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Prepare for the 14year Olds on hexbear to come in and pretend that China has a great government
Yeah, the Chinese government is totally very democratic and is receptive to the criticism of its citizens! They never censor words and topics they don’t like on their social media platforms!
It also respects women so much and represents them very proportionally
Also they don’t censor any single website internationally
Just got banned from Hexbear for saying something negative about China and the US at the same time. They have no tolerance of any discussion that challenges their preconceptions.
You know, that actually makes sense. 14-year-olds. It would explain a lot about hexbears.
oh no the tankies be tanking
My feed got a lot less irritating when I blocked posts from CyberGhost.
Why is memes of all places political, amma head out
Link to the original meme?
So many hexbear users here lmao
Libs are subconsciously uncomfortable thinking about real politics. Too many contradictions with their world view. Leftists are not. Hence a lot of us engage with these threads, it gets to the top of our all, and more engage.
We out here
We can smell liberal lies from a mile away
Why the fuck do both authoritarian sides use “liberal” as an insult?
It’s because they both think the common man should be submissive or forced to submit to their brand of authoritarianism.
As they get banned from more instances, the instances they are not banned at start seeing a higher concentration of them.
Not how federation works.
Right, it’s not that there is something actively pushing hexbear to them, but because there are fewer places for them to go, it becomes more likely that they will end up in the remaining instances.
For example - let’s say 2 hexbear users like to look at memes. They were previously using the lemmy world meme community, but now, since they are defederated from there, they will go to different instances’ meme communities. But then, more defererate, and it funnels a higher concentration of them into the remaining instances’ meme communities.
The point of federation is we don’t have to go to other instances to see there posts. I’m commenting from hexbear all, not the Lemmy meme community.
This is the lemmy.ml memes community, so unless I am very mistaken about how things work, I don’t think you found your way here from hexbear all.
If lemmy.ml defederated from hexbear, you would no longer see this community on the “fediverse all” section, just like you cannot see communities from lemmy.world.
The point being, as available communities become fewer and fewer, hexbear users looking for meme communities will probably concentrate on the few remaining to them, instead of being spread out over the many otherwise available.
It’s literally the top non-stickied post in our active feed
I wonder if half the agita about this comes from not understanding how federation works. Federated lemmy instances behave almost like a single website, your posts are our posts and vice versa.
The_Donald of the Left.
Do you agree with this meme and consider yourself part of “the Left”? Just curious
That’s irrelevant, also, I’m not interested in discourse with you. Bye.
Then you shouldn’t have said anything
The_Donald is when you believe the opposite of The_Donald
Holy shit. Too bad instances can’t defederate HB. They seem to not understand that they’re tankies.
Have fun worshipping the machinery of enslavement and death. As it crushes you, I hope it comforts you knowing at least you weren’t a tankie.
Too bad instances can’t defederate HB.
Can you please elaborate?
They seem to not understand that they’re tankies.
Tankie is a social construct and is used to lazily discredit everyone to the left of bernie. It functions to libs the same way as “woke” functions for chuds. As a term it’s basically meaningless to anyone outside of the internet.
I have only seen it used in reference to people who support dictatorial regimes with socialist aesthetics, mostly MLs. I have yet to see an anarchist be called a tankie. Also you can hear it IRL, not commonly though since most MLs are on twitter and the like and not IRL.
Literally every one of our anarchist users have been called tankies, lmao
Based on your answer, I’ve discovered what tankie means: Tankie = Marxist.
Successful Marxist movement results in a dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictator = tankie.
Hence tankie is a term used to describe any Marxist.
Thanks for contributing to this scientific breakthrough!
Russia and China were never Marxist.
Have you read any marx?
Nah, first premise is false in more than one way. You are conflating the ideology Stalin made with Marxism.
The second error is that there has never been a dictatorship of the proletariat, every time it has been a political party that seizes power for themselves and not the workers. In doing so they become the ruling class with differing class interests than the workers.
Marx must be rotating in his grave with the speed to power the whole globe at this point.
You didn’t do the reading :(. Dictatorship of the proletariat is a concept Marx and Engles adopted. Stalin didn’t create it.
I don’t know what you think the proletariat taking control of the state is suppose to look like, but there will always be a communist party involved. The mechanisms of power exist to be ruled by a party.
