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When you bring in religious leaders in, people who are influential for all the reasons Aniket mentioned, they didn't contest it, creates an opportunity for people, for a protest movement to actually have a say and incorporate that legitimacy. So on one hand, you might have a religious leader who says, “Well, here's my authoritarian system, here's why I'm like legitimately religious,” and you finally get an opposition voice that is sympathetic to people, incorporates the masses, but finally, and most crucially, also has a religious narrative that, because of the egalitarian nature of a lot of these movements that we've seen, actually allows for people to get authoritarian leaders to get removed. |
</dpm> |
<dlo> |
All right, so let’s go with the frame we were given and start on overthrowing, right. Because that is the prerequisite for a lot of these issues. First thing you have to recognize is that we do talk largely about mass appeal, and it goes pretty unresponded by the government. The first issue here with the mass appeal is the issue of heterogeneity. |
Now, we get some argumentation here on a few things. First, we hear from OP, we hear from GOV that most of the authoritarian states we're talking about, are homogeneous. First of all, this isn't true. Even in the areas that they give us, like Pakistan, you still have divides, right? Even within the Muslim community between the Sunni and the Shiite; And in the more homogeneous areas, what we see is that if you end up aligning yourself in Pakistan probably with the majority, you're going to end up largely disenfranchising the minority, hurting the most disenfranchised groups, and because that ends up causing a lot more harm, additionally, we get this idealistic notion of like, some very progressive collaborative religions working together all under one broad coalition. This goes directly against the framing of religion that we saw from the first speaker because if we're to look at religion, which as it is, is the one ordained truth given to these religious groups by God, then their ideology is directly opposed to notions of collaboration. They are the ones who have the truth; other religions are false believers and heretics. |
We think that there are really two broad religious groups out there. We have our more open, progressive, collaborative religious groups who we feel are more likely to work with our organization, work with our protest movements without us actively trying to integrate them, and we have our more conservative, less collaborative, more maybe truer to their religion groups who are just going to tear apart our broad tent and make it their own. |
So looking at that first group, it makes sense to have a discussion about what active integration actually looks like, which we haven't really heard anything from governments because that's what this debate's all about, and we think that active integration looks like, you know, going to churches, making concessions, listening to their speeches, and having these different religious figures be the figureheads or spokespeople of the movement. |
Sure, OG, |
<poi> |
if the super conservative population is 10% of the people, why would the, why would incorporating that. |
</poi> |
Got it, okay. First of which, these 10-15% is still a significant portion of the population. It's important not to disenfranchise them. You can also look back to whence I told you before about how they're the most vulnerable groups. If you're now having us replace this authoritarian regime with a theocratic Shiite regime, who's going to now oppress the 10%? I don't really consider that to be a victory, and additionally, we think that attempting a sort of collaboration is gonna be working. So, on to the points I was actually in the middle of saying about what being active actually looks like, so we think that these concessions we're giving means that it's very, that is the focus here of the debate. The religious groups that we actually have to actively integrate to have as a part of organization, all the ones going to actually have to make promises and concessions to so because of that our values are going to end up being hampered and we think that when you have to make these for the concessions you're going to disenfranchise these other sort of religious groups. Additionally, even in areas like pakistan when you have different levels or even if you have like a majority I believe sunni population i'm not convinced that all of them are going to be okay with having the sunni religion be the figurehead, and end up basically oppressing these sort of Shiites . So going down to this idea, and yeah and additionally, just when we look at attempting sort of broad correlation, uh, coalition we have to recognize that religion in government ends up trending towards authoritarianism just by nature, again, of believing in one soul truth that they now have to force out onto other people. We explain this to, in our leader speech, and it goes again uncontested. So let’s lastly talk about sort of comparative that we're given in the previous speech about how, yeah, about how we can go ahead and co-opt, or if we don't co-op religion, the authoritarian regime will. |
A few thing, first of all, we never actually hear, why the religious groups are going to want to side with us. If the authoritarians now are willing to work with these religious groups and we're trying to grab them too in the government world, they're asking us to view a sort of race to the bottom where it's a fight of whether protesters or the authoritarians can effectively concede more to these religious groups, and it's, A, battle we're definitely not going to win because the authoritarians have much more to offer these religious groups, and B, we think that a more theocratic authoritarian society is even worse than the authoritarians we started with because they actually now have not only a stranglehold on the society, but they have a stranglehold that specifically excludes segments of the population. |
