For the last couple of days, a lot of things have been going on. The Capitol Riots are one of the most agitating and saddest things I’ve seen in the last few years apart from the countless demos in Germany by people that are too stubborn, too lazy, too anxious to believe that there’s a threat out there that actually kills people.
I wanted to write about this topic, just shortly, to make you know that I do not condone any sort of false information or fake news spread on my blog or in my community on Twitch. I do not condone any sort of QAnon/Querdenker type of bullshit to be spread here. If you’re a conspiracy theorist who’s thinking about lizard people, Bill Gates, and some sort of dictatorship in Germany led by Jews or whatever, then please, please, please, would you kindly fuck off from here.
I do not condone any sort of hate speech or bigotry spread on here. My stream is an LGBTQIA+ safe space and we have many people from all over the world in our community. I do not want to hear any sort of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, or other forms of slurs, bigotry, and insults in there targeted at members of our community or me. I do not condone anyone targetting anyone on my blog and I’ll continue to delete comments like that whenever I see them.
I am all for a discussion but I don’t plan on giving a platform to those people that are spitting on democracy and our values and that are leading riots and demonstrations against the state and against lockdowns, carelessly ignoring hygiene rules and masks and whatever, carelessly endangering anyone that might die from it or might come in contact with the elderly, the sick and the weakened.
I won’t give a platform to those people that fight actively against democracy and wield black, red and white flags while marching into the Capitol or any other place. I won’t give a platform to the Cheeto or to any of the Nazis, QAnons, Maga people, Covidiots, and other supporters that Cheeto has been inciting.
I won’t give a platform to more violence, physical, mental or verbal.
I won’t give a platform to anyone who calls the BLM movement a “terrorist group” or anything like that and who generalises all of the movement against white supremacy and racism as a “group of looters and terrorists”.
Fuck White Supremacists. Fuck Nazis. Fuck Trump. Fuck QAnon. Fuck Bigots. Fuck Querdenker.
I thought that even I have a platform, so I should mention my stance on it and some of my thoughts. What happened at Capitol is horrible and I’m sorry to hear that the Cheeto had another Trump Card like that. I hope the nightmare is over soon and I hope that it’ll get better soon. Arnold Schwarzenegger has published a message to his fellow Americans and friends around the world on his Twitter account and I recommend watching it.
I want this place to be a place where we can talk about games and enjoy Indie stuff and other games and after getting a few racist trolls on WordPress I decided to publish a post that explains my position here as someone who streams and blogs and tweets and speaks. As someone who’s able to not just review games but also have a stance on things. I’m not neutral, after all. Alas, I should make clear that I’m against Nazis and Racists and Sexists and all the other bigots in the world and the fucking idiots out there that are still endangering people. I hate it when people enjoy the freedom of speech we have here only to spout nonsense and hate speech and only to incite to violence against politicians and refugees and immigrants while saying that there is no freedom of speech. I hate it when peaceful protestors get struck down while the police are the ones that are being attacked when Querdenker movements start acting with tens of thousands of people in Berlin or wherever. I should note here that I hate racism among cops and I hate that it’s a thing, be it in Germany or in America. In Germany, it’s not as bad as in America, I would want to say, but I actually don’t have any statistics at hand as there are politicians that don’t want to investigate racism among policemen and soldiers. I wonder why. So, it’s a thing, yes, but I still hate it when people get attacked. Not all cops are bad, but a lot of them are. I hate it when some of the good ones out there, defending the parliament against those violent protestors that want to feed their families or whatever – well, I hate it when those people get attacked. I mean, I hate it when people get attacked, period. I don’t want to see that happen to any of us. But sadly, a lot of the bad cops and the racists and whatever are letting people go on like that even when they get attacked in Germany, while they open the gates for the rioters on Capital in America. Fuck Racists and Bigots among the cops.
Alas, uh, I can sum up that I’m for freedom of speech and for democracy but against Nazis and Bigots and all of those people that are against democracy. With Alex Turner’s words “perhaps fuck off might be too kind” but uh… you can have your opinion, just don’t share it here and don’t spread hateful stuff on my blog or in my stream. Thank you. If possible stop being hateful, period. Don’t hurt people. Be kind to others. Don’t be an asshole.
“Die Gedanken sind frei” – your thoughts are free, after all. Your words can hurt, though.
Cheers.
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!
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I all of us have been giving certain folks far too much benefit of the doubt, long since all doubt should have been removed.
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What I find strange is the immense silence from those who previously supported the Hong Kong riots, since those were ostensibly for democracy and freedom of speech. There was that immense hoo ha about boycotting Blizzard and so on.
Perhaps we all need to be clear on where we draw the line, e.g. violence is not acceptable? Violence is only acceptable in the name of democracy? How about civil disobedience but not violence?
There is an article by Neil Gaiman that I think quite appropriate on “Why defend freedom of icky speech?” If we support civil disobedience on a cause that we agree on, we should support the same level of civil disobedience for a cause that we find absolutely icky.
Ditto on violence. If we find the violence on the side of a cause we dislike abhorrent, we should equally draw a principled line on the means, even when the cause is just.
