NationStates Jolt Archive

Far-right group formed in European Parliament

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Far-right MEPs have managed to club together in the European Parliament, getting enough members to form a political group entitling them to EU funds.

The group was created on Tuesday (9 January) and managed to get just the threshold number of deputies needed under EU rules - 20 MEPs from six different member states.

The diverse group which houses politicians from Romania's anti-Roma xenophobic Greater Romania Party, through to France's and Belgium's anti-immigrant National Front and Vlaams Belang.

The group also includes Andrew Mölzner (an Austrian MEP kicked out of a far-right party in Austria for being too extremist)), Dimitar Stoyanov (a Bulgarian MEP who caused a ruckus in the parliament last year when he circulated a derogatory email about Roma people) and two Italian MEPs Luca Romagnoli and Alessandra Mussolini (granddaughter of Benito).

The group is to be headed by Bruno Gollnisch, a member of the National Front, and is to be called "Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty."

Having hammered out a political charter upon which they can agree - broadly anti-immigration, anti-EU constitution and anti-Turkish EU membership - the text will now be sent to European Parliament president Josep Borell.

http://euobserver.com/9/23223

Now, aside from the main content of the article which is open for all to debate (is it good to integrate these individuals into the political scene? discuss), what I found funny was how old Benito's granddaughter followed in his footsteps. Is it in the genes? :D

Whatever. My parents and grandparents loved Mussolini.

Whatever. My parents and grandparents loved Mussolini.

He did make the trains run on time. Which is why I'm certain that the US won't go fascist anytime in the near future, because AMTRAK is always several hours late for me.

In light of his actions though, I wonder why she chose to follow his example.

Anytime I hear about fascism in Europe I think,

http://www.johnberman.com/pics/funny/not_this_shit_again.jpg

It's like when will you guys quit with the fascination for xenophobia, nationalism and goose-stepping like a bunch of turns already?

No offense to the non-fascist Europeans, but seriously. I'm waiting for the second communist revolution in Russia and the invasion of Poland.

He did make the trains run on time.

Nope. (http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.htm)

But Mussolini was such a loser...his army was terrible, he got pwned hard by the US (and almost by the Ethiopians), and had to have his ass rescued by the Germans when everything went to hell. I can't honestly think of one thing he really did good other than make things somewhat more efficient...

Fascism sucks, and people who support it suck.

Nope. (http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.htm)
Goddamn you. I was going to post that.

Anytime I hear about fascism in Europe I think,

http://www.johnberman.com/pics/funny/not_this_shit_again.jpg

It's like when will you guys quit with the fascination for xenophobia, nationalism and goose-stepping like a bunch of turns already?

No offense to the non-fascist Europeans, but seriously. I'm waiting for the second communist revolution in Russia and the invasion of Poland.

I'm hoping the next revolution will be half capitalist half socialist if you know what I mean...

communism + Russia... bad mix, bad bad mix

Nope. (http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.htm)

Well, how do you like that. My high school history teacher has some explaining to do.

But Mussolini was such a loser...his army was terrible, he got pwned hard by the US (and almost by the Ethiopians), and had to have his ass rescued by the Germans when everything went to hell. I can't honestly think of one thing he really did good other than make things somewhat more efficient...

Fascism sucks, and people who support it suck.

Well, according to my mother he made sure she went to school instead of being forced by my grandfather to work the farm. After WWII she got pulled out of school, but at least they came to America, where she could work in a factory.

he got pwned hard by the US (and almost by the Ethiopians)

Are you fucking serious!? :eek:

She has posed for nude pics, so she can't be all bad.

(Though she might also be a bit of a woofy as I recall).

Are you fucking serious!? :eek:
Mussolini needed help from Germany to consolidate the situation when he tried invading (what was then) Abyssinia. Utter fiasco.

Nope. (http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.htm)

Mussolini may have done many brutal and tyrannical things; he may have destroyed human freedom in Italy; he may have murdered and tortured citizens whose only crime was to oppose Mussolini; but 'one had to admit' one thing about the Dictator: he 'made the trains run on time.'

lol

As long as she doesn't put on that silly little helmet Il Duce always seemed to wear, she's not bad looking. A little pouty, but that's fate of the Right in the EU, I suspect. Never quite satisfied with the way the last 50 years of history have turned out. What's Italian for "Maybe we shouldn't have gone along with absolutely everything Adolf suggested ..."?

It's like when will you guys quit with the fascination for xenophobia, nationalism and goose-stepping like a bunch of turns already?
Recall: You're building a rather long wall along your southern border right now.

It's the same sort of people. In America they'll tell you something about a "melting pot" and about assimilation (and really still mean they wanna see only people their own colour around them). In Europe they'll wave funny-looking medieval flags.

But why they do it is still beyond me. I'm working hard on getting closer to understanding though.

Mussolini needed help from Germany to consolidate the situation when he tried invading (what was then) Abyssinia. Utter fiasco.

Interesting, thanks. :)

Or, maybe Ethiopians just kick ass? They did trounce the Italians (under Menelik II) in the late 1800s, after all.

She has posed for nude pics, so she can't be all bad.

(Though she might also be a bit of a woofy as I recall).
Links please. :fluffle:

Recall: You're building a rather long wall along your southern border right now.

It's the same sort of people. In America they'll tell you something about a "melting pot" and about assimilation (and really still mean they wanna see only people their own colour around them). In Europe they'll wave funny-looking medieval flags.

But why they do it is still beyond me. I'm working hard on getting closer to understanding though.

Yeah, xenophobia and nationalism are not uniquely European monopolies, never meant to imply that they were. The motive is simple; fear. People fear change, people fear "other" people, people fear foreigners - specially cuz people fear terrorism, "stealing our jobs," "raping our women" - fear of losing one's comfortable ethnic majority and becoming a minority - fear of a lot of things.

That's why the nazis were really a bunch of pansies. "Ohnoes, there are a couple of non-Germans, THEY'RE COMING RIGHT FOR US!"

Links please. :fluffle:

Use google image search.

But Mussolini was such a loser...his army was terrible, he got pwned hard by the US (and almost by the Ethiopians), and had to have his ass rescued by the Germans when everything went to hell. I can't honestly think of one thing he really did good other than make things somewhat more efficient...

Fascism sucks, and people who support it suck.

was it mussolini's fault or was it because he was trying to do those things with an italian army? to quote rumsfeld "you go to war with the army you have".

i dont know how italy went fascist (and i cant be bothered to read up on it) but is there any country less suited to fatherland militarism than italy?

Recall: You're building a rather long wall along your southern border right now.

It's the same sort of people. In America they'll tell you something about a "melting pot" and about assimilation (and really still mean they wanna see only people their own colour around them). In Europe they'll wave funny-looking medieval flags.

But why they do it is still beyond me. I'm working hard on getting closer to understanding though.

*sighs*

Once again, people equate anti-illegal immigration with xenophobia. :rolleyes:

Use google image search.
Don't wanna. it sucks.

Still need links please.

Interesting, thanks. :)

Or, maybe Ethiopians just kick ass? They did trounce the Italians (under Menelik II) in the late 1800s, after all.
No, it's just that the Italians sucked. Hitler needed to step in for nearly every one of their failures. Mussolini cost Hitler more than he benefitted him.

Don't wanna. it sucks.

Still need links please.

Its really not worth it. Trust me on this.

