Hypothetically...

Vajradhara

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Namaste all,

for the sake of discussion...

suppose that you were living in a society at a moment in its' history where it was about to enter into a fascist political phase.

you have an opportunity to be part of the system or a dissident.... an additional consideration is that you have a family and child, not to mention friends, that will be effected by your decision... what path do you follow?

do you choose to participate within the system or work for its' downfall as a dissident? perhaps work for its' downfall from within, a sort of false flag operation? would you be willing to risk the life and/or liberty of your spouse (who may or may not have given their consent) and your child (whom certainly could not give their consent) to oppose the fascists or would you deem their safety and, though not free, lives more important in the sum?

metta,

~v
 
In my travels I've run into a few Nazi's. They all claim there was no choice. It was either become a perty member or the front. Go to war or the front. Join the youth or be ostracised.

We know of peer pressure in our schools....I saw something similar with cigarettes in elementary school....I know this is a stretch but somehow we were learning of Hitler youth the same time as we were learning about the horrors of cigarettes and asked to tell of our parents smoking...I somehow tied this to turning in your parents who were talking bad about Hitler at the dinner table...it was wierd.

Anyhow. I'd rebel. I'm not that good at hypotheticals. I have two kids, some family, no wife, and I'd rebel.
 
for the sake of discussion...

For the sake of discussion, who wouldn't claim to act in some way to combat fascism? After all, what real sacrifices do you have to make in a forum that lacks any true threat or consequence?

So yeah... I'd lead the rebel cause and valiantly take on the dark side. With my trusty robot at my side I'd brave withering enemy fire and use "the force" to uncannily deposit my photon torpedos into the one unprotected part of the Death Star, leading to its utter destruction in a cataclysmic explosion.

Following the great assembly that honored my selfless and courageous exploits I'd take Princess Leia, Chewbacca and C3PO for a kinky foursome of ribald, sci-fi sex, the likes of which has never been experienced throughout the entire history of the universe.

Then I'll need a good shot of penicillin. Wookies got some nasty funk.
 
Interesting dilemma.

First, define fascist.

;)

Namaste Pathless,

a good question.

for the sake of our conversation here, let us use the definition of fascism as Benito Mussolini understood it:

The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

so, i would say that a fascist is a person that supports or upholds such an ideological view and, of course, one that advocates said view as positive and beneficial :)

metta,

~v
 
Namaste Wil,

thank you for the post.

In my travels I've run into a few Nazi's. They all claim there was no choice. It was either become a perty member or the front. Go to war or the front. Join the youth or be ostracised.

i've met a fair amount of Soviet era Russians, Ukrainians and such who make claims of this nature. of course we understand that under duress a person will say things which they do not believe so it one must bear that in mind when watching the Soviet show trials and such...

We know of peer pressure in our schools....I saw something similar with cigarettes in elementary school....I know this is a stretch but somehow we were learning of Hitler youth the same time as we were learning about the horrors of cigarettes and asked to tell of our parents smoking...I somehow tied this to turning in your parents who were talking bad about Hitler at the dinner table...it was wierd.

i can imagine!

of course such domestic spying programs, which is what they in essence are, are quite common amongst totalitarian states.... the ability to split the family unit, thereby establishing the State as the de facto family, has a high priority.

Anyhow. I'd rebel. I'm not that good at hypotheticals. I have two kids, some family, no wife, and I'd rebel.

would it be an active rebellion... i.e. you would join a resistance group or would it be more of a passive rebellion.. i.e. circulation of literature which is banned and things of that nature?

i've really been struggling with it... i think that i would rebel but i think that to do so i could only have a clear conscience about it were i to leave my family and ensure that i could not be traced back to them. if my spouse wanted to join me we'd have to find a place for our son as he isn't old enough to choose such a course of action for himself.

if my spouse didn't want to join me... i think it would have to be a passive rebellion...

yet some part of me simply yearns to be left alone, regardless of the political system, so that my family has a chance to grow old... to have a long life and a modicum of contentment.

in some ways any choice seems to have as one part of the equation no contentment and no prospects of long life.

metta,

~v
 
Namaste citizenzen,

thank you for the post.

For the sake of discussion, who wouldn't claim to act in some way to combat fascism? After all, what real sacrifices do you have to make in a forum that lacks any true threat or consequence?

well.. certainly, but then i'm not suggesting that this forum is a nation-state engaged in a political fascism :)

metta,

~v
 
I would certainly try to make the case against greed, hate, and delusion, (with the Kalama Sutta in mind,) even if it was one individual at a time. (As well as pointing out that corporations are not individuals--they are collectives. (With all of the problems associated with such. This point could be made with the anatta teaching...;))
 
Let us look at the choices:
1) as a dissident one would face arrest, detainment in a lovely facility where one would be conscripted into forced labor, fed the "approved" diet and given the "approved" medical treatment while being in close confines with many others infected with god only knows what.
Life expectancy in prisons now is only 65 so under a totalitarian regime what could one reasonably expect conditions to be?
- Expect to be used as a guinea pig in the high risk medical experiments for certain.
- As a dissident one could expect to be turned in by virtually anyone as people are of very low caliber in regards to moral fiber and ethics.
-Surveillance technology these days is something akin to hitlers, stalin's and mao's wet-dreams all rolled into one...... yechhh.

