Minneapolis City Council Members Vote to Dismantle/Defund Its Police Department - Page 6 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Polls on politics, news, current affairs and history.

Is it a good idea to defund, dismantle and abolish police departments?

Absolutely! Police are meant as a form of social control rather than a means of law, order and justice. Might as well take the savings and use it for more effective alternatives to public safety.
11
41%
No, police departments do not need to be dismantled or abolished but some reforms of the police are needed. It would be dangerous to defund the police and cause more lawlessness in society.
12
44%
The police departments don't need any reform at all as its stands, the police are doing a fine job and don't need to be abolished at all. People are being hysterical and over-reacting.
3
11%
Other (Explain).
1
4%
#15104129
Politics_Observer wrote:@Donna

That might be true, but unfortunately, a 14 year old boy got caught in the crossfire and was hit. These self proclaimed security guards lack sufficient training in the application of the use of force. The person who used this level force could be held legally liable for what happened to the 14 year old and perhaps even to the shooting victim depending on the circumstances. And even if the shooter is not held criminally liable for the shooting, the shooter can easily be held civilly liable for the shooting and have to pay astronomical damages that he or she will not be able to declare bankruptcy on. In cases where you use lethal force, even if you are not found criminal liable you can still very easily be found civilly liable. Juries hand out millions of dollars in judgement damages like it's candy.


It wasn't CHOP security who shot the 14 year-old, it was whoever was attacking the CHOP encampment who did.
#15104239
The biggest group of Nazis in the world today is China's National Socialist, so called "Communist Party". According to a lot of lefties you have a moral right to go and smash a China regime sympathiser in the face when ever you feel like it.
#15104252
Godstud wrote:Nazis are Communists, now? :roll: What absolute tripe.

Please, please, please just try and learn a little bit of history. The Nazis were socialists, to the left of say the 1964 to 1970 Wilson government. The Chinese economy is very different now to when Mao died. The Chinese Communist party always had nationalist deviations or at the very least differences from Bolsheviks /Soviet Communist party, but what ever it now can in no way be considered to follow an Internationalist ideology.

I don't expect ignorant leftie / liberals to know this but Hitler actually became more left wing during his years in power and in his final months regretted the fact that he hadn't gone for complete nationalisation. Ideologically speaking Hitler and Deng were like ships that passed in the night, going in opposite directions. Hitler also expressed his admiration for Stalin.
#15104253
NO. Nazis started out as a socialist party and then abandoned any semblance of Socialism. Maybe you should learn something of history, since you tend to gleefully remain unaware of it.

The Nazis were not socialists
While their name did include the word “socialist”, their policies and treatment of left-wing opponents show they were not socialists in any meaningful sense.

Historians have regularly disavowed claims that Hitler adhered to socialist ideology. Historian Richard Evans wrote of the Nazis’ incorporation of socialist into their name in 1920,“Despite the change of name, however, it would be wrong to see Nazism as a form of, or an outgrowth from, socialism….Nazism was in some ways an extreme counter-ideology to socialism”. Or as simply put by historian and Hitler expert Ian Kershaw, “Hitler was never a socialist.”

Socialism, for supporters of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, appeared to substitute Marx’s idea of class war with a race one.

The Nazis didn’t create the term “National socialism” themselves; both the left-leaning Czech National Socialist Party and right-leaning Austrian National socialism movement predated the Nazi party in Germany. The term was added to the party’s title in 1920—turning the German Worker’s Party into the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. This, along with their manifesto, was done to appeal to the working classes.

This can lead to confusion as to what national socialism meant.Though they sometimes described themselves as socialist, their general ideology and treatment of left-wing figures reflected their true views.

In Hitler’s speeches, he established his idea of socialism as something only for select Germans the Nazi party deemed worthy. In his 1920 speech “Why We Are Anti-Semites” he claimed Judaism was the opposite of socialism by aligning it with capitalism at a time when Germany’s workers were suffering.

In the same year, the party outlined their party programme, which included a number of points which could be seen to align with socialist and anti-capitalist ideals. However, historian of the period Karl Dietrich Bracher has referred to the programme as “propaganda” through which Hitler gained support and then discarded once he achieved power.

Hitler worked closely with industrialists—in 1933 he held a meeting with a number of German industrial figures and gained their trust by speaking of the communist threat. In return, they gave millions of Reichmarks to fund the Nazi party in the upcoming elections. Many developed close relationships with the Nazi regime and flourished under the ideology—the Krupp family supplied Germany with arms during World War Two, readily dismissed Jewish employees, and it's then head Alfried Krupp joined the Nazi party in 1938.