No, it's just that the Italians sucked. Hitler needed to step in for nearly every one of their failures. Mussolini cost Hitler more than he benefitted him.

With friends like that, who needs enemies, eh? :p

Its really not worth it. Trust me on this.
Don't care. Still want the links. :fluffle:

No, it's just that the Italians sucked. Hitler needed to step in for nearly every one of their failures. Mussolini cost Hitler more than he benefitted him.

That's because the italians make food, not war.

Once again, people equate anti-illegal immigration with xenophobia.
And once again, people try to use "the lawmaker says it's so" as a shield.

There is absolutely zero significant distinction between a "legal" and an "illegal" immigrant. One has the money, time and expertise to engage in a bunch of unnecessary bureaucratic crap, the other does not.

Given that illegal immigrants generally have jobs, you can't even use the "they don't have skills, so they don't contribute" excuse. They're wanted, they're needed, they're contributing.

That's because the italians make food, not war.
And the French do what? Make love? :) I'll stick with them then.

Its really not worth it. Trust me on this.

So true, as I recall.

With friends like that, who needs enemies, eh? :p
Real joke from Nazi Germany:

The German army HQ receives news that Mussolini's Italy has joined the war.
"We'll have to put up 10 divisions to counter him!" says one general.
"No, he's on our side," says another.
"Oh, in that case we'll need 20 divisions."

;)

So true, as I recall.
She's that ugly?

And once again, people try to use "the lawmaker says it's so" as a shield.

There is absolutely zero significant distinction between a "legal" and an "illegal" immigrant. One has the money, time and expertise to engage in a bunch of unnecessary bureaucratic crap, the other does not.

Given that illegal immigrants generally have jobs, you can't even use the "they don't have skills, so they don't contribute" excuse. They're wanted, they're needed, they're contributing.

Indeed. I don't know why so many *supposed* capitalist "conservatives" are against it. Legal or not, immigrants work jobs, purchase and offer services and goods, help the economy.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that very few US citizens have any idea what it is like to try to immigrate to the US. It's not something so trivial that the only reason "illegals" get around it is because they want to "leech off the economy" or, I don't know what some people think - they walk through the desert risking death just because it's fun and convenient?

Its really not worth it. Trust me on this.

QFT.

Allessandra is ugly.

She's that ugly?

See for yourself.

See for yourself.

http://isidoro3.interfree.it/vip/mussolini/isiscan@vipitalia_alessandra_mussolini003.jpg
http://www.jutarnji.hr/EPHResources/Images/mussolini016.jpg

The 80's ended a long time ago...

-snip-
your libedo has failed you. She is hawt!

Now, go hang your head in shame!

QFT.

Allessandra is ugly.

Speak for yourself. I'd hit it.

Not least cuz of the satisfaction of defacing a piece of Europe's most shameful totalitarianistic history with my evil outlander seed.

your libedo has failed you. She is hawt!

How do I say this... women do not stimulate me, in the least. Although, to be honest, she does not seem ugly to me either. I have no idea what she's like today, but she definitely was not malformed.

Once again, people equate anti-illegal immigration with xenophobia.

Legal, illegal, what's the difference? Since when did the will of the state determine right and wrong?

Economic nationalism is now and always has been primarily rooted in xenophobia and other forms of arbitrary prejudice. (And, for what it's worth, that's just as true of its manifestations on the Left as it is of its manifestations on the Right.)

Real joke from Nazi Germany:

The German army HQ receives news that Mussolini's Italy has joined the war.
"We'll have to put up 10 divisions to counter him!" says one general.
"No, he's on our side," says another.
"Oh, in that case we'll need 20 divisions."

;)

ROFLMAO

Legal, illegal, what's the difference?

Legal = Someone who enters the country without breaking any laws

Illegal = Someone who violates our laws to get into the country


But on an unrelated note, I do think we should make it a lot easier for people to emigrate here, so there won't be as many "illegal" immigrants.

Speak for yourself. I'd hit it.

Well, to each his own. I already have a lady of my own, so if you want Alessandra, go for it. :)

See for yourself.
Dude, ix-nay on the oobs-bay.

Legal = Someone who enters the country without breaking any laws

Illegal = Someone who violates our laws to get into the country

Like I said, the will of the state. Why should I care?

But on an unrelated note, I do think we should make it a lot easier for people to emigrate here, so there won't be as many "illegal" immigrants.

Then you must agree that many of those deemed "illegal" are being unjustly denied legal access... so why do you care that they are "illegal"?

Why should I care?

Because they have already demonstrated lack of respect for the law. Also, by entering illegally, they forego any background checks, so we have no idea of their criminal record (or lack thereof), their medical history (they could carry communicable diseases rare in the U.S.), etc.

Because they have already demonstrated lack of respect for the law.

So what? That's something that should deny one from citizenship? I have a lack of respect for the law, do you think I should be deported? In fact, I break several laws on a somewhat regular basis. IM ILLEGAL!

So what? That's something that should deny one from citizenship? I have a lack of respect for the law, do you think I should be deported? In fact, I break several laws on a somewhat regular basis. IM ILLEGAL!

A) You're a citizen

B) That's not a sufficient argument to justify their being granted citizenship

A) You're a citizen

So what? Citizens can disrespect the law, but not non-citizens? Why hold foreigner people up to your unreasonably high standards for basis of being "allowed" to live here, but not those who are already here? This seems to be a double standard.

B) That's not a sufficient argument to justify their being granted citizenship

I wasn't making an argument to justify their being granted citizenship, I was making an argument against your argument that "lack of respect for the law" is a valid argument against someone being allowed to live here.

*snip*

Okay, you win. Let's get back to the OP's topic.

Okay, you win. Let's get back to the OP's topic.
Feel free to debate it if you like. I won't object. It's certainly related to what I posted.

Feel free to debate it if you like. I won't object. It's certainly related to what I posted.

It has nothing to do with Alessandra.

It has nothing to do with Alessandra.
Check the OP carefully. ;)

Speak for yourself. I'd hit it.

Not least cuz of the satisfaction of defacing a piece of Europe's most shameful totalitarianistic history with my evil outlander seed.

Well I would probably hit it too under the right circumstances. But then, I do drink a lot.

Well I would probably hit it too under the right circumstances. But then, I do drink a lot.

lol

And I thought all fascists were short men with inferiority complexes or fat drug crazed transvestites. Anyone know any hot communists?

Recall: You're building a rather long wall along your southern border right now.

It's the same sort of people. In America they'll tell you something about a "melting pot" and about assimilation (and really still mean they wanna see only people their own colour around them). In Europe they'll wave funny-looking medieval flags.

But why they do it is still beyond me. I'm working hard on getting closer to understanding though.


Invisible bias
A group of psychologists claim a test can measure prejudices we harbor without even knowing it. Their critics say they are politicizing psychology.

By Chris Berdik | December 19, 2004

INSIDE THE WOOD-PANELED confines of the Harvard Club, about 200 Bostonians gathered recently to tap into their subconscious. Literally. Audience members were told to move as quickly as possible through a series of faces and words projected on a screen, tapping their left knees for a young face or a "good" word (joy, sunshine, love), and their right knees for an old face or a "bad" word (bomb, agony, vomit). It took about 15 seconds for most to finish. But when asked to switch, to pair young faces with "bad" words and old faces with "good" words, the rhythm faltered and the tapping slowed. Audience members shook their heads and giggled. Some threw up their hands.

