[quote=Why this guy has supporters?"/quote]Because many Americans are not well enough educated to apply rational thinking to slick snake oil salesmen. (Hmm, how would one say "slick snake oil salesman" in Esperanto?)

GB is a "Shock-Jock" a particular breed of (as far as I know, only American) radio personality who keeps advertisers coming by delivering the listeners - who are too stunned & amazed by what he says to consider the ramifications.

Shock Jocks make their living by lying & they are usually associated with conservative/Right wing politics. Why? I'd offer suggestions but that isn't within the realm of this discussion.

George Soros is "associated" with the Left & is also a major international competitor with GB's ultimate boss at Newscorp. Therefore I end up hearing about Soros's "dastardly deeds" from my associates on the Right much more than I hear about anything he does from anybody else.

Miland:

qwertz:These East-Germans are really annoying and have no respect for the achievements of Western-Germany.

Let me guess what they might say in the former DDR: "These West Germans are really annoying and have no respect for the achievements of East Germany." Nicht wahr?

Who said what? The DDR regime's puppets? Of course they tried to make Western Germany looking like the evil. Very silly attempt. The peoples? No. There were some people not frighenting and trying to escape to Western-Germany. Not very easy to escape to freedom. Because there was some little risk to get a Kalashnikov slapshoot into the back or blow up at the Todestreifen (death stripe).

qwertz:

Miland:

qwertz:These East-Germans are really annoying and have no respect for the achievements of Western-Germany.

Let me guess what they might say in the former DDR...

Who said what? The DDR regime's puppets? ...

You're in the wrong thread, I guess you lost your way.

custinne:

qwertz:

Miland:

qwertz:These East-Germans are really annoying and have no respect for the achievements of Western-Germany.

Let me guess what they might say in the former DDR...

Who said what? The DDR regime's puppets? ...

You're in the wrong thread, I guess you lost your way.

No, you guess wrong. Follow the thread from 2010-11-13 16:05:26 ongoing: "...Interesting. Somebody makes something discussion topic which other people don't see a demand to has be changed...".

"New order" discussions also concerns the E-o komuno if they really wanna do something to attract young people for Esperanto.

La Espero vs. eobo, you know.

Mike,
Of all the Glen Beck haters, I notice many are from outside the US. I wonder how many of them have ever listened to his show and what he has to say.

If you don't listen to his show, what are you basing your opinions on, second hand information. As Beck himself says, "find out for yourself".

Mike:
Believe it or not, I am a huge fan of Beck. Sometimes his research is a little spotty (such as in this case), but the basic message of personal responsibility, a return to limited government, belief in American exceptionalism, the reexamination of the true roots of the the "Progressive" movement in the US, distrust of the tendency toward global governance, and suspicion of slimy economic hitmen like Soros are all things which I applaud.

Should Beck have found out a little more about Esperanto before he raised this particular point? Yeah, probably. Nevertheless, Soros' attempt to destroy the dollar and refashion the US and the world in his image are well-documented. If it takes a showman like Beck to get people to pay attention to what's happening around them (even if he gets an isolated fact wrong here or there), then I'm in his corner 100%.

Hopefully, these (assuredly) non-widely-shared-in-the-Esperanto-community beliefs of mine won't make me unwelcome in Esperanto circles forevermore.

With all due respect,

You have no right to speak for the EO community as a whole. We are a diverse bunch and to say that "most of us ..." does not seem appropriate.

On offence intended, please do not take it in the wrong way.

erinja:

In the American Esperanto community, most of us are the types who support someone like Soros,

zmjb1:With all due respect,

You have no right to speak for the EO community as a whole. We are a diverse bunch and to say that "most of us ..." does not seem appropriate.

On offence intended, please do not take it in the wrong way.

With all due respect, how many American Esperanto speakers have you met? And how many of them were right-wingers? I would estimate that it's roughly one right-winger in five US Esperantists, nationwide. You might say that my experience has been influenced by where I live (DC metro area, previously Boston metro area). But in the areas where I've lived, it's more like one right-winger in ten Esperantists. People get into all kinds of discussions at national Esperanto conventions, including political discussions. It's uncommon to spend a lot of time in that atmosphere and be unaware of the political affiliations of the attendees.

You will perhaps disagree with me for over-generalizing on these points as well, but in my experience (15+ years with Esperanto so far), in the US Esperanto movement, men usually outnumber women by a lot, and gays, Jews, and vegetarians are overrepresented compared to the general population (that is, you find more of them in an "Esperanto crowd" than you would expect to find in a random group of people).

It's definitely not to say that the US movement isn't diverse, or that ALL US Esperanto speakers are gay male left-wing Jewish vegetarians. But to be completely fair, right-wingers will find themselves to be an obvious minority at most US Esperanto events.

Actually I don't know of any country whose Esperanto movement worldwide is more right-wing than left-wing. No offense to you right-wingers but I think that for a variety of reasons, Esperanto attracts left-wingers more easily than right-wingers.

