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Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by amirkdv on Friday November 13, 2020 @12:23PM (#25084721)
Genuinely curious: what are some historically significant examples of "false positives"? By which I assume you mean a time when people rose to resist something they didn't really have to.
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by nostrademons on Friday November 13, 2020 @12:48PM (#25085100)
To elaborate on aazaa's comment: think of the labels "patriot" and "terrorist" and think of how frequently they correlate with "winner" and "loser".

The Founding Fathers were patriots, because America is now the dominant world superpower. But there are a number of groups that attempted to do to America exactly what America did to the British. Daniel Shay, Tecumseh, Sitting Bull, the entire Confederacy, the Anarchist movement of the early 1900s, the Business Plot of 1933, McCarthy, Vietnamese nationalism, Osama bin Laden. How does history remember them now?

Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by alavesto on Friday November 13, 2020 @01:30PM (#25085665)
This isn't to be taken as a show of support at all, but I had similar thoughts when the story of the kidnapping plot against Michigan gov Gretchen Whitmer broke. The militia had been heavily encouraged by multiple undercover FBI agents-provocateur who themselves were integral in engineering the plot - and it's really unclear whether the militia would have even considering doing such a thing without these agents egging them on and offering to provide explosives.

If the British Empire had the technology and infrastructure of today's intelligence agencies, the founding fathers would have been arrested as terrorists before they could get 10 people in a room together. There would have been some undercover agent of the Crown showing up to meetings trying to convince George Washington that they needed to go kill the king - and history would remember them all as nothing more than evil terrorists justly apprehended for plotting violence against the state.

Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by awb on Friday November 13, 2020 @08:08PM (#25089387)
If the FBI did that, that's entrapment and might be an eligible defense. However, if the FBI assisted or even encouraged an existing plot, then I don't think it would qualify.

> Entrapment is a practice whereby a law enforcement agent or agent of the state induces a person to commit a "crime" that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit

> Depending on the law in the jurisdiction, the prosecution may be required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not entrapped or the defendant may be required to prove that they were entrapped as an affirmative defense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment

Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by ip26 on Friday November 13, 2020 @02:27PM (#25086352)
I'm not deeply versed in the Whitmer case, but Federal agents are supposed to follow a set of guidelines to avoid entrapment, which is what you're describing & is supposed to cause the case to be thrown out.
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by spinny on Saturday November 14, 2020 @05:50AM (#25091474)
Remember, remember, the 5th of November ...
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by triceratops on Friday November 13, 2020 @03:41PM (#25087213)
> How does history remember them now?

You've picked a set of figures whose historical legacy spans a very wide spectrum. At one end (largely positive) are Tecumseh and Sitting Bull, and at the other are (largely negative) are Osama and the Confederacy. Shays sits somewhere in the middle, mostly because other than history buffs no one even knows who that is.

Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by nostrademons on Friday November 13, 2020 @04:45PM (#25087870)
That was deliberate. The point of this sub-thread is that historical narratives get written and re-written by the victors, and the "right" side of history depends on when you're located in history.

Tecumseh and Sitting Bull have positive legacies because Native Americans are not realistic threats to the United States at this point. They weren't always viewed as such: see for example the (fraudulent) Speech at Tuckabatchee, which indicates how people might've viewed Tecumseh in 1860:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh#Speech_at_Tuckaubatch...

Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by justinator on Friday November 13, 2020 @01:11PM (#25085438)
Sitting Bull is in interesting company.
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by aazaa on Friday November 13, 2020 @12:32PM (#25084895)
History is written by the victors. From this perspective, every successful resistance was necessary and every failed resistance was not.

Take the American Civil War, for example. If you (still) believe in the cause, it was a true positive. If you don't, then it was a false positive.

Or, to be less inflammatory, consider the French Revolution. Was that a true positive or false positive, especially considering the aftermath?

Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by gfodor on Friday November 13, 2020 @01:44PM (#25085849)
I think this is probably true for armed conflict, but for civil conflicts in liberal societies, I think it's fair to assume that over time things converge to a more moral and just society over time. (So, the "victors" can be presumed legitimately moral.) However, this has an assumption that a society is liberal, and provides the free exchange of ideas, which is something that seems to ebb-and-flow itself.
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by chordalkeyboard on Friday November 13, 2020 @02:18PM (#25086228)
The free exchange of ideas falls prey to the paradox of tolerance.
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by svrb on Saturday November 14, 2020 @01:43AM (#25090699)
The paradox of tolerance demonstrates a fatal flaw in the concept of "tolerance", not in the free exchange of ideas. I have become increasingly convinced that the concept of "tolerance" has been corrupted over time until it became susceptible to the paradox, and thus able to act as a strawman of (classical) liberal beliefs.

You will find absolutely nothing in "equality before the law" which falls victim to the paradox.

Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by chordalkeyboard on Saturday November 14, 2020 @03:15PM (#25095270)
The paradox is that you can exchange ideas freely until someone uses your openness to new ideas to argue against the free exchange of ideas; whereas people who don’t believe in the free exchange of ideas will not allow you to advocate for the free exchange of ideas because they don’t believe in the free exchange if ideas and the free exchange of ideas is one of the ideas they prohibit.
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by gfodor on Friday November 13, 2020 @02:52PM (#25086611)
Only if you don't understand the paradox.
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by chordalkeyboard on Friday November 13, 2020 @03:12PM (#25086899)
Would you mind explaining it then? I feel like this is a major problem in society today and I'd be edified by exposure to a solution.
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by watwut on Friday November 13, 2020 @01:49PM (#25085909)
Afaik, no serious historian is talking about French revolution in terms of single good side vs single bad side.
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by mturmon on Friday November 13, 2020 @02:54PM (#25086646)
How about the people who thought UN troops in black helicopters would take over the US? Eg, US Congressman Helen Chenoweth, from Idaho.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_helicopter

Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by awb on Friday November 13, 2020 @12:47PM (#25085089)
The anti Women's right to vote movement, anti Civil Rights movement, anti Gay marriage movement, etc. A vocal minority was stoking fears of the implications of recognizing the rights of the disenfranchised as the imminent breakdown of society, family and law and order. Turns out they were just bigoted.
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by malinens on Saturday November 14, 2020 @02:16AM (#25090782)
all of the anti things You just wrote had quite popular support in society at that time
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by mensetmanusman on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:57PM (#25089912)
Arab Spring has been a disaster.
Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by mongol on Friday November 13, 2020 @01:46PM (#25085875)
Sweden in the past 30-40 years.

Perhaps not historically significant, yet, but clear as night and day when you have lived here over the course of that time.

What has happened in Sweden during this time? It was until very recently almost impossible to have any public, critical opinion about migration without risking being labeled racist. Why? Not sure. But seems to me, a reaction due to fear that Sweden could evolve to something like Nazi Germany. Which of course was not going to happen.

Re:They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) by BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 on Friday November 13, 2020 @02:24PM (#25086310)
Been in Sweden last year. Couldn't buy almost anything with cash. People have not noticed how an important liberty has been taken from them. Once cash is gone, government has complete information about you, and complete control over you, no shackles needed.