2) If you can't beat them then join them.
-seems to have worked for hundreds of millions in China, Russia and numerous other countries as they are alive and propagating while the dissidents are dead and gone.

[youtube]bAsA00-5KoI[/youtube]
 
Well as far as civil disobedience goes I've been drug off Pennsylvania Avenue, off the lawn of the Capitol, off the steps of the capitol, unchained from bulldozers and trees... I think the most interesting one was sitting in front of tank in a parade and stopping the parade, much to the boos and cat calls of the audience and getting hauled to the side by the army....(protesting invasion of Grenada)

Again, I'm not good at hypotheticals...I would act, how I would act I don't know, whether it be active underground or leaflets... I'm guessing it would be nonviolent, it has been my way so far...the reason I'm not good at hypotheticals is one just really doesn't know what one will do until they are there...or so it seems for me.
 
For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.

If one accepts this as a fundamental of fascism then, from a perspective at the other end of the political spectrum (anarchism) one may perhaps argue that all nations are fascist?

s.
 
If one accepts this as a fundamental of fascism then, from a perspective at the other end of the political spectrum (anarchism) one may perhaps argue that all nations are fascist?

s.
Oh boy! Political fundamentalists vs political atheists. Where's my popcorn?
seattlegal-albums-emoticons-picture91-stealing-popcorn.gif
 
Anybody can fantasize that they'd demonstrate against a power that was unafraid and unhesitant to imprison, torture or kill dissenters.

I am not going to make such a claim.

All of this talk is school yard bravado... nothing more.

Hopefully, we'll never have to find out who really would be willing to lay their life on the line.

Until the shooting starts, until the torture commences, it's impossible to say who could face it.
 
Let go of your guns. Unload your paranoia.

Create the world you want to live in.




Jeeze... now who's living in fantasyland?
 
CitizenZen:

Anybody can fantasize that they'd demonstrate against a power that was unafraid and unhesitant to imprison, torture or kill dissenters.

I am not going to make such a claim.

All of this talk is school yard bravado... nothing more.

Hopefully, we'll never have to find out who really would be willing to lay their life on the line.

Until the shooting starts, until the torture commences, it's impossible to say who could face it.
I agree with CitizenZen. There are times that I feel like I have sacrificed my ideals upon the altar of comfort and security. How much have I resisted assimilation into the American Dream? I resisted until I had children (1981) and then like the frog in hot water, I found myself boiling away and jumped out as fast as I could (around 1999). I still haven't been arrested for my subversive letters, thoughts and membership in certain organizations; but I know that I am on Homeland Security's radar..or at least I was back in the Bush/Cheney rule. We have lost so many civil liberties since 9-11-01 that I am sure whoever was responsible for that event :rolleyes: is jumping for joy at their success in destroying those freedoms.
 
...... Unload your paranoia.

Create the world you want to live in.
Can we have an Amen?

Is all this religious/philosophical jargon we all talk (for years) powerful.....or just dead words?
Maybe it is just empty clouds and tinkling brass.....for the most part that is the best one can say of it. Worthless pursuits.
But not all fits in that category.
"Dunamis" is the word.
 
Namaste all,

for the sake of discussion...

suppose that you were living in a society at a moment in its' history where it was about to enter into a fascist political phase.

you have an opportunity to be part of the system or a dissident.... an additional consideration is that you have a family and child, not to mention friends, that will be effected by your decision... what path do you follow?

do you choose to participate within the system or work for its' downfall as a dissident? perhaps work for its' downfall from within, a sort of false flag operation? would you be willing to risk the life and/or liberty of your spouse (who may or may not have given their consent) and your child (whom certainly could not give their consent) to oppose the fascists or would you deem their safety and, though not free, lives more important in the sum?

metta,

~v
hypothetical...?? my A$$:mad:!!

Marijuana Party of Canada ? Parti Marijuana du Canada | Bill C-6 returns Bill C-52, after 40th Elections.

The Mask Slips, for Those with Eyes to See: Preparing for the Real Pandemic
September 19, 2009

The Mask Slips, for Those with Eyes to See: Preparing for the Real Pandemic : Republic of Lakotah - Mitakuye Oyasin

by Kevin D. Annett, M.A., M.Div.
Last week, many of the aboriginal people in the remote west coast village of Ahousaht were innoculated with the tamiflu vaccine. Today, over a hundred of them are sick, and the sickness is spreading.

In the same week, body bags were sent to similarly remote native reserves in northern Manitoba that have also received the tamiflu vaccine.

