The Nazi's socialist?

Navarro

Well-known member
Which explains why the tankies would put people like him up against a wall as soon as they took over.
But I was actually referring to how a "Libertarian Socialist" country would defend itself afterwards. Because even if they managed to kill all their own tankies, there'd be plenty more in other lands. All too keen to go and bring Benefits of Government By Vanguard of Revolution to a country that lacked such benefits.

I guess he thinks he would take over the world all at once?
 

Battlegrinder

Someday we will win, no matter what it takes.
Moderator
Staff Member
Founder
Obozny
There is a lot to unpack here. WWII was not fought to save liberalism. Just like the Axis used propaganda so did the Allies (even the two names are propaganda). While I do believe that some of the boots on the grounds fighters fought to save liberalism the reality is much different than the fantasy. WWII or as it should properly be called the continuation of the great war was about continuing the grudge match from WWI which had nothing to do with the death of Ferdinand.

I'm pretty sure that's not true, to my recollection historians view WW1 as having laid the groundwork for WW2, but it is not viewed as a continuation of that war and is instead deemed to be an entirely separate conflict. The allies seem to have viewed it in quite different terms, given their radical change in goals between the wars. In WW1 they wanted an armistice and a peace deal and let their defeated foes mostly alone, in WW2 they demanded unconditional surrender and a years long occupation and top to bottom reconstruction of the axis governments.

And I really need you to answer this. Do you understand the difference between saying violence is justified and violence should be used?

I don't see there as being a meaningful difference. You've said in the past you view the use of violence at these events as an issue because of poor optics, not an issue of being morally wrong. I disagree, I view those actions as being fundamentally wrong, so splitting hairs about justifications vs employability or whatever doesn't matter, at the end of the day my issue is the morality of using force, your issue is with the practicality of it.

Which ideas?

Fascism, or rather "Fascism", for one.

Authoritarianism has a specific meaning. You have also inverted what I have said. The public is made up of individuals and it is up to each individual to decide what action they should take in any given circumstance.

That would be a better answer if there were not large, organized groups seeking to recruit, train, and organize those individuals as footsoldiers. Since such groups do exist, this is clearly no longer a matter of the spontaneous actions of various people, or even spontaneous actions that sweep passerbys up in the moment. when people are showing up with matching uniforms and riot shields, this is no longer about thier singular, individual action.

It is also something I stepped in to correct. It did not happen all at once but the organizers did come around to my way of thinking.

I'm pretty sure you had nothing to do with it, things calmed down after charlottesville because it was no longer possible for either side to pretend this was a bit of consequence free fun and that what they were doing could have serious effects. There was a before and after video of some guy on the right wing side, where prior to the rally he was acting like this big macho tough guy "we're coming their to defend our rights, blah blah won't be intimidated by a bunch of losers in masks blah blah look at this tacticool gear I'm bringing, we're not going to start a fight but we will win it".....and then he was sobbing in his hotel room later that day, because things had gone totally wrong in way you can't patch up with some ice packs and band aids, and his entire macho persona collapsed.

I do not know if you have been to protests but it is easy for things to get overcharged emotionally and even the best organized events can be sent into a spiral by rogue agents. That the counter-protest was not well organized and that they did not have a policy in place was a major moral failing on the part of the organizers.

This wasn't a handful of "rogue agents" showing up and leading a bunch of emotionally changed people into a fight, major portions of both sides had been showing up to these rally with the full intention of fighting, and that was well known to all involved.

Please demonstrate this.

1. "The Cult of Tradition", characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by Tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

This sounds a lot like dogmatic rejection of other arguments or sources in favor of the "traditional" sources of wisdom and guidance that shaped the far left worldview to me.

2. "The Rejection of modernism", which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

Well, technically they go back a bit farther than merely rejecting the enlightenment and instead lean more toward rejecting western civilization as whole, but that's pretty close to what he says here.

"The Cult of Action for Action's Sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

"Hey guys, we took action by attacking this rally, and it didn't seem to work, they're still gathering in rallys and now they're bringing weapons to fight us. Should we reflect on our actions any maybe reconsider?'

"No, merely showing up and fighting proves that we will defend minority communities, we must keep fighting, there's no time to think!"

"Disagreement Is Treason" – Fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

"Scratch a centrist/liberal and a fascist bleeds", that sure sounds like arguing that anyone who disagrees with a given course of action is a traitor to the overall cause.

"Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

Yes, the far left has their own collection of "them", various groups and demographics they blame for all problems and issues.

"Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class", fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

Every party in existence appeals to the middle class, because that's where they recruit the most people from.

"Obsession with a Plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite's 'fear' of the 1930s Jewish populace's businesses and well-doings; see also anti-Semitism). Eco also cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.

Oh yeah. The obsession with the nonexistent nazi plot to take over the country and brainwash everyone into going along with it is easily the most visible and obvious element where the far left lines up with this.

Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak." On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

"Hey guys, nazis are on the rise and will soon sweep into power and murder all the brown people, and they have the police and the government and the courts and blah blah blah on thier side. Luckily, despite all these advantages, nazis are a bunch of weak manbaby losers and all we have to do is win a few fist fights on the streets to crush them forever".

"Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy" because "Life is Permanent Warfare" – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

Again, see their contempt for liberals, centerists, and anyone else not openly on their side, who's treasonous calls for "civility" and "discourse" and "not burning down the city because someone had a kekistani flag" are just weak willed calls for surrender to the enemy and an obstacle for the forward march of progress to overcome.

"Contempt for the Weak", which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate Leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

I'd argue that the far left attitude toward "marginalized" groups, IE, that they are so traumatized by the nebulous oppressive forces of "them" that these marginalized peoples cannot be expected to behave themselves in the public square and have no choice but to lash out at anyone outside their group, and that it is unreasonable to expect any better from them, etc, is in fact a contemptuous attitude that frames those people as "weak" and irrational and unable to behave themselves in a civil fashion.

"Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero", which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, "[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."

Everyone in every society and subculture ever wants to be a hero, and self-sacrifice is a common virtue in nearly all of them.


"Machismo", which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold "both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality."

Ok, this one doesn't fit.


"Selective Populism" – The People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the Leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of "no longer represent[ing] the Voice of the People."

Something something Trump was elected something something our democracy is broken something something Bernie was robbed. Sound familar?


"Newspeak" – Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

Every idealogue ever has jargon, shorthand, thought stopping cliches, etc. The far left seems to be worst at this than usual, but then I've always been on the right so perhaps I'm just used to the jargon and shorthand we use (though since you're not on the right and can easily hold a conversation with us without us having to change how we talk to you....perhaps not).

However what you have just done is a genetic fallacy in particular an ad hominem. You are impugning the argument based not on the argument but on the source. Additionally your argument seems to be that because he was not living in a major population center it does not matter if he read their literature or was aware of what was going on because he didn't have first hand experience.

It is not fallacious to argue that a source is wrong because the author has no idea what they're talking about, have no education in the field they are attempting to speak authoritatively in, and in fact have no relevant experience with the thing they're trying to describe whatsoever.

And its coming back especially with the rise of serious fascist movements. I do not mean calling someone a fascist but the number of self identified fascists and attempts they are making to organize themselves.

Again, people have been slinging the term "fascist" around as a catch all term for people they don't like for about 90 years. There is no feasible way to divorce it from it's history as a rhetorical blungon and start only using it to describe a certain, narrowly defined portion of the political spectrum, particularly not since other people are actively attempting to use it as a blungon against an ever widing part of that spectrum as we speak.
 
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LordsFire

Internet Wizard
It is not fallacious to argue that a source is wrong because the author has no idea what they're talking about, have no education in the field they are attempting to speak authoritatively in, and in fact have no relevant experience with the thing they're trying to describe whatsoever.

It's also not just the source of the list that's being attacked, it's the efficacy thereof. The argument isn't 'he has no standing to criticize,' it's 'his list is crap, which is no surprise given his background makes it clear he's no special authority on the subject.'

Don't let dirtbagleft try to act like it's just the source of the list that's the problem.

Interestingly enough, I can see how the list does include fascism within its descriptors. I can see why people believe it's a useful list, because it does describe a fair bit of fascists. I do agree with what others have pointed out though, that it's so general and vague that it's useless.

A better list would be one that describes fascists in particular, not things they have in common with almost every other political movement ever.
 

Big Steve

For the Republic!
Founder
Yes, that is intentional, because many people are labeled as being racist because they make some claim about the relative traits or qualities of different racial groups - some of which could subjectively be interpreted as superiority or inferiority. I do not believe that these claims, whether true or false, should rise to the level of racism. Making a claim about races shouldn’t be racism, there should be negative feelings involved.

I mean, I can get saying it's not racist to observe that sickle cell is more common in Africans than Caucasians (IIRC?). OTOH, I'd include claims of some kind of inherent mental condition in a specific group as a sign of racist thinking. Judging that if someone is X, therefore they are Y, is prejudicial thinking, and that is at the root of racism, even if you at the time don't feel hate or anger or the like.
 

