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Kirbmarc Profile picture
Kirbmarc
@kirbmarc
Just a guy on Twitter with some opinions. No gods, no heroes, no saints - just us flawed human beings. Never look down on anyone, never bow down to anyone
Apr 25, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Thread: Religious animus from the majority CAN and HAS lead to massacres and violations of human rights - Christians in the Middle East, Muslims in Spain during the Reconquista and in Yugoslavia during the recent Yugoslav wars, Jews...basically everywhere where they've been a minority.
Apr 22, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The biggest reason I'm against the death penalty is Beccaria's moral argument - that the state shouldn't have the power of life and death over its citizens. The death penalty, Beccaria argues, "is an act of war on the part of society against the citizen that comes about when it is deemed necessary or useful to destroy his existence". Worse still it's an act of war on someone who is already imprisoned - "out of combat", so to speak.
Jan 19, 2021 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
I think there needs to be precision in categorizing sets of authoritarian political ideas - responses also vary according to the nature of the authoritarian political ideas.

Fascism is ideological in ways Trump isn't - Trump is still a danger in terms of democratic backsliding An important difference between 20th century fascism and 21st century right-wing authoritarian populism is that fascism was explicitly deadset on exposing democracy as bad - people like Orbàn or Erdogan or Trump are fine with the superficial trappings of democracy.
Jan 19, 2021 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
(Inspired by Benjamin Barber's "Jihad vs McWorld" 1992 essay): Is Trumpism the American form of "Jihad", as definied by Barber, i.e. a tribal defense of identity and conservative ideas against alleged external and internal enemies, and against the "McWorld" ("globalism")? 1/ The framework of an American "jihad" seems to fit the Trump phenomenon better than either classic fascism or classic white supremacist ideas. The hostility isn't primarily and explicitly racialized - it's directed against the "globalists" and immigration being "used" by them. 2/
Jan 19, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Yes, it is difficult, because: a) the role of religion in fostering reactionary ideas is now downplayed compared to the Bush era and b) the idea of what "whiteness" exactly is is ill-defined and vague. The trend of reactionary politics exists even beyond the "west": people like Erdogan in Turkey or Modi in India or Khan in Pakistan use tropes of modernity as decadence, nostalgia for a mythical past, adherence to an exclusive model of citizenship, worrying about foreign meddling
Jan 18, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
This is basically where I am.

The model for authoritarian movements of the 21st century is kleptocracy with a fluid mix of conservative and nationalist tropes (nostalgia for a mythical past, obsession with "decadence", hatred for liberalism, universal values, and "globalism") The mythical past can be anything deemed glorious and aspirational - from the Soviet Union AND Great Power tzarism for Putin in Russia, to a mix of the 1950s and the 1980s, or at least their mythical versions, fot Trump in the US, to the Ottoman Empire for Erdogan in Turkey
Jan 18, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
At the end of the day a lot of interpretation of Trump's speeches and rhetoric is done by trying to speculate over Trump's intentions and not the results of his words. Which would be necessary if we were trying to ascertain guilt in a court of law - but that's not the case. If you want to argue that Trump isn't guilty of incitement under the law I think you have a strong case - the requirement threshold for incitement is very high, and rightfully so. If you use that to argue that this means that Trump acted ethically from a political POV...well...
Jan 17, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Hot take: I think that assuming that socially widespread beliefs are perfectly logical and coherent makes you blind to lots of aspects of those socially widespread beliefs, and more inclined to assume the worst of your rivals and to believe in conspiracy theories. Socially widespread beliefs are often contradictory, or vague, or shifting. People aren't caricatural versions of computers from a Star Trek episode who crash when their contradictions are exposed - they ignore or rationalize away the contradiction and move on.
Jan 5, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
That's what I took from the article - despite the intent of the author, maybe. There's a warning in there - the Chinese model may become attractive to many countries and movements and we - liberal democrats - need to fix our weaknesses to stay competitive. I think that this is a serious concern. Liberal democracy is in crisis in the "west" too. This doesn't mean it's doomed, of course - but we need to reevaluate the economic and social policies of the last decades to protect the freedoms we value, because China HAS changed.
Jan 5, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The idea of acritical anti-American campism produces weird results. Rojava was the closest the 21st century got to a left-libertarian/anarchist phenomenon, but since they allied themselves with the US (only to then be betrayed by the US, by the way) some people in the far-left reject them in favor of acritical anti-American "anti-imperialism".
Jan 4, 2021 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
I'm getting a bit tired of people who think that criticism of some institutions justifies embracing "alternative" institutions as rational. Even if institutions are flawed people far too often embrace "alternative" institutions uncritically, with little skepticism. 1/ It's something I've noticed with lots of online contrarians - they think that since the "MSM" are flawed or liberal democracies are flawed or politics in a corporate-friendly field are flawed (which is true) then EVERYTHING they do or say is forever tainted and unreliable 2/
Jan 3, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
That's soemthing that's happened to lots of claims about the virus - for example "it affects the elderly and those with underlying conditions more than the young and those in good health" has often been shifted into "if you're young and in good heath you don't need precautions" Or the mask/no mask saga - emphasis over how they needed to be worn correctly, they're not a panacea and they weren't enough for hospital workers in the beginning was referred to as "they're useless" which has then shifted to "they're muzzled against our freedom".