Communist parties should be judged by what they do for their poorest citizens. With that in mind, AES countries are doing a decent job. Things get better when they are in power, and get way worse if they are overthrown
What my society looks like when a party seizes power for themselves and not the workers
(Source: Thomas Piketty’s World Inequality Report 2022, for fun maybe try poking around and finding a non socialist state with any comparable inversion of income inequality.)
Do you believe capitalism is good because it helped some people? The whole point of socialism is to put the means of production into the hands of the workers and not a vanguard party. Yea, the USSR did quite a lot of imperialism which it used to reduce income inequality of the Russian people but it was never socialist.
Yeah, clearly the Soviet, Chinese and Cuban workers had completely different interests than being raised out of poverty and squalor. Damn those dastardly political parties and their… diligent work towards eradictaing poverty while promoting actual, decentralized democracy.
Well, Cubans still live in pretty close proximity to squalor. They can’t even afford to maintain their own buildings, don’t have a functional transportation system, and people live on what, $20 a month? The one saving grace is out there health care system is decent. And by that, I mean much more equitable than in the United States.
the ideology Stalin made
I would say Lenin was more instrumental in the creation of Marxism-Leninism, Stalin was just the guy who happened to be in charge when they named it. It’s also a tendency that has evolved a lot from what it was in the 40s.
You mean the guy in charge after the death of Lenin? Who Lenin warned against?
I love how you guys have decided that your definitions are the only correct ones. It’s your primary weapon here, for obvious reasons.
Communism is political science, words have meanings and we tend to use the correct ones, yes.
I love how you guys have decided that your definitions are the only correct ones.
You’re strawmaning hard here, because I never said it’s a definition or that it’s the only one. It’s just my understanding of the term. What part of it is wrong in your opinion? I want to consider it
It’s your primary weapon here, for obvious reasons.
Because it’s obvious that when you’re challenged on your understanding of words you have nothing to say?
What is a tankie?
No one seems to know
The term originates from Soviet and aligned regimes sending in tanks to brutally crush protests and rebellions. E.g. The Hungarian Revolution, The Prague Spring Uprising, Tiananmen Square, etc. Some communists were disgusted at their fellows for cheering on said oppression (“Send in the tanks!”) and started calling them Tankies.
Tankies fellate oppressive regimes and dictators. They’re the smooth-brained “communists” that live in a binary world where anything “their side” does is good and anything the west does is “evil”. They’ll claim any criticism of historically “communist” countries like China and Russia is a CIA talking point … because they’re idiots.
TL;DR – they’re the MAGAts of the left.
Tbf the hungarian coup was actually connected to an mi6 operation. And the people involved started killing Jewish people and communists, so…
And the people involved started killing Jewish people and communists
On brand for libs
Oh, so calling people Tankie is just red scare propaganda then. Thanks for the heads up.
Random observation but I find it kind of interesting how the talking points anti-tankies tend to bring up are things that, even if the worst allegations are accepted, are relatively minor compared to some other events you could bring up. I’ve heard so much about Tienanmen Square under Deng, but much less about the Cultural Revolution under Mao. And the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring happened under Khrushchev and Brezhnev respectively, when there’s much worse stuff you could bring up about Stalin.
I can’t help but think that this conflicts with the supposed definition of tankie of just knee-jerk defending anything someone does if they wave a red flag. If that were actually true, wouldn’t you focus on the most extreme examples by the most extreme leaders? The fact that there’s so much focus on people like Khrushchev and Deng, who were both more moderate than their predecessors, seems more like the point of the word is specifically to attack people who might have a more favorable view of those more moderate figures, while being critical of their predecessors’ actions.
Which is to say, tankie isn’t actually meant to be directed towards someone who knee-jerk defends anyone with a red flag, but rather, it’s meant to be directed towards someone who defends anything at all about anyone at all with a red flag, by accusing them of being the former. In other words, it’s a word that demands the exact kind of knee-jerk response it’s supposedly criticizing, just in the other direction.
In fact, it’s particularly interesting that these accusations of ideological rigidity and blind loyalty are in reference to Khrushchev, who did nothing but criticize Stalin, and Deng who controversially said that Mao was “70% good, 30% bad.” I don’t think it’s even possible for someone to defend everything done by both Stalin and Khrushchev
And anyone who dares criticize them or any actual communist is a fascist, of course!