ShieldWife

Marchioness
I mean, I can get saying it's not racist to observe that sickle cell is more common in Africans than Caucasians (IIRC?). OTOH, I'd include claims of some kind of inherent mental condition in a specific group as a sign of racist thinking. Judging that if someone is X, therefore they are Y, is prejudicial thinking, and that is at the root of racism, even if you at the time don't feel hate or anger or the like.
Racial groups have differences though. If somebody claims that black people tend to run faster or that Asians are better at math, they would be making statistically accurate statements. Is it racist to tell the truth? If you say that group X is better at action Y is that a racist statement? Is is racist if it's true? Is it racist if it's false? If a true generalization can be racist then the term racist should be essentially meaningless. If its an incorrect generalization based on faulty data, is it racist then? Does that mean the difference between being racist and not is whether or not your data was accurate. A person is racist for drawing an incorrect conclusion? The entire thing just becomes ridiculous. That is why I define racism the way I do. It doesn't require any sort of analysis over whether or some any particular generalization is true and it doesn't demonize anybody for telling the truth.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Racial groups have differences though. If somebody claims that black people tend to run faster or that Asians are better at math, they would be making statistically accurate statements. Is it racist to tell the truth? If you say that group X is better at action Y is that a racist statement? Is is racist if it's true? Is it racist if it's false? If a true generalization can be racist then the term racist should be essentially meaningless. If its an incorrect generalization based on faulty data, is it racist then? Does that mean the difference between being racist and not is whether or not your data was accurate. A person is racist for drawing an incorrect conclusion? The entire thing just becomes ridiculous. That is why I define racism the way I do. It doesn't require any sort of analysis over whether or some any particular generalization is true and it doesn't demonize anybody for telling the truth.

It's a serious problem that secularists have to deal with. Without divinely-granted human worth and value, difference in human capacity tends overwhelmingly to result in seeing those differences as indicative of human value. So they try to deny that the difference in capacity could possibly be anything but the consequence of racism.

For someone who believes in intrinsic human value, it's not a problem. If X ethnic group is better or worse than Y ethnic group at anything, that doesn't say anything about their moral value. And given I have an ethos of taking each individual on their own merits when it comes to the second type of human value, that of what treatment their decisions have earned them, I'll be treating each person I encounter based on who they are, rather than what ethnic group they're part of anyways.

It's much easier to have a coherent ideology that doesn't devolve into denying reality or being racism when you don't reject God.
 

FriedCFour

PunishedCFour
Founder
@DirtbagLeft i would say that the libertarian principle you are lacking in entirely is in freedom of choice. You want a world where the entire economy runs exactly the way you want it enforced by law where non participants are starved and killed. To eradicate opposing views and religions and beliefs, and you want this spread globally. In this way you are more authoritarian than an ethnostatist because at least they stop at borders. I am curious though. What would really be so bad to you about an anarchy where people have actual freedom of choice and association, where they could choose to participate in your little communes or choose a Christian commune or choose a ethnostate or an ancap or some hippy dippy spiritual flavor of the week commune or any of these other ways of living? You don’t value that freedom of association in the slightest, you don’t want just a slice of land to be able to enact your ideals. You want the entire planet to be just like you, think just like you, act just like you.
 

ShieldWife

Marchioness
It's a serious problem that secularists have to deal with. Without divinely-granted human worth and value, difference in human capacity tends overwhelmingly to result in seeing those differences as indicative of human value. So they try to deny that the difference in capacity could possibly be anything but the consequence of racism.

For someone who believes in intrinsic human value, it's not a problem. If X ethnic group is better or worse than Y ethnic group at anything, that doesn't say anything about their moral value. And given I have an ethos of taking each individual on their own merits when it comes to the second type of human value, that of what treatment their decisions have earned them, I'll be treating each person I encounter based on who they are, rather than what ethnic group they're part of anyways.

It's much easier to have a coherent ideology that doesn't devolve into denying reality or being racism when you don't reject God.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. Equality is a myth, there is no such thing as people being equal. That doesn't mean that it's alright to harm and oppress people. I don't think that humans have inherent worth either, but that doesn't mean that one person is inherently superior because they are superior in certain ways. It's wrong to initiate violence against others and the reason for that isn't because the victim is your equal in any sense. It's wrong to murder an inferior person, what ever that may mean.
 