Hitler also suppressed trade unions and refused to give the homes of German princes to the people, as he felt this would move the party towards communism.
Socialists, along with other left-wing political activists opposed the Nazi regime and were persecuted under it. The Communist Party and Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Germany were banned in 1933, along with the limitation of the power of all those who opposed Nazi rule.Many SPD members were arrested, sent to concentration camps, or exiled to Prague, Paris and London. The first concentration camp in Dachau, built-in 1933, was intended to inter the Nazi’s left-wing opponents. Hitler was also vocally critical of the “November criminals”—those who led Germany after the First World War and signed the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles. These leaders were social democrats.

More left-leaning members of the Nazi party were also targeted; Otto Strasser and his brother Gregor followed a strand of Nazism that wanted to remove the elites Hitler courted from power. Gregor was killed along with other pro-worker members during the Night Of the Long Knives.

https://fullfact.org/online/nazis-socialists/

The right needs to stop falsely claiming that the Nazis were socialists
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/ ... ocialists/
#15104278
Oxymoron wrote:
Why fire the officers? They should have a right to keep their jobs, but the Union that is easy to remove without having to restart from scratch.
I get it, its much easier to finalize the Marxist movement without an armed force stopping you...but alas that wont happen.



SHHHHHHHH!!!

Stop foiling the Marxist movement! (grin)


Actually, you're invoking a *stereotype*, that the class struggle is reducible to weaponry and violence.

It's really about control of society's *productivity*, meaning the means of mass industrial production, or factories. The Industrial Revolution took place all over the world, on a mostly *ruling class* basis, without any mass-conscious *social* reorganization, meaning a *proletarian* basis for how such paramount technologies (factories) are used by society, and how the goods are distributed.

Capitalism's inherent class elitism and enforced scarcity are distinctly *outmoded* in the context of abundant-capacity *industrial* production, and this socio-material issue *still* hasn't been reconciled, *centuries* after its inception.

Bourgeois policing isn't *helping* the situation, either.


---


annatar1914 wrote:
The Police should not be abolished in America. But I am a Statist, and so I recommend a system similar to this;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militsiya

It would be somewhat like Federalizing the Police in America, initially.




Functionally, Ministries of Internal Affairs are mostly police agencies. Their functions and organisation differ significantly from similarly named departments in Western countries, which are usually civil executive bodies headed by politicians and responsible for many other tasks as well as the supervision of law enforcement. The Soviet and successor MVDs have usually been headed by a militsiya general and predominantly consist of service personnel, with civilian employees only filling auxiliary posts. Although such ministers are members of their respective countries' cabinet, they usually do not report to the prime minister and parliament, but only to the president. Local militsiya departments are subordinated to their regional departments, having little accountability before local authorities.

Internal affairs units within the militsiya itself are usually called "internal security" departments.[citation needed]

The official names of particular militsiya bodies and services in post-Soviet countries are usually very complicated, hence the use of the short term militsiya. Laws usually refer to police just as militsiya.

The short term for a police officer (regardless of gender) is militsioner (Russian: милиционер, Ukrainian: мiлiцiонер).



This is just Stalinist branding. (Policing is *always* a function of the state, whatever state that happens to be.)


---


Hellas me ponas wrote:
As an outsider, from Europe. I consider this whole thing a really great shame for America and Americans.
Every one here looks at America like the grand hub of civilisations and cultures. Especially the matter with African people it was supposed to be solved literally 60 years ago.
But still here we are in year 2020, even Iran has stopped punlically executing gays and in America there is a huge margin of racists.
Dude, how come Germans are less racists than Americans? What has happened to America really? Moreover, how come the land of the free and democracy allows such racist behaviours? Racism is a European thing, America was founded supposedly to leave behind all European complexes and Conservative institutions.
Yet here we have an America in which White humans treat Africans and Mexicans like they are Jews in Germany in 1938



Dude-bro-man (heh),

The racism has always *been* here -- I think this is one of those things where, due to a recent upsurge in struggle, it just happens to be more *visible* lately, since it's now on people's radar screens.

Also, the streets here are *not* paved with gold. (grin)


Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction era

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenfran ... uction_era
#15104585
@ckaihatsu , you said;

This is just Stalinist branding. (Policing is *always* a function of the state, whatever state that happens to be.)



I'm not a Marxist exactly in my Socialism, and I am something of a Statist, because It will always be needed and will never ''whither away''. For all of Marx's realism compared to his fellow Socialists, this was a definite remnant of Utopianism in his thinking.
#15104612
ckaihatsu wrote:




Dude-bro-man (heh),

The racism has always *been* here -- I think this is one of those things where, due to a recent upsurge in struggle, it just happens to be more *visible* lately, since it's now on people's radar screens.

