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from the It's-not-easy-being-white-supremacists dept.
Over at the CCN, Gab is having trouble even getting its bitcoin on.
The declaration by free speech social network Gab that the firm was still allowed on Square’s bitcoin-friendly Cash App after being banned on other platforms may have been premature.
This emerged after the social media platform that is occasionally referred to as “alt-right Twitter,” over its popularity with extremist right-wingers, disclosed that the personal Square Cash account of the firm’s founder and CEO, Andrew Torba, had been deactivated.
Things like this are just bad for business.
Earlier this month as CCN reported, Gab had posted a tweet that gave the impression that Square’s Cash App — which allows users to buy and sell bitcoin — had reactivated Gab’s access. According to Breaker magazine, Square might have unknowingly reactivated an account belonging to Gab but will continue to “pro-actively delete any new accounts that it learned were connected with Gab.”
[...] Besides Square, other platforms that have banned Gab in the recent past include cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, online payment processing firm Stripe, bitcoin payment service provider BitPay and online payments system PayPal.
Currently, bitcoin, as well as money orders and checks sent to its post office address, are the only ways for Gab to process payments for its premium service, GabPro. On January 8, Gab announced that it had integrated with open-source crypto payment processor BTCPay Server.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @05:27PM (11 children)
In order to punch Nazis, you must be a socialist, because then you will understand the objective, historical reasons why we punch Nazis.
When we get Nazis, it is a clear sign that capitalism has run its course and is nearing the end of its curve of development [marxists.org]. The ruling classes promote Nazis, because Nazis are the only means they know of containing socialism.
It is also important to understand the 1917 October Revolution before we go around punching Nazis.¹ Punching Nazis is all well and good, but it is absolutely critical we understand the objective, material logic of punching Nazis, otherwise we get another Stalin. The Nazi tendencies are the historically proven forces the ruling classes deploy to counter the natural tendency towards working class control of the means of production, and the Stalinists are what happens when we go around punching Nazis without a clear political orientation focused on--this term is off-putting but nonetheless descriptive--dictatorship of the proletariat by democratic means. Personally I think we need to open our ears to the anarchists as well (but not the anarcho-capitalists, sorry to Mr. Vim) in order to create a sustainable system that does not evolve into Stalinist dictatorship of the bureaucracy.
Just as the bourgeois revolutions were inevitable, leading to globalist capitalism, so too is an international proletarian permanent revolution. However, we are participants in these events, and the proletarian permanent revolution cannot happen until we take correct, carefully considered, philosophically and theoretically grounded action to bring it about. (Compare and contrast the "mytho-macho bullshit," as I called it, of the right-wing militia movements in Montana and Michigan.)
When we go punch Nazis, there is a danger that we, ourselves, become Nazis. Only rigorous study of history and philosophy stands between our own transformation into Nazis and Stalinists and finally capitalist social-democrats. If this happens, then the curve of capitalism begins again. Thus, the proletarian revolution is patient. Capitalism seems to be able to renew itself, but only on the basis of world war, catastrophe, death, and famine. Only a sociopath could view such disasters and crimes against humanity as a reasonable component of any kind of system, even as it gives the terrible promise of lending a phoenix-like nature to capitalism.
We will keep repeating this cycle, perhaps with eras spanning centuries of reversion to feudalism, followed by new bourgeois revolutions, until we get it right. It is in our best interest to get it right sooner rather than kicking the can down the road.
¹ This is a starting point for understanding the nature of the tasks before us when we punch Nazis. Perhaps more importantly, we must also understand the failures, which are many. A study of the October Revolution leads naturally to a study of the German November Revolution, the Sparticist uprising that cost us Luxemburg, the assassination of Trotsky, Hitler's rise to power over the ineffective KPD and SPD, and the Comintern's turning away from international revolution towards the bankrupt idea of "socialism in one country."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by EEMac on Saturday January 12 2019, @06:05PM (8 children)
Or maybe you just want to punch people who disagree with you. Then you pretend they're Nazis to give yourself a socially acceptable excuse. This is definitely the case for one large activist group in America today.
