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First they came for the Trumpists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trumpist.

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.

(to be continued apparently!)



Yes but the Trumpist part is nuanced. Armed people storming political organisations after the call of the ousted person who holds the power of the state, while expecting martial law and denying election results with claims convincing no-one but themselves is when people say somebody should take care these people.

It's fundamentally different from people exploring or even advocationg for economical models like communism or questioning geology like the shape of the earth.

This is more on par with islamists stockpiling for the jihad and actually taking actions to do it or a looner posting on 4chan about shooting kids and actually go to the school with guns and fire at people.

There's a difference between discussing ideas and organising an action, though both are done using the exact same tools - speech. It makes sense to disable the communications of the adversary who is in process of taking you out.


Unfortunately there is a huge double standard with this - for Trump, we're mindreading his words were meant to be violent, whereas for his opponents, "context matters", despite unrest and violent action from all sides.

I don't advocate for violent speech, but it's important at times like this to be even-handed in our policies, because as I've said before, when a group or specific groups start feeling their voices are being silenced, then violence follows soon after.


How much of this is on Trump is to be decided by the people who are going to judge him, if ever. Meanwhile everyone is entitled to have opinions on it and advocate these opinions.

However, the reality is that we have an overwhelming evidence of dangerous people doing something malicious and getting organised on some platforms, including but not limited to FB. Therefore people in immediate danger and the people who are directly assaulted or feel threatened demand actions to be taken. It's either let it run and turn into civil war or break the circuit before it goes any further.

Let's not pretend that this is about intellectual discussions, it's literally about taking power with force. People actually died and they did not die when looting or anything like that but when they were faced with counter force when they attempt to achieve their objective.

You either let it run its course and have a memorial day afterwards where you distribute medals to the best killers who survived or intervene in stop the conflict. Some people simply don't believe in the wonders of the war or don't think that there's a good enough cause for having one and currently it happens that these people are in control of the systems.


"The Communists" in Niemöller's "First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist" [1] were not "the people advocating for economical models", but (in his eyes) violent revolutionists who set the parliament building on fire.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire


Could be but the context here is about caring or not caring for wronging the people who you don't associate with. Putting communists in camp and not caring about them is very different from raiding their HQ when or after planning for a violent attack. I don't think that he was advocating for the right of the communist to convene and plan attacks.

If the government starts collecting QAnon people from the streets and putting them in the camp, then it would be a question about caring or not caring about them since I am not a QAnon. Besides that I would very much like be attacked by QAnon and my choice for government be respected by QAnon and if they do not that, then they are not the people that "the man" came for but they are "the man" who is coming for me and thus I would like them be stopped.




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