[HN Gopher] Anti-War Speech Sent Eugene V. Debs to Prison, 1918
___________________________________________________________________
Anti-War Speech Sent Eugene V. Debs to Prison, 1918
Author : oriettaxx
Score : 164 points
Date : 2022-11-26 17:57 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fifthestate.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fifthestate.org)
| backworsestasi wrote:
| Back then they had state level and federal level defense
| councils. People would get reported to the authorities for all
| sorts of things. If you didn't donate to the red cross you would
| get on the list.
|
| They also would instruct the pastors of churches to disseminate
| messages and those that didn't were on the list as well. This is
| before mass communications took hold. Most folks got their news
| through word of mouth or gatherings.
| humanrebar wrote:
| What about newspapers? They weren't invented in the 1930s.
|
| Revolutionary War propaganda famously included various
| pamphlets, editorials, and self-published periodicals (Thomas
| Paine, The Federalist Papers, etc.).
| itdependson99th wrote:
| beebmam wrote:
| He also ran for president from prison (and lost). Might be
| relevant in the next few years.
| perihelions wrote:
| Democracy overrules the status quo of criminal law. That's a
| deeply admirable principle, and principled people shouldn't
| abandon that principle -- the supremacy of democracy -- on mere
| expedience. Democracy _decides_ what is a crime and what is
| not, and can boldly overrule the law with a mere vote.
|
| Incidentally, the incoming president of Brazil is also an ex-
| con.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I'm sure many Americans will soon become ardent supporters or
| opposers of this position.
| yucky wrote:
| Democracy is mob rule. When one says that democracy decides
| what is a crime and what is not, one is then defending a long
| history of lynchings, miscegenation, slavery, forced medical
| procedures, Jim Crow laws and much much more.
| tshaddox wrote:
| What about other requirements for office and limitations,
| like the age and citizenship requirement and term limits for
| President of the United States? Should "democracy overrule"
| those too?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| IMO they should, there's no need for these laws to be cast
| in stone and never change.
| ahtihn wrote:
| Democracy can overrule those, there's a defined process for
| it.
| perihelions wrote:
| You got me there. The questionable aspects of 18th-century
| political sociology fundamentally *refute* the moral
| arguments in favor of democracy, in the same way
| diagonalization arguments refute theorems in computability
| theory. It's ironclad math.
| retrac wrote:
| it's possible for a candidate to run from prison in
| Westminster-style parliamentary systems. The fact that a
| candidate is imprisoned should not inhibit the electors from
| expressing their choice. Though once elected, they face
| certain practical barriers to assuming office.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" Though once elected, they face certain practical
| barriers to assuming office"_
|
| Then they're democratic in name only. If the previous
| leader has the effective, practical ability to fuck with
| the transfer of power, it ain't democracy.
| whateveracct wrote:
| I think the barrier is the fact that the new elected
| official would still have prison time left to serve.
|
| Nothing about that should stop them from running and
| winning. But running and/or winning shouldn't get them
| out either.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" But running and/or winning shouldn't get them out
| either. "_
|
| Then you're disenfranchising the majority of democratic
| voters, millions of citizens, in preference of ossifying
| so-called criminal justice against a mere one human. Why
| would you do that? What hallowed value does that serve?
|
| The question of what's a crime and what's valid is a
| _democratic question_ fundamentally, and is and should be
| mutable.
|
| We're in this thread, remember, because pretentious
| ideologues once imprisoned an anti-war protestor for
| bullshit reasons that were framed as "crimes".
| mindslight wrote:
| > _what 's a crime and what's valid is a democratic
| question fundamentally, and is and should be mutable_
|
| Sure, and the question of the legality of a given action
| can also be on the ballot. Implying that someone who wins
| an election should automatically get out of jail is
| nonsense. One of the pillars of the bureaucratic rule of
| law is making it so that no individual has autocratic
| power. We already have too much of powerful politicians
| and other agents of the state being effectively above the
| law.
| perihelions wrote:
| I'm philosophizing above my pay grade, probably, but
| winning a majority of votes seems to me like the
| *opposite* of "autocratic power".
|
| If anything, to me, "convicted criminal winning an
| election by majority vote" strongly pattern-matches
| "effective _check against autocracy_ ". Again: look at
| what the OP is, what fact patterns we're discussing in
| this thread!
| mindslight wrote:
| > _winning a majority of votes seems to me like the
| opposite of "autocratic power"_
|
| No it's not. The two concepts are orthogonal, and
| collapsing them to a single quality is a dangerous
| fallacy. The first is about how someone gets elected to
| an office - one of the cornerstones of our society is
| that leaders are elected by the people. The second is
| what someone in an office can legally do once they are
| there - another cornerstone is that nobody is above the
| rule of law. Equating the two effectively throws out the
| latter.
|
| The distinction is very clear when it comes to a
| narrowly-scoped office, or even a general executive at a
| low level like the mayor of a city. It only gets fuzzier
| as you go up in scale, as those charged with enforcing
| the law are better poised to not enforce against
| themselves. But the proper term for that is "corruption".
| tshaddox wrote:
| It's not clear to me why one ostensibly democratic
| mechanism (the criminal justice system) should
| automatically be overridden by other ostensibly
| democratic mechanism (an election).
|
| It seems pretty clearly undemocratic to me to say that
| you get out of jail if you win an election (or that the
| justice system somehow applies less to you if you're an
| elected official).