“An actual communist is someone who hates any communist movement that has actually managed to successfully overthrow its country’s ruling class and take power,” I say without a hint of irony
Nooo not tankies! Don’t they know it’s illegal to be a communist
they wish it was and will side with Nazis to make it a reality
Classic Hexbear take that is not remotely based in reality.
They historically have aligned with or created fascist movements to oppose communists around the globe. Read the Jakarta method, read about the contras.
I support crushing fascists with tanks.
This has made my Lemmy experience considerably better
Nothing more ‘socialist’ than supporting the current world order but with some welfare
The pure (libertarian) socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
Look, I agree that it’s dumb to call yourself a socialist and have zero respect for most attempts at socialism, especially when your critique doesn’t come from anything serious but just parroting of cold war propaganda. I agree that these countries weren’t literally the devil, nor fascist, not “pretending”, that’s all fine.
But it’s still so dishonest of MLs to dig for quotes and smugly boastbout how “libertarians never succeed”. Even if we completely ignore all the very explicit and deliberate attempts at sabotage anarchists had to endure from their statist “comrades” (which we shouldn’t but we always casually seem to be forced to do in the name of “unity”), it doesn’t change the fact that vanguardist revolutions have all been incredibly flawed too.
You all are very often willing to recognize your failures, most of the people like you I have talked to seem to agree that at some point the revolution was “hijacked”, usurped, corrupted, lost aim, usually coinciding with a figure they don’t like taking over the revolutionary government and messing things up.
The supposed “strong state that crushes all opposition” being taken over by the reformist opposition and then the capitalist one in the case of the USSR and Leninists. The market reforms of Deng in the case of China and Maoists. But you all never seem to ask yourselves the question “Why was that allowed to happen?”. Why am I supposed to put my trust in some authoritarian bullshit solution specifically justified as a means to protect the revolution when it failed at doing so? Why do you have to be so smug and condescending at me for not trusting in things that didn’t work?
Why do you instead of learning from the mistakes in your methods that most of the time you yourself recognize and trying to come up with new ideas and systems for the current age, insist on still clinging to material analysis of the world of a hundred years ago as the gospel, the sole undying and absolute truth on how to Make Socialism, merely saying “it’ll totally work right this time” instead? Why do you insist on mocking and “”“dunking”“” on anyone who refuses to do that?
They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted.
This is all completely false. It genuinely is just lies. You can disagree with the explanations, but to claim there literally aren’t any is just ignorance and a complete lack of good faith. Look, if you’re a socialist in the internet, you probably have dealt with confidently incorrect liberals whining about strawmen that you don’t believe, because they haven’t read anything about it - and it’s probably been incredibly frustrating. So why do you never think twice before doing the same thing with anarchists?
I’m always told to read Lenin and a ton of authoritarian essays and I always do in good faith, but it’s extremely rare for me to ever be afforded the same honour, and then all the conversations I have end up with people telling me shit like this and me having to explain anarchism 101 to them because they genuinely don’t actually know anything.
No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
I am also always told to be charitable and nuanced about the failures and mistakes of vanguardist revolutions, but no one ever has the same honour with anarchist ones.
I am quoting Parenti. You’ll need to read Blackshirts & Reds to get an answer – that’s where the quote is from – or one of his other books.
Thanks for ignoring everything I said.
Sorry to disappoint. I don’t have hard opinions about anarchists vs MLs. I generally think Engels was more convincing on authority, but I’m not well read enough to have a formed opinion on it and haven’t read anything from the last decade or so. I especially don’t think the things that you’re asking here because I didn’t write the statement, Parenti did, and he did so for rhetorical effect against western leftists putting ideology over AES. I’m happy to receive some recs I can follow up on.
I am sorry for being agressive. I mostly assumed you thought the same things as the person you were quoting. I appreciate that you at least admit you aren’t well read enough, that’s more than most people I talk to.
I’m happy to receive some recs I can follow up on.
I really appreciate this too. Thank you. I think as a direct expanding on what I’m talking about, this essay is very good:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anark-the-state-is-counter-revolutionary
It’s available on video form too, but the video doesn’t have citations.