To the Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji, who presided over the event, the demonstration showed that most of the audience -- like most of the people who have been subjects in this type of experiment -- have a harder time associating old people (or nonwhite people, or homosexuals) with "good" when given no time to think. These are all examples of what Banaji calls implicit prejudice, and their importance extends way beyond an intellectual parlor game. Implicit prejudice, she argues, can affect our decisions and behaviors without our even knowing it, undermining our conscious ideas and best intentions about equality and justice.

Such implicit prejudices are "ordinary," says Banaji. "Ordinary people show them. They stem from ordinary cognitive processes."

About a decade ago, Banaji and Anthony Greenwald, a psychologist at the University of Washington, developed a test for uncovering these subconscious preferences -- the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Normally, instead of tapping knees, an IAT subject uses a computer keyboard to group "good" and "bad" words with images as split-second differences in response times are measured and tabulated.

Today, some 8,000 people a week take an IAT on the website of Project Implicit (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/), founded in 1998 by Banaji, Greenwald, and Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist. The site has dozens of tests measuring implicit biases on everything from politics to race to gender roles. Some results so far: 75 percent of white respondents implicitly favor white over black, more than 70 percent of all respondents favor straight people over gay people, and about 80 percent favor young over old.

To Banaji and a growing number of researchers, the IAT has potential uses far beyond the lab. This year, Banaji is heading a group of psychologists and legal scholars at the Radcliffe Institute to develop new approaches to anti-discrimination law based on the idea of implicit prejudice. The IAT has been proposed for use in corporate ethics classes, police and other professional training, and in consumer research.

But not everybody trusts the IAT. Social psychologists are divided on just what the IAT measures, arguing that different response times may just reflect an awareness of cultural stereotypes and social inequality. In February, the journal Psychological Inquiry will devote an entire issue to the debate surrounding the test. And beyond the technicalities, a bigger question looms: If prejudice really is rooted deeply in our subconscious minds, how can we get rid of it?Continued...

The foundation for a social scientific study of prejudice was laid 50 years ago by a Harvard psychologist named Gordon W. Allport in "The Nature of Prejudice." Prejudice, Allport wrote, grew from the instinctive way people simplify their world by categorizing everything -- including other people.

According to Allport, we have various automatic expectations based on probabilities. We assume, for instance, that a man in a three-piece suit has money and employment or that the person sitting beside us in church shares our basic beliefs. Allport noted that while such expectations aren't always correct, they're useful and generally harmless. For Allport, prejudice -- the dangerous phenomenon that could lead to everything from racial slurs to lynchings -- began when those expectations were accompanied by conscious antipathy toward a particular group and were inflexible in the face of contradictory evidence.

Allport's treatise remained a foundation for psychological research into prejudice for decades. Indeed, Banaji and her colleagues begin with the premise that prejudice has its roots in the normal human tendency to categorize. But they veer sharply from a fundamental tenet of Allport's theory. In their view, you don't need to have antipathy toward any particular group to harbor implicit prejudices that could lead to discriminatory behavior. Instead, according to IAT researchers, implicit prejudices build over time as stereotyped images seep into our brain -- news images of the African-American suspect or the Arab terrorist, commercials where wives clean the house, the not-so-bright sitcom character with a Southern drawl.

Says Banaji, "Seeing is believing, at least at some level."

A big reason for the persistence of these prejudices, she emphasizes, is denial. People with strong egalitarian values know there are prejudiced people out there who act in prejudiced ways, but they don't allow that they might be one of them. Banaji argues that this denial is rooted in the desire to believe that our judgments and actions are all within our conscious control.

IAT co-creator Greenwald agrees: "There are many, many well-meaning people who attend diversity trainings and say, `I'm happy to go along with this, but it's not my problem.' But with the IAT, people discover, `Well, there's something going on in my head, too."

That's why Banaji and her colleagues at the Radcliffe Institute think it's problematic that much anti-discrimination law requires plaintiffs to prove an employer or other individual intended to discriminate. They hope to spread the idea of implicit, unintentional prejudice throughout the criminal justice system. And they hope to develop legal arguments, bolstered by theories of implicit prejudice, that could prove in court that an employer's hiring and promotion policies discriminate against women or minorities, for example, even without any conscious intent.

. . .

While Banaji says many subjects react negatively to being told they exhibit implicit prejudices, those at the Harvard Club who cared to comment after the presentation seemed convinced. "I think everybody has biases. It's part of being human," said va Das, 62, a civil rights lawyer. "I think the only real question is what to do about them." Bob Frankel, a 59-year-old research engineer at MIT added, "I think one of the values of people taking tests like [the IAT] is so they realize, `OK, maybe I'm not quite who I thought I was."'Continued...

But not everyone thinks Banaji and her colleagues have necessarily discovered a hidden reservoir of prejudice. The dissenters, a number of whom have articles in the upcoming issue of Psychological Inquiry, argue that a speedier association of white with good and black with bad may simply reflect a subject's awareness of societal inequalities, such as the disproportionate number of blacks in prison, rather than a subconscious bias.

The principal critique of the implicit prejudice theory, written by Hal Arkes of Ohio State and Philip Tetlock of Berkeley, carries the subtitle "Would Jesse Jackson `Fail' the Implicit Association Test?" In one section, they speculate whether Jesse Jackson and Jesse Helms would score similarly on the IAT.

"Although the two figures disagree profoundly on certain political issues," the authors note. "They agree that the `African-American family' is in trouble, that African-American crime rates are far too high, and that African-American test scores are too low. . .. Should we theoretically expect indices of `negative affectivity' [such as the IAT] to differentiate people who share a considerable knowledge base but who differ only in their causal attributions for between-group inequality?"

Instead, Arkes and Tetlock argue that to conclude a person is prejudiced, one should stick with the Allport standard, which says that prejudice requires some level of hostility toward a particular group. What's more, they say, Banaji and other IAT promoters are "politicizing" psychology. "We suspect that, when the history of social psychology is written at the end of the 21st century," they write, "implicit prejudice research will be a prime exhibit of how society became so obsessed with avoiding stereotypes that it skewered citizens as racists for displaying even trace awareness of politically painful realities."

But Banaji dismisses the argument that the test simply reflects "awareness" of stereotypes and inequalities. She brings up a recent "meta-analysis" of more than 60 studies that show the IAT to be a better predictor of behavior than explicit measures of attitude in sensitive areas such as racial interaction. Among white subjects, for example, a strong subconscious bias for whites over blacks among white subjects was correlated with behaviors such as lack of eye contact with a black test administrator. Other IAT lab experiments found implicit prejudices correlated to more negative ratings of a black author's essay and a greater willingness to make hypothetical cuts in the budgets of minority student groups.

"If it's just an activation in my head, if it's not my attitude, then it shouldn't affect my behavior," says Banaji. "We would all agree that this is something that comes from the culture. But I would say it becomes us."

Banaji recently bought some postcards featuring prominent people of color: Jackie Robinson, Zora Neale Hurston, Gandhi. She scanned them into her office computer, and they now cycle through as screen savers. It's part of the ongoing effort of this Indian-born psychologist to rid herself of her own pro-white IAT bias.Continued...

