I aways put those two ideas behind the same word 'racism', you made me realize this word exists even in french.

Although, from what I read, you can't separate the two ideas. In the definition I read, racialism is about believing in different human races (operative word being human). Which is wrong from a scientific standpoint. So even entertaining this idea (based on known wrong premises) is a form of racism (because if it has no scientific ground, it is just a pretext to facilitate some discourse -> a racist one).

Again, in my opinion, racism or racialism aren't some forms of absolute evils because they are so much made of ignorance and sheer stupidity that it doesn't let room for much less. On the other hand, the segregation part is evil.

Spending beyond your means always has bad results,for both individuals and Governments. End of story.
And how did this discussion get sidetrtackes into a discussion of racism.?

It's a cute sky full of little cherubs who hate viets and cannot stand japs but aren't racists because vietnamese and japanese people are not a race so it's all okay. There isn't even such a thing as "racist slurs", or "racist behaviour", and nobody gets offended by being called a "racist" as long as they show their "hey it's just cultural determinism" pass. However there are lots of little harps and rainbows. Thank you for inviting me.

However, racism, in a broad sense, is a specific form of discrimination. And racism isn't a thing-that-goes-way-beyond-discrimination. If you mean racism in a broad sense, it is a worldview (a way to treat ethnic identities) that can be actualized or not in actions, that is, which goes from merely shaping interpretations and social representations, to paternalism, to more or less passive or agressive hostility, to legitimation of violence, etc. Likewise, racialism (if that is what you mean with racism, in a narrow technical sense) doesn't determine actions directly : it can claim that "all races are equal" (which in practice generally collapses into underlying hierarchisations, and stigmatisation of what is designated as "half-breed") to straightforward eugenism. And the same goes with whatever combinations of both.

But the belief that only racialism (or racism in the narrowest racialist sense) is a true bad thing, and the belief that racialism is distinct in causes and effects from culturalism, is exactly the bullshit that makes this such a huge stake for racists. Because heck, stigmatizing a global population is cool, but being called a "racist" for it is super offensive. And is an obstacle to racist propaganda (of the "greeks are lazy cheating bastards anyway, so who cares about this population" sort).

It is a completely hypocritical and context-irrelevant usage of a technicality, that attempts to remove from the vocabulary a word commonly used as a broad category (just as it can be used for a narrower one), to benefit from the fact that none other replace it, and that if one gets shaped for it, it will take enough time to gather the moral weight of "racism".

It's just instrumentalizing vocabulary in order to whitewash statements and stances that have rightfully gathered the negative "racist" stigma for decades. Hey, presto, the "i hate arabs" grandpa is not racist anymore, neither is the "don't trust a chinese" granduncle. Mass hug.

Clean slate for a nice new century. Quite handy, in times of nationalist crispations and asylum rights negations.

Well, it's actually a useless clarification, given the xenophobic greenlighting agenda behind this whole argument.

As the very point is to be able to be able to treat populations like races (through the neoracist usage of culturalism) without being called out on it, or without being guilt-tripped by a too openly negatively connoted term, the discussion is a fake one.

It's a mere "hey, it is now cool to say that a population is unworthy" stake. The grand comeback of unbearably stigmatized discourses. With that at stake, with this new rhetorical device at hand, its deconstruction hardly matters. What matters is that it can work on (some) people.

Expect a lot of "i am not racist because it is not a race" from the likes of Le Pen, Bossi, etc. And the libel trials it'll enable. Not sure they'll be very succesfull though.

I thanked you because you had the strength and will to write it down, while I just shrugged.
It is not useless, it is the matter, words matter: not understanding this allows people to justify what is happening right now to Greece and, to a lesser extent, nearly anywhere in Europe, to let human being suffer, starve and die because "they are lazy and they deserved it".

And, right now, the "proletarian" is not defined by the fact that he has only "proles" (latin for "son"), but by lacking the intellectual means to understand that no one should be able to give orders to a sovereign state.
Proletarians lacks class consciousness, and this compresses democracy under the weight of The Market.

We are rushing into war.


Poor Bossi. He had a stroke, and a bad one, now he can barely speak. Now the leader of Lega (the party founded by Bossi) is Salvini. Sadly, Lega is the only Italian party openly against euro.