Here’s a good rebuttal of On Authority:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/london-anarchist-federation-the-problems-with-on-authority
A modern and a classical reading on how anarchists view authority and power:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anark-power
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mikhail-bakunin-what-is-authority
Cheers pal, I’ve favorited this post to come back too. I’ve read Bakunin before, but I haven’t read the rebuttal on On Authority or the other essays you linked. Looking forward to it! Appreciate the time you put into this
At least it’s something new instead of a method that has failed to bring about socialism time and time again through history. All those transitory government systems just end up being dictatorships that give as much power to the workers as the fucking US, less even.
You will never achieve socialism if you just prop up a ruling class with vastly different class interests, they will never cede power to the workers.
It’s very far from new, and it has failed entirely to bring about socialism time and time again through history.
You will never achieve socialism if you just passively support the status quo while condemning all forms of AES for not being pure enough.
What I support is workers organising. What I don’t support is Stalinist strongmen oppressing workers. Socialism without power of the workers is meaningless and not worth achieving, that’s literally the current system. If I wanted capitalism with socialist aesthetics I can just move to China, that already exists. What I want is actual power to the workers and nothing else.
Did an AI write this? You didn’t actually respond to anything I said.
Neither did you.
I clearly did, but by all means, go with “no u” and see how convincing it is.
You attributed some failed strategy to me and then accused me of purity testing states that are only aesthetically socialist. That response had nothing to do with what I said.
Hexbear users don’t operate in good faith so no point in actually trying to engage them in good faith. They will wear you out if you do.
We engage in good faith only so long as we are met with good faith, if you aren’t going to respect us we have no reason to respect you
Workers had more power and say in democracy in the USSR then they have ever had in a Western capitalist country, and American police are more brutal, more violent, more repressive, and kill more people than any “strong men” under Stalin. You’ve consumed too much anti-communist propaganda.
No, me and my family lived under Soviet rule in an annexed satellite state. Workers had no power here, people who were friendly to high ranking party members had power and if workers did not comply they got sent to slave camps in siberia where they were not likely to return.
I really don’t care about the US and it’s quite weird how literally everyone who is trying to paint the USSR in a good light says that with no prompting. Like lung cancer is also bad but bringing that up in every single conversation about anything is weird.
no prompting
My sibling in Christ you mentioned Stalin, a leader of the USSR, and this entire thread is about socialist states
Was Stalin the president of the US? Is the US the leader of socialism or something? The US has nothing to do with socialism, like I have been part of my local anarchist group for years and no one has ever even mentioned the US.
What decade were you born in?
You aren’t new you are in a tradition of 200 years of stepping onto rakes. Your face plant is not innovative
Very interesting how all those “pretend socialists” only exist in the third world, and all the “real socialists” existin the west. Yet all the successful revolutions have been done in the third world by “pretend socialists”, and the so called “real socialists” in the west have accomplished nothing. Their biggest success of the “real socialists” in the west being capitalist welfare states or social democracies that rely on old school imperial relationships to fund their welfare in a select few areas.
No Eurocentrism present to this line of thought here at all…
What do you think of Nelson Mandela OP? He was a very good leader, right? You know that he considered Cuba an ally and supported their revolution as Cuba sent troops to fight against the apartheid government in the border wars, took inspiration from Mao and called the Chinese revolution a miracle, thanked the Soviets for giving unending support in the fight against apartheid while receiving the a Lenin Peace Prize? So is Nelson Mandela now a fascist according to your meme?
“Authoritarian” is completely drtetmined by
Nelson Mandela was not a great man. At least not great enough to be so admired while F.W De Klerk had his funeral protested (F.W De Klerk helped end Apartheid).
Nelson Mandela did no more besides be a figurehead and help make a constitution that no one (not even when he was in power) follows. The ANC is corrupt to this day
Im going to come by your homestead with a handgun past midnight and make you feel true fear, Afrikaner maggot
Based
Excerpt from Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds
Some leftists and others fall back on the old stereotype of power hungry Reds who pursue power for powers sake without regard for actual social goals. If true, one wonders why, in country after country, these Reds side with the poor and powerless often at great risk and sacrifice to themselves, rather than reaping the rewards that come with serving the well-placed.
For decades, many left-leaning writers and speakers in the United States have felt obliged to establish their credibility by indulging in anticommunist and anti-Soviet genuflection, seemingly unable to give a talk or write an article or book review on whatever political subject without injecting some anti-Red sideswipe. The intent was, and still is, to distance themselves from the Marxist-Leninist Left.