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/12/19/invisible_bias/

So why people discriminate towards young? One of the reasons might be because we are evolved to protect young as a species. Sophisticated species like mammals do this while less evolved produce more offsprong and give less care. So discrimination may have genetic basis as well as cultural, for ex 9/11.

Beyong this, it's also that some people would prefer their people or their culture, instead of living in a more multicultural environment? Why? I dont know. Why some people prefer pasta over soup? In any case, reducing a diverse bunch of people of certain political allignments to "they'll wave funny-looking medieval flags" is rather unsophisticated.

Recall: You're building a rather long wall along your southern border right now.

It's the same sort of people. In America they'll tell you something about a "melting pot" and about assimilation (and really still mean they wanna see only people their own colour around them). In Europe they'll wave funny-looking medieval flags.

But why they do it is still beyond me. I'm working hard on getting closer to understanding though.


Invisible bias
A group of psychologists claim a test can measure prejudices we harbor without even knowing it. Their critics say they are politicizing psychology.

By Chris Berdik | December 19, 2004

INSIDE THE WOOD-PANELED confines of the Harvard Club, about 200 Bostonians gathered recently to tap into their subconscious. Literally. Audience members were told to move as quickly as possible through a series of faces and words projected on a screen, tapping their left knees for a young face or a "good" word (joy, sunshine, love), and their right knees for an old face or a "bad" word (bomb, agony, vomit). It took about 15 seconds for most to finish. But when asked to switch, to pair young faces with "bad" words and old faces with "good" words, the rhythm faltered and the tapping slowed. Audience members shook their heads and giggled. Some threw up their hands.

To the Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji, who presided over the event, the demonstration showed that most of the audience -- like most of the people who have been subjects in this type of experiment -- have a harder time associating old people (or nonwhite people, or homosexuals) with "good" when given no time to think. These are all examples of what Banaji calls implicit prejudice, and their importance extends way beyond an intellectual parlor game. Implicit prejudice, she argues, can affect our decisions and behaviors without our even knowing it, undermining our conscious ideas and best intentions about equality and justice.

Such implicit prejudices are "ordinary," says Banaji. "Ordinary people show them. They stem from ordinary cognitive processes."

About a decade ago, Banaji and Anthony Greenwald, a psychologist at the University of Washington, developed a test for uncovering these subconscious preferences -- the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Normally, instead of tapping knees, an IAT subject uses a computer keyboard to group "good" and "bad" words with images as split-second differences in response times are measured and tabulated.

Today, some 8,000 people a week take an IAT on the website of Project Implicit (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/), founded in 1998 by Banaji, Greenwald, and Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist. The site has dozens of tests measuring implicit biases on everything from politics to race to gender roles. Some results so far: 75 percent of white respondents implicitly favor white over black, more than 70 percent of all respondents favor straight people over gay people, and about 80 percent favor young over old.

To Banaji and a growing number of researchers, the IAT has potential uses far beyond the lab. This year, Banaji is heading a group of psychologists and legal scholars at the Radcliffe Institute to develop new approaches to anti-discrimination law based on the idea of implicit prejudice. The IAT has been proposed for use in corporate ethics classes, police and other professional training, and in consumer research.

But not everybody trusts the IAT. Social psychologists are divided on just what the IAT measures, arguing that different response times may just reflect an awareness of cultural stereotypes and social inequality. In February, the journal Psychological Inquiry will devote an entire issue to the debate surrounding the test. And beyond the technicalities, a bigger question looms: If prejudice really is rooted deeply in our subconscious minds, how can we get rid of it?Continued...

The foundation for a social scientific study of prejudice was laid 50 years ago by a Harvard psychologist named Gordon W. Allport in "The Nature of Prejudice." Prejudice, Allport wrote, grew from the instinctive way people simplify their world by categorizing everything -- including other people.

According to Allport, we have various automatic expectations based on probabilities. We assume, for instance, that a man in a three-piece suit has money and employment or that the person sitting beside us in church shares our basic beliefs. Allport noted that while such expectations aren't always correct, they're useful and generally harmless. For Allport, prejudice -- the dangerous phenomenon that could lead to everything from racial slurs to lynchings -- began when those expectations were accompanied by conscious antipathy toward a particular group and were inflexible in the face of contradictory evidence.

Allport's treatise remained a foundation for psychological research into prejudice for decades. Indeed, Banaji and her colleagues begin with the premise that prejudice has its roots in the normal human tendency to categorize. But they veer sharply from a fundamental tenet of Allport's theory. In their view, you don't need to have antipathy toward any particular group to harbor implicit prejudices that could lead to discriminatory behavior. Instead, according to IAT researchers, implicit prejudices build over time as stereotyped images seep into our brain -- news images of the African-American suspect or the Arab terrorist, commercials where wives clean the house, the not-so-bright sitcom character with a Southern drawl.

Says Banaji, "Seeing is believing, at least at some level."

A big reason for the persistence of these prejudices, she emphasizes, is denial. People with strong egalitarian values know there are prejudiced people out there who act in prejudiced ways, but they don't allow that they might be one of them. Banaji argues that this denial is rooted in the desire to believe that our judgments and actions are all within our conscious control.

IAT co-creator Greenwald agrees: "There are many, many well-meaning people who attend diversity trainings and say, `I'm happy to go along with this, but it's not my problem.' But with the IAT, people discover, `Well, there's something going on in my head, too."

That's why Banaji and her colleagues at the Radcliffe Institute think it's problematic that much anti-discrimination law requires plaintiffs to prove an employer or other individual intended to discriminate. They hope to spread the idea of implicit, unintentional prejudice throughout the criminal justice system. And they hope to develop legal arguments, bolstered by theories of implicit prejudice, that could prove in court that an employer's hiring and promotion policies discriminate against women or minorities, for example, even without any conscious intent.

. . .

While Banaji says many subjects react negatively to being told they exhibit implicit prejudices, those at the Harvard Club who cared to comment after the presentation seemed convinced. "I think everybody has biases. It's part of being human," said va Das, 62, a civil rights lawyer. "I think the only real question is what to do about them." Bob Frankel, a 59-year-old research engineer at MIT added, "I think one of the values of people taking tests like [the IAT] is so they realize, `OK, maybe I'm not quite who I thought I was."'Continued...

But not everyone thinks Banaji and her colleagues have necessarily discovered a hidden reservoir of prejudice. The dissenters, a number of whom have articles in the upcoming issue of Psychological Inquiry, argue that a speedier association of white with good and black with bad may simply reflect a subject's awareness of societal inequalities, such as the disproportionate number of blacks in prison, rather than a subconscious bias.

The principal critique of the implicit prejudice theory, written by Hal Arkes of Ohio State and Philip Tetlock of Berkeley, carries the subtitle "Would Jesse Jackson `Fail' the Implicit Association Test?" In one section, they speculate whether Jesse Jackson and Jesse Helms would score similarly on the IAT.

"Although the two figures disagree profoundly on certain political issues," the authors note. "They agree that the `African-American family' is in trouble, that African-American crime rates are far too high, and that African-American test scores are too low. . .. Should we theoretically expect indices of `negative affectivity' [such as the IAT] to differentiate people who share a considerable knowledge base but who differ only in their causal attributions for between-group inequality?"