The matter is indeed important, and the very fact that my posts get systematically downrepped illustrate the importance of these stakes. The ability to hijack the technical, academic usage of "racism", in an everyday discussion that employs it in the same broad sense as in "cultural racism", "class racism", etc, ensures the only legitimacy of the current culturalist trend of neoracism. Racists do not care one bit about their underlying rationale. Genes, culture, or whatever magic device, are just interchangeable rhetorical tools for the same old discourses : the debunking of the race myth hasn't lead to any conceptual change, only a cosmetic swapping of instrumentalized notions. Racism is not an effect of beliefs, racism is its own reward : it is the purpose. Deconstruct its fundation, another will come to replace it. Racism, for itself, is wished and needed in politics (as showed by the "PIIIGS" narrative), in any form it'll have to take.

They only (suddenly) care for the underlying narrative devices if one becomes too blatant and must be ostensibly ditched. Being able to go "Hey, I am saying the EXACT SAME THING but I am using the word CULTURE now, so I have NOTHING to do with that !" is what matters, what makes them feel all respectable in the public sphere. Pulling that rug from under their feet, acting as if they hadn't swapped keywords, endangers this pretend legitimacy. That's why it's important to do. That's why the backlash is noticeable, even on gog.

But the fact that preserving racist narratives is much more important than denouncing their modern avatars is also what makes these posts futile. Either someone is sensible enough to be already creeped out by racist discourses whatever their varnish, or is already hellbent on protecting his right to make racist statements without being blamed for it. And this downrep precisely illustrates that people from the second category aren't present in negligible numbers. This discussion probably benefits no one.

At the best, it pisses off some of the "i am not racist but germans/turks/greeks/albanians are horrible people" goons. Giggling at the ragevotes is the only vague satisfaction I get from it, but I expect zero untold "hm, yeah, essentializing populations is pretty much racist actually, oops". In that sense, lots of keyboard pressing for nothing.



________
(Anecdoticaly, I've recently got news of a legal case I had contributed to a couple of years ago. A bunch of greek nationalists got jailed for having beaten up in the street a couple of adorable ladies suspected of being of albanian decent. Was qualified as a case of racist violence. Apparently, they didn't try the "albania is not a race" line of defense, but I'm not sure it would have worked that well...)

NO no no no no, by all the gods, please, PLEASE, anything BUT that!!! I will pay all my debts plus interest, just please don't make me fuck that thing! I prefer to die than see "that" as a woman!

The Greeks offered to lie to the EU in return for $29 billion in additional aid that would never be paid back. As long as they get to insult those giving the money, as well. Greece would in return promise various budget reforms it has no intention of ever actually carrying out, so the EU could say it had an agreement before being fleeced further. When the time came, the Greeks would spend the $29 billion just like they spent the previous $350 billion - any way they damn well please.

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Too bad you don't apply this to yourself. You consistently applied the term "they" to Greece not distinguishing between Greek citizens, politicians (current/former), or capitalists. It's then no surprise you end up with this vulgarity: Your comment is blatantly racist as it demonizes and dehumanizes an entire country of people. Does it really need to be said to you that this is obviously false? It would be nice for you to accept accountability for that racist remark but I doubt we'll see it until you stop wasting your time watching angry youtubers (your prior thread) and filling your head with books of fairytales. If you feel offended that your views were not taken with any seriousness perhaps you should do something more to better inform your views. Maybe take my initial recommendation:

http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1435807205&sr=1-1&keywords=capital+in+the+twenty-first+century

Or if that's too long perhaps this:

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1435807235&sr=1-1&keywords=confessions+of+an+economic+hitman+by+john+perkins

If you want to argue a point of view do yourself the favor of putting in the work.

The main thing that I'm worried is the strength of the Euro if Greece leaves. What's the common prediction for this, since it's already lost a load of value in the past year or so?

History informs all judgement, but going back to where disagreement began is futile. Why? Because the linear relationship between him and myself has deteriorated into a circle of contempt, and a circle has no beginning and no end - the latter being a bit of a problem.
Something has to be done about that circle so if you don't mind, I'll reply to Telika directly in more detail.

(the following message was written under the influence of the full moon at which I marveled just now - but no drugs were involved)

Let's take a step back for a moment and look at the situation:

The discussion is going around in circles and aside from semantic goal post moving nothing new is happening.

In general, I think it's safe to say that we haven't found much common ground in recent months, none in fact. It's also safe to say that neither of us is being a constructive presence whenever the two of us are in the same thread and it has anything even remotely to do with politics or racism, or - heaven forbid - when the two topics collide. Which would convert even the Hanging Gardens of Babylon into a toxic Wasteland within minutes.

Do you want this to be our legacy on this forum? "Mayday, it's those two Swiss guys again... we tried to lock them up separately in padded cells but one of them keeps escaping and finds the other one and then they burn down the entire clinic along with all the other inmates, I mean patients."