Also, the streets here are *not* paved with gold. (grin)


Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction era

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenfran ... uction_era


Indeed, that is true and I've said it too before.
Suddenly everyone got sensitive about Africans in America, while some months ago they didn't even know what America even is lol
My point is other though, the basis of American existence, is that all men are born equal, freedom is a human birthright etc. Thus an American by definition can't be fascist, authoritarian or racist. That was my point. That how can someone claim he loves America and he is American if he behaves in such ways?

Now when it comes to police etc, police is a state tool to keep order and civilisation. Thus I guess policemen have to be like soldiers, because they exist to preserve democracy and equality not to practice it. Thus fascist or racist elements might appear in there since they shouldn't be allowed to "think" .

But for the rest of Americans, this discussion shouldn't even be on the table.
Get it?
#15104627
annatar1914 wrote:
@ckaihatsu , you said;



ckaihatsu wrote:
This is just Stalinist branding. (Policing is *always* a function of the state, whatever state that happens to be.)



annatar1914 wrote:
I'm not a Marxist exactly in my Socialism, and I am something of a Statist, because It will always be needed and will never ''whither away''. For all of Marx's realism compared to his fellow Socialists, this was a definite remnant of Utopianism in his thinking.



Do you think that a post-capitalist society would really need specialized *professional* policing? Here we are, still within *capitalism*, and there are already mass calls for the complete *abolition* of policing.

I recently posted the following to another thread, and it's relevant here....



The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at any time. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class.... The police, which until then had been the instrument of the Government, was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The privileges and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves.... Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the instruments of physical force of the old government, the Commune proceeded at once to break the instrument of spiritual suppression, the power of the priests.... The judicial functionaries lost that sham independence... they were thenceforward to be elective, responsible, and revocable.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commune_( ... in_Marxism



So this is a statist-type *reform*, but I think that, fully post-capitalism, anyone and everyone could readily respond to a civil-type disturbance by instantly *publicizing* it (as through instant messaging of some kind), and *politicizing* it with information, commentary, analysis, etc., to create a local 'swarm' of awareness and response, all without any formal state-like separatist standing institutions. There *could* be guidelines, and time-tested norms, etc.


Hellas me ponas wrote:
Indeed, that is true and I've said it too before.
Suddenly everyone got sensitive about Africans in America, while some months ago they didn't even know what America even is lol
My point is other though, the basis of American existence, is that all men are born equal, freedom is a human birthright etc. Thus an American by definition can't be fascist, authoritarian or racist. That was my point. That how can someone claim he loves America and he is American if he behaves in such ways?



Yes, I see -- of course. But you've also just acknowledged the *darker* side, which is the racism and organized racist violence, the history of which I linked to.

And now we actually have a fascist in office, Trump, so there's a real-world counterargument to your more-positivist line here.


Hellas me ponas wrote:
Now when it comes to police etc, police is a state tool to keep order and civilisation. Thus I guess policemen have to be like soldiers, because they exist to preserve democracy and equality not to practice it. Thus fascist or racist elements might appear in there since they shouldn't be allowed to "think" .

But for the rest of Americans, this discussion shouldn't even be on the table.
Get it?



No, I really *don't* 'get' whatever it is you're alluding to -- I don't presume to 'read minds' so if you want to discuss with me you'll have to be as explicit as possible.

Of course I know that individual cops are basically just following protocols and procedures, but there are also *abuses* of power, of course, as we've seen massive *protests* against.

It's the *institutionalization*, as you're indicating, that ultimately creates the social problem -- the 'institutional racism' that so many are now waking up to because of the BLM protests.

This is related to the segment above, in response to Annatar -- as soon as there's a *specialization* / professionalization of any administrative / enforcement kinds of social tasks, then those institutions which are *tasked* to those duties become *separate* from the larger society, as you've just aptly described.

This is a *problem* because there's not necessarily any real *accountability*, not even from so-called 'democracy', or 'elections'. I'd prefer to see the 'commune'-type reform described in the excerpt, but ultimately it's the *workers* of the world who need to control social production so that all elitism / institutionalization is eliminated *forever*. Workers can collectively be co-administrators over everything they do, and produce.
#15104633
I see.
I only meant thst cops live under circumstances that can breed fascist ideas in their mind (they are commoners who bear authority, its very likely they'll be assholes with thst and abuse it etc).
But a normal American citizen, lives under circumstances that promote completely different ideas than racism etc.
#15104651
Hellas me ponas wrote:
I see.
I only meant thst cops live under circumstances that can breed fascist ideas in their mind (they are commoners who bear authority, its very likely they'll be assholes with thst and abuse it etc).
But a normal American citizen, lives under circumstances that promote completely different ideas than racism etc.



*Or*, the typical person, in whatever country, lives in an elitist / racist / sexist society, and it's the officials and employees of the state who *enforce* the elitist / racist / sexist *policies* on all *non*-ruling-class people, meaning those who produce commodities and get paid a wage for it -- the working class.


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