On the face of things, it appears that flu vaccinations are causing a sickness that is being deliberately aimed at aboriginal people across Canada, and this sickness will be fatal: a fact acknowledged by the Canadian government by their “routine” sending of body bags to these Indian villages.

Before you express your shock and denial at the idea that people are being racially targeted and killed, remember that murdering Indians with vaccinations is not a new or abnormal thing in Canada. Indeed, it’s how we Europeans “won the land”, and it’s one of the ways we keep it.

In 1862, Anglican church missionaries Rev. John Sheepshanks and Robert Brown inoculated interior Salish Indians in B.C. with a live smallpox virus that wiped out entire native communities within a month, just prior to the settlement of this native land by gold prospectors associated with these missionaries and government officials.

In 1909, Dr. Peter Bryce of the Indian Affairs department in Ottawa claimed that Catholic and Protestant churches were deliberately exposing native children to smallpox and tuberculosis in residential schools across Canada, and letting them die untreated. Thousands of children died as a result. (Globe and Mail, April 24, 2007)
In 1932, B.C. provincial police attempted to lay charges against Catholic missionaries who had sent smallpox-laden Indian children back among their families along the Fraser river near Mission, BC. The RCMP intervened and protected the church, even though whole villages were wiped out as a result of the church’s actions.
In 1969, native children who escaped from the Nanaimo Indian Hospital on Vancouver Island described being inoculated with shots that caused many of them to die “with bloated up bodies and scabs all over”, to quote one survivor.

Knowing this history, it’s not surprising when Indians on isolated Canadian reserves start sickening and dying en masse from sudden illnesses, after receiving flu shots. After all, it’s still the law in Canada, under the apartheid Indian Act, that no on-reserve Indian can refuse medical treatments or experimentation. So it’s small wonder that these reserves are the places being targeted first to be injected with untested, unsafe and potentially lethal flu vaccines.

As an entire race of involuntary test subjects, Indians in Canada are a weather vane for what will befall all of us, and very soon. For the very techniques and weapons of genocide perfected against aboriginal people are now being deployed against “mainstream” Canadians.

Under Bill C-6, which is about to pass third reading in Parliament and become the law, no Canadian will be allowed to refuse inoculations for the swine flu, despite the fact that it is relatively benign and mild, and has killed only people who are already immune-compromised. Indeed, it is astounding that such coercion and dictatorial laws are being employed to deal with what the chief Canadian Health Officer has called a “mild seasonal flu”.

Clearly, another agenda is at work; but the time to ascertain and challenge that agenda has all but run out. This coming month, forced inoculations and imprisonment of those who refuse them may be a reality across Canada. And for what reason? Clearly, not for public health, considering the sickness and death caused by previous swine flu vaccines.

I believe that the real pandemic is about to be unleashed through the very vaccines being pushed by governments and pharmaceutical giants like Novartis and Glaxo Smith Kline. The shots will be the cause, not the cure, of the pandemic. Of course, those in power can disprove this by simply being the first people to take the swine flu shot: an event about as likely as these companies forgoing the multi-billion dollar profits they will reap from the mass vaccinations.

It’s indeed ironic that, very soon, many “white” Canadians may be suffering the same fate that aboriginal people have for centuries. Perhaps it’s fitting. For if we are indeed being targeted for extermination, or at the least martial law and dictatorship, we finally can have the chance to shed our complicity in the genocide of other people, and get on the right side of humanity - simply by having to fight the system that is causing mass murder.

///
……… ……… ..
Rev. Kevin D. Annett
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, BC Canada V9R 2H8
250-753-3345
www.hiddenfromhistory.org

Kevin Annett is a community minister, educator and award-winning film maker who lives and works with aboriginal and low income people in Vancouver and Nanaimo, BC.
Read and Hear the truth of Genocide in Canada, past and present, at this website:
www.hiddenfromhistory.org
Film Trailer to Kevin’s award-winning documentary film UNREPENTANT:
YouTube - UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide

“Kevin is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than many who have received it in the past.”
- Dr. Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor Emeritus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“A courageous and inspiring man.” (referring to Kevin Annett)
- Mairead Corrigan-Maguire
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Belfast , Northern Ireland

“As a long time front line worker with the Elders’ Council at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, I stand behind what Kevin Annett is trying to do for our people. The genocide that continues today and which stemmed from the residential schools needs
to be exposed. Kevin Annett helps break the silence, and brings the voice of our people all over the world.”
Carol Muree Martin - Spirit Tree Woman
Nisgaa Nation

“I gave Kevin Annett his Indian name, Eagle Strong Voice, in 2004 when I adopted him into our Anishinabe Nation. He carries that name proudly because he is doing the job he was sent to do, to tell his people of their wrongs. He speaks strongly and with truth. He speaks for our stolen and murdered children. I ask everyone to listen to him and welcome him.”
Chief Louis Daniels - Whispers Wind
Elder, Turtle Clan, Anishinabe Nation
Winnipeg, Manitoba
 
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