| perihelions wrote:
| One's direct and one's second-order indirect. It'd be
| like the bash shell saying you can't do something as sudo
| because a config file you edited last year overrules it.
|
| Democracy is root.
| [deleted]
| anikan_vader wrote:
| For example, the IRA member Bobby Sands was elected to the
| UK parliament while in prison during his (subsequently
| fatal) hunger strike. Parliament then immediately passed a
| law banning people from running for parliament from jail.
|
| Of course, the UK is a monarchy, not a republic, so its
| relevance to the subject at hand is somewhat dubious.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| The UK is only a monarchy at the ceremonial level.
| Officially it's mostly a parliamentary democracy, in
| practice it's mostly a bureaucracy.
| anikan_vader wrote:
| >> The UK is only a monarchy at the ceremonial level.
|
| This is a common claim, but I can't say that I agree. The
| House of Lords holds real power, as does the king in his
| role as head of state. The UK is not an absolute monarchy
| by any means, but the king is far more than just a
| figurehead [1].
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/how-
| archaic-...
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| One can only hope Charles disbands parliament and puts it
| to the test. For once I hope the fear mongers at the
| Guardian are right, but I suspect that I am, sadly.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Always interesting to see how certain kinds of political speech
| were never really protected by the First Amendment.
|
| And to remember that WW1 was ended, in part, by labour action:
| the October Revolution in Russia, and the Kiel Mutiny in Germany.
|
| The full speech is here: https://genius.com/Eugene-v-debs-anti-
| war-speech-annotated
| est31 wrote:
| > And to remember that WW1 was ended, in part, by labour
| action: the October Revolution in Russia, and the Kiel Mutiny
| in Germany.
|
| I don't know much about Russia, Germany certainly has given
| Lenin a train ticket so that he could participate in that
| revolution, because they thought that it would help their
| interests. But for Germany, the theory that Germany lost the
| war because of the revolution is the so called
| "Dolchstosslegende", a right wing conspiracy theory. Germany
| has already lost the war before that revolution.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth
| Vespasian wrote:
| Yes and the mutiny did happen in part because the German navy
| planned for a Last-Hurrah-Suicide mission to "die an honorful
| death"
|
| The sailors were not cool with that and decided to not be
| killed on the final stretch of a pointless war
|
| That was the final straw and was used to kick of the
| revolution. The monarchy already had lost most of its
| authority by that point.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Germany certainly has given Lenin a train ticket
|
| This was fascinating and amazingly conniving.
|
| The Churchill quote, saying Lenin was smuggled back into
| Russia "in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus" is quite
| the imagery.
|
| Lenin on the Train by Catherine Merridale covers it well.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| I find his speech to the court, knowing full well he was headed
| to jail for the crime of speaking out against the war, more
| powerful.
|
| He left half the members of the court, the people who later
| convicted him, in tears.
|
| Full speech here:
| http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/address_to_the_court.htm
| cdmckay wrote:
| And yet they still sent him to die in prison
| simfree wrote:
| They could have done a jury nullification.
| pooper wrote:
| It isn't that easy.
|
| The judges are all crooks and liars and will make you pay
| because you didn't "respect my authority" (read in the
| voice of the petulant child, Eric Cartman from the
| cartoon show South Park).
|
| In fact, I feel like I am doing something illegal just by
| typing this. We cannot win in a court of law. They will
| simply replace us if we show them any brain activity.
|
| You must reach a unanimous not guilty verdict, not
| because of jury nullification but because you genuinely
| believe the defendant is not guilty.
|
| > For the most part, the answer is no. You should NOT
| discuss jury nullification with your fellow jurors.
|
| > It is well-established that it is perfectly legal for a
| juror to vote not guilty for any reason they believe is
| just. However, courts have also decided that they can
| remove jurors for considering their option to
| conscientiously acquit.
|
| > This applies anytime until the verdict is officially
| rendered. Even as late as deliberations, if a disgruntled
| fellow juror decides to tattle on you to the judge, you
| could be replaced with an alternate juror. We recommend
| not openly discussing jury nullification during
| deliberations.
|
| > https://fija.org/library-and-resources/library/jury-
| nullific...
|
| All normal disclaimer applies. I am not a lawyer. I anal.
| Yada yada.
| lossolo wrote:
| > The judges are all crooks and liars and will make you
| pay because you didn't "respect my authority"
|
| Generalizations like that are not helpful, I am not a
| lawyer and I won in court with judge, he reversed his own
| ruling because I've proved he was wrong based on Supreme
| Court rulings.
| pooper wrote:
| If you find me any precedent showing that I can openly
| discuss jury nullification without the judge throwing the
| book at me, I will be very indebted to you. Until then,
| the point stands.
|
| They do not take kindly any effort to disrespect them.
| Remember, a court of law has authority because we as a
| society gives them this authority. Since we don't live by
| divine rights of kings, they do not have any claim to
| authority other than through us, the people. This is the
| very foundation of our democracy. I agree that usually
| this is inflammatory language but in this specific case,
| you must walk into court assuming they are out to get you
| if you discuss jury nullification.
|
| Once again, this is not legal advice. I anal.
| 3a2d29 wrote:
| Not being able to talk about jury nullification does not
| mean all judges are crooks.