Well, It doesn't seem like I'm going to pay any mind to that Beck feller... whoever he is.

Interested to read exactly what Chomsky said 'though. Anyone know where I can find it?

Travis523: George Soros is a very "scary dude" and is actively working toward the New World Order. There are 20 or 30 videos right on You tube of him admitting to this.

Which brings us to the question, what is this New World Order, and why is it bad?

Anyway, at this rate, no such world government will exist, democratic or totalitarian. I can envision something similar to the European Union but on a world scale, but nothing more, due to the tribalistic nature of humans. A sort of world-wide governing power is inevitable if we humans ever want to either work towards peace or venture onto other planets, unless of course humans evolve to a point of understanding where we can trust each other and live in harmony (cough).

Esperanto essentially works towards some of those ideals, since it is about humans understanding and cooperating with eachother, essentially the core idea upon which a world government and socialism are both founded upon. Esperanto is essentially a lefty thing both dangerous to capitalism and communism, since it undermines the "everyone for themselves" core of capitalism, and true socialism in general is dangerous to communism because it limits the power of the government .

Otherwise, if we don't agree with all that, we can stagnate as we are now, with little progress at all relative to how much we are using up on this planet. We've basically created an ultimatum for ourselves. In that sense, a "new world order" is indeed necessary, but whether it's the one constructed by conspiracy theorists and people with tin-foil hats, or just a system of order in the world that happens to be new, well, people can figure that out for themselves.

zmjb1:Mike,
Of all the Glen Beck haters, I notice many are from outside the US. I wonder how many of them have ever listened to his show and what he has to say.

If you don't listen to his show, what are you basing your opinions on, second hand information. As Beck himself says, "find out for yourself".

I don't hate the man, I just think he's said something very stupid. That bit about "find out for yourself" does not actually justify misinformation, crazy as it sounds. The responsibility of giving out information is to share truth, and receive criticisms on where one does not achieve that. Does he do that? Has he done that for this case? If so, and he makes sure to fix up any misunderstandings, that's all well and good.

But the responsibility entails catering whatever information you give out for the stupidest of people. If I live in the same world as you, there are many people that'd automatically disregard the "find out for yourself", and take everything he says as the truth. The more people who are like that, the more likely you end up with a new "shared reality" - that is, a "fact" that is assumed by a group of people to be true. Its thanks to such things that racism, negative conservative attitudes, stupid progressive attitudes and overall common stupidity exist.

As for Beck hating, what most of us are stating is our disbelief that he has a job really. Since, after all, while we speak the same language, our societies could be miles apart at times.

And let's not forget - we can all study things up by ourselves, but that doesn't mean we're doing a good job of it. Which is more a problem with news commentators in general, since there's no chance for discussion with all his viewers to find out better, nonBIASED information .

ZOV:What show?

Chaser's I believe it's called, if we're talking about the aussies trying to get australia blown up by replacing Australia with afghanistan. They tend to rival this Beck guy in "How do they have a job still"-ness. Although they have found themselves arrested a few times .

Mike:belief in American exceptionalism

Damn those long complicated terms that give us non-yanks a wrong impression of their meaning! I thought that meant something far worse at first! haha.

@ general conversation:
Obama's a nazi, the world is run by chinese spies, humans are descended from aliens, and George Soros is a jewish-nazi double agent who wants to help herald the coming of the Esperanza/Spanish-speaking anti-christ from the other side of the Mexico border with romanian heritage, who shall be called Nikolai Carpathia. Who will be very quickly "dealt with", by moi. And then I'll run the world from my secret moonbase. MWAHAHAHA!

But don't just listen to me, research it yourself, there's plenty of evidence for it!

It's that one half is utter bollocks, and the other half is twisted.

TL;DR:

Ultimately there's two sides to a coin. For example, if we look at the Empire in Star Wars, on one side they're an evil empire ruled by the dark side of the force, out to get the rebel alliance. On the other side, they brought great reform to an increasingly corrupt system, and simplified things, and brought a great deal of galactic unity, and also maintained a well armed galactic police force full of bucketheads.

Where problems lie is when we are exposed to more subliminal messages, like "the empire is bad" - it's never really stated in Star Wars, but who came out of that movie feeling like the Empire were the goodies? Similarly, our friend Beck is a bit like Lucas - he shows us the plain information (although in this case a bit spotty as said by many), but he's also gone and given us a non-explicit message. Soros is secretly Darth Vader, and Esperanza is the dark side of the force. In this case nonetheless.

His fans, and his supporters here, are not in the wrong for liking him, nor are they stupid for doing so.

However, it's the sheeple/stupid masses/uneducated proletariat/stultularo who are both at risk and the risk here. Safety in groups means that such misinformation is hard to correct, and gang mentality means that such groups are dangerous to approach or even be known by if they have been misinformed in a way they emotionally respond to. cf. dangerous political groups who gain control via popular support.