Instead, Arkes and Tetlock argue that to conclude a person is prejudiced, one should stick with the Allport standard, which says that prejudice requires some level of hostility toward a particular group. What's more, they say, Banaji and other IAT promoters are "politicizing" psychology. "We suspect that, when the history of social psychology is written at the end of the 21st century," they write, "implicit prejudice research will be a prime exhibit of how society became so obsessed with avoiding stereotypes that it skewered citizens as racists for displaying even trace awareness of politically painful realities."

But Banaji dismisses the argument that the test simply reflects "awareness" of stereotypes and inequalities. She brings up a recent "meta-analysis" of more than 60 studies that show the IAT to be a better predictor of behavior than explicit measures of attitude in sensitive areas such as racial interaction. Among white subjects, for example, a strong subconscious bias for whites over blacks among white subjects was correlated with behaviors such as lack of eye contact with a black test administrator. Other IAT lab experiments found implicit prejudices correlated to more negative ratings of a black author's essay and a greater willingness to make hypothetical cuts in the budgets of minority student groups.

"If it's just an activation in my head, if it's not my attitude, then it shouldn't affect my behavior," says Banaji. "We would all agree that this is something that comes from the culture. But I would say it becomes us."

Banaji recently bought some postcards featuring prominent people of color: Jackie Robinson, Zora Neale Hurston, Gandhi. She scanned them into her office computer, and they now cycle through as screen savers. It's part of the ongoing effort of this Indian-born psychologist to rid herself of her own pro-white IAT bias.Continued...

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/12/19/invisible_bias/

So why people discriminate towards young? One of the reasons might be because we are evolved to protect young as a species. Sophisticated species like mammals do this while less evolved produce more offsprong and give less care. So discrimination may have genetic basis as well as cultural, for ex 9/11.

Beyong this, it's also that some people would prefer their people or their culture, instead of living in a more multicultural environment? Why? I dont know. Why some people prefer pasta over soup? In any case, reducing a diverse bunch of people of certain political allignments to "they'll wave funny-looking medieval flags" is rather unsophisticated.

Recall: You're building a rather long wall along your southern border right now.

It's the same sort of people. In America they'll tell you something about a "melting pot" and about assimilation (and really still mean they wanna see only people their own colour around them). In Europe they'll wave funny-looking medieval flags.

But why they do it is still beyond me. I'm working hard on getting closer to understanding though.


Invisible bias
A group of psychologists claim a test can measure prejudices we harbor without even knowing it. Their critics say they are politicizing psychology.

By Chris Berdik | December 19, 2004

INSIDE THE WOOD-PANELED confines of the Harvard Club, about 200 Bostonians gathered recently to tap into their subconscious. Literally. Audience members were told to move as quickly as possible through a series of faces and words projected on a screen, tapping their left knees for a young face or a "good" word (joy, sunshine, love), and their right knees for an old face or a "bad" word (bomb, agony, vomit). It took about 15 seconds for most to finish. But when asked to switch, to pair young faces with "bad" words and old faces with "good" words, the rhythm faltered and the tapping slowed. Audience members shook their heads and giggled. Some threw up their hands.

To the Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji, who presided over the event, the demonstration showed that most of the audience -- like most of the people who have been subjects in this type of experiment -- have a harder time associating old people (or nonwhite people, or homosexuals) with "good" when given no time to think. These are all examples of what Banaji calls implicit prejudice, and their importance extends way beyond an intellectual parlor game. Implicit prejudice, she argues, can affect our decisions and behaviors without our even knowing it, undermining our conscious ideas and best intentions about equality and justice.

Such implicit prejudices are "ordinary," says Banaji. "Ordinary people show them. They stem from ordinary cognitive processes."

About a decade ago, Banaji and Anthony Greenwald, a psychologist at the University of Washington, developed a test for uncovering these subconscious preferences -- the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Normally, instead of tapping knees, an IAT subject uses a computer keyboard to group "good" and "bad" words with images as split-second differences in response times are measured and tabulated.

Today, some 8,000 people a week take an IAT on the website of Project Implicit (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/), founded in 1998 by Banaji, Greenwald, and Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist. The site has dozens of tests measuring implicit biases on everything from politics to race to gender roles. Some results so far: 75 percent of white respondents implicitly favor white over black, more than 70 percent of all respondents favor straight people over gay people, and about 80 percent favor young over old.

To Banaji and a growing number of researchers, the IAT has potential uses far beyond the lab. This year, Banaji is heading a group of psychologists and legal scholars at the Radcliffe Institute to develop new approaches to anti-discrimination law based on the idea of implicit prejudice. The IAT has been proposed for use in corporate ethics classes, police and other professional training, and in consumer research.

But not everybody trusts the IAT. Social psychologists are divided on just what the IAT measures, arguing that different response times may just reflect an awareness of cultural stereotypes and social inequality. In February, the journal Psychological Inquiry will devote an entire issue to the debate surrounding the test. And beyond the technicalities, a bigger question looms: If prejudice really is rooted deeply in our subconscious minds, how can we get rid of it?Continued...

The foundation for a social scientific study of prejudice was laid 50 years ago by a Harvard psychologist named Gordon W. Allport in "The Nature of Prejudice." Prejudice, Allport wrote, grew from the instinctive way people simplify their world by categorizing everything -- including other people.

According to Allport, we have various automatic expectations based on probabilities. We assume, for instance, that a man in a three-piece suit has money and employment or that the person sitting beside us in church shares our basic beliefs. Allport noted that while such expectations aren't always correct, they're useful and generally harmless. For Allport, prejudice -- the dangerous phenomenon that could lead to everything from racial slurs to lynchings -- began when those expectations were accompanied by conscious antipathy toward a particular group and were inflexible in the face of contradictory evidence.

Allport's treatise remained a foundation for psychological research into prejudice for decades. Indeed, Banaji and her colleagues begin with the premise that prejudice has its roots in the normal human tendency to categorize. But they veer sharply from a fundamental tenet of Allport's theory. In their view, you don't need to have antipathy toward any particular group to harbor implicit prejudices that could lead to discriminatory behavior. Instead, according to IAT researchers, implicit prejudices build over time as stereotyped images seep into our brain -- news images of the African-American suspect or the Arab terrorist, commercials where wives clean the house, the not-so-bright sitcom character with a Southern drawl.

Says Banaji, "Seeing is believing, at least at some level."

A big reason for the persistence of these prejudices, she emphasizes, is denial. People with strong egalitarian values know there are prejudiced people out there who act in prejudiced ways, but they don't allow that they might be one of them. Banaji argues that this denial is rooted in the desire to believe that our judgments and actions are all within our conscious control.

IAT co-creator Greenwald agrees: "There are many, many well-meaning people who attend diversity trainings and say, `I'm happy to go along with this, but it's not my problem.' But with the IAT, people discover, `Well, there's something going on in my head, too."

That's why Banaji and her colleagues at the Radcliffe Institute think it's problematic that much anti-discrimination law requires plaintiffs to prove an employer or other individual intended to discriminate. They hope to spread the idea of implicit, unintentional prejudice throughout the criminal justice system. And they hope to develop legal arguments, bolstered by theories of implicit prejudice, that could prove in court that an employer's hiring and promotion policies discriminate against women or minorities, for example, even without any conscious intent.

. . .

While Banaji says many subjects react negatively to being told they exhibit implicit prejudices, those at the Harvard Club who cared to comment after the presentation seemed convinced. "I think everybody has biases. It's part of being human," said va Das, 62, a civil rights lawyer. "I think the only real question is what to do about them." Bob Frankel, a 59-year-old research engineer at MIT added, "I think one of the values of people taking tests like [the IAT] is so they realize, `OK, maybe I'm not quite who I thought I was."'Continued...