Navarro

Well-known member
It is not fallacious to argue that a source is wrong because the author has no idea what they're talking about, have no education in the field they are attempting to speak authoritatively in, and in fact have no relevant experience with the thing they're trying to describe whatsoever.

It reminds me of the SST movie defenders saying "ooh Verhoeven understands fascism so well because he was a kid in occupied Europe". Well, apparently his childhood in occupied Europe convinced him of the absurd idea that the USA was just as bad as Nazi Germany and he continued to believe so at least until he recorded the commentary to the movie. If anything, that proves that Verhoeven's childhood did not appreciably help him understand fascism, and in fact did the opposite.
 

Navarro

Well-known member
The Starship Troopers movie really pissed me off. Hollywood leftists love to prattle on about their artistic integrity, but when a novel comes along that they have ideological disagreements with, instead of trying to capture the intent of the author, they make a farce of it.

It even sucks as satire of totalitarianism, since Verhoeven forgot to give his Terran Federation any totalitarian substance.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
I think we're getting way off course here and need to get back to discussing actual Socialism and Nazism rather than Hollywood. Plenty of threads to complain about movies around here.

@DirtbagLeft, we've pretty much debunked the Lenin quote on three grounds:

  1. It predates the Soviet Union, and even using a "soft start" it's within six months of the October Revolution, hence too early for the state not to be in a state of transition.
  2. Lenin felt socialism was a state of transition to communism so he would have called a socialist state "in transition."
  3. We cannot tell for a certainty what he would have felt was sufficient due to both #2 and his death in 1924 is still early enough in the nation's existence (Only 2 years past the actual start of the USSR) that his opinion of when things would be "finished" highly uncertain, and cannot ever be established with any reliability

That being the case I'd like to see what your quotes from other leaders, those who existed after the "settling in" period are and your opinion on them. Especially, in light of Stalin stating that he'd attained State Socialism after the 5 year plan that introduced collectivization and dekulakization of the farmlands.
 

DirtbagLeft

Well-known member
So when do you start?
Make the argument. What makes me a bad person? Rude? Sure but rude /=/ bad

Yes, that is intentional, because many people are labeled as being racist because they make some claim about the relative traits or qualities of different racial groups - some of which could subjectively be interpreted as superiority or inferiority. I do not believe that these claims, whether true or false, should rise to the level of racism. Making a claim about races shouldn’t be racism, there should be negative feelings involved.
Black's are prone to sickle cell anemia. That statement is not a racist statement. What makes a statement racist is not an observation about traits exhibited by different clines. A cline however is not the same thing as race. Race is determined by arbitrary external characteristics, where as clines refer to a graduated phenotype within a species. Race on the other hand carries the perception of humans near speciation, a claim which if made outright would be laughable.

But even general claims about race are wildly inaccurate as was the claim about sickle cell. Firstly because saying they are prone to sickle cell is only a small portion of the picture which leaves people with the wrong impression. Sickle cell evolved several times independently within different clines. Second and of broader interest is that when the selection pressure for the sickle cell mutation is removed the mutation disappears within a few generations even when it is dominant within a population.

What makes something racist is not the bringing up or even discussing relative traits. What makes something racist is what is being either outright stated or implied. One can lie by telling only the truth selectively. Take Katrina. FoxNews showed imagines of white people "scavenging" during Katrina and images of Black people "looting". These images and words leave the viewer with a specific image. They did not show white people "looting" which they did, or black people "scavenging" which they also did. The impression which the viewer was left with was that white people in a crisis scavenge necessary supplies, while blacks are stealing TV's that don't work. The impression was not "some people do what it takes to survive and some people do shitty things.". It is not necessarily the subject which makes something racist it is the framing.

If for example I start talking about the statistics of race and IQ that would be racist not because blacks tend to score lower on IQ but because IQ is linked to socio-economic status and a number of other factors. This is why when you control for confounding variables that gap vanishes. But if I frame it in terms of race anyone listening is left with the impression that race is linked to IQ. Or if I start talking about how 13% of the population accounts for 50% of the crime, again there is a certain impression someone is left with even though that impression is demonstrably false as again crime is directly related to socio-economic status.

There is no such thing as "Just stating a fact". Regardless of how innocuous the "raw fact" there are implications built into it which the hearer is supposed to accept and walk away with. For example if we were more honest and said that 3% of the population accounts for 50% of the crime (which is more accurate) there is still a built in implication. The implication being that race is still somehow a factor. For starters that 50% accounts for incarcerated individuals not individuals who were convicted but not incarcerated. Given that someone is far more likely to be incarcerated if they are poor and more blacks than non-blacks that is going to skew the numbers heavily against blacks. On average blacks are also more likely to receive longer sentences than other races for the same crime with the same criminal background. This is going to again skew those numbers.

