Comments

  • A new home for TPF
    EDIT: The archive is now available at tpfarchive.com, with data from November 2025. It will be updated with the new data when we shut this site down.Jamal

    Well, that was super user friendly.
  • Donald Trump (All Trump Conversations Here)
    What a dumb equivocation. Are you really such an idiot you cannot tell the difference?
  • Iran War?
    It's not a strawman, it's rephrasing what you said. Anyhoo, enough on this. People can read and realise you don't know what you're talking about from the entire exchange. It's just unfortunate that you can't seem to learn anything when it's handed to you on a silver platter.
  • Iran War?
    Maybe it's just a good theory if you're seemingly so keen on disproving it but unable to?

    What would disprove it of course is a long-lasting move towards peace between the US, Israel and Iran - a pipedream to be sure. The reason we don't see that, and we'll probably never see that, is because geopolitical realities put these countries at odds with each other pretty much by default.
    Tzeentch

    If you want a theory to be taken seriously, it needs to be falsifiable. So your position is that the JCPOA was done for shits and giggles to make sure it continues to fit your narrative. And this is of course nonsense.

    The JCPOA was the product of 20 months of multilateral negotiations involving hundres of pages of technical annexes, inspections and UN SC Resolution 2231. It was also strongly opposed in the US itself. It wasn't a PR stunt or fake but a real policy.

    The impact on Iran was significant. It shipped 97% of its enriched uranium out of the country, cut its centrifuges to a third and accepted the most intrusive inspection regime ever imposed. Nuclear-related sanctions were lifted by the US. To claim it was all “phoney” because US firms didn’t rush in fast enough simply ignores the chilling effect of the continued non-nuclear sanctions, secondary risk and the volatility of US domestic politics.

    Retrofitting failure as proof of insincerity is of course silly. By that logic any diplomatic failure proves the diplomacy was fake.

    As for Israeli rejection, the US pursued the deal in spite of it underlining the autonomy of the decision in the first place and proving the break with prior policy.

    In other words, you don't have a theory but a narrative, which ignores actual facts but you're hellbent on constructing something that you believe is unassaillable. It will be fun to watch this narrative to become more ludicrous as time passes.
  • Iran War?
    That's one of them yes.

    The JCPOA does not align with your core theory that says letting Iran develop peacefully was never an option. If you want to claim the JCPOA was a “carrot” toward eventual suppression still contradicts the framing: that any development at all is intolerable. So which is it?

    But seriously, what would disprove your theory?

    From what you've written so far it doesn't seem to be possible which is what makes it "unfair" (but also not a theory; there's no theory of everything after all).
  • [Feedback Wanted] / Discussion: Can A.I be used to enhance our ability to reflect meaningfully?
    This is every reason why it's a good editor and first draft writer. Other than that, it has no role in anything.
  • Iran War?
    It's amazing how much stupidity you manages to pack in a few paragraphs. I've decided to engage it one last time; after this I'm done. Probably forever.

    Step 1: “The Iranian regime is wicked. This should be acknowledged.”
    This is the opening move in every bad foreign policy argument: moral branding as strategic substitute. “Wicked.” That’s it. No context, no history, no understanding. Just a label slapped on like it’s a Marvel villain. What does wicked mean in this case? That Iran is authoritarian? Brutal? Repressive? So are most US allies in the region. Saudi Arabia executes people for witchcraft. Egypt jails journalists. Israel is currently flattening Gaza block by block. Are they all wicked too, or does “wicked” only apply to governments you’ve been trained to hate?

    But more to the point: what are you proposing we do with this wickedness? Because that’s what this entire line of reasoning hinges on. If calling a regime wicked is just a rhetorical flourish, fine. But if it’s supposed to justify military action, then you’ve just advocated moral total war—foreign policy by exorcism.

    Step 2: “If you can’t accept that, there’s no point talking.”
    Of course there isn’t. Because your position is a closed loop. You demand agreement with your metaphysical assumptions before we can even begin to discuss facts or outcomes. You’re not interested in a debate. You’re interested in moral submission.

    This is the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “LA LA LA THEY’RE EVIL.” You’re not debating Iran. You’re protecting your fragile little worldview from the contamination of reality. If someone says “maybe we should consider what actually works,” and your response is “I don’t talk to people who don’t believe in evil,” you’ve left the realm of debate and entered the sandbox of magical thinking. You’ve effectively said: I refuse to engage with people who ask questions I can’t answer without chanting moral absolutes.

