working class to toss away any assurances at medical care, vaccinations, decent food and clean water, and potentially even their rights (however illusory they may be in this day and age), all to fight in the name of a system that, historically, doesn't have a good track record with providing those things to it's people during wartime or even post wartime. So I'd imagine most people would fight for their oppressors. Think of it like this- the First World, the people you need to convince to rescind their wealth, cultural identity, traditions, everything they love and everything they've made, they're the House Niggers of the world. Now, they're still oppressed under the system, but they ultimately lose whether or not they fight. The question is, will they lose and live in comfort, or lose and die like a dog? They will always choose to live in comfort, unsurprisingly.
The rest of the world are the actual slaves. And just like we saw during the American Civil War, an Emancipation Proclamation doesn't mean shit to people with so little. Hell, even a John Brown like you zealously taking on The Man single-handedly and giving them the means to fight- they'll stare at you like you're an idiot because that's exactly what you would be, and the State will come and kill everyone you love, and then they'll execute you while everyone watches to set an example… With very, very few exceptions, they wait for freedom to be granted to them. (And then hate the side that fought for their freedom anyways because fugg whitey lmao)

Listen to this guy, 'cause he gets it.

You have to be either at the extreme of the autism spectrum or living under a rock to think first-worlders are content right now.

You have this completely wrong. What motivates people to revolution historically is not the degree to which their lives are shit, but the gap between their lives and the lives of people who are better off. To someone living in a shithole, revolution is not gonna happen (lack of resources to fight one notwithstanding) for the reason that winning would put them hardly better off, unless they are the warlord sitting on top of it all. On the other hand, people who live even ok lives would be driven to revolt if they see the people above them have it so much better that revolution is worth it (see: bourgeois revolution).

They're not content, this much is true. And wouldn't you know it, random Holla Forums user, I never said they were! Odd how that keeps happening on these sorts of boards.
They're not content. But what they are is afraid. They have, as far as they are aware, everything they need, and the opportunity to get most of the basic material possessions they want, under this system. Phones computers, Internet access, soft drugs (hard drugs if you know the right people), and porn, as well as all the necessities I mentioned in my last post, which you hopefully read at least most of. You are, again, asking them to potentially piss away some or even all of that, for a system that is largely unproven, and largely has a far worse track record in regards to keeping their people well fed and somewhat safe.

If that were even remotely the case, it's a wonder we haven't had one hundred revolutions in America alone since World War 2. Either our government is way less bureaucratic and incompetent than I thought and they've just been wasting motherfuckers left and right ( you know, actual revolutionaries, not just dumbass militiamen turned terrorist and random innocent black people) or you're not quite right about that.

Third Worldism is saying the revolution can only happen in the Third World because the proletariat of the First World are effectively a quasi-bourgeoisie exploiting TW labor. It's not saying that comfortable people won't revolt.

While I agree with you I think you're thinking of it wrong. While people still have a measure of comfort and are surviving fine, they simply won't do something that could very likely end in their death. I wouldn't even blame people for acting like this: the system is extremely efficient at exploiting and oppressing the people as much as possible by allowing them certain freedoms and giving them certain things to be able to tolerate it. It's not so much people prefer the system because of all the things they can get, instead all the things they can get allows them to tolerate it.

No matter what system exists or how shitty it is, as long as people are able to survive and have outlets to tolerate it, they won't revolt; it's not a unique aspect of modern capitalism.

But people are content.

Forgive me if I'm missing something here, but I read your post like, five times, and I don't see anything therein that does not mesh with my intended answer. Maybe it all comes down to interpretation, but ultimately, let it be said that I do not disagree with what you've said, so I've no idea how I'm thinking of it wrong.

The method is more important than the goal. Some objectives cannot be achieved with "whatever the cost" mindset.

Sheer autism of this post made me cringe.

If killing them serves to further proletarian prosperity it makes sense to do so.

So torture of them might be bad press for us to the proletarians.
But hanging them might demoralise the bourgeoisie and their defenders and spur on the proletariat.
These questions cannot be discussed in a thread where we say "to here and not farther" because its not black and white. It depends entirely on the entire state of the world, and one action x and person a might have negative effects, while action x on person b may have positive ones.

To draw an allegory:
Torturing Rommel or Goebbels and broadcasting it might serve a purpose of justice and demoralize the remaining nazis, but tortuting lowly conscripted german boys might just make the remaining nazis angry and your own men disgusted.

