And I suppose you're arguing that's a good thing? Everything you said could have been applied to suspected terrorists during the early 2000s, and suspected communists during the McCarthy era. Do you support those actions as well?
To be clear, I'm not against punishing the entities listed. I'm against punishing the entities listed without due process.
Or to put it another way, Osama bin Laden didn't get much due process. But that is the difference between (allegedly) committing a crime and being a threat to a government.
Alleged criminals get due process, threats get "dealt with", for some given value of "dealt with".
Of course then the danger is that governments will see threats that aren't really there and try to turn people into threats rather than criminals to "deal" with them. But to my mind that is an argument for better oversight of the use of the tools that governments have, rather than just removing the "threat" toolkit and leaving only the "criminal" toolkit.
I get your point (that ethics and law matter -- including basic principles of law where international law is not codified), and on a certain level this is valid.
But historically speaking, once things ratchet up to a certain level and scope of barbarity (as we are seeing unfold in real time) -- it's just not realistic to sit and wait for a "fair" solution to emerge (in the near term or ever). People are going to be hurt (and treated unfairly) one way or another. It's just a question of who is going to take the hit, and in what form. So if it's at least arguably plausible that measures that inconvenience a few individuals in the top .1 percent net-worth-wise might bring this insane situation to a close sooner rather than later -- I can go with that.
And there's no reason we can't "rub" a bit of due process into the situation -- by saying "OK sure, you can file an appeal, and have a shot at getting your toys and baubles back -- after Russia returns to its borders, and Putin has been decisively removed from power."
That both involve a skip of some civil liberties is hardly a meaningful similarity
They certainly weren't considered "innocent" back in the day, at least according to some of the newspaper editorials.
>A Los Angeles Times editorial dated February 28, 1942, stated that:
>As to a considerable number of Japanese, no matter where born, there is unfortunately no doubt whatever. They are for Japan; they will aid Japan in every way possible by espionage, sabotage and other activity; and they need to be restrained for the safety of California and the United States. And since there is no sure test for loyalty to the United States, all must be restrained. Those truly loyal will understand and make no objection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
>The behavior of Shintani and the Haradas was included in an official Navy report dated January 26, 1942. The report's author Navy Lieutenant C. B. Baldwin wrote: "The fact that the two Niʻihau Japanese who had previously shown no anti-American tendencies went to the aid of the pilot when Japanese domination of the island seemed possible, indicate[s] [the] likelihood that Japanese residents previously believed loyal to the United States may aid Japan if further Japanese attacks appear successful."
Since it will be governments (maybe) seizing those assets and not members of HN - would that be sufficient to not horrify you?
I'm not arabic/muslim so the chances of me being targeted by anti-terror regulation is probably fairly low. Yet, I'm still against them. This comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...#Text
And bypassing due process is also authoritarian. It might be in service of an anti-authoritarian goal, but that just gives me "the world must learn of our peaceful ways, by force" vibes.
Reactions to war a blunt like this. It could have been avoided only by Russia.
It's quite literally bypassing due process, unless I'm misunderstanding something here.
1. Will there be a trial? The fact that the assets were seized without trial, and that no suggestions of a trial be held suggests that OP (and most people here) are not advocating for trials. If that's the case, I have a hard time understanding how that could be considered "due process".
2. what crimes did the oligarchs actually commit? when was "being a russian oligarch" criminalized? there were russian sanctions that were passed, but those do not give the government authority to expropriate assets
3. any laws passed to expropriate assets sound suspiciously like bill of attainder, which would be banned by the constitution. At best it would allow you to expropriate assets of people who still have connections to putin/russia or whatever.
No it is not, and even if it were, it's decidedly not the brand of authoritarianism that was being warned about in the poem.
Your entire argument seems to hinge on this idea that heretofore unspecified "due process" (what process is due, you haven't suggested) has been violated.
Yet as far as I'm aware, all appropriate processes and procedures were followed by our elected representatives in the course of levying sanctions against foreign nationals. Please point out where any process that was so due was circumvented. What exactly is the due process being violated?
To understand how sanctioning foreign nationals is not authoritarianism, consider the process by which the sanctions came to be. We came together in November of 2020 to elect a new government, entrusted with among other duties, the task of executing a foreign policy. That foreign policy is being executed now, which involves seizing assets of foreign individuals engaged in waging war against an ally. The seizing of assets is done under law, which was written and passed by our elected representatives, and signed into law buy our elected head of state. If at any point in time we deem their actions unfit to represent us, we are able to elect a new government to replace them. This is not authoritarianism. Calling this process authoritarian gives Putin a pass, because it's not at all like what happens in Russia.