Additionally, we have this conversation about how maybe like statesmen or politicians will, and in case, it comes up later around this discussion of whether the fact that religion is going to seep in eventually, if we do have victory, it ends up becoming a very weird argument because the whole point of opposition is that we're trying to keep out religion, at least in so far as making specific concessions to them. |
So at the end of the day, what is this case or what is this round really coming down to? First things coming down to is again whether or not we can actually end up overthrowing these groups. And it's important to realize here that not only is it not nearly a contest between one religion and the other religions at play, it's also a contest between the single religion and the other bodies that maybe don't feel as religious, that have more progressive tendencies, and even the other subsections within that religious group. |
Even the Sunnis and the Shiites in Pakistan aren't a monolith, and we can see this happening in the very example they were given to us of Poland, right. Where, although Poland had a reasonable democracy, or had a reasonable ,or fledgling one, what we're seeing now with recent elections is that it's on the verge of collapsing. We have massive protests as an extremely radical trending towards authoritarian government, and the Catholic Church are hampering down on abortion laws, hitting down other rights, and overall trying to dismantle the government that was fought so hard for. |
So additionally, the main issue, though, that the government completely fails to encounter and that ends up being also very key for this overthrowing issue is the fact that the movement becomes so much easier to demoralize once you're attached to a religious figurehead. This part goes completely uncontested because when we start having the whole point, the reason why protests can be so hard to hamper down is because people believe in an idea. There's not any one person that the government can capture and prison and torture and kill the movements. That's why it's been so hard to take down protests in places like Taiwan; |
But when you go ahead and connect and make a single religious figurehead, that figurehead can be captured, killed, tortured, broad coerced. And just as it may be easier to moralize groups of people if you center around one figure, it's also that much easier to demoralize. The strength of our protest lies in its decentralization. The fact that it's multiple people working towards ideas that they all share, not being spoken by any one person. That's what makes it so for governments to defeat protest, and that's the sort of structure that we need to make sure we stick to. |
Thank you. |
</dlo> |
<mg> |
Panel two extensions mainly for me. First off, on legitimacy and why we exclusively can bring legitimacy to these movements which need it. Secondly, in terms of manpower and why we can amass more people. And I will identify some mechanistic links that were missed by our opening. But before I move on to rebuttals, though, note that most of these movements have the nature of being grassroots movements, right. That is to say most of these movements start from the populations and people of the general public, mostly young people trying to amass together and trying to fight against an authoritarian government. We don't think that they have the necessary means to continue on, in terms of a long-lasting sort of movement and continue to establish themselves without some sort of established institution that is backing them, right. |
I think that is crucial in today's debate and crucial for these movements' success. |
Okay, before I move on, several points of extraneous rebuttal. I think most of OO’s points are contingent on the idea of how religion will basically corrupt movements, right. I think one main thing that they pointed out is the idea that, okay, this idea of like a divine birthright of these religions will kind of transcend and like be carried into these movements. Several responses to this, one, we think that at the end of the day they neglect the fact that these religious groups themselves actually have that impetus to join these movements, right. Why is this the case? One, in terms of on the moral level, there are people within these religious groups that are being oppressed by the government that, they have a moral impetus to go against these authoritarian governments, but even if this is not the case, right, there's another practical level in terms of interest, right. The ways in which these religions are able to be practiced and the ways in which they’re, these religious figures are able to politize is very much limited by their own, very own governments because these authoritarian governments are what is controlling the reins and holding everything under their control, right. At the end of the day, they have a motivation to join these movements. What does this mean? This means that a lot of the times, they will not want to characterize themselves as a threat to the movement, right. They will want to also complement these movements and be part of it and be part of the movement to fight against the authoritarian governments that are a threat to these religions in the first place, right. |
But even if this is not the case, right, note that at the end of the day, secondly, having a religion and believing that this transcends into something that is like a divine birthright are two different things, right. Just because I identify with something and believe deeply and connect with a belief and connect with others through that belief doesn't mean that I believe that this should dominate every aspect of my life, right. I think that there's a clear missing mechanistic link. Just because we co-opt certain narratives of the religion, we don't think that this will completely dominate the movement simply because at the end of the day, the general gist of the movement will be overthrowing the authoritarian government. And at the end of the day, this will not be completely dominated by religion, right? |
