Nazis and the like deserve it, but it's a slippery slope tho
No struggle session needed. We should absolutely oppose the death penalty. Even in a revolution, once you've captured your enemies, there's no more need for violence. If it's gonna be done to war criminals I won't throw a fit, but it should be something we oppose on principal.
And in the US in particular, it's exactly what this tweet says. A way to lock up black men for a few decades and then murder them.
Absolutely. It's already been proven that the death penalty has no meaningful effect as a deterrent of crime, so the difference between imprisoning an evil-doer vs killing them is only the punitive satisfaction felt by the people passing the sentence, which is not a healthy attitude to foster in society. Punitivism is used in American society to justify our backwards legal system, disproportionate sentencing, and barbaric prison conditions. The sooner fetishization of punishment can be wiped from our collective consciousness, the better.
So in a revolution you wouldn't execute the people who are responsible immense pain and suffering and who also represent the best focal point for your enemies?
Fuck that, they get the wall.
No, I wouldn't. I'd make them work. Killing them doesn't undo the pain and suffering. If they die during the course of a revolutionary war that's different, but if you've won, there's no point in killing them. Strip them of their power and wealth, make them work, imprison them, but there's nothing to gain by killing them.
They stripped Krupp of his power and wealth and tossed him in prison.
He died rich and free.
There was no revolution, West Germany was full of nazi generals, politicians, industrialists.
Nato too.
Then what are you even talking about? You're mad a bourgeois state didn't execute their own? He was pardoned. He was never stripped of his wealth because his family retained it. It's obviously not an applicable comparison to a revolutionary socialism.
one of Brandon’s former prosecutors who worked to uphold his sentence, now wants his life to be spared.
What a pigfucker. Death to prosecutors.
The way we've tried to sanitize it as well is rather horrific. People are led to believe that just because we don't do hangings or the electric chair anymore it's become a more civilized process. Now it's untrained state employees injecting people with tainted black market chemicals because pharmaceutical companies have stopped selling to the states. Multiple times now a person has survived their execution for hours or even days in agony after the state has injected them with poison.
A few years back a man in Utah was asking to be sent in front of a firing squad as it was more humane than our lethal injection.
Hard reading warning: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/botched-executions
As executions have gotten less gruesome, they've gotten slower and more painful. I'd rather be shot or guillotined than electrocuted or poisoned, but those show blood, so no thank you.
The next one they'll do is get people drunk at a rager until they pass out and then bury them alive. We only see the fun bits!
If the state fucks up and kills an innocent person, you can't take that back and make restitution, and the state WILL fuck up
I oppose it on ethical and principled grounds
The fact that you can sit for 20 years on death row means the whole "crime deterrence" argument to the death penalty is bullshit.
You can rot in jail waiting for the state to kill you and when you finally die no one remembers what the charges were that put you there. It's whole point is just added cruelty.
That's the whole conservative argument for it.
That's not the left argument on it, if there's one at all.
it's bad. the state shouldn't kill people. retribution-brains will try to deny this.
The people will take care of Bezos. No state needs to tell us what he deserves.
I would MUCH prefer he work for the rest of his life personally building housing in neo-colonial-ravaged countries than getting Epstein'd.
Had to look that up, but I agree. Notice how the libs mention the Romanovs all the time but never mention Puyi?
That certainly depends on the nature of their sentence, or the expropriation/ nationalization of their assets though no? Krupp was essentially let off the hook and immediately placed back into his old position.
I'd be more than happy to have this discussion once we take every penny from him.
He should be forced to work in a distribution center for the rest of his life. After 5 years of good behavior, he gets a second bathroom break a day.
Uncritical opposition.
Even for war criminals (applying death penalty is actually a good way to become one and get a taste of your own medicine).
Even when it’s not the state (what? Is it better if it’s a random militia or a tribe that calls murder justice?)
Even when it’s not the state (what? Is it better if it’s a random militia or a tribe that calls murder justice?)
A revolutionary context is probably the only appropriate time for the death penalty. You don't have the resources of a state to keep someone in indefinite custody, and the whole premise of a revolution is that things have gotten so bad you're willing to kill people to reorganize society.
