Discussion and Debate Community Thread

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

I thought the video at best passes off as satire and at worst is the content creator diving off the deep end.

[Infidel144]

Anyone for a game of ̶A̶x̶i̶s̶ Allies and Allies?

[Fahnat]

Its gotta be some sort of joke video. Right?

I would like that it was a joke, but i think not.
The thing that it makes me laugh is that they use a censored version of german iconography in their videos, the iron cross instead of the swastika, and event that censored image is problematic

[Cope]

I would like that it was a joke, but i think not.
The thing that it makes me laugh is that they use a censored version of german iconography in their videos, the iron cross instead of the swastika, and event that censored image is problematic

It's attention seeking, click bait drivel.

[Heathen Hammer]

I would like to see your opinion of this video from Extra Credits and their "normalizing nazis" and their opinions about it.
This as blown up on their faces with many people responding negatively with their ideas on this video, and i agree with the criticism.
Here is a video that i really liked that articulated very well their criticism of the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0P4_yDLNyw

I think this is the perfect illustration to the point that I raised more then once - modern SJWs are what evangelicals were in the 1990s. Its people who lack necessary critical thinking skills and accept everything CNN or their local church would tell them - and they would got at far lengths to suppress what they'd believe to be wrongthink.

[Aexodus]

Huh just me or was this discussed somewhere else.

[Basil II the B.S]

Oxford economist is upset that Brexit party MPs turned their back to the EU anthem. Declares ''civil war, no quarters, civilization is at stake''.
https://twitter.com/williamnhutton/s...45433552564226

I agree. He belongs to the class of treacherous parasytes who are dismantling European civilization in the name of ''global governance'', technocracy and supranational oligarchies. He's an enemy of our civilization. He wants war, it'll be war. It'll be the liberals against humanity.

[Muizer]

I would like to see your opinion of this video from Extra Credits and their "normalizing nazis" and their opinions about it.

They could do with a healthy dose of moral relativism! But seriously, for a long time, Nazi symbols as well as nazi Germany military were identified 1:1 with outright evil, because they were inextricably linked to Nazi atrocities. To the extent that games omit those atrocities and make Nazi Germany just another military faction, I think there is a problem. When the association of Nazi symbols with Nazi evils is no longer implicitly felt, then it kind of does fall to content creators to include those evils explicitly. It would be interesting to see how ready game developers would be to score points for the Axis side in terms of Jews exterminated in the concentration camps.

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

They could do with a healthy dose of moral relativism! But seriously, for a long time, Nazi symbols as well as nazi Germany military were identified 1:1 with outright evil, because they were inextricably linked to Nazi atrocities. To the extent that games omit those atrocities and make Nazi Germany just another military faction, I think there is a problem. When the association of Nazi symbols with Nazi evils is no longer implicitly felt, then it kind of does fall to content creators to include those evils explicitly. It would be interesting to see how ready game developers would be to score points for the Axis side in terms of Jews exterminated in the concentration camps.

Considering exterminating jews has absolutely nothing to do with the intended gameplay of the vast majority of games that have anything to do with ww2, I imagine they wouldn't be very ready by and large.

At the end of the day it is a game, and I don't play ww2 games to dwell in such genocides. Only the genocide of virtual soldiers at a scale that may well surpass all of humanity's wars put together.

[Mithradates]

They could do with a healthy dose of moral relativism! But seriously, for a long time, Nazi symbols as well as nazi Germany military were identified 1:1 with outright evil, because they were inextricably linked to Nazi atrocities. To the extent that games omit those atrocities and make Nazi Germany just another military faction, I think there is a problem. When the association of Nazi symbols with Nazi evils is no longer implicitly felt, then it kind of does fall to content creators to include those evils explicitly. It would be interesting to see how ready game developers would be to score points for the Axis side in terms of Jews exterminated in the concentration camps.

You mean, it would be interesting to see how ready game developers would be to bankrupt their company with that unsellable game...