|
| The reason people try to discourage "jury nullification"
| is because if a law is unjust, it should be removed, not
| be in place for certain juries to give _some_ people
| passes.
|
| The law should be the law. If you allow juries to decide
| to give "innocent" verdicts even if someone broke it,
| then congrats you have made a system where the jury gets
| to decide randomly if they want to enforce something.
| pooper wrote:
| > The law should be the law. If you allow juries to
| decide to give "innocent" verdicts even if someone broke
| it, then congrats you have made a system where the jury
| gets to decide randomly if they want to enforce
| something.
|
| This is the world we live in though. Imagine telling
| someone who is facing life in prison "tough luck but we
| need to fix the law first".
|
| 1. Congress is pretty much deadlocked and has been for
| decades.
|
| 2. This guy, Michael Flynn[flynn], received a
| presidential pardon.
|
| 3. Prosecution routinely uses its "discretion" on which
| cases to bring forward and what charges it wants to
| recommend. Police / law enforcement uses its "discretion"
| as well.
|
| If there is any justice, either this guy should serve his
| full sentence or we should immediately release anyone and
| everyone convicted of "lying to federal agents[making
| false statements]" from prison declaring the insane law
| null and void.
|
| [flynn] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn
|
| [making false statements]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements
| 3a2d29 wrote:
| Right but isn't the whole issue we have with white people
| walking free after crimes while black people face the
| actual punishment all because of this exact issue?
|
| White college girl has weed, jury nullifies. Black
| unemployed guy has weed, jail.
| hax0ron3 wrote:
| >if a law is unjust, it should be removed
|
| Yeah but by the time a person is actually on trial,
| trying to change the law that they are facing is probably
| too late, isn't it? And the system is slow and is
| dominated by the rich and powerful subset of society, so
| trying to change the law may not work anyway.
|
| >If you allow juries to decide to give "innocent"
| verdicts even if someone broke it, then congrats you have
| made a system where the jury gets to decide randomly if
| they want to enforce something.
|
| To some extent, this will happen one way or another. If I
| was on a jury, I would not vote to convict someone for
| breaking a law that I dislike. And a jury is already
| random in the sense that it's a somewhat random selection
| of 12 people who may have wildly different levels of
| intelligence, concern about the law, emotional states,
| and so on. To some extent, a jury decides randomly in
| every single trial whether they want to enforce
| something. The way I see it, informing people about jury
| nullification just helps to potentially win back some
| power for what myself and those I care about.
| 3a2d29 wrote:
| > a jury decides randomly in every single trial whether
| they want to enforce something.
|
| Isn't that jury nullification? That's the exact thing I
| am saying, shouldn't happen.
| Thiez wrote:
| The police and prosecutor already have that power, to
| decide randomly if they want to enforce something. What
| harm would a little additional capriciousness do?
| 3a2d29 wrote:
| So you would be pro a situation like this:
|
| White college kid is caught with intent-to-distribute
| amount of weed, jury allows them to walk away even though
| they are guilty.
|
| Black kid is caught with intent-to-distribute amount of
| weed, jury decides to enforce jail time this time.
|
| I mean what harm would it do?
| Thiez wrote:
| I am not from a country that uses juries, but your
| hypothetical situation probably happens daily already.
| You need only look at the statistics to see that being
| black (or to a lesser degree: being a man) significantly
| increases the odds of a guilty verdict in the USA. To
| stick to your drugs example, your white kid is more
| likely to have cocaine, and the black one crack. And one
| of these drugs has much more severe sentencing guidelines
| than the other...
| 3a2d29 wrote:
| Right which is why I am saying jury nullification is bad.
| These situations happen because of it.
| labster wrote:
| > I anal.
|
| Yes you are, pooper, yes you are.
|
| Jury nullification is not some divine right, it's an
| unintended consequence of jury secrecy. It's like going
| into a job interview at Twitter, and just talking about
| how everything is exploited by bots, and then you just
| complain about how you aren't allowed free speech on the
| platform. Who would hire you?
|
| Wait, bad example.
| vore wrote:
| Jury nullification is the negative right of not punishing
| jurors for their verdicts, not the positive right of
| jurors being able to pick verdicts that rule against laws
| they don't like.
|
| We can talk all about how jury nullification allows the
| jury to dismiss unjust laws, but do keep in mind the oath
| a juror is required to swear: Do you and
| each of you solemnly swear that you will well and truly
| try and a true deliverance make between the United States
| and ______, the defendant at the bar, and a true verdict
| render according to the evidence, so help you God?
|
| Threatening jury nullification is a clear violation of
| the oath (definitely not "a true verdict rendered
| according to the evidence") and the judge is well within
| their right to hold you in contempt of court for
| violating that oath.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| He didn't die in prison.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| He didn't die in prison but did die of problems he
| developed in prison.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Debs was 64 when sentenced to 10 years in prison. He
| likely would have died there if Harding had not commuted
| his sentence to time served. As noted, Debs eventually
| passed from health problems developed while imprisoned.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| "While there is a lower class, I am in it. While there is a
| criminal element, I am of it. While there is a soul in
| prison, I am not free."
|
| I think to hear him tell it, he was already in prison.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > WW1 was ended, in part, by labour action: the October
| Revolution in Russia, and the Kiel Mutiny in Germany
|
| "in part" saves you there. Otherwise it's nonsense.