    That’s not a worldview. That’s a coping mechanism for people who find cause and effect too hard.

    You’re not interested in whether a policy produces peace, stability, deterrence or even long-term advantage for your own side. You’re interested in moral catharsis. In punishing the wicked, smiting the evildoers and feeling clean afterward. It’s the foreign policy equivalent of burning witches.

    And what makes this dumb, not just wrong, but actively disqualifying you from adult conversation, is that it refuses to process consequence.

    Let’s break that down further:

    Sub 1. You can’t reason with someone who treats disagreement as heresy.
    When you say “I won’t talk to people who don’t believe in evil,” you’re admitting you can’t distinguish between disagreement and depravity. You’re saying: If you don’t share my metaphysical priors, you’re not just wrong, you’re morally defective.

    That’s how ideologues and fanatics operate. Strategists and philosophers, however, deal with people who don’t share their assumptions all the time. That’s literally the job.

    Sub 2. You're not asking what works. You’re asking what feels good.
    This is the key distinction between policy and theater.

    Smart people ask: “If I act, will it achieve my stated goal?”
    You ask: “If I act, will it affirm my moral disgust?”

    This is why people like you always support the next war.

    Sub 3. It reveals an inability to hold multiple truths at once.
    Yes, the Iranian regime is brutal. Also: indiscriminate military strikes tend to kill civilians, provoke retaliation and strengthen hardliners. These things are simultaneously true.

    But your mind can’t accommodate that tension. You flatten everything into one big moral binary where once you label something “evil,” no further thinking is required. It’s cognitive offloading and it’s dumb because it rejects complexity in a domain that requires it most.

    Sub 4. It treats politics as a religious war—without even the consistency of religion.
    “I don’t talk to people who don’t believe in evil” is not a policy stance. It’s a self-imposed lobotomy. It means: I’m not here to think, I’m here to worship my disgust. But unlike religion, it offers no redemption, no coherence, no code. It's just about presumed righteous fury.

    The dumbest part of this is you think this moral absolutism makes you wise. You think refusing to engage with anyone outside your moral tribe makes you principled. What it actually makes you is useless: to peace, to diplomacy, to strategy and to the very concept of accountability.

    To continue with the rest of your so-called argument...

    Step 3: “If the US became a repressive theocracy, attacking it would be reasonable.”
    Ah, the hypothetical pivot. You just compared the most powerful nuclear-armed country in the world to Iran, then used that thought experiment to claim moral consistency. Let’s unpack how absurd this is.

    First: the US has been repressive. It has funded death squads. It has dropped nuclear weapons. By your logic, someone somewhere should have attacked US nuclear facilities decades ago. And if you say, “No, because we’re a democracy,” then congratulations, you’ve admitted your logic is not moral, it’s tribal. It's not about evil, it's about who you see as evil.

    Second: attacking Iran is not a thought experiment. You’re talking about actual military strikes on actual nuclear facilities in a country of 85 million people. And your justification is “well, I don’t hate Persians, just the regime.” Wonderful. That’ll be very comforting to the civilians who would die in the fallout. Tell the corpses it was all very morally sound.

    Third: if any ideology you don’t like justifies pre-emptive strikes, then every state is a target. China. Russia. India. Turkey. The list goes on. But of course, you’re not applying this logic universally. You’re applying it selectively, because this isn’t about wickedness. It’s about who you think deserves to die.

    Step 4: “I don’t care about facts. We need a paradigm shift.”
    And there it is: the moment when the mask fully drops. You admit facts don’t matter to you. You just want to feel right.

    Let me translate that: you don’t want to debate. You want moral license to believe whatever supports your pre-selected enemy narrative. When someone challenges you with history, evidence or strategic analysis, you ignore it. That’s how cults work. This is how warmongers talk right before the bombs drop. It's how people act when they know they’re wrong but don’t want to give it up.

    Your “paradigm shift” is not visionary. It’s just you giving yourself permission to ignore everything inconvenient. Iraq? Libya? Doesn’t matter. Civilian death tolls? Doesn’t matter. Diplomacy? Doesn’t matter. You’ve made up your mind. The world must conform. Where have we seen that before? Oh right... Gaza.