[Muizer]

Considering exterminating jews has absolutely nothing to do with the intended gameplay of the vast majority of games that have anything to do with ww2, I imagine they wouldn't be very ready by and large.

At the end of the day it is a game, and I don't play ww2 games to dwell in such genocides. Only the genocide of virtual soldiers at a scale that may well surpass all of humanity's wars put together.

When I was a small kid, my parents would not allow me to have german WWII model aircraft or toy soliders. In films, German WWII soldiers were entirely dehumanized. In an early computer game like Wolffenstein german soldiers were there to kill with the same level of detachment as the monsters in Doom.

Of course, portraying german soldiers from WWII as embodiment of evil is on the face of it simplistic, until you realise that swastikas, jack boots, helmets, Stukas etc.., were closely associated with the evil of Nazi Germany. If they no longer are, then the desensitization the video speaks of has to a great extent already happened. There's irony there that by railing against 'censorship' and 'fallacies' commentators are actually proving the premise of the video right. They're just too late. That ship has seemingly sailed.

From saying "I can separate the German military endeavour of WWII from tyranny and genocide" it is not a great leap to "the military cannot be blamed for the atrocities of the Nazi regime". Yet that is exactly where you'd start to legitimize excuses like 'they didn't know', 'they were only following orders', 'they were forced into it', 'they were being patriotic', they were tragic heroes fighting for the wrong side. My comment about extermination camps is that I can understand the concern about allowing players to role play Nazi Germany that way and I think the gaming industry has some responsibility in reminding players that is not an acceptable way to look at actual historical events. Go play nazi Germany, but do so knowing you're unequivocally playing the evil guys.

[Cohors_Evocata]

The video is seriously flawed, but I can sorta see the point in cases like Paradox's Hearts of Iron IV. The sales page claims to allow the player to relive history, but there's no mention or depiction of the massacres of the Nazi regime, the purges in the Soviet union have no effect other than on the armed forces (and might even bizarrely be construed as justified, since not starting the purge inevitably leads to a civil war in the game), the event text to the fall of Nanjing contains no mention of the massacres by the Japanese and so on... These and other examples are all pretty important sides to the war and its run-up that can't really be untangled from the combatants the game allows you to play, especially since the game essentially places you in the position of the political and military leadership of the nations involved, not just some grunt on the ground. The game explicitly allows you to set certain policies through its interface, so I don't buy that it only depicts the strategic/military side of the war. Not to mention that in a remarkable exception, the Bengal famine is included in the game (and can be prevented/allowed to happen through the actions of the player), so the argument that the game consistently doesn't depict human suffering as a result of national policy doesn't fly either.

I'm not sure that Paradox's depiction of e.g. Nazi Germany can be said to "normalize" Nazism or the Third Reich, but I think it's hard to argue that their current presentation does it justice. If you want to take the place of Adolf Hitler and take the helm of a regime and ideology founded on the oppression and eventual extermination of certain groups, then by all means do so. It is only right that you would be confronted with the consequences of their ideology and actions. Heck, the game even gives you a way to kick the Nazis out and play as a democratic Germany or restored German Empire if you so desire. I don't think it would necessarily even be all that hard to handle the problem in this in this case: simply having event popups for things like the Wannsee Conference, the Katyn Massacre and discovery of concentration camps in occupied territories by Allied or Soviet forces would already go a long way in making clear that many of these regimes and ideologies have a lot of blood on their hands. I get that including them would be controversial as well, and might even damage game sales, but omitting them IMO weakens any claims to historical authenticity and, worst case, may even be said to help perpetuate like the clean Wehrmacht myth.

EDIT: To expand on this: in cases of "but what if I want to play Hitler, but in my headcanon he is not antisemitic?" Simple, you're no longer playing Hitler, but a derivative of the real historical figure, in which case you can say goodbye to any claims to historical authenticity on other fronts as well. If someone complains that a certain gun or uniform is inaccurate, but sees no problem with whitewashing the actions of the people who used them, I honestly don't see how they can claim to care about historical accuracy. When we can speak of active whitewashing is up for debate of course, but I think it's fairly likely the choice of what to include in the example of Hearts of Iron IV was a deliberate decision. As regards the video, I don't agree with forcing developers to depict the past a certain way, but people do have the right to point out that their depiction is inaccurate and perhaps even irresponsible.

