Zack Polanski and the guillotine

[Everanewbie]

AIBU to be sceptical that much will be done about Zack Polanski's tweet of an image of man wearing a t-shirt depicting a guillotine and the words "making plans for Nigel"?

Now I am not in favour of prosecuting people for words, and I don't want ZP sent to prison. But I would like to see this level of hate stop.

And I am finding the left to be extremely hypocritical with the violent rhetoric while simultaneously celebrating the arrest of Lucy Connelly and Graham Linehan?

Hilarious.
Connolly's offence was worse. But IMO not different enough that a 31 month sentence vs continuing to be leader of a major political party are fair & reasonable outcomes.

Of course it's fascism. Tell the left that though and they implode. Their minds can't compute how they have now become the fascists.

I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what fascism means. This might help:

Fascism is a strict political system led by a powerful dictator, extreme pride in one's country, and total control over the people. In a fascist government, the needs of the country come before individual rights or freedom

Maybe we should stop bandying it about.

I agree. What Reform propose and how they behave is nothing like fascism. Indeed by comparing them to fascists you are making the leaders like Mussolini into something far less awful then they actually were.

It's a word used a lot by youngsters with no idea of its emergence. You're right, I wish it would be dropped completely because other than in North Korea, it no longer has influence.

The bloke who wrote the comment about AW is a heinous and sick individual. But the last thing he is is a fascist. All his type care about are their minority individual freedoms, which is the antithesis of fascism. I think people have started to use 'fascist' to mean 'horrible person'. It's not who it's directed at that annoys me about that, it's the inaccuracy of language.
If we go around saying that people like that bloke are 'fascists' we run the risk of misleading a new generation about what fascism really is. And if we don't understand it, and think its just sick people on SM, how will we know the real deal when we see it and protect ourselves?

Agree it isn't fascism.

But I did hear the Mitchell and Webb "are...are we the bad guys?" sketch in my head when speaking to one of my leftist relatives. They have no idea that some of them really have become the bad guys

Yes, as I said I wish it would be dropped from today's debates. It only needs to raise its head in discussions about history and politics.

Yup.

No-platforming, death threats, book-burnings, wanting people sacked or cancelled.

They've become everything they claimed to hate but can't see it.

In my local area there was an incident where a teenager put something deemed to be racist on social media and when he went to a party, was stripped naked, hit a few times, drinks poured on him, and had swastikas drawn on him - lots of photos of this humiliation ritual then put on SM.

The amount of adults who commented 'they went too far but they had a point' or 'well he shouldn't have said what he said' 'bet he's learned his lesson' and similar was disgusting.

Agree. Its just SM hyperbole and gets in the way of us discussing the points of issue. We end up offending and insulting each other rather than having a reasoned debate.

I couldn't sleep last night so took a look at JKR's twitter page. Her latest fight is against Amnesty who defamed her rape crisis centre. They've had to backtrack and issue an apology. What has it come to when victims of rape are accused of being anti rights because they want their places of safety to be women centred?

You’re friend is not “the left” 🙄

That defintion meets socialism /communism the state over the people which is why extreme left and right are twins. Identical twins.

Agree it's a very NALLPALT (not all left leaning people are like that) situation. I have many left leaning friends and colleagues and I am pretty centrist myself. Possibly left of centre in some areas.

Someone did assert early in the thread that people laughing at CK's murder did not exist though and unfortunately I know someone who did laugh. He took the time out of his busy day (ok, he doesn't have a job atm but still) to call me at work and he could hardly talk for giggling. He thought it was great news. He tried the saw after AW was murdered and I told him that someone was under police investigation for posting similar views, which did shut him up.

They definitely exist irl and I know one of them. Probably more than one tbh.

But thankfully, they are not representative of everyone on the left.

Us "normal" centre people have absolutely no chance of a decent political future with all the loony Greens and angry reform supporters. Wish you would all FO

Actually he very specifically said he wasn’t going to apologise!

No it doesn’t. The definition of socialism is:

the set of beliefs that states that all people are equal and should share equally in a country's money, or the political systems based on these beliefs

No dictator, no extreme patriotism, no abnegation of individual rights or freedoms.

It wasn’t funny but it was karma.

I could have sworn you accused me of fascism the other day.

Karma has a habit of being indiscriminate. Watch out.

I probably thought if you can't beat em ...

How would you describe your political leaning @onlyoneoftheregimentinstep ?

Do point out where I accused you or anyone else on MN of being a fascist.

Oh lighten up. 😉

You lecture people on the use of the word fascism, but are quite happy to use it yourself. Hypocrisy should always be called out I think. 😉