[thechat] The Death of Democracy...

Tara Cleveland tara at taracleveland.com
Fri Feb 14 08:23:00 CST 2003


> Chris Marsh asked:
>
>>> This is an unpleasant viewpoint. Justified?

then Luther, Ron wrote:
> Why do you characterize this as unpleasant?  On the surface perhaps one man's
> regret-ridden exhortation to guard personal freedoms more closely -- but
> underneath, underneath I would see it as a more hopeful message believing
> in the power of one voice speaking out to grow into more voices and gain
> enough power and momentum to change the world.
>
> Shouldn't that be more uplifting than unpleasant?

Yah, but the article it's on top of is different. The guy's article is using
the most unpleasant views and people as justification for his viewpoint that
the US government is rounding up people that they think will cause massive
unrest when WWIII comes.

He's saying that people like David Duke, Ernst Zundel, Kirk Lyons (head of
the Southern Legal Resource Center), etc. are being rounded up and thrown in
jail because they will rise up against the US gov't during the riots after
the US starts getting bombed.

I don't know too much about the other people but Ernst Zundel wasn't
arrested because he was a holocaust denier or because he was against the
Canadian Government, he was arrested because he contravened the hate speech
laws in Canada. There were huge and sometimes militant demonstrations
against him by the *people* - and let me tell you I knew a bunch of those
people and they weren't friends of the Canadian government either. It's not
some government conspiracy against racists.

So putting that very poignant and powerful statement on top of an article
defending virulent racists, haters and holocaust deniers is really kind of
gross - but I guess in some ways it gets the point across. The point is that
we should defend them because next it'll be the rest of us who don't agree
with the government. But I don't think that his argument that the world is
going to end up in war, the US gov't has all of this planned and is rounding
up racists because they'll lead the people to "massive civil chaos and
unrest" once the bombs start dropping, is at all logical or believable. I
think the quote at the top of the article is the only part worth reading...

Regards,
Tara




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