Adam Hochschild, a liberal writer and publisher, warned those on the Left who might be lackadaisical about condemning existing communist societies that they “weaken their credibility” (Guardian, 5/23/84). In other words, to be credible opponents of the cold war, we first had to join in cold war condemnations of communist societies. Ronald Radosh urged that the peace movement purge itself of communists so that it not be accused of being communist (Guardian, 3/16/83). If I understand Radosh: To save ourselves from anticommunist witchhunts, we should ourselves become witchhunters.
Purging the Left of communists became a longstanding practice, having injurious effects on various progressive causes. For instance, in 1949 some twelve unions were ousted from the CIO because they had Reds in their leadership. The purge reduced CIO membership by some 1.7 million and seriously weakened its recruitment drives and political clout. In the late 1940s, to avoid being “smeared” as Reds, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a supposedly progressive group, became one of the most vocally anticommunist organizations.
The strategy did not work. ADA and others on the Left were still attacked for being communist or soft on communism by those on the Right. Then and now, many on the Left have failed to realize that those who fight for social change on behalf of the less-privileged elements of society will be Red-baited by conservative elites whether they are communists or not. For ruling interests, it makes little difference whether their wealth and power is challenged by “communist subversives” or “loyal American liberals.” All are lumped together as more or less equally abhorrent.
Even when attacking the Right, left critics cannot pass up an opportunity to flash their anticommunist credentials. So Mark Green writes in a criticism of President Ronald Reagan that “when presented with a situation that challenges his conservative catechism, like an unyielding Marxist-Leninist, [Reagan] will change not his mind but the facts.” While professing a dedication to fighting dogmatism “both of the Right and Left,” individuals who perform such de rigueur genuflections reinforce the anticommunist dogma. Red-baiting leftists contributed their share to the climate of hostility that has given U.S. leaders such a free hand in waging hot and cold wars against communist countries and which even today makes a progressive or even liberal agenda difficult to promote.
A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was George Orwell. In the middle of World War II, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that a “willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual’s point of view is really dangerous” (Monthly Review, 5/83). Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hordes.
Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish—while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba, provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa.
Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for “the poor little children who got fed under communism” (his words).
Those of us who refused to join in the Soviet bashing were branded by left anticommunists as “Soviet apologists” and “Stalinists,” even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society. Our real sin was that unlike many on the Left we refused to uncritically swallow U.S. media propaganda about communist societies. Instead, we maintained that, aside from the well-publicized deficiencies and injustices, there were positive features about existing communist systems that were worth preserving, that improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in meaningful and humanizing ways. This claim had a decidedly unsettling effect on left anticommunists who themselves could not utter a positive word about any communist society (except possibly Cuba) and could not lend a tolerant or even courteous ear to anyone who did.
Saturated by anticommunist orthodoxy, most U.S. leftists have practiced a left McCarthyism against people who did have something positive to say about existing communism, excluding them from participation in conferences, advisory boards, political endorsements, and left publications. Like conservatives, left anticommunists tolerated nothing less than a blanket condemnation of the Soviet Union as a Stalinist monstrosity and a Leninist moral aberration.
TLDR
Do you guys actually write this shit out or are you ctrl + v from some source? Every time i see hexbears they write up a whole journal article as a comment that most likely nobody is going to read.
most likely nobody is going to read
Being too lazy and uncurious to read a handful of paragraphs is not something to be proud of
Say it with me nowNo investigation…
Just read it ffs you libs are just the laziest
Im actually a cracker… no wait im a fascist… or am I a conservative?? I dont know you hexbears call me everything i dont remember where we left off
You’d be better able to define what you are on ideological grounds if you’d read
Why not all of the above, and a dedicated idiot to boot?
Sorry can you dumb that down for me please
I probably couldn’t stoop down that low if I tried
I think a part of good, honest discourse is recognizing and respecting the time of the person you are talking with.
If you are going to respond with 11 paragraphs quoted from a book, you should preempt it by saying something to diffuse it. Something like, “oh man, this is super long but actually quite beneficial. I wrote a tldr though at the end in case you don’t have time to read the whole thing.”
