And here’s more for you to think about, take your time...
MarcoD said:
As I said, I find all ideological violence insanity. I am also directly opposed to you portraying facists as nutcases. People kill other people for ideological reasons, this has always been the case, and unless you strongly oppose that, will always be the case in the future.
You make it too easy for yourself. Yes, there have always been wars between humans, tribes, nations and even continents. But to use this to paint some picture of the human being as some form of "killer machine", is to take it too far, unless we are talking cannibalism.
How can I say this? What do I mean?
Well, it’s that simple fact that when you walk outside your house to buy groceries, you don’t expect to get your head cut off by the first human you meet in the street, right?
We don’t like violence, that’s most folk’s basic instinct. Then there’s a whole spectrum of people; from professional militaries to criminal murderers, who 'handle' violence every day. But even the toughest Torpedo’s usually uses some form of drug, to make it 'easier'. And the military gets training to handle tough situations.
I thought this was obvious??
A normal human being has this thing called Empathy. If you see another person being brutally beaten, you get 'emotionally involved', whether you like it or not. The reaction has been measured with MRI in the brain, and some scientist suspect it’s 'hardcoded', by evolution.
Then you have people who are seriously mentally ill, or have brain damages, or have destroyed their normal brain functions thru drugs; who don’t feel anything at all for other humans. For some of the worst in this group; there’s no difference in cutting a carrot or a human into pieces.
I don’t know of any natural law stating that; we
will continue to fight wars against each other for all eternity? What’s the name of this law, if I might ask??
As Evo points out, there was a time when we burned witches on open fire. Do you suspect that this is a "basic human behavior" as well? Will it come back? Soon?? Where are the knights??
A lot has changed in the human society and culture in the last 10,000 years, and to make dogmatic statements about the future is just stupid.
MarcoD said:
To portray national-socialism as insanity, or give weak-genes/eugenetic reasons for claimed insanity of proponents, goes against all historical account; moreover, puts you straight into the camp of nazis since you are using essentially similar lines of reasoning. People, and a majority of scientists, believed strongly at that the start of the twentieth century that races shouldn't mix because they grow 'weaker.' For instance, it would be benificiary to the 'Jews' to give them their own state since, as a race, they could only grow weaker in the diaspora situation they were in at that time. In the US, segregation was defended with similar arguments. Believes like that were common, and the view of the German majority, at that point in time.
What on Earth are you talking about?? Just because I say that Adolf Hitler’s drunken and brutal father was not the typical "Nobel laureate material", you’re calling me a racist?? Is the Hitler family a "race" now?
I can’t take you seriously.
MarcoD said:
Fascism is mostly perfectly rational, it is just that we have found after WWII the fallacy in the arguments - which starts which that you just can't abstract over populations as homogenous groups with their own agendas. The latter is exactly the fallacy in Breivik's reasoning, or sometimes in Fukuyama's books, or even in some of the debates on Jihadism, Israel, and the role of the US/EU in that.
Fascism is
not a natural law; it’s a sad part of human history. One of the basic fundaments of fascism is violence, fear and peer pressure. These 'incitements' have been used by rulers throughout the history of human civilization. Time to learn from previous mistakes...
MarcoD said:
My source for claiming Behring Breivik as 'perfectly normal' comes from history. The current affairs is completely comparable to US history during the segregation debates where a lot of politicians were openly for segregation as 'the natural order of things' (in a non-violent manner, of course), but a substantial part of the rest of the population were part of the KKK and hung (teenage) blacks. To claim that they were insane, no, they just believed in the wrong arguments, and they did what humans do - eliminate a perceived threat with murder.
KKK is typical example of what I’m talking about. You didn’t see any KKK running around in New York did you? This is a typical fear and peer pressure small-town phenomena. All it takes is one Big Maniac that punches the others in the face, if they don’t follow, and you’re up and running your "fear business".
I can give a more recent example, the Rwandan Genocide. In 100 days 1,000,000 people were slaughtered by machetes. Do you really think that the perpetrators did this "for fun"?? It was something "natural" for them?
The perpetrators had this choice – Either you kill this enemy with machete, or we will hack you into pieces.
The killing was organized by the nutcase government; they imported 500,000 machetes for Hutu use in killing Tutsi. All it takes is a few psychopaths on the top, and no one to stop them.
MarcoD said:
Moreover, I have been skimming some populist right-wing forums to check their response.
And what did you expect to find, some kind of truth?? Please give me a break.
MarcoD said:
And that is my point, the EU situation is the same as the US debate on segregation, only we are moving in the other direction. In some sense, it is the direct result of the rhetoric accompanying the 'War or Terror.' If you dismiss Breivik as a nutcase, the right-wing populists will never see that he just does what they preach. And because of that, and because the history of mankind is full with genocides or ideological violence, I will not dismiss him as a nutcase. They have blood on their hands (this is the logical result of their actions), just as we have blood on our hands for sometimes supporting states like Lybia or Israel, or suppressing people in Afghanistan.
If the EU dismisses Breivik as a nutcase, then that is closing your eyes for what is happening, and the EU will end up gassing its muslim population in a few decades.
You must be kidding, right??
Gassing?
Anyhow, it doesn’t really matter much if you and I think Breivik is nutcase or not. What this moron in fact has accomplished (
at least in the Nordic countries) is a genuine disgust for anything that comes even close to extreme right-wing populism. They are smoked for years after this.
As I said – everybody hates violence and extreme right-wing populism will forever be connected to Breivik’s terror attack on innocent teenagers on the island, and there’s nothing they can do to change this fact.