Our society is not without faults. Our domestic and foreign policies are also often flawed. To correct failings, we need people who point them out, however unpopular that may be. We should be enabling a wide framework of public discourse, not seeking to silence people. To date, we haven’t quite reached the level of hysteria of 1950s McCarthyism, but we are perhaps coming close.
Capitalism certainly has flaws, but if you think the “oppression” in the US or western Europe is in any way comparable to that under the major fascist and communist regimes of Stalin, Mao or Hitler, I’m not sure what to say. We are from different planets.
It’s funny how you equate capataliam with democratic there.
Authoritarianism is bad in all forms.
But there’s a town in Texas that offers a $10,000 bounty to report me using the public bathroom.
https://apnews.com/us-news/texas-government-programs-lgbtq-general-news-fc1fb0ef003010fa961e64663a57b11d
But please tell me how I’m not oppressed.
And if you think Canada is innocent, what do you think we did to the natives in the name of capitalism?
What do you think the RCMP does with start light tours that are still happening?
It wasn’t me that brought up capitalism. We were talking about forms of government (fascism and communism) and then someone else said, WhAt AbOuT CaPiTaLiSM. That said, there is quite a bit of overlap in practice between economic and governmental systems. But I digress.
I agree with you that authoritarianism is bad. That was my central point, in fact. Comparing fascism and communism is not necessarily a “false equivalence” insofar as all of the major 20th century examples of both converged on authoritarianism.
As for oppression, I’m not going to argue that no one is oppressed in the West. But I will stand by my assertion that the scale and degree of oppression under Mao, Stalin, and Hitler (the largest 20th century examples of communism and fascism) is not comparable to what trans people may be experiencing in some Texas town.
As for indigenous people, yes, historically the scale of the original genocide is certainly comparable to the communist and fascist regimes of the 20th century. However, it is also important to remember that over 90% of the indigenous people died naturally of diseases they had no immune defense against. It was inevitable given the level of medical technology of the time, much like the plague in Europe. The starlight tours specifically are shameful but actually illegal for the police to do. Those are not state-sanctioned actions, unlike Stalin’s pogroms or Hitler’s concentration camps. A better example for your case would be the residential school system, which was both state-sanctioned and very oppressive.
You keep saying it’s not as bad as Hitler or mao, but then akwnoledge it has been?
This ignores atrocities that we did do in the time. Like the Alberta eugenics board. Just because the scale of people wasn’t the same, doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad.
When do you think the last residential school closed? This is RECENT times.
It’s not a suffering Olympics. It’s not about the number of bodies, it’s about the attitude of those who stood by and benefited from the system.
And just because the starlight tours are illegal, can you find one example of an officer who was prosecuted for it? Because if there’s no punishment is it really illegal?
To sya they’re incomparable is to ignore the people who are suffering, telling you it is.