Leo Dal Pozzo

it doesn’t need rearmment for someone to want what the others have.

I guess you mean military power here. How do you achieve that without rearming?

who would otherwise become a victim

This is the assumption that i’m challenging. Obviously, to make people accept spending billions in rearming there must be the threat of becoming a victim dangling above our head, hence the constant scaremongering about Russia attacking a NATO country any moment. Before were the Soviets, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam or Korea… at moments it’s China, sometimes it’s Iran. There is constantly an enemy to defend from, which justifies military spending.

And to that, I’d answer yes

And this scared instinctive reaction, which ignores any other factor that isn’t pure and irrational fear (pumped and justified by the state apparatus of every single NATO country) is how the weapons industry is laughing their way to the bank, while we leave in fear because of yet another enemy at the doors.

This is not true. The maginot line was easily avoided by the German and any war historian will tell you that it was a stupid and stupidly expensive idea. In no way it was a threat to the German invasion.

The goal is to show the other side that you are willing to fight and at best a war is impossible to win for them.

So they need to show that they have both the means and will to defend themself. Hence more military spending, moving soldiers closer to Russia and so forth.

And so forth, right. You are proving my point. What’s the “so forth”? Russia feels more threatened and feel forced to rearm themselves. Europe sees russia rearm themselves and say “they are getting stronger, we need to rearm even more”. Does anybody expect Russia or anybody else to say “Hey our enemies are rearming themselves, better stop producing weapons and start diplomatic relations instead!” Did this ever happen? Does anyone expect it to happen? No, but we have countless proofs of the opposite happening. This is WWI all over again. I wish people would study history to see that the things they are saying are not new, they were said in past and the results were always disastrous.

Is any of the people who praise the rearming have an idea of what happens in case of war with Russia? Did people forget that they are in a military alliance with China, Iran and N. Korea? How do you think a war in this situation will look like? Do you think the world will survive it?

So what’s the end goal? Start a war to stop a war? Arms race have very often ended with war. The cold war ended because the Soviet Union disintegrated from the inside, using it as an example of a “succesful” rearming race feels intellectually dishonest, especially when we have countless of examples of arms race ending in war.

What you are saying is misleading from many pojnts of view:

• Russia never stated they want to invade europe, quite the opposite. You can think they are lieing, and that’s an opinion,but who is saying that Russia will invade europe any moment is mostly the EU. We have reports from the secret services of Poland, the US and other european countries that sat Russia is definitely not preparing an invasion. These reports are vert underreported in western media, but they are easy to find in specialized media.
• your second statement is false. The concept of “never again” related to wars came out after WWI, not the 2. Seems a small detail, but it’s not. Also, the european union is not a political entity, but purely commercial. The political part was never really developed (despite the promises). In fact the articles of reciprocal defense are very weak.
• while the trust in Russia is subjective and i can even agree with you, it’s a much weaker point when your main security partner is the US… Also, you don’t need to trust Russia to understand that they will not attack NATO, it’s enough to take a break from the very partisan info bombardement we receivr every day and look at the geopolitics and geoeconomics.

Exactly. We know very well that 1st world war started because europe was in full rearming, but some powers felt that war was inevitable and was better to do it sooner than later.

War is not a video game or a movie. You are banalizing an extremely complex subject.

This is a bit naive. War and conflicts are way more complicatee than “one lunatic in the world”. Conflicts have always a reason. We can agree with it or not, but believing it’s all caused by one monster leader that it’s followed blindly by the people is just a very common propaganda point, which has been used for the last >2000 years and in basically every conflict we knoe about. One of the main reason armed conflicts happen is because each side feels the other one is rearming. This becomes a circle and a spiral that it’s hard to stop, especially when the arms industry has such ppwerful lobbies.

“If you want peace prepare war” right? Now let’s look how many years of peace the romans had in their entire history thanks to this doctrine.

This is an incredibly dangerous way of thinking. This kind of mentality allowed two world wars to happen. Stop looking at geopolitics like if it was a football game. It’s not the politicians dragging us into war, it’s common people giving for assumed war is inevitable. You all will be the world’s distruction once again. It’s really insane how humans have the tendency to repeat history despite having knowledge of it.

I don’t know if that’s true Please inform yourself about it then, because that would change the entire discussion. This is an entire field of study, it’s not hidden stuff.

I agree they shouldn’t have a platform and visibility. Definitely shouldn’t be normalised. Shaming them and isolating them is HOW their ideas grew so much. The key is to invalidate their points with arguments, even if they don’t listen, it’s important they are out there and visible to other potential viewers. If you cannot do that because you are isolated from the fascist/flat earthers or whatever, their bubble will grow constantly because they talk to the belly of the people, and these folks will look for the opinions their belly tells them their are right. This is how we got wehere we are now. People saw something they could relate to when they heard these extremists complain about immigrants, corrupted system, secret plots to rule the world. Without access to a counter argument (becuase of the isolation) the spiral started to go deeper and deeper, until full extremization. We have seen something similar with covid.