Okay, secondly, that’s the second push that we get, is the idea that, okay, these movements will be easily shut down by authoritarian governments. Two responses, one, I think this is even worse on their side, right, because there's simply no legitimacy in these movements. There's no institutional power to back these people up, and many of these grassroots movements are led by young people, and they're more likely to be quashed by the troops and police forces of the government, right, but we think that this, secondly, under our side, we have a higher chance of these movements being sustainable and carry on for the long term because of the fact that we co-opted a lot of people from diverse backgrounds under this religion and have different levels of political power, right, more on this later; And lastly, in terms of their idea of heterogeneity, we think that under their side it's even worse because there's no way in which you can amass enough people note that currently a lot of movements are again dominated by young people and you don't get enough buy-in from people from higher levels of power. We don't think that this will necessarily be better on their side but under our side it's much better, because you have more chances of success, when you have people united around the same beliefs and people actually striving towards tangible goals, right. |
Okay, moving on to my substantives. In terms of my first extension, right, in terms of legitimacy we think that crucially, no house has identified the fact that religion itself can be a factor that holds people back from joining movements right why for instance take islam for an example, religious violence is not legitimate until it is sanctioned by a religious authority, right, look at the arab spring, the reason why most that is mostly bought in by young people rather than older people is because the older people simply don't think that this violence is religiously legitimate, right, but the point at which you co-opt religious narratives, right. This is the tipping point at which, people will actually want to opt in, people from various different backgrounds, people from different ages because of the fact that now it is legitimized and it is seen as something that is something that will actually lead to tangible goals in terms of overthrowing the authoritarian government, right. We think that this is much more weaponized under our side, right, but secondly, we think that also, people, these movements are often not seen to be legitimate because they don't have institutional backing, right. It is really easy to fizzle out, but what having religious authority on your side is uniquely beneficial is because this type of authority is so tied to people's identity and their daily life and their figment of their being, right. This means the movements will be much more likely to be long lasting. Again, this sort of analysis has been neglected by our opening, right. So two main impacts from this, one, we establish the legitimacy of our movement and we allow people to actually flourish in the long run and secondly, we remove the barrier that is stopping people from opting in especially when religious, religion is holding them back, right. Also, in terms of my second point, in terms of manpower right, we think that we have long-term benefits for a lot of these grassroots movements because these long, these movements often can't enough, can't amass enough people because the main demographic is like, young people, right. This, they're easily quashed by the establishment but with the religious institutions co-opted, given the large demographic that will be, that is encapsulated within these religions. You have different people from different levels of who have different levels of political capital. We think that we have a lot more mobility in terms of having a diverse group of people along the power hierarchy to consolidate the movement, right. we think that apart from what our opening identified, which is like more people in general. We get more power under our side too and we think that at the end of the day this is crucial in terms of having a these movements to be long lasting and to have any sort of chance to have success, right. So that's why I'm very, very proud to stand CG. Thank you. |
</mg> |
<og> |
Okay, so I think we're going to win this debate in CO by first of all, giving a more accurate picture of how religion works in these countries and what specifically this integration is going to look like. I think CG fallout of this debate, the point of which they proved what could happen but don't actually show you the likely scenario of how religion will be played out within these members. |
I think they massively underestimate who has the power to control these narratives to begin with and who has that power to dictate their narratives and decide how religion will be interpreted in these events. How does religion work in these countries? Extending on massively from our opening because our opening has already established that these are very religious countries because often it's set within the developing world of authoritarians and also incredibly diverse. |
But it's also crucial that they're often very, very divided. There's often huge religious conflicts within these societies, a lot of hatred and pain between these religious groups because they've been specifically fueled by those leaders of those authoritarian groups in order to maintain that soft power, because obviously having a divided populace is much more beneficial for you as a leader to maintain political support. Because how do leaders specifically use religion to strengthen their power? This goes on much further from our opening when they just say they’re appointed by God. I think it's true they specifically frame themselves as appointed by God, but also protectors of the faith and they are appointed by this higher power not just to carry out their role as a government but also protect the faith. |