I'm sorry you feel like some Russian billionaire's "due process" was violated, but that's simply not the case, and even if it were that is not "authoritarian". Not every bit of government overreach is "authoritarianism".
> that just gives me "the world must learn of our peaceful ways, by force" vibes.
I'm sorry, but as a point of fact it's government force that is used to preserve and enforce property rights. How do you think private property remains private if not for the government's monopoly to arrest and imprison? Peace and goodwill toward men is not keeping the property of Russian oligarchs private -- it's the threat of imprisonment for violating them.
My advice to you is if you're really worried about the issue of civil asset forfeiture, this is not the right context to argue against it. Billionaire Russian oligarchs are not a sympathetic group to champion, and it's really in poor taste in the moment. Your effort is better spent fighting concrete injustices faced by ordinary Americans, rather than making dozens of posts on HN defending... Russian oligarchs engaged in a war of aggression.
You realize that sanctions =/= expropriation, and we were talking about expropriation?
>I'm sorry, but as a point of fact it's government force that is used to preserve and enforce property rights. How do you think private property remains private if not for the government's monopoly to arrest and imprison? Peace and goodwill toward men is not keeping the property of Russian oligarchs private -- it's the threat of imprisonment for violating them.
I'm not against "force" here, I'm against invoking authoritarian policies to fight authoritarianism. If there are some anti-due process terrorists running around, and the government decides respond by sending them to gulags/gitmo without trial, they shouldn't get to claim the moral high ground. At the very least, the irony shouldn't be lost on them.
>My advice to you is if you're really worried about the issue of civil asset forfeiture, this is not the right context to argue against it. Billionaire Russian oligarchs are not a sympathetic group to champion, and it's really in poor taste in the moment. Your effort is better spent fighting concrete injustices faced by ordinary Americans, rather than making dozens of posts on HN defending... Russian oligarchs engaged in a war of aggression.
Yeah, but the whole point of due process is to protect the unsympathetic. If they're sympathetic they can at least try to win in the court of public opinion. For the unsympathetic, due process is literally all they have.
That's .... the point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveilla...
You realize that due process isn't something that's reserved for US citizens, right?
> These are Putin's economic hitmen. Fuck them.
Note that I objected to the lack of due processes, not to seizing their assets. Until they have been granted due process, they're merely accused of being "Putin's economic hitmen".
People are dying every day -- obviously lawsuits and criminal trials take years in complex cases. A lot more people would be dead by then. Our goal in the immediate term is to stop the war. One of the strongest non-kinetic tools we have for that is these sanctions.
When the war ends, then we can figure out due process... for these guys hundred million dollar yachts. I'm sure they can live without a cruise to a resort island in the mean time while we try to save lives in Mariupol.
OP isn't talking about freezing the funds, OP is literally asking for the funds to be redistributed right now.
As Dan Carlin said, what's terrible about authoritarian countries is that fighting them forces you to act like them. If we set ourselves boundaries only we follow, we're doomed to lose.
Following the regular process just gives an advantage to the enemy because he knows he can just put all his foreign assets in the hands of private oligarchs and we'll have our hands tied behind our backs by our own noble principles.
If we don't act bluntly (like confiscating oligarch wealth) we have no leverage at all.
We _can_ afford to give rapists proper due process because society still functions afterwards. But look at what happened during the height of Mafia power. Both Italy and the US had to change the regular due process (RICO, Maxi Trial) because it cannot work when individuals are conspiring behind the scene.
And Russia functions as a giant mafia state.
Have the courts freeze the assets of the accused when there is that risk.
The OP claimed that due process is impossible, so I showed how it can work. Funding or plotting genocide would probably be a serious crime anyways, so why not have a proper trial instead of cutting corners?
A functioning justice system is the bedrock of democracy, and it's the last place where you'd want to be making shortcuts. Not only would missteps cause reputational damage for democracies, it's going to ultimately hurt you too.
I'm OK living in a world where elites might have higher risks of having their property rights violated during crisis times.
If you're approaching this from a consequentialist perspective, would you also be for preemptively seizing billionaire's assets the moment they're accused of kicking a puppy or whatever? After all, it's "also not a huge grievance in the grand scheme of things, so it's not really a thorny ethical problem".
>I'm OK living in a world where elites might have higher risks of having their property rights violated during crisis times.
Sounds great in theory until one day you're declared an elite[1]. Apparently 16% of peasants were considered kulaks in 1912, although the definition was later changed by the Bolsheviks so I'm not sure how much % actually got persecuted. Regardless I'd say the typical HN reader is at a risk of being considered a kulak.