Indeed, from my couch it would be very presumptuous to argue what is the « « best » » thing to do in desperate times calling for desperate measures.
My point was that Robespierre, just like Louis XVI, ended up guillotined.
The only time I support the death penalty is for cops and politicians using their positions to kill people for fun/profit
I haven't critically examined this in a while, but I feel like it's justified
I agree with you that it would be morally justified in that case, but I don't think that any human institution can be trusted to do it. There's just too much at stake and too many ways it can go wrong that even if killing someone for a certain crime is completely morally justifiable there will always be an unacceptable margin of error.
It's understandable why the death penalty is so attractive to so many, but it should be seen as a relic of the past and left behind as much as capitalism itself.
Synthesis: abolish the state and police and no one qualifies for it
Yeah and as soon as a leftist government would do that, you'll see capitalists advocating for the death penalty for them, arguing that they are "using their positions to kill people for fun/profit". Death penalty is just an ethical nightmare, no matter how you look at it.
Oh I thought you meant only those "using their positions to kill people for fun/profit". You're are talking about killing all capitalists, my bad.
Still strongly disagree with you.
Maybe it's not execution, but a battle royale.
Winner(s) get(s) to live in a relatively comfortable reeducation camp.
I'm just assuming that a prerequisite to leftist government is going to necessarily involve all the capitalists going away somehow. It's understood that it wasn't a morally good action but 'we won't apologize.' We're talking about how we would administrate a system we actually control. That comes with moral cost.
There's still a difference between "going away somehow" and "mass murder going way beyond death penalty for crimes".
I'll caricature a bit you're position here, but to me that's just as dumb as saying "I'm for poverty to disappear. That why I advocate for killing all poor people. Problem solved, I am very leftist."
Killing anyone belonging to the wrong class is totally different from death penalty. And try doing that, and you'll end up killed long before you "control the system".
I’ll caricature a bit you’re position here, but to me that’s just as dumb as saying “I’m for poverty to disappear. That why I advocate for killing all poor people. Problem solved, I am very leftist.”
This isn't a caricature, it's an inversion...
Look, we're talking about unseating the greatest concentrated power in all of human history. It's not going to be bloodless. I'm not talking about going home to home tracking down landlords. My expectation is that they're going to fight to the death.
Killing anyone belonging to the wrong class is totally different from death penalty.
Elaborate what 'the wrong class' is supposed to mean.
guy with the username Guillotine_Terror_69: i would never support killing anyone
Watch Shaun's video on it, it's pretty good.
The death sentence should be opposed on all grounds, even one innocent person killed is one too many. And innocent people will be convicted, that's in the nature of a criminal justice system.
Obviously I oppose it in the present form for a million reasons, but I'm sympathetic towards Robespierre's argument for killing the king, because if he was left alive he would pose an existential threat to the revolutionary government. Tbh the big problem is that the people who most deserve it are the ones that are safest from it, if you can flip that in a revolution, the argument becomes stronger.
If I were writing a speculative fiction story about a revolution, and the intelligence community was merely disbanded, I would have them continue to undermine the revolutionary government, and they would pose a severe danger due to their intel, connections, and skills. If the revolutionaries tried to reform them, then I don't think it'd work and they'd have to deal with being infiltrated by "reformed" spies. Imprisonment would carry a greater risk in a revolutionary context as well. I think the revolutionaries in my story would purge the IC at least.
But that’s the whole thing about death penalty. Robespierre was guillotined just like Louis XVI.
Well, sorry to be cliche, but "In the game of thrones, you win or you die." In the context of a revolution, it's a necessary risk. If it's not worth killing and risking death, then you shouldn't be fighting a revolution in the first place. But there are plenty of cases where a government being too soft was an invitation for the CIA to come in, and as long as they're around, they're a threat.
I'm not particularly happy that that's how it is but that's reality. If you don't like it there's always reformism and mutual aid type stuff, which I think are more realistic approaches anyway in the States.