But not everyone thinks Banaji and her colleagues have necessarily discovered a hidden reservoir of prejudice. The dissenters, a number of whom have articles in the upcoming issue of Psychological Inquiry, argue that a speedier association of white with good and black with bad may simply reflect a subject's awareness of societal inequalities, such as the disproportionate number of blacks in prison, rather than a subconscious bias.

The principal critique of the implicit prejudice theory, written by Hal Arkes of Ohio State and Philip Tetlock of Berkeley, carries the subtitle "Would Jesse Jackson `Fail' the Implicit Association Test?" In one section, they speculate whether Jesse Jackson and Jesse Helms would score similarly on the IAT.

"Although the two figures disagree profoundly on certain political issues," the authors note. "They agree that the `African-American family' is in trouble, that African-American crime rates are far too high, and that African-American test scores are too low. . .. Should we theoretically expect indices of `negative affectivity' [such as the IAT] to differentiate people who share a considerable knowledge base but who differ only in their causal attributions for between-group inequality?"

Instead, Arkes and Tetlock argue that to conclude a person is prejudiced, one should stick with the Allport standard, which says that prejudice requires some level of hostility toward a particular group. What's more, they say, Banaji and other IAT promoters are "politicizing" psychology. "We suspect that, when the history of social psychology is written at the end of the 21st century," they write, "implicit prejudice research will be a prime exhibit of how society became so obsessed with avoiding stereotypes that it skewered citizens as racists for displaying even trace awareness of politically painful realities."

But Banaji dismisses the argument that the test simply reflects "awareness" of stereotypes and inequalities. She brings up a recent "meta-analysis" of more than 60 studies that show the IAT to be a better predictor of behavior than explicit measures of attitude in sensitive areas such as racial interaction. Among white subjects, for example, a strong subconscious bias for whites over blacks among white subjects was correlated with behaviors such as lack of eye contact with a black test administrator. Other IAT lab experiments found implicit prejudices correlated to more negative ratings of a black author's essay and a greater willingness to make hypothetical cuts in the budgets of minority student groups.

"If it's just an activation in my head, if it's not my attitude, then it shouldn't affect my behavior," says Banaji. "We would all agree that this is something that comes from the culture. But I would say it becomes us."

Banaji recently bought some postcards featuring prominent people of color: Jackie Robinson, Zora Neale Hurston, Gandhi. She scanned them into her office computer, and they now cycle through as screen savers. It's part of the ongoing effort of this Indian-born psychologist to rid herself of her own pro-white IAT bias.Continued...

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/12/19/invisible_bias/

So why people discriminate towards young? One of the reasons might be because we are evolved to protect young as a species. Sophisticated species like mammals do this while less evolved produce more offsprong and give less care. So discrimination may have genetic basis as well as cultural, for ex 9/11.

Beyong this, it's also that some people would prefer their people or their culture, instead of living in a more multicultural environment? Why? I dont know. Why some people prefer pasta over soup? In any case, reducing a diverse bunch of people of certain political allignments to "they'll wave funny-looking medieval flags" is rather unsophisticated.

Anyone know any hot communists?

Nope, all of 'em are pretty ugly (the famous ones, at least).

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/12/19/invisible_bias/
Yeah, I did that test on the web. Apparently I'm slightly biased against black people.

In any case, reducing a diverse bunch of people of certain political allignments to "they'll wave funny-looking medieval flags" is rather unsophisticated.
Hey, this is a bunch of people who are rather concerned with their "nations" and "traditions" - essentially medieval stuff.

But anyways, I'm well aware of the threat they're posing, and while I'll make fun of their kind at every opportunity, rest assured that I am taking their threats seriously.

He did make the trains run on time.

Who wouldn't love him then?

She has posed for nude pics, so she can't be all bad.

(Though she might also be a bit of a woofy as I recall).

...

I can't say anything without incriminating myself.

As for Benito Mussolini, his death was a rather sick spectacle, as I understand it. Shot and hanged in the town square.... *shudders*

Followed in his footsteps? Why, was she hung upside down with her genitals stuffed in her mouth?

Yeah, I did that test on the web. Apparently I'm slightly biased against black people.


Or maybe the test is bullshit.

Or maybe the test is bullshit.
You think? :p

Followed in his footsteps? Why, was she hung upside down with her genitals stuffed in her mouth?

I don't think she has a penis to stuff in her mouth.

Followed in his footsteps? Why, was she hung upside down with her genitals stuffed in her mouth?

WTF? :eek:

What's Italian for "Maybe we shouldn't have gone along with absolutely everything Adolf suggested ..."?

Forse non dovremmo andare con assolutamente tutto Adolph suggerito.

I probably have the syntax wrong, though.

WTF? :eek:

It's what they did to Benito.

It's what they did to Benito.

That's almost as bad as what was done to Pierre Mulele (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Mulele). :eek:

I don't think she has a penis to stuff in her mouth.

I can't believe that this was left hanging here for so long.

But Mussolini was such a loser...his army was terrible, he got pwned hard by the US (and almost by the Ethiopians), and had to have his ass rescued by the Germans when everything went to hell. I can't honestly think of one thing he really did good other than make things somewhat more efficient...
Fascism sucks, and people who support it suck.

JUST by US and Ethiopia?
Mussolini sent the Alpini (mountain infantry) against GREECE and they had to be resecued by the Wehrmacht. Mind, the Alpini were acknowledged by the soviet war bulletin as "the only unbeaten invasion force in Soviet land". They were also the only ones able, while retreating, to fight and pull themselves out of a huge ring of soviet troops (battle of Nikolajevka), so we aren't talking about sucky soldiers. And do you know what Benito Mussolini said when he was reported that the Alpini were dying on the Greek mountains because of the cold and the lack of winter clothing? "It snows? Well! So sissies die and we'll better this mediocre Italian race." Really. He did care a lot for the people he led, I DON'T think.

Fascism caused the ultimate devastation of Italy, plus a lot of suffering and massacres in Spain, Jugoslavia, Lybia, Eastern Africa, etc. And Hitler regarded Mussolini as his inspirator. Nevermind if Mussolini did something good here and there, as a whole fascism totally sucks. And Onorevole Alessandra Mussolini still proudly claims to be a fascist. What a jerk of a woman. I am ashamed, as italian, that she got elected at the EU Parliament.

Also I find pretty ok that Mussolini got executed - not as result of a juridical process, but as result of a political process.
It was Mussolini who reintroduced death penalty in Italy - it had been abolished in the late 19th century (the "Zanardelli" code of laws). He sent a lot of political oppositors to death via "special" courts, and also had some assassinated (just to name some of them: Matteotti, socialist parliament member; the Rosselli brothers, oppositors in exile).
He was a traitor unto the Kingdom of Italy because he did set up another, unlegitimate government on italian territory, the Repubblica Sociale Italiana - a puppet state of the Nazis.
He was also a traitor unto the RSI and unto all people who honestly believed in fascism because he tried to flee to Switzerland disguised as a German soldier.

In piazzale Loreto c'è ancora tanto posto! Still plenty of place in piazzale Loreto!

It's what they did to Benito.

No. The corpse of Mussolini didn't get his penis stuffed into his mouth or something like that.

