“Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die," Elon Musk told the large crowds at Saturday’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally.
More than 100,000 people descended on Britain’s capital on Saturday for one of the country’s largest far-right rallies in decades.
The “Unite the Kingdom” rally was organized by Tommy Robinson, a convicted fraudster with a violent criminal record, and attended by billionaire Elon Musk via video link. Amid a sea of flag-waving and soccer-style chanting from large crowds that exceeded expectations, violent clashes with police led to dozens of arrests.
It came amid a surge of nationalism in the U.K., with a far-right party topping the polls, and the murder of American conservative activist Charlie Kirk — an assassination Robinson used to mobilize support in the run-up to the event.
You’re entitled to an opinion. You’re not entitled to be respected for it.
Opinions precede action.
Actually, opinions are the foundation of democracy and therefore must be respected always. You might not agree with someone’s opinion but I’m not here to convince you otherwise. You are clearly here because your extremist voice and flagrant disrespect of anyone you disagree with stands in your own personal development. People like you are the reason the right wingers become more extreme. Proof of the matter is obvious everywhere in Europe. Politicians don’t respect the wishes of the people who elected them. The EU has had an immigration problem for at least a decade , they are now electing extremist and populist politicians out of desperation that their voice isn’t heard. Populist parties rise to power out of general unhappiness of the electorate, not the other way around.
You might not like them, hell I certainly don’t but you cant change the society in a few years, it takes decades, even hundreds of years. Feel free to drown yourself in the sorrows of your utopia when right wing nutters are being elected all around Europe.
Opinions are the foundation of all ideologies. Hitler’s opinions on undesirables for example.
The reason right wingers become more extreme is because of allowing their opinion on violence go unchecked lets them begin to actually start practicing it. Even the Charlie Kirk killer was a Trumpist who thought Kirk was too much to the left.
The issue in humanity has always been that the left has always only fought back once things become dire. They’ve only ever functioned as a check to a society’s collapse rather than a deterrent to it’s downward decline. If the left actually adhered to the paradox of intolerance, then society and humankind would progress much faster, because those who are a factual detriment to society - the greedy, the power hungry, the psychopathic - wouldn’t be allowed to gain power, either permanently or through meaningful consequences.
The issue is the left is inherently peaceful to a fault. They don’t actually go out and start punching let alone killing until it’s too late and they’ve literally been forced into it.
It’s also why rarely does violence actually permanently fix things - because those willing to do it usually want power rather than justice, and even if that is the case, it does not remain permanent policy.
But then, being reactionary rather than preventative to threats has always been the greatest fault of humanity, but especially the left. Not being aggressive with aggressors early on, not dealing with climate change until it’s kinda too late, etc.
And democracy is an ideology that we are supposed to follow. That ideology comes mostly in the form of representative democracy where you elect someone that is supposed to represent your group.
You don’t know if Tyler Robinson is left or right , that is all media speculation at this stage. As someone that lived behind the iron curtain, the concept that left is inherently peaceful is complete nonsense. Neither left or right is inherently violent or peaceful. Violence of the far left and far right is always a result of someone who thinks their ideology is superior, disregards all moral grounds, and forces their will and/or dogma on somebody else. Leninist-Marxist, PLO, Earth Liberation Front, too many examples to list. I do agree that the left is generally less violent today.
As someone who lived behind the iron curtain, you may not realize this, but people lie.
Something or someone calling itself leftist does not mean it is. The USSR pretending to have been socialist is about as authentic as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea being a democracy.
Earth Liberation Front is about the most violent actual leftists example you listed, and even they pale in comparison to what the right wing does, and is again an appropriate response mechanism for permanently altering the climate of the entire planet in a devastating way for the fictional concept of money we have collectively decided to value. If anything, again proving my point of too little too late when you consider the consequences, and considering they formed back when there was acid rain literally happenings due to pollution.
The right is inherently violent because it’s an ideology of power and authority, not union and equality. Belief in power and authority is inherently violent, because subjection of humans goes against the inherent will of personhood, and will inevitably lead to conflict. The pursuit of power is also inherently violent, because it requires therefore forceful subjection. That’s why all authoritarian governments are right wing.
I can think of only one example in recent human history that broke that mold - only one dictator that, as far as I know, sought power solely for the purpose of improving their country and the lives of people while eliminating corruption, that being Lee Kwan Yu. They were the closet I’ve seen to an actual violent leftist ideology, and their governmental system remains an outlier in that it’s a democratic competitive authoritarian system.
Thanks for proving all my points. In one paragraph you justify left wing violence as long as the cause is honourable, and in another paragraph, you claim the eastern block socialists as not really left wing.
I’ve got some news for you. They were as left wing and as forceful as they come. You didn’t own property , everything was state owned, society was very progressive (abortions were legal - ex USSR , socialised medicine, free schooling all the way to getting a job, gender equality, LGBT rights were a lot further than in the west).
Conservatism/right-wing is not inherently violent, that’s fodder. Some societies are more conservative than others. There are even right wing libertarians. It becomes evil when it seeks to impose its will over minorities or majorities, and in effect invalidate their voice. There are many examples of this from the left and the right (more right for sure).
If you are not a centrist, you are a dogmatic
Everything being state owned isn’t leftist, at all. That’s straight up authoritarian. Putin has almost everything owned by the state too - are you seriously going to call him a leftists??? Sprinkling in some civil rights so the state machine runs better does not a leftist state make. And actual libertarianism is solidly center neutral. Right wing libertarianism is an oxymoron.
But, there’s no point in discussing the situation further with someone who still has past traumas from an authoritarian regime.
State ownership of means of production is the very definition of state socialism, thus removing power from the capitalists, which is strictly an implementation of the leftist ideology. I have no trauma, I just don’t live in a lala land. I’m sure you spend a great amount of time thinking about what society could be, instead of accepting what it is and dealing with it. Libertarianism, centrist? Oh please. Its very foundation is rooted in anarchist concepts, distinctively left wing ideology.
I agree there is no point discussing things any further. Just keep dreaming of your utopia, eventually you will grow up.
Except there’s also state capitalism. The bloc may have been started with the intention of state socialism (doubtful, since we’re talking about Stalin here), but it was definitely run as a state capitalist system, as most authoritarian governments do - including modern Russia.
Just because something is rooted in concepts that might be left (or right) wing, doesn’t mean the thing itself is at the same level (much like Stalinism).
Libertarianism itself is strongly center.
It’s offshoots, like Libertarian Socialism, are what’s left or right wing ideology.
Again, you don’t actually know your politics, instead shaping your perception on things based off experience, not what they really are.