|
| WW1 was _certainly_ not ended by the October Revolution. If
| anything, it made the war 10x worse, by freeing German troops
| for Ludendorff 's 1918 offensive, which almost succeeded.
|
| The Kiel Mutiny? Maybe accelerated the end by a few days. The
| Germans were already seeking an Armistice.
|
| > certain kinds of political speech were never really protected
|
| Adams and Wilson were indeed villains here. Lincoln suspended
| *habeas corpus." Roosevelt sent Japanese-Americans to the
| internment camps.
| philistine wrote:
| Using in part is perfectly fine because for the Russians, the
| war was completely ended due to labour action. They owe their
| war's end to that.
|
| Was it the right decision, or did it end up losing more lives
| in the long term? Whole other discussion.
| [deleted]
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Leaving aside the toll of Communism over its 72 years:
|
| There was a Russian Civil War, which we don't hear much
| about. So the war hadn't really ended for them. There was
| also a war between Russia and Poland.
|
| I looked some for a total of "WW I casualties by year"
| table but didn't find one; only "casualties by country."
| The significance would be "giant German offensive;
| therefore giant casualties."
|
| In any case, I don't think there's much of a case for the
| hypothesis "Russian Revolution saved lives."
| compiskey wrote:
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| throckmortra wrote:
| Where was he arguing for Communism? Do you believe pro-labor
| == Communism? Your post reads as knee-jerk and paranoid
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| It's beyond dishonest to frame him as paranoid for making
| the connection when the person he's replying made that
| connection for him.
|
| He might just be pro-labor but not pro-communist.
| throckmortra wrote:
| Where did he make the connection?
| chefandy wrote:
| Yeah don't you hate it when people inject their obvious
| political bias into comments?
| enkid wrote:
| You're ignoring the Russian Civil War, which killed millions
| more. It's not like the October Revolution was a clean stop to
| the violence. And even after the end of the Civil War, the
| political violence didn't end.
| [deleted]
| anon291 wrote:
| Using examples of terrible decisions in order to justify
| continuing to make bad decisions is a terrible way to govern.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's always a reactionary push to silence people for their
| own good.
|
| John Adams kicked it off, and Woodrow Wilson's craven politics
| represented a moment where the country could have moved in an
| awful direction.
|
| It's unfortunate that we live in an era where many people have
| mastered the art of mass manipulation. We're in an era where
| we're vulnerable to the same sort of grinding warfare that WW1
| became, and the information landscape is a barren one full of
| propaganda and junk.
| vkou wrote:
| No, we don't silence people for their own good, we silence
| people for our own good.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Sure. The problem is, who is "us" and who is "them".
| Unfortunately the 20th century shows what people are
| capable of in pursuit of protecting "our" stuff, whatever
| that may be.
| rektide wrote:
| I havent opened it yet but the book _American Midnight_ came
| highly highly recommended, which covers this time period & this
| event.
|
| A power hungry intolerant federal government mandating War-fervor
| & jingoism, suppressing all outside voices (largely liberal &
| progressive), clamping down on how people think & what they say.
| passing the Sedition Act & charging many under these wartime
| powers, before it's repeal.
|
| This book supposedly makes quite the case for this being one of
| thr darkest times in America. Excited scared/sad to start reading
| it.
| dry_soup wrote:
| Ken White (of "Popehat" twitter fame) has a great article
| explaining how this and similar court cases during the first
| world war are the origin of the (poor) "fire in a crowded
| theater" argument against certain kinds of free speech:
|
| https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
| the_optimist wrote:
| lend000 wrote:
| I never understood why Woodrow Wilson is lauded in the history
| books, and comes out in historians' presidential rankings quite
| well. His administration (and he personally) had a pattern of
| suppressing free speech with prison time. That, and he created
| the Federal Reserve (which then went on to create the Great
| Depression, as it slowly learned to use its powers). Whether or
| not you think a central bank is a good thing, it certainly belies
| his ideology that the government knows best.
| philwelch wrote:
| I've seen a lot of negative backlash against Wilson's legacy in
| recent years, to the point of verging on overreaction. He is in
| an awkward position since he was too progressive for
| conservative tastes and too racist for liberal tastes. The main
| positive thing people used to say about Wilson's legacy was his
| championing of liberal internationalism, combined with lots of
| bemoaning the fact that the US didn't ratify Versailles or join
| the League of Nations due to isolationist obstruction in the
| Senate.
| rayiner wrote:
| To be clear, Wilson was more racist than the conservatives of
| the period.
| philwelch wrote:
| Indeed; I didn't mean to understate the point.
| rayiner wrote:
| Wilson was "one of their own"--a professor at Princeton. He was
| also the founder of the ideology of governance by credentialed
| experts, which is unsurprisingly popular among highly
| credentialed people, like historians.
| hax0ron3 wrote:
| Also, Wilson got the United States into World War One, which
| helped to put the US on its trajectory to eventually being
| involved in World War Two and subsequently becoming the
| world's top geopolitical power. So I suppose that people who
| think that it was good for the United States to be involved
| in World War Two and/or people who think that it is good for
| the United States to be the world's top geopolitical power -
| which is a pretty large number of people, at least in the
| West - have those reasons to like Wilson.
