Forum Post: Alright Guys, lets see it
Posted 12 years ago on April 18, 2012, 12:16 a.m. EST by TheSkepticalBeliever
(1)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I am a 10th grade student doing a research paper on you guys. I am questioning your motives, origins, and legitimacy of claims. Please don't slam me for saying this. First Question: What are your demands specifically? Second: What is your political alignment if any? Third: Where are your origins rooted in? Fourth: Would you consider yourselves any of the following; socialist, capitalist, or facist. Fifth: Do you condone, back up, support, or align yourselves with anarchists or anarchic practices? I look forward to eloquent responses.
Ask yourself the following questions. Does authoritarianism solve problems or hide problems? Do people deserve to participate in a real way in the decisions that effect their lives?
None of these questions require that we pigeon hole ourselves into old slogans or terms like socialism or capitalism or whatever. Nor does is it obligate us to align ourselves with any partisan political outlook. Politicians always speak in terms of how "they" can change the world for everyone else, but we think differently. Anything that comes from the top down can only be a temporary solution, and it's almost never a robust solution.
Who makes demands? Extortionists make demands, and we're not extortionists. We're people who believe a better world is possible, and who believe only we the people can make that happen.
The origins of this movement started in Adbusters magazine, when an ad asked people to come and occupy wall street.
No one is going to say they are fascist, because it has a bad connotation, even though it is a more common belief than most people think.
There does seem to be a surprising amount of alignment with anarchist beliefs here, the forum administrator once told me they were an anarchist and, incorrectly, that this would not mean they wanted to get rid of social welfare programs.
And as a movement, OWS remains demand less, so I don't think you are going to get any specific demands out of anyone, although maybe you wanted individual demands.
Are you that guy that used to be someone else???
Musta got booted, eh?
What's with the fascist bullshit? This movement is about as far away from that as it could be.
Why make that insinuation?
That guy that used to be someone else... What? Could you be a little more specific?
I never said this movement was fascist. All I said is that it is a more commonly held belief than most people think. What do you think the definition of fascism is? Have you looked it up?
Economic systems are said to be capitalistic if the means of production are privately owned and controlled. They are said to be socialistic if the means of production are publicly held and controlled.
They are said to be fascist if the means of production are privately owned, but controlled by the government.
[Removed]
Hmmmm, That's strange.
There's no actual name for when the means of production controls the government. You know like we have going on throughout most of of the World.
So I'll coin one for you.
Neo-libe(R)tarianism
lol
How long and far did you search for a term for that? You might have come across one if you had really looked, but my guess is you didn't really do any actual research. It's too hard and difficult.
It is called "corporatism", but you can refer to it with completely random and unrelated terms if you like...
Oh wait, you did. My bad.
I think what you need to do here, is provide proof of your stated "commonly held " belief.
The place I've seen such misunderstanding held as common, is on FLAKESnews, or maybe Glenn Beck..
?
I never said any particular places where it might be a commonly held belief, you just went ahead and put those words in my mouth. I don't know why you want so desperately to disagree with me, I think if you could get past your blind hatred of random strangers, you would realize you agree with me a lot. All I said is, there are a whole lot of fascists in the world that will never admit to being fascist.
You're Thrasymaque antennae are working very well, I see. A few of his new names are CarlosFenito, JuanFenito, PabloFenito, EricBlair, engineer4, EdiblePlanet and likely this OP as well. I'll let you know if I see any more. He has many tactics. In this case, likely, he's being paid to divert attention away from what we should really be looking at.
The mods do seem to clean a few of 'em out from time to time, and then we get a flood of new usernames, spouting the same drivel.
The ones attempting to pin the term fascist on the movement really do piss me off though, as they are about as far off the mark as you can get.
It feels like you just tuned in to FLAKESnews, and I always change the that channel.
There's various forms of anarchism, not all of which preclude social welfare programs (so there can be some overlap with social democracy).
The whole idea of anarchism runs counter to the notion that a powerful and arbitrary controlling force can seize goods from the individual.
Right, but this still doesn't necessarily preclude some aspects of social democracy (since social democracy doesn't require this sort of confiscatory regime). Obviously there's many differences of opinion on this (I mean, there's individualist anarchism, libertarian socialism, anarcho communism, syndicalism, and the list goes on and on).
Anyway, notwithstanding the (loosely speaking) affinity for anarchism among some OWS supporters, I don't think OWS is anarchist in a strict sense. It loosely borrows some anarchist ideas, like challenging power structures and requiring a justification for any power relationship. But I mean, many of our founding fathers shared these sort of sentiments (so it's not exactly alien to American thought).
Thank you for what input you have given. Sincerely, Me.
Now we have desperate and hysterical trolls masquerading as children.Why would any student inhabit a messageboard for the purpose of doing research on a school paper?Why would anybody who has access to the internet need to do such a thing?ATBtrash
I call foul: you are not a tenth grade student.
What school do you go to?
This forum is not going to be the best place for you to do your "research."
Good luck on your paper.
If you are doing a research paper then do the research! You will need to form you own opinions on these questions by reading all you can about this movement. Asking individuals what they think is not going to get answers only opinions.