[Basil II the B.S]

The side of science™ and truth™.
https://twitter.com/Ilhan/status/1148394510394769413


It's actually pretty funny how unbelievably stupid these people are.

[Prodromos]

Pompeo's speech to CUFI a couple days ago.

The U.S. and Israel: A Friendship for Freedom - United States Department of State

I want to kick off my remarks by telling you something that you already know, but a lot of folks truly don’t: Christians in America are among Israel’s greatest friends. (Applause.)

This isn’t a new development. Christian support in America for Zion – for a Jewish homeland ‒ runs back to the early Puritan settlers, and it has endured for centuries. Indeed, our second president, a couple years back, said, quote, “I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation,” end of quote.

And then a little more recently, now just over a hundred years ago, 1916, a prominent American evangelist named William Blackstone helped to convince President Woodrow Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration. That was the United Kingdom’s own statement of support for, quote, “a national home for the Jewish people.”

That document, that document helped lay the groundwork for what happened in 1948, when a Missouri Baptist displayed an incredible act of political courage. We have to remember these times. It was a world that was recovering from the fury of World War II, people of all nations returning to their homelands. And President Truman wondered aloud to one of his aides. He said, “Everyone else who’s been dragged away from his country has someplace to get back to. But the Jews have no place to go.”

So President Truman, incredibly, courageously, decided to recognize this new state. He did so on the very same day its first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, read aloud its declaration of independence in Tel Aviv. We take this for granted sometimes, but this wasn’t an easy decision for the president. Nearly every one of his advisors, military and diplomatic, had counseled against that decision.

But he knew – that president knew – it was the right thing to do. He later said, “I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?” (Laughter.) He continued. He continued. He said, “What would Jesus Christ have preached if he had taken a poll in Israel?” (Laughter.) And, “Where would the Reformation had gone if Martin Luther had taken a poll? It isn’t the polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It’s [doing what’s] right and wrong, and leadership.” (Applause.)

You have a president like that today, too. (Applause.) No one – no one was more grateful for Truman’s brave decision than the Jewish people themselves. In 1949, Israel’s Chief Rabbi came to see President Truman. He told him, he said, “God put you in your mother’s womb so that you could be the instrument to bring about the rebirth of Israel after two thousand years.” And as the story goes, tears filled the president’s eyes.

The Rabbi then opened the Bible and read the words of King Cyrus – a real friend to Israel. It was from the Book of Ezra. He read that “The Lord God of Heaven hath given me all the kindness of the earth; and he hath charged me to build Him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.”

It fills me with unending pride to know that American hands helped build the modern house of Israel. (Applause.)

Our welcoming, the American welcoming, of the new Jewish state into the family of nations was one of the most consequential diplomatic decisions of the 20th century – not just in terms of the world map, but as a statement to the world of who we are as Americans. (Applause.) It proved, as we continue to prove, that we stand for human dignity, that we stand for justice, that we stand for independence.

We are now some 70 years on from that moment. America has an incredibly unique and important relationship with Israel, and it’s one that I personally treasure and am proud to work every day to maintain. (Applause.)

[Basil II the B.S]

Two rapefugees, one from Iraq and the other from Egypt attempted to rape an Italian woman. Once she defended herself with pepper spray, they tried to run over her.
https://www.msn.com/it-it/notizie/ro...id=mailsignout

The Iraqi one has been rejected by Sweden 3 times, Finland once, then finally arrived to Italy.
Every single open borders/multiculturalism/refugees welcome advocate/apologist is responsibile for this in my eyes.

[Prodromos]

On this day 510 years ago, the Protestant Reformer John Calvin was born.

The Man Who Founded America - The Christian Post

What one individual would you identify as the virtual founder of America? Would it be George Washington? Thomas Jefferson? Thomas Paine? Benjamin Franklin?