| opo wrote:
| Wilson was also very racist:
|
| >...While Wilson's tenure is often noted for progressive
| achievement, his time in office was one of unprecedented
| regression in regard to racial equality.[1] He removed most
| federal officeholders who were African Americans, his
| administration imposed segregation policies, and instituted a
| policy requiring a photo for federal job applicants.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson_and_race
| [deleted]
| Aunche wrote:
| The Federal Reserve absolutely did not cause the Great
| Depression. Economic crashes occurred at least once a decade
| since beginning of American history, and as the economy grew
| more more interconnected and less self sufficient, economic
| crashes tended to be worse than the last, culminating with the
| Great Depression. Economists overwhelmingly agree that the
| Fed's biggest blunder during the Great Depression was not going
| far enough. It was only with what I'm sure you would call
| "money printing" enabled by the Fed to finance WWII, that the
| economy truly recovered.
| lend000 wrote:
| Most people can't name any specific recession prior to the
| creation of the Federal Reserve, but everyone has heard of
| the Great Depression. A sibling commenter posted some good
| analyses, but the gist of it is that they tried tightening
| the money supply at the worst possible time (something the
| modern Fed avoids at all cost, at the expense of increasing
| wealth inequality by artificially inflating the value of
| assets whenever they start to dip).
| 988747 wrote:
| Small-scale economic downturns did happen once a decade,
| because that's natural in a healthy economy. Federal Reserve
| tried to prevent a downturn in 1929, but their misguided
| monetary policies made it two orders of magnitude worse
| instead. Milton Friedman once wrote a great analysis on this:
| https://fee.org/articles/the-great-depression-according-
| to-m...
| MR4D wrote:
| I highly recommend ready "The Panic of 1907". After that, I
| think you might come to a different conclusion.
|
| Even if you don't change your mind, it's still a great read
| for those fascinated with panics and depressions.
| choxi wrote:
| Do you mean this?
| https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/panic-of-1907
|
| Because that name is also used to describe the event,
| wasn't sure if you meant a specific book or article.
| MR4D wrote:
| Sorry, I should have included the link - I meant the
| book:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Panic-1907-Lessons-Learned-
| Markets/dp...
| narrator wrote:
| The supreme court case Schenck v. United States said at the time
| that speech discouraging people from being drafted was
| prohibited.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| The Supreme Court has made many awful rulings with respect to
| the first amendment.
|
| Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire is another one.
|
| Just astoundingly awful
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Not arguing that, but I don't think any subsequent case has
| ever been judged by any court where the prevailing opinion
| cited Chaplinsky.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Put another way- it was speech telling people to break the law.
| klplotx wrote:
| FYI, Schenck v. United States was overturned in 1969
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States):
|
| "In 1969, Schenck was largely overturned by Brandenburg v.
| Ohio, which limited the scope of banned speech to that which
| would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless
| action (e.g. a riot)."
|
| So we can tell other people to avoid the draft now, even in a
| dry bureaucratic sense. In real life of course the draft is
| slavery and immoral, as Ayn Rand and many others have pointed
| out.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I have found general anti-war comments I have made here and
| elsewhere online to be unpopular. If WWIII starts, its likely
| that comments against participating or legitimizing it will be
| flagged here on HN.
|
| The thing that people should understand is that wars are
| strategic. Any moral justification is just propaganda. The
| paradigm is "might makes right" and has been for millennia. The
| American Empire is a great example, and the Chinese Empire that
| comes after it will be the same. But that will be even shorter-
| lived than the Americans because AI will probably take control
| soon after. On a large scale, humanity operates at a moral level
| similar to that of ant colonies.
| fullsend wrote:
| The Chinese Empire is a fantasy. China will remain a great
| factory and little else. Everything there is still done using
| personal connections (eg. corruption). The basis of a globe
| spanning empire this system is not. When all your growth is due
| to external investment, external contracts, and external
| culture/politics, you can't become the center.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Those common criticisms of their political system are valid,
| and certainly in some ways the west is more advanced. But
| realistically western political systems have their own severe
| (but different) problems, and the Chinese systems have their
| own advantages.
|
| As I said, the bottom line for the world order seems to be
| deployment of force. Right now the most relevant force
| paradigms as far as I can tell are mass information control
| and bio-warfare (nuclear has largely been tabled.) The
| authoritarianism has given China an advantage in terms of
| controlling information and infection and that has been
| strongly proven out.
| [deleted]
| boomskats wrote:
| I'm sorry, could you please repost your argument in the form of
| TikTok, or one of those Youtube short videos? I really
| struggled to remember any context past those big words in that
| second sentence.
|
| Ooh look! A squirrel! <scrolls>
| Quequau wrote:
| It's a minor thing I know... but the man's name is Eugene Victor
| Debs and it's usually printed as "Eugene V. Debs". So the "V"
| stands for Victor and not "versus". The title makes it seem sorta
| like a lawsuit "Eugene vs. Debs".
| pimlottc wrote:
| It's not minor, changing it to "vs" makes the sentence
| incomprehensible... I didn't understand what was going on until
| I read your helpful comment.
| [deleted]
| MikeMaven wrote:
| geofft wrote:
| The link seems to be down, but this is the speech itself:
| https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1918/canton.htm
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's not protected speech to tell people to break the law. He
| didn't go to prison for his beliefs, he went to prison for
| telling people to break the law.