I use this site while I’m at work. I literally don’t have time to read all of that lol.
On Hexbear we regularly bully each other into reading entire books when someone has a bad take. This is mild.
11 paragraphs is like one single page, maybe two.
Good for you guys
Educate yourself or shut the fuck up. Otherwise, don’t act surprised when you’re ridiculed for constantly voicing worthless thoughts.
educate yourself and everyone around you
In this case, I’m just saying throwing 11 paragraphs of some random essay isn’t a good way to communicate. I’m all for education.
Someone else already said that the last 2 paragraphs are basically a summary of the whole book, try reading those and see if the other 9 interest you
It would be good for you too. I see less whining about having to read two pages in 5th grade classrooms.
But in fact you don’t have to! No one is forcing you to engage.
You are wasting your time shitposting on social media. Your time means nothing. I respect neither it, nor you.
Likewise 😘
Oh lmao it’s the Topic Decider.
Was I deciding a topic just then?
No, I’m just amused that you consistently put so much effort into decrying reading. Much more so than just doing the reading.
Can you read,serious question?
It’s a bit fucking stupid to ask that question through the medium of the written word, no?
It’s probably still less stupid than asking whether the clearly labelled excerpt from a clearly labelled book and author is copied “from some source”
No he wasn’t asking it seriously obviously
Then they are an idiot for saying “serious question” then, aren’t they?
You are the only one you didnt seem to get it moron
Fun fact: the word count of the people shidding and pissing and cumming about how long this excerpt is now exceeds the word count of the excerpt itself.
Gonna paste a comment I made a couple weeks ago. Seems relevant again, both because of the accusation levied against hexbears and also because Parenti.
Oh a hexbear. … You lot only have overly simplistic takes.
When we respond to blatant ignorance with carefully chosen wording, backing up our position with citations and links, and calmly explaining the nuance of complex geopolitical realities, we get accused of “always throwing walls of text at people.” When we answer that same ignorance with short and pithy responses, we “only have simplistic takes.”
There’s no winning with you simple-minded dronies, but I guess there never is when one side can just make shit up that fits their vibes-based outlook on the world.
Libs out here proudly being like
You have a lifetime of anti communist propaganda to overcome. You’re close, take the last step and realize you’ve been lied to about AES countries. No place is a utopia, but those countries are lights in the dark.
those countries are lights in the dark
That’s what North Koreans see at night when they look across the border towards South Korea.
Sanctions are hilarious! Bet the leveling of the country during the Korean war was a real laight too.
The US bombed and firebombed until there were “no more targets in Korea.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea Examine the primary sources if you like, they’re decent. It was comparable to genocide.
And now we point and laugh at the DPRK for being less developed than the US-backed South?
What’s your opinion on Cuba OP?
Cuba is failure but you could easily argue that outside forces made that happen, and it least it’s not a giga corporatocracy calling itself communist like China is. China feels like late stage ultra capitalism with shortcuts. Yay corporations are married to the government…Pretty much where the US is headed.
Educate yourself with blowback season 2.
Why is Cuba a failure in your eyes? It seems to be doing better than other countries in the region. It has a higher life expectancy than the US even, and standards of living have risen dramatically since the revolution.
Have you ver been to Cuba? It’s worse than any other country I’ve been to in the Caribbean in terms of standard of living/HDI with way more of the authoritarian garbage you weirdos seem to like.
Move there. Send me a pic of your house. I will visit.
You’re actually just wrong lol. Cuba has a larger HDI than most countries in the region. And that’s while being economically strangled by the United States.
And what’s this authoritarianism you’re talking about with Cuba? It’s a democracy. And it’s got better rights for minorities than the United States.
Wtf does “Cuba if failure” mean? What a bizarre thing to say.
Also telling that you spent 95 percent of a comment that was supposed to be about Cuba ranting about China.
Y’all are funny
Cuba is an interesting one.
The problems with Cuba are political prisoners and their handling of AIDS. And a huge chunk of issues intertwined with the trade embargo.
As with all nations, it could be better, but it’s far from the worst nation in the world.
Better than the US that’s for sure.
Each year around a 100,000 Cubans are willing to risk their lives for a chance to live in the US.
The US is far from perfect, but people don’t get on rafts hoping to make it to Cuba.
“Rich country good, poor country bad!”