    Step 5: “If you don’t believe in good and evil, we’re talking past each other.”
    No, we’re not talking past each other. You’ve just run out of arguments and retreated into cosmic language because your position has no leg to stand on.

    Let’s be clear: the world is full of evil. But the presence of evil doesn’t mean we drop bombs until it feels better. That’s not morality. That’s cowardice dressed up as courage. It’s easy to scream about evil. It’s harder to explain how your cure won’t kill more than the disease.

    And the irony is, you don’t actually believe in good and evil. You believe in your good and their evil. That’s why you’d never apply your logic to Saudi Arabia, to Israel, to the US under Trump, or to any “friendly” regime. Your whole worldview collapses the moment you apply it consistently.

    This is why your political mumblings every time are like a child’s drawing. It pretends to be moral but it’s tribal and incoherent. It substitutes certainty for wisdom and posture for policy. And worst of all, it’s been tried but it’s called failure. Your ideas don’t need a “paradigm shift.” They need a burial.

    As I said: You’re setting up a position that can’t really be challenged, because every shift in policy, whether engagement or hostility, is framed as just another method of containment. That makes your theory immune to contradiction, which is a problem if we want to understand history analytically rather than narratively.

    That doesn't make it a strong theory at all as it cannot explain anything...
  • Philosophy by PM
    I only use PM to gossip or talk about personal stuff.
  • [TPF Essay] The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox
    He seemed to attack all forms of it.RussellA

    Correct but I do go out of my way defining its key characteristics; so if there's someone out there calling something "radical individualism" but doesn't meet the 5 core observations, it is not "radical individualism" as treated here. Obviously, I have independent points against each core observation so any belief resting on any of those five observations is immediately suspect.
  • [TPF Essay] The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox
    Lol. If anything, Christiana is a functioning illustration of how liberty is sustained by shared norms, internal constraints and community accountability.
  • Iran War?
    You realise you are not being fair right? You’re setting up a position that can’t really be challenged, because every shift in policy, whether engagement or hostility, is framed as just another method of containment. That makes your theory immune to contradiction, which is a problem if we want to understand history analytically rather than narratively.

    You say “letting Iran develop peacefully was never an option” but I say the JCPOA was exactly that: an attempt to reintegrate Iran through diplomacy, with strong backing from US allies. That effort failed for contingent political reasons, not because of an unbroken strategic line.

    The idea that changes in method do not reflect changes in strategy assumes far more coherence and control than US policy typically demonstrates. We’ve seen containment, yes, but we’ve also seen drift, contradiction and decisions driven by domestic optics or lobbying pressure.

    That’s not missing the forest for the trees. It’s recognizing that what looks like a forest from a distance often turns out, up close, to be a tangle of competing interests with no clear path.
  • Iran War?
    You're talking about a regime that rapes female prisoners before execution so that when they die they don't go to heaven.

    Also, not surprising that one of TPF's most obsessive Israel haters views the Iranian regime as seemingly reasonable and moderate.
    BitconnectCarlos

    Unsurprisingly, you bring no knowledge to the table. We are once again back at the "they bad, us good" myopic view of the world that brings us nothing but idiocy.

    You actually went out of your way to defend attacking Iran because "you hate the regime" not the Persians living there. Well, maybe we should introduce that kind of foreign policy more broadly. Trump, for instance, is hated throughout the world. He has access to nukes and has shown himself to be irrational. Let's attack US nuclear facilities! Because, well we don't hate Americans (or Mexicans or Canadians) but hey "fuck them" that's "double effect" when invariably at some point there's going to be a nuclear fallout because it's totally legit and fine to attack countries just because you don't like them. Idiot.
  • Iran War?
    I already did twice. You are ignoring a lot of facts to reach your version of real politik interpretation. What we've seen that deny a consistent, long term strategy of containment:

    1. We've seen doctrinal shifts as follows: Bush's axis of evil, then we saw Obama's JCPOA, then Trump's withdrawal, Biden's wishy-washy approach and now again Trump going on the attack.
    2. The 1953 coup was Cold War containment not aimed at suppressing Iranian power. Since the 1979 revolution I don't see a unified strategy, instead shifting between confrontation and limited engagement.
    3. During the Iraq war, the US basically handed Baghdad to pro-Iranian forces.
    4. Your analysis also ignores lobbying by regional states like SA and Israel. It's client politics not puppet mastery.