| Zak wrote:
| Later cases have held that it can be. Calling for imminent
| lawless actions isn't, but claiming a law is unjust and
| generally shouldn't be followed is usually protected speech.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The point is that he didn't go to prison for giving an anti-
| war speech, it was also a call to action to break the law.
| Jefenry wrote:
| If I see any runaway slaves coming through I'll be sure not to
| tell my neighbors we should try and hide them.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I don't know what point you are trying to make.
| [deleted]
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| That it has been in the past, and still often is in some
| cases, moral to tell people to break the law, and immoral
| to tell them they shouldn't.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I don't think that's in dispute. Moral speech is not
| always protected speech.
| retrac wrote:
| Most of us would find a law that prohibits encouraging
| slaves from revolting or freeing themselves; to be horrid.
| Arguments that such laws don't really restrict freedom of
| speech because they're only encouraging an illegal act,
| would ring quite hollow. You might well be accused of
| sophistry if you made the argument seriously today; the act
| that's illegal to advocate is a fundamental right of all
| men, after all.
|
| Conscripts are enslaved. What some may call a mutiny of
| conscripts others might call a slave rebellion. Let's just
| take that axiomatically for now. Obviously not all agree.
| But many accept that argument completely. Arguing it does
| not infringe free speech to call for people to free
| themselves, because it's only prohibiting the encouragement
| of a crime rings similarly hollow, from that perspective.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The draft is unjust (in my opinion) but what happens if
| speech telling people to break other laws is protected?
|
| What if I urge people, in a riveting call to action
| speech, to kill X celebrity?
| Zak wrote:
| That's a grey area. The prosecution would need to prove
| that you _intended_ for someone to commit the murder,
| that you advocated its _imminent_ commission (or at least
| the imminent initiation of steps toward the crime), and
| that you believed your advocacy of such crime was likely
| to lead to someone carrying it out.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > What if I urge people, in a riveting call to action
| speech, to kill X celebrity or Y ethnic group?
|
| I think the former is specific enough to be legally
| problematic, but I was actually under the impression that
| the second one is technically legal? ( _morally_ awful,
| but _legally_ unprosecutable)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I think you're right. It's not specific. Edited my
| comment.
| nradov wrote:
| Such speech would only place you in legal jeopardy if it
| contains a direct and credible incitement to violence. If
| you simply said something like, "Let's kill all the
| Elbonians!" and nothing more then it would still be
| considered protected speech under current US Supreme
| Court precedents.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| All true, but no one AFAIK was threatening abolitionists
| who used legal due process to actually pass the 13th
| amendment on free speech grounds. That activity is not
| the same as openly telling people to aid and abet
| breaking the current law, or conscientious objection.
| Zak wrote:
| The southern states attempted to secede from the country,
| and fought a civil war that killed almost a million
| people to prevent the 13th amendment from passing.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > In the South abolitionism was illegal, and abolitionist
| publications, like The Liberator, could not be sent to
| Southern post offices. Amos Dresser, a white alumnus of
| Lane Theological Seminary, was publicly whipped in
| Nashville, Tennessee for possessing abolitionist
| publications.[57][58]
| vkou wrote:
| That conundrum was not resolved through speech, but through
| war. And, unfortunately, that war did not go far enough, as
| slaveowner politics quickly reasserted themselves.
| aizyuval wrote:
| War is the worst, and yet it serms to be so common and often "The
| only choice" (allegedly. As it was in WW1).
|
| It's a viscous cycle. It sucks.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It is thick, but wilfully. I think you (or autocorrect) mean
| vicious.
| gpm wrote:
| I think it's quite rare that war is the only viable choice _for
| both sides_ , but probably reasonably frequently the case that
| war is the only viable choice _for one side_. Sort of like how
| many crimes require both a victim and a perpetrator, but only
| one side is making the choice.
|
| It's also the case that in many modern wars both sides will
| claim to be the side with no choice though. Also that having
| entered a war by choice doesn't necessarily imply that it's
| still possible to exit the war by choice.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| There's a huge taboo in the United States against explicitly
| pointing out the economic agendas behind foreign wars. You can go
| up on a soapbox and talk about 'humanitarian concerns and
| defending democracy abroad' (typical neoliberal-Democratic
| drivel) or 'patriotism, national security and fighting terror'
| (typical neocon-Republican drivel), but noting that war is a huge
| profit center for various interests, that's not really allowed.
|
| For example, the Iraq War really was related to oil - Saddam had
| no WMDs, no ties with Al Qaeda, but he was moving his oil money
| out of the petrodollar recycling system, which was a huge threat
| to global dollar hegemony and the balance-of-payements issue (see
| capital accounts vs. current accounts). Plus, it was a huge cash
| cow for government contracts and the military procurement system,
| which always gets hungry during peacetime. GW Bush and the
| neocons of course sold this in their preferred manner.
|
| The same thing happened with Libya and Syria, only now it was the
| other set of talking points - although again, Qaddafi was
| promoting pan-African unity, an alternative currency,
| independence from Europe and the USA on oil sales, closer ties to
| Russia and China, etc. Assad backed out of a Saudi-USA-Israeli
| pipeline deal in 2009 and went for the Russia-Iran pipeline
| instead (plus lots of electricity integration with Iran), so
| Obama signed off on the CIA overthrow/regime change directive. If
| you want more strong evidence that their 'humanitarian
| democractic' rhetoric was nonsense, look at how they treated the
| pro-democracy protests in Bahrain (crushed by Saudi tanks) or the
| Saudi assault on Yemen.