Very astute political analysis there
Notice how when confronted with facts the hexbear has no real argument but assumes being obnoxious is the same as making a coherent argument.
Cuban refugees carry a higher level of risk than other countries, and yet they still come. Ignoring facts doesn’t make a country better. You wouldn’t let a fact like that slide from the US. Hexbears lack intellectual honesty.
So once again, your argument is “rich country good, poor country bad”
No, it’s that saying one place is worse doesn’t make it so.
Human development index and quality of life studies put the US ahead of Cuba. Cuba isn’t a hellhole that many people make it out to be, but that doesn’t automatically make it better than the US.
Cuba has better healthcare and lower cost of living, but Americans aren’t on rafts to Cuba.
One of the problems with enacting good and lasting change in the western world is that life is pretty darn good on the whole. It could be a lot better, but just shouting that the US is bad is mindless propagada. Be better than that.
I disagree.
By what metric was the USA better than Cuba?
Cuba literally has better rights for queer people than the US now, so yeah, I’m curious what metrics as well. Looking forward to some response from them.
define fascism
Cheering on the genocide committed against ukraine for example
Literally no such thing. The Holodomor is a fiction created by Nazi propagandists to paint the failures of Soviet agricultural policy in dealing with a famine as a deliberate attempt to exterminate Ukranians.
Important to note, this was merely the latest in a long series of famines which had historically plagued this part of eastern Europe. It was also the last.
For more detail, look up the hearst press holodomor controversy
Much appreciated. I could do with more specificity the next time I have to make this argument lol
Fascism.
I’m confused, are you saying he’s using it wrong?
Here’s a copy paste from Webster.
often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
Replace the word race with party and you’ve got an incomplete yes, but not necessarily inaccurate description of Stalins USSR.
Seriously not trying to just be a troll or shill here, so if you feel I’m wrong please let me know how and why. I am legitimately, in good faith, curious about the perspectives of some communist here. It is an ideology I am somewhat interested in.
“Replace the word ‘pollution’ with the word ‘jews’ and captain planet looks pretty fascist!”
A different response, which comes from a different angle to those pointing out that Marxism-Leninism is not fascist:
The word ‘fascism’ is used so fast and loosely outside of a technical context that I wouldn’t say one interpretation is necessarily right or wrong. It depends on context. (Incidentally, same for ‘socialism’, even principled well-read communists can’t agree on a definition.)
For example, if we’re talking about the actual Fascist ideology (think of Mussolini and associates) then I would even hesitate to include Nazism due to the very different roots: they’re both nationalist anti-liberal anti-democratic, anti-socialist ‘third way’ ideologies and they did ally in the war, sure, but to group them both as ‘fascism’ trivializes core differences in how they formed, why they successfully formed, how they appealed to their followers (fascism actually recruited many self-identifying socialists in Italy and its important to recognise why to prevent it), and why they were ultimately antisocial and unsuccessful in their goals.
This isn’t just some academic masturbation nitpicking or anything: I believe that the ignorance of Classical Fascism by lumping it in with the far more obvious and baseless idiocy of Nazism makes it harder to recognize and counter, especially when neo-Nazis are such ridiculous cartoonish farces. Fascism stemmed from National Syndicalism and has core economic ideas like corporatism (from ‘corpus’) that could fool people, and sounds much less stupid that Hitler’s bizzare esoteric fantasies about Aryan racial supremacy: even Mussolini considered Hitler crazy.
The point of me making this distinction is that the dictionary definition you gave isn’t even wrong in describing fascist ideologies, but, I don’t think that list of common traits should be mistaken for a definition. Those traits are the results, not the foundation of the ideology, and a neo-liberal state like the USA can easily match many of those traits despite being a very distinct ideology. Any you will absolutely see people saying ‘USA is fascist’ as a shorthand for nationalist, racist, imperialist, oppressive, blah blah blah, but it’s definitely not post-National-Syndicalist faux-socialist corporatist collectivism. We should obviously fight both but they are not the same and manifest differently.
Replace the word race with party
That’s a pretty significant difference, don’t you think? Exalting racism and exalting a political organization that opposes racism are diametrically opposed things, not equivalent.
Replace (good thing) with (bad thing). You looking pretty fucking bad now don’t you tankie?