Benito Mussolini, his lover Claretta Petacci and some other fascist leaders were captured at Dongo (a town on the shore of Como lake, near the Swiss border) by partisans of the "Garibaldi" brigade (communist) while, disguised in Wehrmacht uniforms, were trying to escape to Switzerland hidden amidst retreating German regular soldiers.
The CLN (National Liberation Commitee) and the legitimate government of the Kingdom of Italy had already sentenced Mussolini to death for high treason against Italy - this crime was punished with the death penalty by the very same laws introduced by Mussolini.
Mussolini and Claretta Petacci were executed the day after their capture by the leading officer of the partisan brigade.
Their bodies, among those of other fascist leaders, were hung and displayed in Milan, in piazzale Loreto, in the same place where, in the summer of 1944, the bodies of 15 people (including elderly and children, not just partisans) killed by the fascists were hung and displayed - and many milanese were forced to go and see that by the fascist "Muti" brigade.
After some time, the corpses were removed and secretly buried at the Cimitero Maggiore in the Musocco suburb of Milan.
Today, a sign marks the place where the 15 "martiri di piazzale Loreto" were displayed and desecrated, and every year, at the anniversary the ANPI (Italy's Partisan National Association) holds a ceremony there in their memory.

The display of the corpses in that place was a sort of vendetta for what Mussolini and his fellows did to Italy and to the city of Milan. It might not be justified, but it is understandable.

In piazzale Loreto c'è ancora tanto posto.

add:
I did a quick check and found that initially the corpses weren't hung. They were displayed on the ground of piazzale Loreto. The enraged milanese crowd started spewing and kicking at the bodies. Then Sandro Pertini (a socialist leader who had been jailed by the fascist, and became in the late '60s speaker of the Lower House of the Parliament and in 1978 was elected President of the Republic) bade the partisans to hang the corpses, to prevent further desecration, while allowing everyone to see that Mussolini was really dead.

Nope, all of 'em are pretty ugly (the famous ones, at least).

Ernesto "Che" Guevara?

Or myself, although not famous...;)

Forse non dovremmo andare con assolutamente tutto Adolph suggerito.

I probably have the syntax wrong, though.

Forse non avremmo dovuto andare assolutamente d'accordo con tutto quello che Adolf suggeriva.

Damn Internet translators.

So what? Citizens can disrespect the law, but not non-citizens? Why hold foreigner people up to your unreasonably high standards for basis of being "allowed" to live here, but not those who are already here? This seems to be a double standard.


huh? If a citizen breaks the law, they go to prison if found guilty.
That includes crossing borders illegally.
So if someone tries to get into the country illegally they should be thrown in prison? Seems better to deport them back to their own country.

edit: what i mean by this is that is seems crueller to me to throw someone into prison for simply wishing to live in you country, than saying sorry you have to go through proper channels and deporting them back to their nation.

I wasn't making an argument to justify their being granted citizenship, I was making an argument against your argument that "lack of respect for the law" is a valid argument against someone being allowed to live here.

But their first act is breaking the law. it does not seem like a very good start...

It's like adoption over having your own. If you have your own, your lumbered with what you got. If you adopt, you get to pick and choose.

edit: not saying i agree with it, but people are like that. I know alot of adopted people and in every case the parents adopted them because they want to ofcourse but also because they were healthy and 'cute'.

In the end its the same with with immigration, ok they don't have to be cute (Ali G approach...) but the government/people want the immigrants to be a bonus to the nation

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/12/19/invisible_bias/


:) i took the test

result
Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between White People and Black People.

good to know! (although that's what i always thought)

Anytime I hear about fascism in Europe I think,

http://www.johnberman.com/pics/funny/not_this_shit_again.jpg

It's like when will you guys quit with the fascination for xenophobia, nationalism and goose-stepping like a bunch of turns already?

No offense to the non-fascist Europeans, but seriously. I'm waiting for the second communist revolution in Russia and the invasion of Poland.

Maybe if there weren't so many goose-steppers in Europe, there wouldn't be so many posts.

Sure, people can form such parties in the US, but no one takes them seriously, and they don't win seats in modern elections. Quite unlike Europe, which seems to be able to elect a few seats for radical left or radical right parties.

Hey, I'm still waiting for the Hague to prosecute someone for hanging Mussolini and abusing his corpse - I mean, Europe is the paragon of the enforcement of human rights, and there's still no investigation into those dandy photos of his abused corpse that were sent around the world.

Maybe if there weren't so many goose-steppers in Europe, there wouldn't be so many posts.

Sure, people can form such parties in the US, but no one takes them seriously, and they don't win seats in modern elections. Quite unlike Europe, which seems to be able to elect a few seats for radical left or radical right parties.
I think it's because so many of your "radicals" (not necessarily a slur) on the far right (or the authoritarian left) are well integrated into your mainstream parties. Take people like Ann Coulter and her following. Now, I do not think she is serious most of the time. Some of her cronies and her fans are though. These people are in the mainstream. They preach hatred, to a degree. So, I do not think it is that the US "suffers" from any shortage of fascists or other breeds of totalitarian; I think it is that they are not as easily noticed.

I think it's because so many of your "radicals" (not necessarily a slur) on the far right (or the authoritarian left) are well integrated into your mainstream parties. Take people like Ann Coulter and her following. Now, I do not think she is serious most of the time. Some of her cronies and her fans are though. These people are in the mainstream. They preach hatred, to a degree. So, I do not think it is that the US "suffers" from any shortage of fascists or other breeds of totalitarian; I think it is that they are not as easily noticed.

Yes, we don't fancy the cool black uniforms with the skulls on them, nor do we march around with huge red banners in the streets.

I think it's because so many of your "radicals" (not necessarily a slur) on the far right (or the authoritarian left) are well integrated into your mainstream parties. Take people like Ann Coulter and her following. Now, I do not think she is serious most of the time. Some of her cronies and her fans are though. These people are in the mainstream. They preach hatred, to a degree. So, I do not think it is that the US "suffers" from any shortage of fascists or other breeds of totalitarian; I think it is that they are not as easily noticed.

It's really more a function of the very limited number of seats per head of population in combination with a first past the post system.

If there were 3000 representatives in congress (making one rep. approx = to 1 mp in terms of the number of voters they represent), and they were elected by proportional representation on a national basis, then I'm sure the US would have some fascists and communists too.

And that is why US politics - at the national level - has such a narrow spectrum.

Yes, we don't fancy the cool black uniforms with the skulls on them, nor do we march around with huge red banners in the streets.

Speak for yourself. Those boots are damn spiffy.

It's really more a function of the very limited number of seats per head of population in combination with a first past the post system.

If there were 3000 representatives in congress (making one rep. approx = to 1 mp in terms of the number of voters they represent), and they were elected by proportional representation on a national basis, then I'm sure the US would have some fascists and communists too.

And that is why US politics - at the national level - has such a narrow spectrum.
Perhaps. Either way, it would explain why the US seems relatively free from such individuals. I doubt it is in reality though.

Perhaps. Either way, it would explain why the US seems relatively free from such individuals. I doubt it is in reality though.

If you vote in new york city, there are always lots of silly parties* on offer as well as the democrats and republicans. They just don't have a chance in hell of getting a majority. So these individuals absolutely do exist and in sufficient numbers to qualify for an electoral spot. It's just easy, for the most part, to ignore them and pretend they are not there.