|
| It's all pretty farcical. Just admit that maintaining a global
| financial empire is pretty difficult without engaging in covert
| regime change and military dominance, already. Stop pretending
| it's about self-defense or good works - I mean Ukraine is all
| about control of natural gas sales to Europe, plus another multi-
| billion injection into the domestic weapons manufacturing
| complex.
| satellites wrote:
| To anyone curious about exploring this angle more, I recommend
| Noam Chomsky's book "Imperial Ambitions." It's a collection of
| interview transcripts where he discusses the US wars in the
| Middle East and the political and economic motivations behind
| them. It's very informative.
|
| But of course, American leadership will never break the facade
| of doing "good." The propaganda is too effective. It's way
| easier to maintain false narratives that keep the population
| looking the other way than to come out and say why you really
| want to invade other countries.
| tchalla wrote:
| > There's a huge taboo in the United States against explicitly
| pointing out the economic agendas behind foreign wars.
|
| The taboo is a feature, not a bug.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Public_Informatio...
| lr4444lr wrote:
| A taboo? Maybe I was (un?)fortunate to be on a college campus
| during the launch of the second Iraq War, but the "war for oil"
| commonplace was the dominant narrative. Anyone offering an
| alternative hypothesis besides that, or GW Bush finishing his
| father's legacy from 1991 was practically laughed at.
| satellites wrote:
| True, but that's on the bubble of a college campus. In the
| media and in non-college circles it was close to heresy to
| criticize the war during the first few years. Much more so to
| say it was a profit-driven sham.
|
| Not to say no one was speaking out about it, but the vastly
| dominant narrative was to support the war effort and ignore
| the corruption.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| I strongly believe it was a combination of bush finishing his
| daddy's legacy + Hussein playing into the narrative to try to
| gain power and attention.Adam curtis' hypernormalization BBC
| documentary is a very good intro to the topic: it was very
| eye opening, I had no idea that (according to many western
| intelligence outfits) _almost certainly_ Qaddafi was NOT
| responsible for pan an lockerbie. Why he didn 't deny it and
| why the intelligence agencies didn't bother going after the
| truth is answered by curtis' thesis.
| [deleted]
| Keysh wrote:
| > The same thing happened with Libya and Syria, only now it was
| the other set of talking points - although again, Qaddafi was
| promoting pan-African unity, an alternative currency,
| independence from Europe and the USA on oil sales, closer ties
| to Russia and China, etc. Assad backed out of a Saudi-USA-
| Israeli pipeline deal in 2009 and went for the Russia-Iran
| pipeline instead (plus lots of electricity integration with
| Iran), so Obama signed off on the CIA overthrow/regime change
| directive.
|
| Oh, bollocks. In what universe did the US _go to war_ with
| Assad 's regime? The US tepidly tried arming a few of the (non-
| fundamentalist) rebel groups once they appeared, but nothing
| more than that. (Presumably you think the Arab Spring uprisings
| in Tunisia and Egypt were caused by the CIA, too, for some
| unfathomable reason.) And how, exactly, has the US _profited_
| monetarily from what happened in Libya and Syria?
|
| (Gaddafi was actually getting _closer_ to the US and Europe; in
| 2004 he gave up his nuclear weapons program in return for
| better relations with the West. As for "pan-African unity" --
| sure, from the guy who invaded Chad to steal land from it. No
| one took his bombast seriously.)
| rayiner wrote:
| There's no taboo about it. I was spouting the "we invaded Iraq
| for the oil" theory myself when I was a college student at the
| time. But in hindsight we didn't get any oil out of that war.
| We weren't even trying.
|
| The intervening 20 years has made clear that there's no
| realpolitik rational decision making at play here. Take Ukraine
| for example. Is there oil in Ukraine? No, it's Russia that has
| the oil. So why do we give a shit about Ukraine? Because
| Americans really are just that childishly idealistic when it
| comes to foreign policy. They believe in good versus evil and
| that America needs to intervene on the side of good.
| tdba wrote:
| I used to believe the Iraq War was about oil too, but the
| theory doesn't really stand up when you consider that there
| were several much easier ways for the US to secure an oil
| supply in the early 2000s (as other commenters have noted).
| Instead, I suggest you read about the Wolfowitz Doctrine
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfowitz_Doctrine), named after
| Paul Wolfowitz, the man who CNN in 2003 called the "Godfather
| of the Iraq War" (https://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/12/29/ti
| mep.wolfowitz.t...). Enjoy the rabbit hole.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Exactly. The us did not get any oil out of Iraq anyways, most
| of it is being extracted by a French company (total) iirc.
| yesbut wrote:
| Well, it was for oil. We even had the Oil for Food
| sanctions program in the lead up. The result didn't work
| out in the US' favor, Iraq basically kicked us out.
|
| But ultimately I think the oil was a secondary goal. The
| goal was, and is, endless military conflict as a means to
| funnel public funds into the military industrial complex.
| It doesn't matter if "we win" or not, hell we haven't won a
| war in decades. The point is to maintain persistent
| instability as a motivator for continued military budget
| increases. Ukraine is a prime example. All NATO member
| spending has increased, as has India, China, Iran, and
| Brazil. The media and politicians just use the "spread
| democracy" type rhetoric as a sales pitch for the public.