    Iran's containment, for what it's been, has been tactical not an absolute goal. An alternative view (which I consider more likely) recognizes containment as a recurring motif but not a coherent doctrine. US policy toward Iran has been shaped and distorted by domestic political cycles, institutional fragmentation and pressure from regional allies. What results is not a clean or consistent strategy of suppression but a messy and contradictory exercise in reactive hegemony, where containment competes with other priorities like energy security, counterterrorism, alliance management and electoral optics. Iran’s rise has been resisted but never with the kind of strategic clarity your version assumes.
  • Iran War?
    There hasn't been nuclear fallout, there won't be nuclear fallout.RogueAI

    That has been luck. Read the IAEA reports and statements on attacking nuclear sites.

    Now, do Israel and America have the right to bomb Iran? Depends. What are Iran's intentions? What are they saying? What are their plans? Death to Israel and America! Well, then. What did Iran think would happen?RogueAI

    No. Also, you're assuming a lot of things Iran supposedly says but they've never said because you like to lap up propaganda instead of fact check things. First of all, Ayatollah Khomeini in 2005 said "This regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." The original phrase (این رژیم اشغالگر قدس باید از صفحه روزگار محو شود) has been repeatedly translated as "wiped form the face of the earth" but arises from a wrong translation.

    If someone keeps threatening to annihilate you, and has a clock on display counting down the days to your annihilation, maybe your enemies will take you seriously on that?RogueAI

    Ah yes, the symbolic clock that everybody loves to interpret as a military countdown. In 2015 Khameini said "I'd say that they will not see the next 25 years". It's counting down until 2040. The clock is internal propaganda rooted in their belief Israel's regional dominance is unsustainable.

    Finally, Iran's official line is that the Zionist regime is illegitimate and should be replaced. What is meant by that becomes clearer if you look at the repeated calls for a referendum among all original inhabitants of Palestine: Muslims, Christians, Jews and Palestinian refugees as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a dismantling of the "Zionist regime". (He's said this in 2000, twice in 2012 and most recently in 2020).

    To be clear, Zionism is understood as the movement to acquire an Israel from the West Bank to the sea as included in Likud's charter (and Herut before it). If anybody in that area is hell bent on destroying anything, it's Israel with respect to the Palestinian lands and this should be resisted by everyone who cares about any type of international order.

    Once again: prove they are suicidal or irrational and you have a case.
  • Iran War?
    Ostensibly for power generation. Possibly to gain a nuclear bomb. But even the latter doesn't give Israel and the US the right to bomb nuclear facilities and risk nuclear fall out. It's also a totally irrelevant reply to my point that the purported existential threat Israel claims exists isn't there.
  • Iran War?
    Again with the oversimplifications. Yes, Iran is a structural rival to US-aligned states and Israel. Yes, the US has often acted to constrain Iran.

    But "all the rest is bullshit" is not analysis. US foreign policy is not the product of a unified long-term strategy. It’s the outcome of bureaucratic drift, lobbying, shifting administrations and often contradictory goals. At different times the US has supported and opposed Iran. It has sanctioned Iran while supplying arms to Iran (see: Iran-Contra affair).

    If “preventing Iran from becoming a regional power” were the only goal, why allow Saudi Arabia to brutalise Yemen or flood the region with Salafi militias? Why oscillate on Syria?
  • Iran War?
    Ah yes... the "they're 2 weeks away from a bomb" for decades pre-emptive canard. The idea Iran would go so far as to actually drop a bomb on Israel even if it had one is idiotic. There's no credible evidence Iran's leadership is irrational or suicidal as such an attack would guarantee its own annihilation. Israel has their own bombs and a lot more of them and the US would probably retaliate as well.

    What is a common thread is how Israeli governments under Netanyahu have repeatedly used this so-called threat to unite internally, secure foreign aid and justify committing war crimes again.
  • Iran War?
    If you're Iran, isn't the best move to give up on enrichment and take your chances with diplomacy?RogueAI

    Every illegal attack, like the two we've recently witnessed, is an argument for them to pursue a nuclear bomb as that is the only weapon that truly acts like a deterrent. That's rather obvious.
  • Iran War?
    I don't agree with your more polemic statements. You might want to dial back on them to make it easier for others to charitably interpret them. That said there's plenty where we agree; especially the observation that US and Israeli interests align for now, but not forever. The US has a long history of shifting alliances based on strategic value. No partnership is sacred if the costs outweigh the benefits.