To be clear, "you" refers to "people who punch Nazis", not necessarily the AC poster I'm replying to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @06:15PM (1 child)
Yeah, I think you get it. Punching people we disagree with because we just can't stand letting their ideas fall on our virgin ears is the road to hell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @08:20AM
Punching Nazis is itself an expression of free speech. Are you trying to censor my punching of Nazis? You authoritarian twat! Here, let me once again express myself, on your face!!!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 13 2019, @02:15AM (5 children)
To punch Nazis, you must become Nazi. It matters little that the socialists take on a different name to distinguish themselves from the other group of Nazis.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 13 2019, @08:53AM (4 children)
You know nothing about socialists, obviously. It's not very cool to bash something without knowing it. Please do some reading. I would suggest you start with Marx.
Try it, you'll be surprised.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 13 2019, @10:09AM (3 children)
Oh, please. Socialism has been around for a long time. It has been shown to work, many times, on small scales. As soon as socialism is scaled up beyond some limited point, it breeds corruption faster than almost any other known form of government. There is a list of nations that have adopted socialism - Russia (or the Soviet), China, Cuba, Venezuela. Cuba has done the best job with socialism, the others have all been rather dramatic and dismal failures.
There is another list of nations that have adopted socialism to a limited extent. They range from moderate successes to failure.
I have an idea: why don't you make a list of nations that have gone full-on Socialist, without any reservations, that have respected human rights (including the right to life) and have succeeded? I mean, resounding success. Show us when and where socialism has worked on a massive scale, better than any other form of government.
It is pretty safe to say that communism or socialism is on par with Islamic governments. In fact, I could probably make the effort to demonstrate that those deist governments might actually work better than socialism.
If you are going to claim that I am ignorant, you need to make at least a minimal effort to educate me - get to work, Comrade!
Let me counter with - socialists know nothing of history and socialism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 13 2019, @01:30PM (2 children)
You know nothing about the world. And all you do is call everyone a socialist outside your radical-right circle. Fuck, you'll call Canadians socialist too for having universal healthcare coverage?
Yeah, thought as much. Fuck you and your kind of small thinking idiots. You clearly know nothing how most of the rest of the world functions.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 13 2019, @03:03PM (1 child)
No, fuck you, sideways, with a rake. I invited you to point out any nation which had adopted communism/socialism, and succeeded, but you don't take the opportunity. Now, you pretend that I've lived all my life in a fucking village, and don't know how the world works outside that village.
No, I don't call everyone outside my circle a socialist. The world is even bigger than just my circle and socialism. For instance, I mentioned Islam, which is roughly on par with socialism when it comes to respecting human rights.
Your socialism is just about the biggest enemy of humanity. Twenty million corpses in China, another twenty million in Russia - but you and your ilk want another opportunity to prove yourselves right.
Once again, Castro's Cuba is the single best example of "socialism works" - and that example isn't especially great. Unlike some other examples, Castro didn't starve or execute huge segments of his population. Cubans did, however, suffer under Castro. Without Castro and communism, Cuba could have been as wealthy and up-to-date as any other Carribean country, and maybe even better than most others. 90 miles off of the Florida coast, tourism and trade, money just pouring in. Could have, but didn't.
Give us examples, numbnuts. You can't, so you get angry with me, and insult me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @08:26AM
Runaway is American, in the worst formulation of that attribute. Best to not read what he posts, it is either incoherent "old man" stuff, or the latest Islamophobe stuff from the usual sources, and Faux News. We all love Runaway, and we all want to remove his liver and bury him in a shallow grave down by Mine Creek.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 13 2019, @01:44PM (1 child)
What Nazis need is a hug, not a punch.
Nazis belief is that they stand against the "other" that will "kill them" or "oppress them". If you punch a Nazi, it just breeds more Nazis. The same with terrorists - if you kill terrorists you just breed more of them. The only solution is re-education, and a hug is a first step. You can only tear down the hate wall of Nazis through conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4gly9n9RBo [youtube.com]
Of course they may need to be put in some sort of a holding place until they stop being so paranoid about "others", but eventually it works.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 13 2019, @05:04PM
Yes, I like this. We can only turn to war when love and liberty have been exhausted, and only for so long as is absolutely necessary. Our own spiritual strength in love and liberty can make these nearly inexhaustible.
Yet we must be aware. History indicates that as a Nazi movement progresses from quantitative to qualitative [marxists.org], war becomes necessary, for a limited time. I have vague hope that once a socialist culture [wsws.org] is able to emerge, war can become vestigial and fade away.