| simonh wrote:
| I've noticed a tendency in the US to assume that everything
| that happens in the world is caused by internal US interests.
| That all international issues get re-cast in domestic political
| terms.
|
| Did the US start the Libyan civil war? No, in fact the US was
| one of the last of the western militaries to get involved,
| after Canada, France and the UK. The US initially played a
| minor role.
|
| Did the US instigate the Syrian civil war? Again, no, the US
| only involved when IS got involved.
|
| I watched an interview with Tulsi Gabbard where she said the
| Ukraine War was caused by US corporations that profit from
| selling weapons. I mean what's the theory, that Lockheed
| persuaded Putin to invade Ukraine? It's absurd. I get that she
| hates the military industrial complex, and maybe she has many
| valid reasons, but in this case she's delusional.
|
| I'm not at all saying there aren't factions in the US that do
| advocate military adventurism, and profit from it. That's a
| real thing. The second Gulf war is an example, I'll give you
| that one, but even in that case that was just one of many
| factors and I don't think it would have been decisive by
| itself. Also yes, the west absolutely compromises principles
| for geopolitical and economic interests. But this idea that all
| foreign conflicts are a plot by the military industrial complex
| is a bit absurd. It's not always all about you, guys.
| vkou wrote:
| The petrodollar is an interesting theory, but I have strong
| doubts about it. Global dollar-denominated oil trade is a tiny
| drop in the bucket of global dollar-denominated trade - not a
| sacred cornerstone that must be protected.
|
| Geo-political power games (Gulf War I) and outright stupidity
| (Gulf War II) seem like the more likely catalysts for the Iraq
| war (And you noted a few of the causes of the Libyan one).
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Public opinion and conflict seem to have a complex relation and
| predictable phases that follow the seasons of war.
|
| Before the show starts, jingoism is emergent and it ought to be
| illegal to rattle sabres and call for blood where peace is still
| possible. That changes quickly, there is a definite threshold.
|
| Once the game is on, one has to move with the crowd. To not
| support the war is demoralising, treacherous even. And this rises
| as the first body bags come home and mothers weep.
|
| In the middle phase, people are stoic and quiet. Soldiers have "a
| job to do" and we must "grin and bear it".
|
| Without swift victory, then comes the point of fatigue and
| economic pain. Too many dead children on the TV. But the
| protestors are in a minority and need great courage to point the
| way to an exit. That's when tactical silencing of dissent can
| happen. The idea that opposing the war is the same as siding with
| the enemy comes to the fore.
|
| As the tide turns, even millions on the streets (Vietnam, Iraq),
| or the advice of generals (Afghanistan) cannot overcome the pride
| of miscalculating leaders. But at that point public opinion has
| passed the threshold the other way.
|
| By the end it is shameful to still support a lost war (and
| sometimes, depending on the cost, even a victorious one).
|
| Long before it ended WWI was universally seen as "insane" by all
| sides.
|
| Perhaps my historical education is wanting, but only the second
| world war seems to have a clear narrative of victory over evil,
| with a constancy of support for Allied triumph which I think even
| the exhausted Germans and Japanese felt toward the end. That
| "just war" model is wheeled out and is still active apropos
| Ukraine.
| lettergram wrote:
| I recommend reading books from the German perspective of WWII.
|
| > Perhaps my historical education is wanting, but only the
| second world war seems to have a clear narrative of victory
| over evil, with a constancy of support for Allied triumph which
| I think even the exhausted Germans and Japanese felt toward the
| end.
|
| The Germans largely were destitute after WWI and they weren't
| allowed heavy industry, had to pay restitution, etc. combined
| with hyper-inflation and famine it was rough for the 15 years
| or more after the war.
|
| Combine with the west pushing their ideology, including
| eugenics. It created a situation where the Germans felt they
| were being crushed. Similarly, the US cut off oil and resources
| to Japan. They felt like the world was against them. They had
| to quickly lash out to gain control of oil and rubber supplies
| (hence war in the pacific). Germans went after the oil rich
| regions in Africa and Russia / towards Iran.
|
| Ultimately, it was a war of resources. Japan and Germany felt
| they were being boxed in and attempted to assert themselves.
| They both lost and in the 80 year since they've been dominated
| by the Anglo-Saxon culture. Both Germany and Japan do have
| their flavor of the culture, but theirs a Starbucks on most
| corners, a western take on the world and largely global-centric
| world view.
|
| If you want to see a contrast, Russia, China, Iran, etc kept
| their cultural views and have not been nearly as Anglo-ized;
| it's hard to say the Germans or Japanese were wrong in their
| assessment.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Thanks for thoughtful comments.
|
| I do read widely and appreciate your suggestion. What do you
| recommend as the must-read, accessible and honest and
| intelligent account of civilian life in Germany during that
| period. Thanks.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm not the OP but like reading about the interwar period,
| particularly in Russia. You really can't view The Second
| World War in isolation, as it was directly related to World
| War One, particular in Germany and Russia. It was utter
| chaos politically and following any thread though the
| period is very complicated. It isn't really about Germany,
| but gives an idea of the complexity of the era and of
| German politics, Lenin on the Train by Catherine Merridale
| is a good read.
| AntiRemoteWork wrote:
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