I believe that the man history clearly gives this designation to is a humble reformer from Geneva, Switzerland, who died in 1564. His name is John Calvin.

The great American historian, George Bancroft, who was far from a Calvinist, calls John Calvin "the father of America." According to Bancroft, "He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty."

If we are to get back to the principles that made America great, I believe we must get back to the principles of John Calvin, because it was precisely his principles that made this nation great.

For Calvin and the Colonists, the starting point was the sovereignty of God and the final authority of Scripture. Calvin taught that Scripture is applicable not just to matters of sin and salvation, but to all of life. His exposition of the Bible formed, in the main, the whole political, economic, and religious life of America in her infancy. When his biblically-based Christian worldview ran up against prevailing ecclesiastical and political authorities, it held firm.

This was demonstrated during America's founding, as Presbyterians, who were Calvinists in theology, formed the backbone of the American Revolution. More than half of the soldiers and officers in America's Revolutionary army were Presbyterians; all but one of the colonels were Presbyterian elders. In fact, the War for Independence was referred to in Britain as the "Presbyterian rebellion."

According to Bancroft, "The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure." One ardent colonial supporter wrote to King George III the following words: "I fix all of the blame for these extraordinary proceedings upon the Presbyterians. They have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures."

Afterwards, when Independence had been won and the battlefield smoke had cleared, the government that took shape also deserves to be attributed to Calvin. The form of government that existed in the Presbyterian church, which was the only "republic" existing on this continent for 75 years before 1776, was one which the American government, to a great extent, simply mirrored.

In fact, Calvinism and republican self-government are related to each other as cause and effect. One of the great contributions Calvin gave to the world has been the representative system of government.

Calvin is also credited with the rise of capitalism, the economic system that has made America the envy of the whole world.

Finally, Calvinism gave rise to American education. Almost all of America's first colleges and universities—including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—were founded by Calvinists.

Calvin's contribution to America is monumental, but no monument marks his gravesite—a terse J.C. adorns his small gravestone in Geneva. It is a reminder of the One he served, the One whose principles he gave to this world. Those principles stirred the blood, thrilled the heart and gave birth to the freest nation in history. Jesus Christ, the sovereign Lord of all, was the One he glorified, and if this country is to have any hope of sustaining that freedom, it will be found in a return to Him.

[Basil II the B.S]

A good article on the conflict between liberals and democracy in Israel:
Immigration Policy and the Rise of Anti-Democratic Liberalism—the Case of Israel

https://quillette.com/2019/07/04/imm...ase-of-israel/

Pretty much the same as everywhere in the West:
-supranational technocracy
-open borders
-judicial activism
-politicized NGOs

against the people.

[Aexodus]

https://twitter.com/thelocalfrance/s...947181056?s=21

So after occupying charles de gaulle airport, now illegal immigrants have occupied the pantheon in France. I really don’t think they should just give papers to whoever asks for them.

[Basil II the B.S]

They will, because liberals care more about not being called racists than enforcing laws.

Meanwhile Italian secret services and justice system have completed the investigation about ''Twitter bots'' that attacked the treacherous vermin Mattarella when he attempted a coup last year. As it turns out they were 100% Italian and the idea that there was a ''Russian agency'' behind them was a fabrication of the lying liberal media:
https://www.agi.it/politica/troll_ru...ws/2019-07-12/

It's time to start jailing liberals because they are destabilizing the country with their lies. These people are ing evil, they are unable to think rationally, they are a cult, they are ruining society, they hate us, they hate democracy, they hate our people and they want to destroy us. We must stop them.

edit:

Apparently the new dimension for the LGBTQIAP+ agenda is to find out whether a whartog and a meerkat had interspecies gay intercourse.
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1150012742083973120

and I give you even more reasons why we should all hate the liberal media. Here's how MSNCB presented the social media summit at the White House:
https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/t...m_npd_ms_tw_ma

[Prodromos]

Some interesting findings from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election study.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: