@Alon yes. i think it’s fair to point out neither side began with dehumanization at a leadership level, viz Ukraine. at a public level, even before there were “orcs” there were disparagements against “khokhol” on Russian social media. 1/
@Alon but overall i agree with you re:Russia - Ukraine. this rule would not have prevented that conflict, which was prosecuted very coolly as a geopolitical choice by Russia’s leaders, not by virtue of cycles between an inflamed public and inflammatory leadership. 2/
@Alon but many conflicts do depend upon those kinds of inflammatory cycles to gear up to violence and atrocity. consider eg the Yugoslav wars, and of course signally Rwanda. perhaps Russia-Ukraine is the exception that proves the rule? /fin
@LouisIngenthron i don’t think this is a rule you can apply to publics, who have free speech rights. but people in institutional positions of power can be legally bound in what they say while in their roles (and people who aspire to those positions can be bound by strong norms). 1/
@LouisIngenthron so Pence can’t arrest protesters for “dehumanizing language”. that’s easy. a harder question is could anti-abortion activists slippery-slope support for abortion rights into proscribed dehumanization, so it’d effectively become illegal for political figures to support thise rights. 2/
@LouisIngenthron i think that’s a real concern, but not necessary fatal. every rule we define demands lines be drawn, and there is always risk that advocates will push the lines where initial framers don’t mean them to go. that process, drawing, defending, and deciding after all to let shift lines is much of what our court system struggles with everyday. i’m not sure this set of proscriptions of official (and only official) speech would be slipperier than lots of other lines we draw. /fin
@Alon it’s certainly true that dehumanizing language by leaders doesn’t always portend atrocity, but i think it’s the converse that’s more relevant, how often is there atrocity that is not preceded by dehumanizing language from leadership? 1/
@Alon also, although certainly social media has been full of dehumanizing language about Russians, I think Ukraine’s leadership has been surprisingly free of that, continually emphasizing that, unlike the Russian military, they are not terrorists, and any strikes into Russia are carefully targeted at military objectives. 2/
@Alon at the beginning of the war, Zelensky spent a huge amount of rhetoric *humanizing* Russian soldiers, telling Russian mothers we have no desire for your sons to die here. i think it plausible that meaningfully conditioned, both at the level of international support and in actual practice, how Ukraine has prosecuted the war, for the better. /fin
Via Rachel Brown on Left, Right, and Center, an interesting suggestion for a moral rule:
While violence may sometimes be unfortunately justified, what if we declare dehumanizing and inflammatory language by leaders to never be justified, and impose a strong moral and international-law prohibition of that. Would that help us restrict organized violence to what is genuinely unavoidable, help prevent gratuitous carnage?
Not endorsing, considering. Interesting. https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/left-right-center/response-israel-palestine-biden-us
@VickiWoodward good point.
sometimes it feels like we are ruled by toddlers with armies.
i stand on the side of this shit is stupid just stop it.
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@cshentrup @jwmason a big UBI plus nordic labor institutions, social welfare state, and taxation would go a long way towards making the world safe for price-rationing of most goods and services.
@cshentrup @jwmason you can't read minds or "actual utility" (an ill-formed idea), but your values can insist that desserts plus starvation is inferior to everybody gets a meal. who knows? maybe someone you've denied a dessert really savors sweets, and in terms of some hypothetical utility that'd be worth a starvation or two. nevertheless, i'm happy to let values about life's priority guide us rather than that hypothetical.
i agree that the best way to deal with all this is reduce inequality!
@cshentrup @jwmason This one's for you, though you'll hate it. https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/10/19/price-rationing/index.html
[new draft post] Price rationing https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/10/19/price-rationing/index.html
can somebody please tell history just to stay the fuck in the past?
@bmaz perhaps everybody is overbroad. am i essentializing xeeters?
@cakeisnotalie i’m sure Palestinians don’t want their current leadership structure, neither in Gaza nor the West Bank. but that’s not evidence the Israelis have conspired to impose it. Egyptians would prefer a more democratic leadership structure. As would the Saudis. they still don’t have it, and Israel has little to do with it. i love your optimism — the solutions i support all involve effectively imposing some form of democracy in Palestinian territories. i sure hope that is doable.
@cakeisnotalie that is my point. there were elections only once, 17 years ago. the institution didn’t take as a regular thing, whomever you want to claim is responsible for that.
one way to characterize that other site is “the demonization place”.
it’s what everybody’s doing there.
one inconsistency among people with views, well, views like mine, is that we think we have learned you can’t export democracy at the point of a gun, but when we solutionize about Israel/Palestine we kind of assume we can. Israel should vouchsafe for Palestinians in Gaza a democratic state with sovereign control of its borders. but in 2006 elections in Gaza didn’t portend ongoing democracy. does Israel have the ability to encourage democracy and just cynically not, or do they just not have a way?
@stephenjbell lunar! oops.