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I think that violence is bad, period. There are peaceful protests, like Fridays For Future, for instance, that work out. Why can’t the Querdenker/Nazi/QAnon demo be peaceful as well? Instead, they rammed a car into the Parliament, someone had a gun for whatever reason there (btw, talking about Germany), people were throwing rocks and bottles, and nobody was wearing a mask.
In America, it was super violent as well and there have even been deaths, apparently, which is frustrating to hear because I thought that they planned to make America “great again” and not tear the last good bits of it down. I thought those MAGA idiots were naive idealists that were manipulated by Trump but instead, we just saw that they’re fascists themselves who fight against democracy and pretend that the BLM movement did the same.
Just because a few people looted and destroyed stores in the name of “BLM” or “ANTIFA”, that doesn’t mean that the whole movement is bad. I’ve heard from plenty of sites and sources that the BLM movement went more than peaceful in their areas. Here in Germany, there are obviously some idiots as well that vote for the AfD or the NPD or whatever and are huge nazis and racists and stuff… They sometimes protest with about 2,000 people in the city I live in, on Hitler’s birthday… to celebrate it, I guess. The demonstration that is against those idiots had about 20,000 people protesting. Peacefully. Without any incidents.
I think it’s not too fair to compare Germany and China or North Korea because of the cultural differences. Regardless of that, I’m against violence and against dictatorships. I support the Hong Kong riots in a way but don’t completely agree with their method of protesting and them resorting to violence… but in the same way I understand that over there it’d be hard to peacefully protest and to not get thrown into jail.
I think it’s much more fair to compare Germany and the United States, which is why I did that. I don’t think our culture is too different whenever I talk to Americans. Our values are similar as well, most of the time, and alas, I feel like the comparison is fair and legitimate.
So, my line to draw here would be: Violence is unacceptable, no matter the cause. The cause doesn’t justify the means, after all. But at the same time, we can’t really judge the Hong Kong riots too much because of cultural differences. At least not that easily. In Western Culture, I don’t think that we should resort to violence at all.
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It shouldn’t be so hard for people to be considerate of others and not attack/hurt them. Speaking out against it actively and encouraging a more inclusive world is a positive force, and hopefully, bit by bit, we can make this world a better place.
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I mean, when it comes to politics I feel like it’s important to be *for* something and not just *against* something. A lot of these super-right-wing-parties or nazis or conspiracy theorists are just against the state/against democracy. They are not really standing for something. They are not thinking about how stuff could be better, they just want to get rid of the current system.
Instead of being for a better world or a better society or whatever, they chose to just be against everything that enables them to issue those “opinions” and theories.
This basically just results in them insulting people and using hate speech and fake news to gain followers. When people tell them off because of hate speech being bad, they attack them and get angry because “censorship”. Then they become violent and even more angry and when the police or the state stops them/throws them into jail or whatever, they start getting more and more agitated.
When the state allows people like that to persist, they will gain bigger followership and become stronger and stronger to the point of them endangering the peaceful people. When the state punishes and acts against those people, they will gain bigger followership and celebrate the punished ones as martyrs to be able to make a point against the state.
The state or any institution can’t really act against them without them getting bigger… but by acting against them, they at least prevent them from hurting others. “When you tolerate the intolerant, the tolerant will not be tolerated.”
So, yes, I agree that it shouldn’t be too hard for people to be considerate but in the end, it also shouldn’t be too hard for people to wear a mask over their nose and mouth at the same time. It also shouldn’t be too hard for people to put on their seatbelts and to not text while driving. It shouldn’t be too hard for people to fact check their statements and misinformation. It shouldn’t be too hard for people to go outside without leaving their fly open.
What I’m getting at is that stupid people exist everywhere and that stupid people are stupid, which makes them easy targets for polarisation and manipulation. Trump utilizes idiots by using Nazi tactics to be popular. Populism is bad. Hitler did the same. “Make Germany great again” or “Make America great again” as well as the “Us vs. Them” tactic and the whole “fake news”/”Lügenpresse” thing. On top of that, Trump-supporters tend to have a bit of a cult going on as well, basically worshipping him in the same way that some women in Nazi-Germany were idolizing Hitler as a sex god or whatever.
So, Trump may play dumb but the way he rallies those MAGA idiots is super smart, on top of not being good for democracy.
And I’m not saying that those idiots are free of any faults or whatever… I’m just saying that a lot of them get manipulated by someone with “clout” or power/influence and others are joining in because anti-vaxxers, Nazis, racists, and anti-semites just seem to have a lot of common ground with the average Trump-Supporter.
It’s all one toxic soup of idiocy.
Sorry for basically publishing a whole post below your comment, lol. Seemingly out of nowhere as well. I appreciate your comment!
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Sorry I took so long to reply! I appreciate you putting your thoughts into words, perhaps the only way to improve the world is for us to speak up and hope people listen and actively improve themselves. Everyone is always learning and we got to make sure it is in the right way as much as possible. At the end of the day, we always have to work stuff out in conversation, not in violence.
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Exactly! Being silent is never good. Speaking up is the only power we have! When someone uses violence instead of their words, it just means that they were powerless and didn’t have the smarts to find a better way. There is always a better way. “Violence is not a solution and it shouldn’t be” – as a rapper group recently said in song :D (“Rap über Hass” – K.I.Z)
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