    That said, I think it's a mistake to describe US policy as a singular, calculated engine of empire. American foreign policy is reactive, divided across institutions and often contradictory. There's strategy, yes, but it’s wrapped in election cycles, congressional theatre and real limitations. That’s not genius, it’s inertia.

    And while regime change is often assumed as a goal, the political appetite for that kind of project has collapsed since Iraq. Iran is not an easy target. It is resilient, domestically complex and deeply embedded in regional networks. Sabotage and sanctions are likelier than a ground invasion or occupation.

    If we want to critique US strategy in the Middle East, the most credible line is not that it's wickedly brilliant, but that it’s short-sighted, expensive and structurally inflexible in a world that’s rapidly changing.

    Examples of shortsightedness are
    1. the 2003 Iraq War on tha bsis of fake WMDs with long-term consequences such as regional instabiilty, ISIS and Iran's rise in Iraq. This was absolutely not adequately planned for.
    2. Afghanistan was left without a stable government after 20 year; long-term presence does not equate to long-term planning.

    The US has spent 8 trillion USD posy-9/11, primarily in the Middle East and then there's the indirect costs of veteran care, interest on war debt and diverted funding from what US people actually need.

    We also see path dependency; one's a policy track is chosen, reversing it becomes politically and logistically difficult.
  • Iran War?
    I'm not convinced it's as simple as applying the "proper lens." That phrase implies there’s one correct way to see things and that those who disagree just haven’t figured it out yet. It’s a bit condescending, especially when you're not offering actual argument; just a string of confident assertions.

    More importantly, I have doubts about the idea that the US or any non-autocratic state consistently executes long-term strategic plans. Policy is usually shaped by competing interests, shifting administrations and short-term political pressures. Whatever strategy exists tends to be reactive and fragmented rather than unified or coherent.

    That’s not to say power dynamics and resource competition don’t matter. But treating states as if they act with a single mind and long-term purpose can obscure more than it reveals.

    If the claim is that these strikes are part of a broader plan to contain China by weakening Iran, then the burden is on you to explain who is driving that plan, how it is being implemented and why we should assume it is working. Without that, it’s just a story dressed up as insight.
  • Iran War?
    Following Israel’s strike on Iran’s Natanz nuclear site, and now the US bombing of additional nuclear facilities, it’s worth asking whether anyone still takes international law seriously or if we’ve simply decided that nuclear safety is a matter of political discretion.

    The IAEA has been unequivocal: such attacks are illegal, dangerous and risk catastrophic radiological fallout. That no disaster has occurred yet is luck, not justification. These acts undermine not just the credibility of the IAEA but the entire non-proliferation regime. You can’t uphold the rules while breaking them when it suits you. What’s being set isn’t just back Iran’s programme, it’s a global precedent: that military force trumps nuclear safeguards.

    If the goal was to prevent proliferation, this isn’t strategy. It’s arson in the name of fire safety.

    And why now? Iran has been weeks away from a nuclear bomb for decades if we have to believe everybody ever excusing these strikes on Iran.
  • The passing of Vera Mont, dear friend.
    Dear Vera, thank you for having graced this forum. It was a better place because of it. On a personal note also thanks for reviews on my own writing. :flower:
  • Iran War?
    It's pretty insane they are bombing nuclear facilities accepting the risk of nuclear fallout.
  • ICE Raids & Riots
    I feel like I answered that already by saying I did not agree with the assessment that illegal immigration is harmless. There are many knock-on effects that aren't always apparent but are obvious to anyone that has lived with it. A good example is education: no one is being served well by having a glut of students in public school who do not speak the native language that divert already thin attention and resources. The immigrant students will almost always lag behind due to the difficulty of the language barrier, and it further increases already large classroom sizes with students who need special resources to learn. I have seen it first hand, both as a student and as an adult working alongside education. And again, if it's such a universal benefit, why was Abbott's bus campaign the most effective political stunt in decades?MrLiminal

    The concern about strains on public services, like schools, is a reasonable one. Rapid demographic changes can place pressure on institutions that are already underfunded or poorly managed. In education specifically, accommodating students who are not fluent in the native language does require additional resources: ESL teachers, individualized learning plans, etc. If those resources aren’t available or are spread too thin, both immigrant and native-born students can suffer. That’s a real issue, especially in under-resourced communities.