A wider net would get them a toe hold on the national stage however.

*For example, in the last elections there was one party that advocated that everyone should live in rental housing, and everyone's rent should be the same. Something like that anyway.

If you vote in new york city, there are always lots of silly parties* on offer as well as the democrats and republicans. They just don't have a chance in hell of getting a majority. So these individuals absolutely do exist and in sufficient numbers to qualify for an electoral spot. It's just easy, for the most part, to ignore them and pretend they are not there.

You know, I find it funny that both the USA and the UK suffer from a bipartisan system (the UK has the Lib-Dems and the BNP, but they are negligible really). I am not sure if Australia and Canada do too. The variety of respectable parties the UK has when compared to other European countries leaves much to be desired.

If I recall, your LP once rejoiced for getting something like 1% of the vote. Now I am sure that that is a gain in the US system, but still, anywhere else that'd be regarded as nothing.

Speak for yourself. Those boots are damn spiffy.

Yeah, that's why George Lucas hired Andrew Mollo to do the Imperial uniforms in Star Wars.

Mollo's grandfather designed the SS uniforms in WW II. Nice, eh?

Hey, I'm still waiting for the Hague to prosecute someone for hanging Mussolini and abusing his corpse - I mean, Europe is the paragon of the enforcement of human rights, and there's still no investigation into those dandy photos of his abused corpse that were sent around the world.

It wasn't a crime against humanity or a violation of human rights, because you cannot violate the rights of a corpse, since it doesn't have any anymore.
So no Hague court about it. The only crime that happened there was desecration of a corpse (crime against moral, not against a person!), which falls under the amnisty made by the government of the Republic in 1947.

It wasn't a crime against humanity or a violation of human rights, because you cannot violate the rights of a corpse, since it doesn't have any anymore.
So no Hague court about it. The only crime that happened there was desecration of a corpse (crime against moral, not against a person!), which falls under the amnisty made by the government of the Republic in 1947.

I'm sure the lynching of Mussolini is a crime (LOL).

If I recall, your LP once rejoiced for getting something like 1% of the vote. Now I am sure that that is a gain in the US system, but still, anywhere else that'd be regarded as nothing.

If you mean the libertarians, I believe that is correct at the presidential level.

The thing is, no secondary party ever has a shot at the white house (well Perot's reform in 92 possibly, before it turned out that Perot was a whackadoo) and people generally tend not to vote for someone who doesn't have a snowballs chance.

At the congressional level, the respectable secondary parties - like the liberal party of new york - tend to nominate the either the democrat or republican candidate which is most closely allied to their platform. For example Rudolph Guliani ran as a republican and a liberal candidate for mayor the first time around.

Sometimes there is an independant that sneaks in at the congressional level. But because of house and senate procedure they end up cacausing with one of the big parties. So it really makes no difference at the end of the day.

Edit: Canada has a parliamentary system like the UKs, but they have more parties because they are probably the most political people I have ever come across, and they also have that whole independant Quebec thing. Hence they have a minority government right now. Saying that, they are usually dominated by Ontario liberals.

If you mean the libertarians, I believe that is correct at the presidential level.
Yes, that is what I meant. I am guessing on a certain level though that the party's (relatively) low support is also due to the nature of the movement's ideology - many of its supporters have little taste for politics. Which might be its Achilles' Heel.

The thing is, no secondary party ever has a shot at the white house (well Perot's reform in 92 possibly, before it turned out that Perot was a whackadoo) and people generally tend not to vote for someone who doesn't have a snowballs chance.

At the congressional level, the respectable secondary parties - like the liberal party of new york - tend to nominate the either the democrat or republican candidate which is most closely allied to their platform. For example Rudolph Guliani ran as a republican and a liberal candidate for mayor the first time around.

Sometimes there is an independant that sneaks in at the congressional level. But because of house and senate procedure they end up cacausing with one of the big parties. So it really makes no difference at the end of the day.
I've heard about this. I suppose it's the best independent parties can do given the circumstances.

Edit: Canada has a parliamentary system like the UKs, but they have more parties because they are probably the most political people I have ever come across, and they also have that whole independant Quebec thing. Hence they have a minority government right now. Saying that, they are usually dominated by Ontario liberals.
Have there actually been any suggestions in the US for changing the present system? In the UK, the Lib-Dems had suggested what they called the Single Transfer Vote (if I am correct), which would give the UK a written constitution, a new parliamentary system and would open up the elections anew. Unfortunately, it never passed.

Have there actually been any suggestions in the US for changing the present system? In the UK, the Lib-Dems had suggested what they called the Single Transfer Vote (if I am correct), which would give the UK a written constitution, a new parliamentary system and would open up the elections anew. Unfortunately, it never passed.

Not by politicians or the dominant parties. It really works in their favor so, naturally, they don't want to upset the applecart. Nor am I aware of any notable movement to reform the system from outside the party system either. (Actually, sucession movements seem to be more popular among the disgruntled).

Additionally, the loudest and most politically active voices in US politics are usually just zombie cheerleaders for their chosen team, so the thought of electoral reform is completely alien to them. Bring it up with a US poster some time. They'll probably have difficulty grasping the concept of reforming the actual mechanics of the system and instead blame all the defects on voter apathy* or somesuch.

*Which is huge, because if you combine the current system with the current amount of gerrymandering, for many people their vote really does count for absolutely bugger all.

I am not sure if Australia and Canada do too.
Australia has plenty of parties. The conservative "Liberal Party" and the lefty "Labor Party" are the two big ones.

Then there is the "Nationals" (in coalition with the Liberals) which represent country folk, the Greens (fairly self-explanatory), the Democrats (started as people pissed off by party politics, now largely disappeared), "Family First" (religious fanatics) and "One Nation" (Nazis).

And then there's lots of even smaller and local ones. No libertarian party though.

Mollo's grandfather designed the SS uniforms in WW II. Nice, eh?
And Hugo Boss designed the Wehrmacht's uniforms.

Say what you will, but they had taste. :p

Maybe if there weren't so many goose-steppers in Europe, there wouldn't be so many posts.

Well, I like to have a little bit of optimism, and realize that NS General is hardly a valid slice of European political beliefs. For every NN there is on this forum, I can usually find at least two or three reasonable and sane Europeans. If not more. (It's hard to say since not everyone goes, "Hey I'm European!")

But the rise of fascism in Europe is always disconcerting to me.

Sure, people can form such parties in the US, but no one takes them seriously, and they don't win seats in modern elections. Quite unlike Europe, which seems to be able to elect a few seats for radical left or radical right parties.

Part of why they aren't taken seriously is because we have a two-party system. *No* third party is really taken seriously, even if people agree with their beliefs. "Why vote for them, when they're not going to win?" or "A vote for 3rd Party is a vote for TEH ENEMY PARTY."

So we do have those radicals but they're generally hiding out in one of the mainstream parties. At least though, when they're all in one party, it's easy to dismiss them. Here, we have the neo-nazi-esque Republicans (and Democrats), and then the more sane Reps/Dems, so you have people going "Republicans are nazis!" when it's inaccurate except when applied to *some* of them.

Speak for yourself. Those boots are damn spiffy.

I agree! It's just too bad that far-rightnuts have hijacked and destroyed a lot of cool things for the rest of us. Like the Hitler Mustache.