Rudy Giuliani: Foolish Words
Rudy Giuliani Makes Fascist Fearmongering Statements:
Yesterday Rudy Giuliani said:
if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.
But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.
What nonsense. A threat of attack to get us to vote Republican. What a ridiculous ploy, preying on people’s fears to get elected. Ron Paul 08!
Per Wikipedia.org:
Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers individual and other societal interests inferior to the needs of the state, and seeks to forge a type of national unity, usually based on ethnic, religious, cultural, or racial attributes. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, corporatism, collectivism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, and opposition to economic and political liberalism.
Filed under: Politics
What a dumb comment and what a dumb definition of terrorist. If you think Giuliani is a terrorist, then you have misformed the concept terrorist. If your concept allows for no distinction between people who themselves use or threaten to themselves use violence to achieve some political end and people who warn that violence from others may come if such and such occurs (which may be a valid and true statement), then your concept is making clear thinking difficult for you. If I don’t want my daughter to walk through some neighborhood, so I tell her that if she walks through that neighborhood she may get assaulted, I think that’s a little different than if I am someone who lives in that neighborhood and I say, “if you come through my neighborhood, I’m going to assault you.” Giuliani’s claim may in fact be true, just like the father’s claim in the above example. It would be true if a politician said, “if you vote for communists, your country is going to go to shits.” By your theory, this would also be terrorism, as his goal is political. Your theory makes no distinction between a threat and a warning, and takes no cognizance of whether the warning may be valid or not. Given Democratic policies, I think it is certainly a valid warning, not that Republicans have done much or any better.
It seems you are the one who has trouble thinking clearly, obviously displayed with your inability to articulate yourself, your inaccurate definitions, and lack of paragraph use to separate your ideas.
Giuliani is using terror (an instance or cause of intense fear or anxiety) to coerce voters into voting for him. That is terrorism.
Threatening violence isn’t specific to terrorism. Terrorism has to do with using fear as a tool for political gain.
For me, this one straddles the borderline. Giuliani clearly made a foolish statement intended to evoke fear of voting for Democrats, however, to call it terrorism, to me, is to go a little further beyond a reasonable definition. I would agree this is more of a warning rather than a terroristic threat.
This is the definition that comes up on Microsoft Word: “violence or the threat of violence, especially bombing, kidnapping, and assassination, carried out for political purposes.”
But that’s beside the point. Definitions of concepts are objective, so it is valid to disagree with a dictionary if you know what concept a certain word is supposed to denote. Your definition is ridiculously broad, rendering ‘terrorism’ almost meaningless. Half of political campaigning is terrorism under your definition.
Politicians argue two things when campaigning: things will be relatively good if you elect me, and things will be relatively shitty if you elect the other guy (or party). The latter can be said to appeal to fear; the politician is trying to make people fear the negative consequences of electing the other guy. So pretty much all politics is terrorism under your definition. In other words, your definition makes terrorism a harmless, everyday offense.
So either way, whether you recognize that what Giuliani did was in no way terrorism, or you define terrorism your way, what he said was pretty harmless and common.
its fascist fearmongering and is totally inappropriate.
I would say that fascist fearmongering is a much better description of Giuliani’s statements than terrorism.
How great would it be if our media had some balls and came out with headlines like: “Giuliani Makes Fascist Fearmongering Statements.”?
That would be a media I would respect.
FYI - Here’s wikipedia’s definition of Fascism, which I agree is the proper definition and does include what Giuliani said:
I thought we were against censorship
Hey admin, the Editor-In-Chief editing his blogroll would only be viewed as censorship in the eyes of someone seriously lacking insight.
Please rethink any charges of censorship.