    But that said, this concern is not unique to undocumented immigration. Refugees, documented immigrants and even internal migration (e.g. families moving from poorer to wealthier districts) can have similar effects. So the policy question becomes: is the problem the presence of undocumented immigrants, or the lack of adequate investment and planning in public infrastructure?

    This is where things get more difficult. Let’s assume the worry is valid: classroom overcrowding, limited resources, unequal outcomes. The question is then whether deportation resolves this problem in a fair, effective or proportionate way.

    Here are a few counterpoints to consider:

    Systemic underfunding is the deeper issue. Many public schools are overwhelmed even in areas with low immigration. Removing immigrants doesn’t solve the political failure to fund education adequately. It simply scapegoats a visible population for a structural problem.

    Educational investment in immigrant children pays long-term dividends. Children are not a burden indefinitely; many go on to become tax-paying adults, often outperforming peers once language barriers are overcome. Deporting them interrupts that process and increases long-term costs (both economic and moral).

    Deportation is a blunt instrument. It doesn’t target those who are demonstrably harming public institutions. It removes people, including long-settled families, children born or raised in the country and productive members of society, based on legal status alone, not impact. That raises ethical and practical concerns.

    You’re right that Abbott's buses were a highly effective political stunt in terms of media attention. But political success doesn’t equate to policy wisdom. It “worked” in the sense that it forced liberal cities to confront their rhetoric with real logistical challenges—but it also highlighted the failure of coordinated federal response and treated vulnerable people as props in a political game. That it was effective doesn’t mean it proved anything about the harms or benefits of immigration.

    It’s fair to worry about real-world consequences of immigration. But to justify deportation, we’d need to show that it solves more problems than it creates, does so fairly and addresses the root causes of institutional strain. More often, deportation treats symptoms while ignoring systemic failures.
  • Iran War?
    Yes, you've made it quite clear you don't understand double effect. It's not a stand alone concept. For people with a normal sense of morality, leveling nearly all civilian structures is disproportional even under the concept of double effect. Plus it buys into the propaganda that that is what they're doing when it's quite clear what they're really doing isn't going after Hamas targets but trying to get all Palestinians to leave. Which is genocide. Which is illegal. Which is what is in the Likud charter. Which has been reiterated by cabinet members repeatedly. Which you happily ignore because you "stand for something".
  • ICE Raids & Riots
    You're welcome to add what the problem is you think should be solved. My "feel free to add" was an invitation to come up with reasons to support what Trump is doing that are good reasons. So far, I don't see good reasons for deporting undocumented immigrants that are part of society and benefit the US as a whole. Criminals, for instance, were deported already.
  • ICE Raids & Riots
    I've written two substantive posts and make reasonable conclusions. Idiot walks by and calls it "virtue signalling" without any argument. Thanks for playing.
  • Iran War?
    What's also a war crime is targeting a nuclear, civilian facility. Reciprocity excuses Iran's attack under rules of conflict but humanitarian law has been trying to ban it (not very successfully yet).

    On the other hand, I suppose I should applaud you on discovering the principle parties shouldn't be attacking civilians. Now if only you could manage to apply it consistently.
  • ICE Raids & Riots
    I just do not accept your assertions, and I am beyond tired of hearing any opposition to illegal immigration as racistMrLiminal

    Just imagine how tired I am of people denying it when the proof is in the pudding. Funny how only Latinos are targeted no?
  • ICE Raids & Riots
    Reply to a Donald Trump thread. What makes you say they haven't been enforced?

    Obama ~5.3 million 2009–2017
    Trump 1 1.9–3.13 million 2017–2021
    Biden >4.6 million 2021–2024

    As long as the problem is fixed, I am willing to allow a lot.MrLiminal

    It's not clear what "the problem" is.

    Is it crime?
    But multiple studies and comprehensive data show that undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born US citizens at the national, state and local levels. Incarceration rates confirm this pattern (1,221 per 100,000 vs. 613 per 100,000 in 2023).