Personally I like the definition that the historian Robert O. Paxton uses. Now, he’s a liberal, but he does have good insight into fascism and he doesn’t fall into that trap of deciding that communists and fascists must be the same thing. His definition isn’t materialist, but it’s a good start.
To paraphrase, his definition is “a suppression of the left among popular sentiment.” By left he means things like socialists, labor organizations, communists, etc. Fascism is a situation where a country has found its theater of democracy has failed and the capitalists need anything at all to keep themselves in power, even if it means cannibalizing another sector of capitalists. The fascists are the ideological contingent of this, who put forward a policy of class collaboration between working class and capitalist, instead of what socialists propose, which is working class dominance in the economy. Fascists exalt nationality or race because that extends through class sentiments. It brushes aside concerns like internal economic contradictions. I once had a comrade say something like “Fascism is capitalists hitting the emergency button until their hand starts bleeding.”
Communists using a vanguard party is to defend their own interests against capitalists or outside invaders. The praise of the CPSU in Stalin’s era was precisely because it acted as a development and protection tool for the working class. It did its job and people were wary of any return to the previous Tsarist or liberal governments. Women began going to school, women were given the vote for the first time. Pogroms ceased. In less than one lifetime of the CPSU administrating the country, people went from poor farmers to living in apartments with plumbing, heating, and clean medical care. That’s why there was such praise of the party, because they actually did things people liked, and they didn’t want anything to threaten them.
Also, what does it matter if there’s one party or two? The working class have a singular, uniting interest to overthrow capitalism. Why are multiple parties needed? Anything the working class needs to negotiate for can be handled within a socialist, democratic structure, not two or three competing structures against one another. Take a look at Cuba, which has one party, but doesn’t use their party to endorse candidates. Everyone’s officially an independent in the National Assembly.
I’m confused how he could make these observations and remain a lib, what happened?
He was a professor at Harvard most of his career, if that explains anything. He’s also on record calling the January 6th capitol thing a fascist coup attempt.
Harvard, say no more fam
I do think it was an attempt. They just didn’t even know that a coup attempt involved more than walking in the door and demanding Trump be president. The next one in America will involve mass killing, and it will be from a similar demographic.
Yeah we’re still in a position where American fascism doesn’t even recognize itself in the mirror. It doesn’t realize it’s a movement that needs coherent aims. It’s still stuck in the American paradigm of politics as consumerism. A comrade the other day here said the explicit kind of American fascism is having a hard time getting off the ground because they refuse to adopt socialist rhetoric, like European fascist movements in the past.
Yea that’s well said, also American fascists luckily have no history to look back to that’s before the US state formation. So instead of wanting a new system, they just want their guy to play President as they sit on the couch.
If i remember his book correctly, at start he explicitly denies marxist definition of fascism, and then in course of the book his research lead straight to it being correct on at least two separate occasions, them makes full stop and end the topic when he realise what would he have to write next.
I don’t know if thats merely ritually exorcising communism in order to have his book accepted by liberal academia (like in case of Geza Alfoldy for example) or he really is this intellectually dishonest, because he clearly did realised. Anyway it was funny as hell and the book isn’t even bad.
Possibly because of the way he’s found his career. Paxton is very popular in France and was very instrumental in introducing liberal historiography into French WW2 history. For him to throw a bone to Marxists would be undermining how he earned a name for himself in the first place.
Yeah i see that in polish social sciences too, especially by older authors, it’s hard here to keep position in the academia without paying at least lip service to anticommunist witchhunt. Unfortunately even those people are already dead and the new ones are not even shy about being opportunists, most books publish nowadays are almost worthless since it’s either anticommunist propaganda, pophistory or bland compilations from older ones.
This was an enlightening comment and I appreciate it. I may not agree with all of it but it definitely shows there are some perspectives I haven’t considered. A parliamentary or council type system could definitely provide enough representation of different working class communities within a single party. I wonder if they had term limits, or if their representatives would fall into the same hole as the US Congress.
The common socialist position is that term limits are anti-democratic not just because they keep people from voting for who they want to but, more significantly, it tilts the scales in favor of structures that do not have term limits. In the US, for example, elections are essentially completely controlled by private companies from the media to the National Conventions, and term limits check the power of popular candidates (and therefore popular sentiment) versus capital, which does not expire in 8 years.