For example i think banning Hitler’s Mein Kampf, like they do in Germany, is a mistake. The only copies in circulations will be from people that probably simpatize with him and there will be little or no control over the content, which could be altered. This is very dangerous. If the book is freely available there could be laws that force to have notes on the book, which explain why Hitler was a bullshitter and out of his mind. People will be in contact with this content if they look for that book for any reason, it’s not a small thing. They will still find the “altered” copies, but they will be much less attractive (not fascinating because forbidden and easy to find) then will be much easier to see the alteration and to counter it. I hope my point is clearer now

I agree with you. When i say demonising i mean from the point of view of maga folks. The democrats wanted to show how shitty and corrupt he is, they ended up making him a working class hero that is fighting the power and then president for the second time. Trump won thanks to inhability of the democrats and the american public at large to understand that times have changed. Trump understood it and made the “persecution” his winning horse. They manage to transform his mugshot in a huge political win ffs.

I’m not suggesting to let anybody say what they want and offering them a platform. I’m saying that if you don’t want these people in power, like you didn’t want trump in power or fascists in the streets, the key is not to do the easiest thing that comes to mind, but to listen to what people that study other people say, and they all say the same thing: the more you isolate shitty people, the more and more shitty they will become, because they will create their own closed community, which history tells us will only grow. What happened when the flat earthers became mainstream and people started to ban them everywhere and threat them like idiot? Their numbers decuplicated and the closeted flat earthers suddenly were public, to the point that athletes, politicians and other public figures came out as flat earthers. The point was to isolate them, they ended up way more and widespread than before.

Yes, because current efforts seem to be focused in only trying to isolate the people we don’t like. During pre-internet time might have relatively worked, now it’s clear it doesn’t and saying “it’s the best option we have” is just false. It’s the easier option that people (but not sociologist or social psichologist) keep adopting because it’s very easy, fits with our desire to not have shitheads around us and because people assumed that’s how it worked so far.

Stop ignoring the reality and accept the fact that despite attempts to isolate them, the right is getting stronger everywhere. It’s time to change approach or to start to get used to the new reality. Don’t trust me, go beyond social media and go check what experts of hate and extremism say, not the politician we like this year.

I’d love to hear the thoughts of the people that downvoted. If they disagree with what i said, or if stimply they don’t like it and want it to disappear. Unironically, the (very expected) reactions to my comment are proving my point.

Comments on social media make harder to think it’s just a couple dozen rich guys. People forgot or have no idea what war is beside propaganda movies and the media push for war every day. I read every day articles that say how this or the other guy are absolutely sure that Russia is getting stronger and will attack a NATO country any moment. The drones appearing all over Europe are just a warning (even if hey seem to be all Ukranian drones). I also read at the same time that Russia is so weakened by the west that will capitulate any time. In war times you can say a thing and it’s opposite and if you point it out you are for sure a friend of this dictator or that other one. People are so used to thinking in black and white that having an opinion became the same as unconditionally supporting a sport team.

Exactly, but seems that we have been proven multiple times that banning/shunning/shaming only achieves the opposite.

True, but not because they didn’t try, which is my point. The attempt was to make him so much of a monster and demonise him that nobody would have voted him. The point was to isolate him and they achived the opposite, as you correctly said.

I disagree. Trump got elected (twice) with >30 felonies and after having said all sort of things that only few years ago would have made him completely uncandidable. Deplatforminng doesn’t have the impact that it used to have and only make the person look like “they are going against the strong powers”, that’s why the afd in germany keeps getting stronger despite the multiple bans, Trump in the US, the neo-fascists movements in the uk, the neofascists in Italy. What has calling these people “fascists” and isolating them has achieved? Only raising their consent. Also, television and radio are not so meaningful anymore as they used to be, internet has made them completely obsolete and most people take their info from the latter. It’s counterintuitive, but the political history of the last 10 years has proven this multiple times. It’s very useful to look into how cult works and what’s the best way to unlock them. Isolating the people in the cult is the worst move one can make.

I think most people haven’t realised that the world is different from 20 years ago, not even with Trump being Trump.

Banning a party will not magically make the support they have disappear. When people with fascist views get isolated, we only make them close more and more in their own bubble, which will just create more extremism. It’s the same with people that make fun of flat earthers. You are not going to change their mind, you are just sending them deeper into their delusions. People still don’t get that banning everything we don’t like is not a long term solution, but makes the problem worse (war on drugs, forbidding prostitution, etc)