Democracy has existed far longer than fascism has… the earliest fascist movements weren’t until the 1910s, while the earliest recorded democracy was around 508 BC, with the earliest recorded usage of the term in the 430s BC. You’re wrong by a margin of millennia
My dear god, this is history fundamentals. And the sheer balls you’ve got to have to be that rude while being just this severely wrong is obscene.
Democracy isn’t a magic anti-fascist spell, sorry to break it to you. If someone can convince enough of the population to elect them, then they get into power, fascist or not.
By your definition, there really hasn’t been a “real” democracy ever, frankly, since it depends on there being a state with no imbalance of wealth whatsoever. If that’s how you want to define it, sure, go ahead, but I’m going to keep using a definition of democracy that’s based on how the institutions of elections and the state are built, because that’s a useful way to discuss political systems, and “democracy is when only leaders I like are elected” is not.
Brazil’s leaders are elected through universal suffrage, its speech and media are (relatively) free, that’s a democracy by any reasonably useful definition. There’s plenty to criticise in how that democracy functions, especially how money and power can influence those outcomes, but there is no perfect democracy, just the best attempts at what people can build within their existing social systems.
Democracy is a political system, while capitalism is an economic system - understanding how they interact with each other is useful and important, but pretending they’re mutually exclusive is unnecessarily reductive, and closes the space to actually discuss those things.
Edit: the mere fact that Bolsonaro attempted to retain power by force, but was unable to do so in the face of losing the election is direct evidence that there are functional democratic institutions in Brazil
And now it isn’t, that’s democracy, baby
I fully agree that Bolsonaro was a straight up demon, but I also agree with the idea that - currently - the administration of Brazil is probably about as good an example of a good world citizen as it gets
Oh yeah, Russia is real good at keeping those tech oligarchs in check /s
BRICS is such a loosely linked group that generalising like that is just never going to be accurate; Indian and South African, for example, policy on tech regulation couldn’t be more different if they tried.
Don’t get me wrong, I think BRICS is a good organisation for economic cooperation between these very diverse countries, but there’s really no common political, social or economic characteristics.
Brazil is a good example of that, because under Bolsonaro, it couldn’t have been more different - regulations on big tech and banning X would never have happened under his tenure (well, at least not with the same goals)
The one who’s been convicted for assault, contempt of court, public disorder, using a fake passport and mortgage fraud? The very same
Jewish Chronicle is a British newspaper
One of the primary reasons trump wants to reduce the US’ focus on Russia and Ukraine is to prioritise their position towards China. That’s not to say Trump might not decide against direct involvement; he’s famously erratic, but the semiconductor production of Taiwan is an critical economic dependency that can’t be replaced in the short term.
No, it’s not a joke. And putting a small amount of thought into it makes clear that the US believes it can effectively defend Taiwan - it wouldn’t keep such volumes of weaponry there if it believed it would trivially fall into China’s hands.
The US’ Center for Strategic and International Studies has wargamed this 24 times for conventional warfare only and 15 times for consideration of the use of nuclear weapons. In both scenarios, they found they would likely be able to successfully preserve Taiwan’s autonomy.
I think you deeply underestimate just how difficult and expensive in manpower and materiel it is to perform a naval invasion, especially against a nation whose military is specialised for pretty much exclusively that purpose.
Naval superiority is naval superiority; if you can’t get your military to the other side of the strait, you can’t invade the island, regardless of distance. The actual question is whether Taiwan would be able to hold off an invasion for long enough for the US navy to reach and control the strait, which is reasonably likely given the US rents a large number of naval bases in the region for just this purpose.
I’m going to just go ahead and ignore your second paragraph, since it’s entirely unrelated to the US’s military capability wrt to Taiwan.
They don’t build the weapons for themselves (mostly), but the US has enormous volumes of weapons (presumably including a lot of drones) already stored in Taiwan so that they can be bought and delivered instantly if they’re needed
Send the US navy to blockade the strait and finalise the sale of the billions of dollars worth of weapons already waiting on the island for exactly that purpose
But all these things you’ve listed above had specific, self-evident purposes, regardless of the ethics of the actions.
So that doesn’t support your argument that Russia just does random chaotic shit for the sake of it - in fact it does the opposite, suggesting that Russia acts.
As an aside, there was absolutely no reason to be calling the other person “pathetic” for having a differing perspective to you; they were responding politely and in good faith.
Big time
This is literally western media talking about it? Wdym about an “omerta”
It’s been the media consensus - at least on the left - that this amounts to genocide for quite a while now.
I did a quick search in the guardian, and they’ve been publishing articles regularly about it for well over a year at this point.
It means they believe the evidence they have is sufficient to show that it is genocide when considered together.
What’s confusing you here?
But the standards for an organisation like Amnesty International saying a state is committing genocide are much higher than a random person on the internet.
To make a claim like that, they have to have specific evidence satisfying the actual definitions in international law, which is what this whole report is about. It’s all well and good for you to go “well it’s obvious to me”, but that doesn’t meet the standards of evidence for a reputable NGO like them to make a statement like that.
They agree with your stance, so I’m not sure I understand why your response to them - explicitly - saying “this is genocide” is to chew them out for it.
That’s not what they said at all
I think the Brazilian coup was actually more viable than you might think, he probably could have pulled it off if it wasn’t for a small handful of military members who refused to take part.
Jan 6th was pathetic fr though
I’ve been baffled by this south Korean attempt, too, though. The consensus seems to be that he’d assumed his own party would back him (which presumably would have been enough that the opposition couldn’t form a majority against his declaration). I suppose he must have had strong military support to be so (overly) confident.
Regardless of whether the UK rejoins the EU, though, they’re still the most important trading partner, and it’s important to maintain a healthy relationship with the bloc
Well that’s just not what I said - you specifically said fascism, which was invented in the 20th century. It has more specific characteristics than just hierarchical violence; ethno-nationalism, militarisation of the state, flexible suppression of opposition and centralised autocracy.
Just because you’re mad about being corrected doesn’t mean you need to be a dick about it.