It'd be nice if you could offer some opposing arguments to the south atlantic industrial zone project instead of saying oh noes how awful and dragging this beef across threads (19 by my count now). But nary an argument do you present. You're rank and incapable.
Your worldview is one where, if the views of the masses don't agree with yours, it must be because they are sheeple shaped and led by the ruling classes, rather than that they just don't agree with you.
I don't really feel the need to make arguments against your concentration camp fantasies, because few people need to be persuaded. My time is better spent alerting people to the authoritarian extremists in our midst.
You introduced this cross-thread beef to this thread. You say Tony Blair is no extremistyet he presided over the very real rendition of people using British bases to countries that very really tortured them. Under his administration MI6 were present when people were tortured. I don't know what happened to your moral compass to bring you to this point where you defend a war criminal as not extreme. Before your next post you might like to think carefully: you seem to think real life concentration camps in which Tony Blair was complicit (Guantanamo, the CIA black prisons, not to mention the immigration detention centres in this country) are unimportant and unextreme while my notion of the siaz is somehow worse than these real life abominations. You should take a long hard look at yourself but your moral myopia is well known
No it isn't. Nowhere have I argued that and your bad faith posting style strikes again. In fact I don't believe that at all. The notion that the ideas of the ruling class effectively becomes the dominant ideology throughout society (ideological or cultural hegemony) is fairly well established. No one is calling the wider population "sheeple" for we are all products of our environment, family, education system, custom and general social behaviour, the influence of mass and (now) social media, laws, rules and regulations... and that includes, in varying degrees, those who oppose the current status quo. However, some people come into conflict with the system. Maybe this conflict happens at work, at school, been subjected to stop-and-search once too often, or are trying to live a life that's fairly humane and some of the mainstream stuff seems just a little inhumane... or maybe they happened to read something a little more challenging than the usual bigoted brain rot from the Daily Mail or the Sun and instead, now want more than just bigger cages and longer chains.
I don't think a particularly large proportion did support the invasion of Iraq. The fact that I think that a high proportion of the population did not agree with it shows that millions of people had a much better grasp of what is humane, ethical and could distinguish right from wrong than their political leaders have - that's in spite of the ideological hegemony of ruling class ideas (see above link). So again, absolutely not "sheeple". Though yes, admittedly the vast majority did not actively oppose it but that's a whole different kettle of fish.
Yet apparently, basing it on the opinions of political leaders like Tony Blair and GW Bush is okay? Because that's where your line of argument ends up: the leader is right, might makes right.
Hardly anyone marched in favour of the 2nd Iraq war. Just a handful of tiny 'patriotic' demonstrations. Once the war started, and it was over pretty quickly, there was an initial widespread feeling of 'let's support our boys'. Even then anti war protests continued at a local level. Then the majority anti war feeling reasserted itself and became dominant. Only a minority of extremists would now justify that war
And it rapidly became clear that lies were needed to justify the going to war. Colin Powell fed lies to the United Nations which he said he didn't know were lies at the time. MPs were lied to. It beggars belief that anyone would try going down the path teuchter's gong along.
So in your view notions held by a quarter of the population can't be extremist because they are held by a quarter of the population.
Correct.
You're not very interested in it or you'd not be so silly. You're measuring extremism against the wrong point, which is measure of support, rather than - as has been suggested - what's right. You wouldn't say republicans in the United States were extreme on the basis of their electoral support despite the fact their current views make George w bush look a positive moderate. You wouldn't say Hitler was an extremist in 1932 when he received 37% of the vote in that years presidential election. There are so many examples of obvious flaws with your view it is perverse of you to continue to advance it. If it is your actual objective to adopt a useful definition that is.
Nobody with any sense of right and wrong would back concentration camps for them, it’s a ridiculous idea and a vast waste of resources.
I'm measuring it against prevailing views on the relevant question in the relevant context.
How small would a substantial part be before it became insubstantial for your definition? Because if you're using an actual definition that'd be an important part of it. 1/5? 1/10? 1/20?
It's not silly, it just shows there's a lot of extremists about. You're defining extremism as merely a numbers game. But as danny la rouge pointed out, the large numbers of Trumpists in the US, who hold some frankly bizarre views, could not be classed as extremists by your definition because there's quite a lot of them.
I mean, I'm not sure I'd have used the term "extremist" myself. It's a bit too vague to use in pretty much every circumstance, not just of Blair. However, when the debate arose here, I could immediately see which side I fell on.
I think most people would say if you need to tell lies like the 45 minute bit and the dodgy dossier then your case for going to war is on thin ice. And 15 years after he left office having more than half a million people opposing his knighthood indicates that his record sits ill with very many people
Dunno. It can't be precisely determined. If a view is held by 1 in a thousand of a group, then I'd say it is probably reasonable to call it and extremist view, in the context of that group. If it's 1in 100 then maybe. If it's 1 in 4 then it's silly.
1. very
You sir, are an extremist!
