Flippanarchy
Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.
This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.
Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Rules
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If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text
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If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.
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Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
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Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.
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No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.
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This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.
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No shaming people for being anti-electoralism. This should be obvious from the above point but apparently we need to make it obvious to the turbolibs who can't control themselves. You have the rest of lemmy to moralize.
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
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I mean, do we? I'm don't think I'm convinced that every public school teacher in Germany from 1933 to 1945 was a Nazi.
Yeah, I'm not really sold on the 'entire government' thing. Some chemist testing soil samples for the Department of Agriculture isn't part of the problem - that guy's working for us.
ICE? 100% Nazis. There is no justifiable role in that organization. But we can (and should) purge that shit without crippling services that are actually benevolent.
Yeah i l don't see how a park service maintenance worker scrubbing a toilet is supporting the Trump regime
Thoreau would like a word with you
I used to loved Thoreau, until I actually read Thoreau.
That's a lot more than a word. I don't have enough free time to spend it on a 16 page opinion article, but feel free tldr it and I'll give my 2 cents.
Henry Thoreau was a great American author and abolitionist who wrote, among other important works, the essay Civil Disobedience. Written in 1849, the essay was written after Thoreau's imprisonment for refusing to pay taxes in protest of slavery. The thesis of this essay claims that individuals have a moral obligation to defy unjust laws and institutions. He specifically implores government workers to resign in protest due to this moral obligation.
Here's an audio version for those that are curious but don't feel like reading it
What's the argument, though? Defy unjust laws --> quit govt positions even if they're an actual public service and not actually supporting the regime is quite the jump. It's cool that he's a great author and all, but an opinion piece is still an opinion piece - whether its good or not (and I'm assuming it is) depends on the reasoning therein.
Some absolutely horrific things have been done in the name of advancing healthcare... should I quit my job as a surgical tech because of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study? Wouldn't it be better to stay in healthcare and blow the whistle if I see shit like that starting up again?
I'm not gonna be able to condense a 12 page essay into a digestible comment but essentially (read as stripping this part of all of its nuance): if people lived by the morals they claim, they wouldnt be able to sit idly by/ perpetuate a slave state. Can't have a slave state if the bureaucrats running the slave state refuse to run it anymore. And citizens should not be compelled to pay taxes to an institution they find morally reprehensible.
Fun facts about the Tuskegee experiment, it was funded by the United States Public Health Service, the experiment itself was wholly unnecessary as we had recently found a standard of care that treated syphilis effectively, and almost nothing of value was learned. If the pencil pushers and other associated "little guys" enabling this experiment knew what was happening, they could've shut it down swiftly by bringing the bureaucratic process to a halt in an act of protest.
I'm an EMT, and I've often found myself in situations where it's made me question whether I'm doing the right thing by working, and legitimizing, a medical system that feeds off the exploitation of the general populace and medical workers at large. Instead of quitting, I've settled on stealing medical supplies from hospitals and distributing them during food shares and free markets run by local organizations. I'm also a protest medic and help get people trained up to be protest medics. My attempts at unionizing have fallen flat in the past but I'll still engage co-workers and fellow providers in hospitals to encourage organizing.
The people running the machine have an outsized influence on whether that machine runs or not, no matter what their bosses say. A large enough strike (<10% of the federal workforce) could bring this regime to its knees in a matter of days. I don't wholly agree with Thoreau, but an act of resistance in the spirit of his argument would make a world of difference
Agreed on the vast majority of that.
Now let's say you were employed by the USPHS, or VA, or IHS, or... there are other federal healthcare agencies, right? Anyway- you quit because Trump is a dickhead, and now what? Those supplies you're distributing just got cut off. That doesn't help anything.
The pitch I'd make: if you're working for any part of the govt that's functioning as an oppressor, then you should have quit a long time ago unless you're actively sabotaging. Falling that, better late than never - GTFO now. But if you're working for any other part of the govt, do your job and keep in mind who you serve - hint: it's not your boss. Don't be a silent pencil pusher like the 'little guys' in the Tuskegee experiment, speak the fuck up. But don't just quit - use your position to actually serve the public, whether in an official capacity or akin to what you described.
So... I'm with you mostly, but I do hold that there's a distinction between forces like the ICE Nazis and actual public servants employed by the govt.
Absolutely, individual actions will (almost) never solve systemic problems. The only way government employees quitting would make a bit of difference, while ensuring the welfare of those now unemployed workers, would be through robust organization and community support for the dissenting federal workers.
Dual power is essentially non-existent in the states, and those structures would need to be built in order for a strike like this (and broader resistance movements) to be more than a flash in the pan
There were also Nazi soldiers who didn't want to be there. Like they were told their families would be killed along with the Jews if they did not fight for the Fatherland. They don't get sympathy. It seems like it's an all-or-nothing thing with fascism (on both sides, actually, being for them or against them). So yes, OP likely means the school teachers as well. I don't like that, but we can't really say at this point whether they were teaching good things or bad ones (e.g. state sponsored).
Like teachers in America today being told that they can't teach that it's okay to be Hispanic, Black, or LGBTQ+. Some of them probably still are. Some of them are not. It's hard to know how the numbers actually fall though. But the ones who are teaching hate to children absolutely do deserve to be lumped in with the rest of the movement, by the same logic.
The two-dollar term is "moral luck."
Yep and so they choose to be Nazis.
The nuance you're looking for doesn't exist.
If you were told to rape and murder an 8 year old or you and your family dies, what would you do? Either you're dead or a child rapist and child murderer. There's not some gray area there.
Good thing teaching children is not the same as raping and killing them.