There are five mechanisms how they do this, descending from our opening, one, they specifically frame their, often their political party or their agenda around their ideology which is often religious. Therefore, religion and their state becomes inseparable. Therefore, if you're against this particular leader, you are also against the religion that they stand to protect. |
Two, they often recruit the military based off religious faith. They say that, hey, they use a narrative that they are not only defenders of the state, but defenders of the faith. They have this commonality between them and the shared purpose that is much higher than themselves and any form of political values. |
Three, they often pay a lot of religious elite, religious members through things like private privileges in order to get them to vocalize their support and often stand behind these leaders to begin with. They often use their private benefits or their policies to privilege certain individuals and say, “If you back my regime, I will also help you as a religious leader.” It's like sharing your influence, which often means they have a lot of support and vocalized support from the most powerful people in these religious groups. |
Four, finally, they do also divide and conquer rules within their own populace, which in order to fuel resentment between these different sectors, because the minority groups aren't just oppressed, like OG talk about; they're also being actively demonized. These repressed minority groups are specifically framed as being an attack on other people's safety. They're shown as people that want to have power; they are power-hungry because they want to impose their religious beliefs onto the rest of the populace. They're not just people who have different beliefs to you; they are an active threat against your religious beliefs, and if they ever had power, and if they ever maintained their power, they would directly entrench on your rights as individuals. This is specifically how leaders are able to justify very oppressive policies against minority groups by framing them as attacks on the faith and also claiming legitimacy on God. |
Therefore, why is this bad for political movements? I think, political movements within authoritarian regimes have two main obstacles they need to overcome. I think one is internal divisions because obviously having a divided group within yourself just means you are less powerful as an opposition. But also two, a united opposition is probably a massive thing. The point is you have a military that actively backs that leader and the elites that have a united front against you means it's much harder for you to gain momentum and gain any sort of leverage. |
Therefore, why is it bad the point in which you introduce religious leaders? Because I agree you are going to get some buy-in as OG talked about from those that buy into the faith. We're also going to go, it's also going to come at the cost of a huge turn away from most everyone that doesn't buy into the faith because I said, before these often these different religions aren't just portrayed as different but things have been actively against you and against your religious beliefs as a person because of these years of divine rule, conquers, and also I think when you actively integrate religious leaders, you frame this protest as a religious protest rather than just like a trench on human rights. Because you're saying that we gain legitimacy from this unique religion; therefore, those who are unrepresented by that religion or specifically and perhaps more crucially, though, that religion is an attack on their own religious beliefs will inevitably be turned away. I think also, especially within the context of these countries, religion is a hugely important part of people's identity in their life. I think it's probably more important than perhaps even democratic values, where especially when, like, places outside of the West, democratic values just aren't as entrenched in their social values. I think religion will take the forefront in these scenarios. |
Therefore, I think it's also important to note what type of religious leaders these guys probably actually look like and what kind of leaders they'll probably be able to integrate, which I also appear, why? Because I think it's just one very unlikely you're going to integrate religious leaders that support the government or that are part of the religion that the government claims to protect. Why? Because often these leaders are specifically co-opted by the government through things like private privileges in order to gain their support and power. I think also these particular leaders have a lot to lose. They have a lot of privileges and rights to lose by necessarily turning away from their government, such an oppressive government where turning away from them could actually cost them their lives. |
I think if you are going to get any sort of religious leaders from that religion, they're going to be much lesser leaders that, like, in the face of a much higher authority standing against them, probably going to have much minimal impact. There's no point getting one priest to stand out against the Catholic government, if the pope is supporting it, as an example. I think it has very little impact. |
What I think is more likely to happen, though, is therefore you get religious leaders from those minority religious groups to begin with. They have far less to lose, they have far less state, and they're probably more negatively affected by that government and have a greater incentive to take that government down to begin with. |
Therefore, why is this a bad thing? I think it specifically strengthens the narrative that authoritarian regimes used in order to maintain soft power to begin with. Because now, again, and this is why CG can’t really get their harm, can’t get their benefits to begin with about how like, you claim legitimacy through religion. Because I don't think it's these small protest movements that control the narrative, specifically the leader that will say, "Look, this minority group is now being who they have actively demonized and not just oppressed." They are saying that they are attacking us as a faith because again, because they linked their government specifically to the faith. |
