Opinionhaver

this discussion isn’t about him

It's you who brought him up with your smug "fine people on both sides" misquote and its him you've been talking ever since. Only now you're moving the goal posts back to what I originally was talking about.

You said both sides have plenty of bad faith, which is wrong.

What are you even claiming here? That there is no "plenty of" bad faith on the left too?

I don’t consider anything I’ve heard so far to be the kind of evidence that would indicate what I said is somehow false.

However, two wrongs don’t make a right, and these attacks remain blatant violations of international law and the UN charter. If “we” want to maintain any semblance of supporting a rule-based world order, as opposed to just “right of the strongest”, we can’t accept these kind of violations of international law.

Legally speaking, I agree. I’m speaking strictly from a strategic or game-theoretical standpoint. I see this as a binary situation: either we physically stop them from building a nuke, or they will build one. I’d much rather we strike preemptively now - so long as it actually stops them - than have to deal with a nuclear-armed Iran in the future, especially given their history of threatening violence, using violence, and funding violence.

Nukes never should’ve been invented in the first place. But we can’t put that genie back in the bottle, so this is the best we can do given the current situation. They don’t have to pursue one - they’re choosing to, knowing full well the potential (now actual) consequences. I’d argue that the tragedy of a nuclear detonation in a major city far-outweighs, by orders of magnitude, the human and geopolitical cost of preemptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. I’d be against it too if the facility were in Sweden or Finland - but it’s not.

Okay, well let me clarify. I think they were justified in doing so. I don't want them or their proxies obtaining nukes because unlike Russia or even North Korea, they're actually suicidal enough to use them.

You're misquoting him - that's bad faith. Whether or not you believe him is a separate issue. When you criticize someone for what they said, you should address their actual words - not your interpretation of them.

His unscripted comments did not include that, full stop.

Nor did they include the "fine people on both sides" comment that people are misquoting.

But it’s this very specific quote that people are misrepresenting. It’s not like he first said “there were fine people on both sides” and then, a few days later, clarified that he wasn’t talking about the Nazis. He said there were fine people on both sides and explicitly added that he was not referring to the Nazis - and it’s that latter part people omit when they spread the “fine people on both sides” quote.

This is where the "fine people on both sides" quote originates from.

Snopes article on the matter.

The issue with echo chambers is that they reinforce people’s existing beliefs instead of challenging them. That often comes with extreme hostility toward anyone who doesn’t share those beliefs. If the left in the US wants to win elections they need people to vote for them who might have voted right in the past. In order to achieve this, minds needs to be changed, and that doesn't happen in echo chambers. I’m sure you can see the value in a left-leaning person going to a place like Truth Social and, in a calm and respectful way, arguing against the claims they disagree with. Well, in my view, Lemmy could use something similar.

I also don’t think right-wingers are the only ones to blame when it comes to the breakdown of polite discussion. If you put someone who feels just as strongly about the left as people here feel about the right, it’s no surprise it turns into a mudslinging match. It takes two to tango.

Maybe you should re-read my original comment? Because unless you think that Lemmy is not a left wing echo chamber then I have no clue what you're arguing about here exactly.

Misrepresenting what someone says is a textbook example of bad faith so doing that in a discussion about bad faith is ironic to say the least. What he actually thinks is unrelated to this discussion as it's about what he said. You'd call people out for twisting your words so hold yourself to the same standards.

What else do I need to know about them?

That people identify on the political right outside of US as well?