Here's my thing- by and large, most Communists are atheist, with few, very specific, exceptions. So from where do you draw your sense of what is "moral" and what is not? Do you not see just how arbitrary this division of "right" and "wrong" is? If I can set up a gulag and work a bunch of political dissidents to death and execute them or whatever, then what actually separates you from your enemies but rhetoric? Both of you pointing the finger at each other "nah man, we're not really the same because we kill the exact same way for the exact same reasons, but for different ends so that makes it okay!" Really? I put up this thread yesterday, I wasn't born yesterday.

I just interpreted your position as being "people won't rebel against capitalism because it's too pleasant and there's too many commodities they like that they can possess" whereas I was saying it has nothing to do with people liking Capitalism or finding it enjoyable, just that the status quo is just tolerable enough because of all the distractions and sedations for people to continue it rather than possibly die.

At this stage essentially nothing. I am prepared to see all of humanity exterminated if the alternative is permanent space neoliberalism.
The ultimate problem with these things is that it all depends on context, however. The problem with gulags, etc, is deducing whether people actually deserve it. Now I'm willing to be relatively lax with imposing thoughtcrimes, but you still need (idealistically) to know they engaged in those crimes instead of being loyalists who got locked up anyway.

That said this isn't an articulate political position, it's the sparking wires that came after my brain exploded when I realized that the political inertia is too strong to enable proper reformism to take hold. Though one big trait I have is that an explicit dystopia is preferable to an implicit one. (i.e. better mass starvation from insufficient food supplies or mass executions of political prisoners than quietly letting the disabled and unemployed starve to death in the background.)

if you go against the jew-

I believe capitalism and climate change will kill 1 billion people by the end of the century at the very least so I consider anything below that to be acceptable

We're supposed to have the masses on our side, if we don't we shouldn't have a revolution in the first place, it won't work. Anything done to class enemies is justified, there is no higher authority to respond to afterwards.

The Sovereign State always tends to go too far due to its very nature. That's why imo any successful revolution should be a democratic non state endeavour

if revolution occurs, people will die, no doubt.

Question really becomes is the amount of people that are killed justified. Up to a certain level, I think it is justified. Capitalism and its maintenance reeks destruction across the globe. People work as near slaves in the 3rd world, we destroy the environment, which jeopardizes the entirety of the human race. We fight ludicrous wars over resource protectionism and expanding our influence. But exactly what is crossing the line is unknown at this time.

The division between right and wrong is arbitrary, even if you are religious.
The economic system I have in place which is more humane than capitalism.
Yes. Just as an example, killing people who want to oppress me and kill me is common sense. What seperates me from the bourgoiesie or fascists is that I don't kill people to oppress them or keep them oppressed, I kill people to stop them from oppressing me or others. There is a difference between killing a serial killer and a peacefull grandmother, the first stops a dangerous maniac who threathens society and its citizens and the other one kills an innocent person who does nothing to you or anyone.

I am not sure what kind of moralism you are trying to pull, but absolute morals don't exist. Might makes right. I function on my own terms of what I consider moral or immoral, which is mostly based on protecting those who need protecting, freeing those who aren't free and not harming people who do no harm to others. If you harm others, I will harm you to stop you, this is a basic rule most societies work on.

then the elite have every right to dominate you, and you have no right to wish otherwise. You're weak and they're strong. Either might is right and thus we should submit to our betters OR might is not right and thus we can not justify wanton violence with that argument

First picture is one of an ethnic cleaning in Syria
Second and third picture are Nazi concentration camps.
Fourth picture is a Civil War pow camp.

The gulag system was abolished in the 1960s and any repression that we will cause will be no different than any other capitalist shithole.

I see what you did there.

You dont understand what might makes right means, does it?
The saying means that right and wrong dont exist, and what is right and what is wrong is subjective to the people and shaped by those with might (those in power). It implies that your argument of "good" and "bad" is stupid, and all that matters in the end is whoever has the power to enforce their ideas and ideals. Once you have the power, your ideals become right and moral.

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Liberty is the answer no matter your ideology.
If you're alt right and want to form a community of only whites you should be allowed to do so.
If you're an ancap and want to be a capitalist you should e allowed to do so.
If you're an left-winger and want to build a commune and own the means of production collectively you should be allowed to do so

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