They're saying an attack on us is an attack on the faith, the leaders are specifically able to often depersonalize these protests and say, “Look, they're not attacking my government, they're not attacking my policies, but they're attacking me because of my religious beliefs and how I want to protect our faith.” |
And specifically, the point in which they have religious leaders they can point out, I think this becomes far, far worse and far easier to do so on this side of the house. The things want to know who controls the narrative, it's not these individual religious leaders, but specifically governments who have one, media control, or two, have the buy-in of lots of elites that will be willing to vocalize their support, especially when those elites often come from high religious establishments. |
Therefore, the impact, so this is probably threefold. I think only three. One, probably get more likely that those elite religious leaders will likely vocalize their support, empower the government, which will fuel further dissent, so all their followers will be like, "No, we actually support this government," to begin with, and this actually is an attack on our faith and probably also like to do things like donate resources and money for these governments in order to help them. I think two, you also get a more united military, the point of which they have a more common goal to attack. They're not attacking their neighbors who want greater human rights, they're attacking those that want to attack their faith, the faith that they have been designed to defend. |
Therefore, they have a much more shared common goal, and that goes beyond the individual self, I think, which this probably looks like things like greater repression of peaceful protest and far greater military impact. |
I think finally, just get a more divided process. The point of which you're never going to get full buy-in from the population at the point in which you introduce religious divide. I think it's probably bad because you get less band power and just a far less effective protest. |
So for all those reasons,I’m proud to oppose. |
</mo> |
<gw> |
Panel, we see three examples of people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We've seen three examples of genders, these examples of Gandhi; that the sheer power that religious institutions and religious leadership, through its sheer magnitude of having support and buy-in, can grant these movements success. |
We show you better than any other team does, why we managed to get success for these movements and why we managed to oppose ourselves to authoritarian regimes. First, I'm going to give you some examples of like how, what is it, how like the other teams haven't meaningfully engaged with our extension. And then I'm going to go away team by team as you do with a web speech. |
So first of all, no team is meaningfully engaged with our point on manpower, organization, and resources. Rachel showed you very clearly how engaging with these religious institutions and religious movements will give you greater amounts of manpower to the tipping point where you can actually overthrow these regimes. And the fact that all the division arguments that were put forth by CO, don’t necessarily manifest in the way that they characterize them, we're going to, we characterize this in a moment. |
We always, we also showed you how organization works in these movements and how organization is more able to happen within the framework of religious institutions, where they are more of a basis for organization as compared to other sort of very, very diverse movements that you kind of have and trying to overthrow authoritarian regimes. |
And we also talked to you about resources, which is something that nobody managed to touch. So now let's look at the best case that we have, and in the best case that the opposition games gave you, we still win, because we still have the pluralism amongst religious groups because these groups have greater incentives to want to coexist than they do to want to exterminate and kill each other and mobilize the state against one another because they know the numbers just aren't on their side to help them target one another, and that the people will still be like their religious institutions would still be oppressed under such a status quo, so they won't be willing to take that chance versus way against closing. Closing’s main argument is that religion is used like a political tool to claim legitimacy over the state. |
So what's wrong with this argument? First of all, fundamentally it isn't necessarily true since these groups often have common incentives. For instance, even in Pakistan, which is a much-used example in this debate, people don't necessarily vote on religious grounds because even within religion there is enough diversity of political interest for them to want to divulge. |
So what does this mean? This means that there would be, like, if you can incline people to converge on a common interest, this doesn't necessarily mean that there's enough sort of commonality for the kind of oppression and the kind of harms that CO tell you to exist. |
So what does this mean? This means first of all that these states don't usually have a single majority large enough to have a monopoly on state power and claim any of the harms that like CO give you about military and state convergence on power and narratives to actually manifest. |
But even if they did, the competing institutions who aren't a majority of these other religions are still larger because like this majority isn't big enough to be decisive, so what happens as a result? What happens as a result is that they can mobilize to such a large tipping point of people that they will not succeed in the kind of narrative control that you're talking about. |
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