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Germany, France lobby hard for terror-busting encryption backdoors – Europe seems to agree

Peter2 Silver badge

The reason we have "wannabe Trumps" now popping up all over the place is, Trump has shown them all that it can be done. Fascism does work.

That man has done real, quite possibly terminal, damage to democracy as practised in the Western world for the past 75 years.

No, the reason these people exist is because for over a decade problems have existed which have not been adequately addressed in the view of a large percentage of the population, and discussions on an ever increasing number of subjects have been supressed with accusations of thought crime! to reduce allowed debate to "what we agree with", along with tactics of "your either with us or against us!".

This is what has caused severe and lasting damage to democracy. It worked for years, but there are now more people who say, "screw this, I'm against you at any cost" then can passively agree to be "with you" any longer.

Instead of admit there is a problem and actually deal with it by reasoned debate, the same people who created the problem double down on the thought crime accusations, and define everybody who disagrees with them as being bigoted, fascist etc.

By the dictionary definition of the term, a bigot is somebody who refuses to accept contrary views. If your frequently insulting something like two thirds of the population because you don't like their views then sorry to be the one to break it to you, but your actually the bigot by the dictionary definition of the term. (Until it's redefined in the next issue of newspeak)

If people keep redefining what fascism actually is to the point it's just casually tossed at people who disagree with you on political issues then it renders the term meaningless and makes it difficult to actually identify or oppose genuine dictators because the label has been casually applied to basically half the frigging planet!

THAT!!! is why you have Trump. That's why Britain is leaving the EU following a free vote. It's simply a political expression of "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" because the people at the political extreme fringes are the only remaining effective opposition to support. You don't like it? Then accept that not everybody who disagrees with you is a Thought-crime-ist and for goodness sake allow people to moderately disagree with you.

If you do, then a rebuilt political centre will naturally suck off the people who are simply supporting trump etc as an "anybody else" option and we can return to a more sane political environment. If you don't, people like Trump will become the political centre.

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