Ok, got you down for child rapist and murder since you dodged the question and I have no doubts that you will neither dodge nor say no when it's a Nazi asking.
You've got a great debate strategy. You must have gone to the same seminars as Charlie Kirk.
You clowns are such a joke
Right, so you're saying the teachers are complicit. I'm saying that's how the logic works. You either take it or leave it. I'm not disagreeing with the OP, I'm clarifying for someone.
If you don't agree with me, that's not as clear.
Anyway, it's all ethics. So in your example, you have one 8 year old who you have to kill. (What you do to them doesn't really matter, except in how it'll fuck up your own memories and dreams and whatnot. But as far as the ethical scales are concerned, your impact to the universe is you killed 1 child. And maybe others know it, maybe they don't — you didn't specify. Now, if you weigh that against just your partner being killed, maybe you've been married a long time, you're both getting up there. You sacrifice yourself and your partner for this one child, as you should. But, what if your family includes three children about the same age? Then you have the classic trolley problem. Your inaction results in the death of the three children (plus whatever other family members). Your cruel action results in the death of one child. There is no easy answer, which is why the trolley problem continues to test people. Personally, my answer to the trolley problem is the inaction — you do nothing, more people die, you blame the trolley. You could have saved them, but by doing nothing, you didn't do a bad thing, you just didn't do a good thing and a bad thing. Ethically I think it's the right call. Not everybody agrees.
We stopped calling any valuable scientist, engineer and entrepreneur a nazi as soon as we could use their skills, cars, or wealth too.
yes. you need an entire nation of nazis to function under complete societal control. nazis have to be in every corner of public life, especially government facing positions. this application of the term doesn't consider only full-fledged allegiance swearing nazis but workers as well who followed whatever orders they were given to keep their heads low and remain out of trouble. if you follow a nazi work ethic, in your nazi culture, hired by a company staffed by nazis, conducting government business through the lens of nazism.. you're a nazi. it doesn't matter if you aren't willingly being one or merely trying to live, you are upholding nazi values.
Well shit, someone better tell the genocide studies professors at state colleges that they're actually Nazis
You mean those that already fled to Spain and Canada?
Those people work for the state, not the federal government.
And this person is talking about all government workers.
It doesn't matter, most federal workers fit as well. Career scientists and engineers at the EPA aren't fucking Nazis
yeah, they are. they are willingly teaching state propaganda which has been fascist for decades just now more openly, and this current administration has destroyed education and instituted their own rules and regulations on what is and isn't allowed to be taught. if you are working for the government in a capacity that puts authority or power in your hands, then yes, you are a little nazi puppet and are therefore a nazi yourself. it doesn't mean you're the same amount of evil as active nazis participating beyond their need to survive.
I'm just trying to keep my state college library's tech running smoothly, and keep the students from having vaping in the 4th floor bathroom. I'm planning a Gaypril book display because the students are home over the summer, so they never see the one I put up for pride month. I know the procedures for if ICE shows up (they're not allowed in non-public buildings, but the library is a public building). I keep snacks, drinks, and a first aid kit in my office in case I have to shelter in place. I'm a member of my union.
I'm trying my best here and so are my coworkers. I don't see myself doing more good working in the private sector.
i don't know if we are at the point where i would apply the "little nazis are everywhere" framework yet but i also can see the argument made for a parallel to Nazi Germany. many average nazis were not ideologically motivated and favored Hitler's economic vision and the promise of restoring Germany. the sweet librarian was a nazi because she was poor and suffering, not because she hated Jews and believed in the supremacy of the Aryan race. but even workers in nazified fields were nazis doing the bidding of the party even if they were resisting in their own ways.
look at it this way: our education in the US has eroded significantly the past 30 years. right-wing policies have dismantled the effectiveness of public education and they have supplemented their own learning methods and material. education standards have been controlled by fascists for quite some time now which is why kids aren't learning fuck all about actual real history. the US has removed and prevented genuine discussion of our past and are propagandizing our students into denying the harms we caused ourselves and the world.
you are a state worker upholding the standards set by the state. the state has been openly fascist since Trump's first presidency. what are you going to do when your school starts telling staff they have to take away certain reading materials if they see students with them? what is your plan if state schools are required to implement policies that control speech and expression? because if your answer is to stay and provide a balance as the opposition you are being naive. you will have to also do their bidding or lose your job, so you'd be fighting fire by pouring water and oil on it.
there has to come a point in this administration where state jobs are seen as vile and avoided and anyone upholding the system should be looked at suspiciously. it doesn't matter if the principal of a high school is a resistance Democrat, because they are still willingly being used to normalize and standardize fascism. they are also nazis.
My job is to improve access to educational resources and to help ease young adults into adulthood/soften life's blows for my students. I can't do that if I'm not at the school.
Librarians are keenly aware of the tension between intellectual freedom and the government. For example, since at least the PATRIOT act we've stopped keeping certain patron records--you can't be compelled to share information you don't have. You think I've not been watching librarians in other states be prosecuted for providing LGBTQ+ material to students? I've been paying attention.
I've not been asked to do anything against my morals. I'm a state employee, not a federal one, so changes made at the federal level get interpreted by my state government before reaching my college and me. TBH, I expect our services to be eroded through lack of funding, rather than through the implementation of new rules. We're too understaffed to effectively implement new rules anyway.
I think the fact that so many people don't seem to grasp this basic concept about how this country functions seems to imply that those services have already been eroded plenty
Your best would be shooting ICE if they come anywhere near the building, not just politely asking them to leave or cowering away when they step near a library.