How did it get to be that way, one might ask. As I said to xSinghx, rolling back to the beginning of hostilities is futile. Nevertheless, remember how we used to have fun conversations including harmless shit talking with no resentment back in the days before everything was about "it's racism / no it's not / yes it is etc".
Those days are obviously gone and all that people who weren't there can see now is an unexplainably mysterious but explainably ridiculous feud that doesn't contribute anything positive whatsoever.

If we keep this up, we're going to turn into sad angry old men - if we don't die of character assassination before that.

Another person that will likely die is tinyE:
A little while ago, tinyE said he wants everyone to get along because it breaks his heart otherwise and he hates it when people are fighting here because he loves us all (what he says anyway).

An then there's Brasas who has been on our case for a while now, trying to cramp our style. He wrote me a PM asking if you and I really have to do this to ourselves...? I reflected upon this and he is right, it's inefficient and just like Einstein said it's insane to try the same thing over and over and expect different results. We're not getting anywhere this way. Hate keeps a man alive, just like Quintus Arrius says to Ben Hur. But we aren't galley slaves so no need for hate. We don't want to just survive, we want to live.

In that regard, I'd like to officially invite you to visit me in RL and treat you to a cold beverage of your choice, on me. I live in the area of Lucerne and if you're interested, I can show you some of our mountains here, there's good hiking in the area.
We can also buy some drugs from the friendly Nigerian drug dealers behind the train station - just joking, I don't do any drugs other than buying games online!

The offer is genuine, I always keep it real it when I talk about RL. A while ago I said I'll visit the GOG HQ and I did show up there and reported back here so there's undeniable proof that I exist in RL. It's also not a trap. We can also meet in your city, although I'm rather poor and probably can't even afford the train to drive to where you live which I'm guessing is 3 hours from here. Either way, my offer stands.

It's not about being cuddly fake friends or making an awkward truce, it's about having someone in front of you and saying "hey, perhaps that person isn't the monster I made him out to be in my mind".

It's about saying "behold, there is a human being!"

In a broad sense your hand is your leg.

Racism is the catalyst for violence like lynching, for slavery, not for whether you get a cab or not. If you equate racism with discrimination, you're so off base it's like you've never seen racism in action or met any actual racists. They exist.

Violence, like lynching a black man in S-USA is not discrimination, but rather the inhuman violence restricted only for things outside our own species (check out a chicken farm sometime). Because the racists simply don't see people different from them as real humans.Because they are fucking racists.

Racism obviously calls for discrimination, just as water tends to make one wet, but we don't consider drowning "getting wet, in a broad sense".

At least here outside La-la Land.

False.

If you didn't get a cab because of discrimination based on race then yes that is racism.

Discrimination can take many forms.

If it's based on race, then yes it's...racism. If it's based on sex, it's...sexism. If it's based on class, it's...classism. If it's based on...etc

Are you getting this yet?

There are many trends in it.
Euro losing value is a profitable for EU exporters trend - their goods become more competitive. This was EU monetary politic for some time.
Against it worked very strong swiss frank, which holded afloat euro with nailed exchange rate. When Switzerland cut off euro, it sank some more.
In comparison, Greece is a brick, whose problems bring down whole EU, and cutting them off would strenghten currency a little.
But. Their problem is an unpayable debt.
Banks would start to give credits with higher % to lesser amount of people and companies due to stricter checks. This is a longterm hit to speed of economical growth and would inflate euro even more.

At page 4 I posted a link to nytimes article about Puerto-Rico going default too.
What is scary about it - they are US colony, their debt originates in the same credit system where their states get money.
That is a sign that US getting inner default themselves.(Outer debt is in $, they can always print more money, on paper it would be ok, realistically we will see toilet paper having a price of a car)
US going down would bring down China, and at this point I'm gona leave to buy weapon and ammo.

I too support democracy and that's why I see the referendum a bit critical (too late for the deadline, too short time to discuss the options, government steals itself out of responsibility, government does not inform neutrally about the options) but in general I like that the Greek people can voice their opinion. Exactly because I love democracy so much, I'm always cautious it will turn to demagogery, which is a risk with not carefully chosen referendums.

As it is I see the referendum simply as a question: stay with the euro or leave the euro. No will mean that Greece will have to leave the euro if I'm not mistaken.

My personal best option: c) Leave the euro and get rid of Syriza and get someone else. My favorite would be Potami because they are the ones most outspoken against corruption and I like them. I trust them most to rebuild the Greek economy outside of the euro and successfully (much stronger) coming back.