China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

Re:China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs by martythemaniak on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:00AM (#24304320)

A really good "code smell" for political bullshit is when a person or idea is simultaneously an ineffectual loser and a grave, powerful, insidious force. Closely related to the notion that the leader is simultaneously both a powerful winner and a powerless victim.

"cancel culture" here is both powerful and dangerous enough to bring down Western civilization, yet so laughably weak it cannot even pretend to solve real problems.

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Re:China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs by heymijo on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:35AM (#24304628)

I first heard this idea articulated in Umberto Eco's article on Ur-Fascism or Eternal Fascism [0,1]. First link is the abridged list. The second is a full feature article.

From Point #8

"by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak"

[0] http://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fasci... [1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/

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Re:China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs by martythemaniak on Friday August 28, 2020 @03:42PM (#24309110)

I started reading that article, it's good, thanks.

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Re:China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs by FeepingCreature on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:12AM (#24304409)

The part that usually completes this idea is that the person or idea only has power because people give it to them. So the person in itself is not powerful but they are given power.

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Re:China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs by AbrahamParangi on Friday August 28, 2020 @10:44AM (#24305468)

Respectfully I think the Umberto Eco line is a surface observation.

Any strength misdirected is simultaneously “too strong” and “too weak”.

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Re:China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs by coldtea on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:11AM (#24304400)

>A really good "code smell" for political bullshit is when a person or idea is simultaneously an ineffectual loser and a grave, powerful, insidious force.

I've read that somewhere.

By the same "heuristic" anti-Trump talk is "political bullshit", because he is said to be simultanously a buffon/ineffectual loser and a very powerful insidious force.

But of course such heuristics are themselves usually selectively applied to opinions which those applying them already agree are "political bullshit".

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Re:China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs by lucretian on Friday August 28, 2020 @10:15AM (#24305091)

this is an obviously bad analogy. trump is clearly a moron, and also holds the most powerful position in the world. those are not contradictory in any way.

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