    Job displacement?
    Illegal immigrants tend to fill low-wage, labor-intensive jobs that are unattractive. They may have a small negative wage effect but overall impact on employment and wages are either minimal or slightly positive due to additional growth and job creation through their own demand. Agriculture, construction and hospitaly heavily rely on immigrant labour (including undocmented workers).

    Mooching of the state?
    They tend to pay billions in taxes and not receive benefits. Fear of deportation discourages them from reporting crimes, seeking medical care or particiapting in civic life. Relating this to your mention of "robust social programs, job security in the face of automation/AI, social cohesion and UBI", we can rest assured we can have them pay for the privilege to remain without getting benefits.

    What's left?

    • Blatant racism. Highly probable for a significant part of Trump voters.
    • Dems the rules. Formulaic but morally vacuous.

    Feel free to add.
  • Bannings
    Banned unenlightened for being a broken record.
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    So your point is that he isn't a neo Nazi?
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    What fact are you disagreeing with? That Martin Sellner is a neo-Nazi? Or that the letters between the participants referred to a "master plan"?
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    There's nothing "secret nazis" about these identarian statements and policies or how the average AfD voter understands them. Are you even aware of what Correctiv published in 2023/2024 as part of their infiltration of the Potsdam meeting? When the master plan of the neo-Nazi Martin Sellner was going to be discussed which turned out to be all about remigration? Are you even paying attention to what's happening or is it all just because you agree with the law & order line you get a hard on and stop thinking?
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    A previous poster already mentioned the Springer quote.

    Some populist politician said something inflammatory - big whoop.

    All this is is scrouging together circumstantial evidence to make the case that "secretly" the AfD is fascist.

    Quit playing a sucker for the establishment.
    Tzeentch

    Because this was groundbreaking commentary on actual facts. :roll:
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    They're openly fascist. Springer is in the Bundestag. But good to know you're ok with fascists. Explains a lot of your other posts.
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    What's childish and boring is pretending "their site" is the only source of information and pretending what they say and do has no relevance. There's a reason the AfD acronym is to be confused with the Sturmabteilung slogan, that they repeatedly comment on Biodeutsche and Passdeutsche in speeches, interviews and on social media and in far-right media outlet. It's not an accident.

    The AfD has publicly stated they want to deport millions. René Springer explictly stated: Wir werden Ausländer in ihre Heimat zurückführen. Millionenfach.

    Das ist kein #Geheimplan. Das ist ein Versprechen.

    Für mehr Sicherheit. Für mehr Gerechtigkeit. Für den Erhalt unserer Identität. Für Deutschland.

    Quite simply, you will never arrive at their numbers for remigration unless you subscribe to the distinction. There's a reason the term circulates in other right-wing neo-Nazi groups. There's a reason the term circulates in other right-wing neo-Nazi groups and fora associated with the AfD. That reason is that it is a fascist party and we're back at the Aryan bullshit of German identity.

    Wake up. It's not "threatening the establishment" unless you mean it in the same way as any other fascist party from the early 20th century.
  • [TPF Essay] The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox
    I had a very long time to draft the responses, because I started with them when the comments arose. Gave me time to shave away all the acerbic comments I had and play nice for a change. :razz:
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    The fact you see no problem with remigration really says it all. As if it doesn't echo extremist and identitarian talking points of the (neo-)Nazis. Like most right-wing parties nowadays the nationalist and anti-immgrant positions are straight from the early 20th-century fascist playbooks.

    The whole idea that AfD is not a fascist party, is about pretending the acronym doesn't refer back to the Sturmabteilung even when prominent leaders say it out loud. Björn Höcke has been fined twice for using the banned Nazi slogan “Alles für Deutschland”, which was the official slogan of the SA. Every German knows this. It's the most obvious dog whistle in the world; just like Wilders' seagull is a nod to the national socialist movement in the Netherlands.

    EDIT: Just to make sure you are on the same page on wwhat kind remigration they are talking about. The AfD has an ethnicity- and ancestry-based understanding of what it means to be German. They differentiate between Biodeutsche and Passdeutsche, where the latter is meant to exclude Germans who became German through naturalisation. Their remigration idea includes the mass deportation of naturalised Germans...