It's not about the facts its about the narrative being shaped out of the facts, narratives which are false.
Really? What I have observed is that every claim you've made on an empirical matter has been wrong.
Okay let's see here.

You were wrong when you said Aristarchus invented modern science, and further demonstrated by that that you don't know what science actually is.
Not exactly what I said but close enough as to make no difference. Now I am going to restate what I said and then guess how you interpreted what I said. My claim was that Aristarchus damn near invented the modern scientific method in a time when most of the scientific instruments we had during the scientific revolution didn't exist. And further that he manage to invent the field of astronomy without the use of such tools prior to the scientific revolution. Both of these statements are factually true. Another claim that I made was that he discovered the earth was not the center of the universe. Again a statement that is demonstrably factually true. Now the way you are most likely reading this is that he cannot be the father of modern science or of astronomy because we credit those to Copernicus and Galileo. As I stated previously however, and this is the point you are choosing to ignore. Much of the discoveries of the scientific revolutions were rediscoveries of things that were known but suppressed. This was a fact which was lamented by Francis Bacon and others who were extremely frustrated over the fact that they would "discover" something only to find out that it had already been known to the Greeks. The source of their frustration was in that they had to 1) waste time and effort re-discovering things which were already discovered previously (duplication of work), and that they had to reinvent a method which already existed previously.
So... I am correct and you are incorrect.
You were wrong when you called early 20th century Russia a slave state, and wrong when you claimed that the Bolsheviks overthrew a monarchy. You were also wrong when you said that they were better than the Tsar.
There is so much wrong with what you have said here it is not even funny. So lets take this in parts.

20th century Russia a slave state.
There are a few principles which you need to understand first. De Juri is a concept which means something exists as a matter of explicit law. De Facto on the other hand means that something is in fact that case but is not officially sanctioned. Serfs in Russia were slaves owned by their Land Lord and could be sold and or traded. Their debts were inter-generational meaning that they passed down to the offspring. Given the way the debts were stacked once an individual became a serf they could theoretically buy their way out but effectively could not. The push and pull during the reign of Alexander I saw a tug of war between the crown and the noble classes over serfdom and while the serfs kept being promised freedom eventually by Alexander I the promise ultimately fell through and the Serfs found themselves jerked back and forth both in the question of their rights as well as the question of their freedom.
In 1861 Serfdom was officially abolished with much the same stimulative promises as were made to the American Slaves. Just like the American Slaves however the Serfs were shafted in the land transfer with a large number of Serfs becoming unlanded due to shenanigans on the part of the Nobel's who believed they would be able to force Alexander II to recant and so placed onerous practices in place in order to preserve the land and keep the serfs indebted. While the practice was ended De Juri the practice persisted De Facto for decades after (just like American Slavery). With the industrialization of Russia being introduced the practice of Serfdom shifted forms but never vanished. Again while the practice was not De Juri legal the nobles and Bourgeoisie were able to apply economic pressure on the peasants such that resisting them was a literal death sentence. While there was no open market for serfs there was an unofficial black market that had existed since 1861.
As to the Bolsheviks you are correct only on a technicality of the most obscene and asinine sort. In February of 1917 the Duma backed by the Military which was ready to mutiny seized the government from Nicholas II and abolished the Monarchy placing the Tzar and his family under house arrest. The Russian Provisional Government was formed by Noble's and Wealthy Industrialists (most of whom were also nobles or related to nobles). At the same time Councils of both soldiers and peasants began forming demanding a voice in the government. A second revolution occurred eight months later when it became clear that the Provisional Government only intended on making superficial gestures to include peasants in the government and that things would otherwise remain the same. "Here's the new boss he is like the old boss".

So yes on a pure technicality the Bolsheviks did not overthrow the Tzar. The October revolution was not actually a second revolution however given the timeline of events and the lack of a stable government at the time of the second major uprising.

You were wrong when you said the Biblical narrative portrays God as evil.
So Yahweh did not commit genocide by drowning, or by slaying all of the first born of Egypt? He wasn't capricious when he punished adam and eve who didn't know good from evil. He didn't scatter man kind to the four corners of the earth because he feared what a united mankind was capable of (tower of babel)? You are lying or morally degenerate.
You were wrong when you said that Morales was an all-around good sort, that Bolivia was a fascist dictatorship, and that the current President of Bolivia called for the indigenous to be genocided.
You are lying again. Morales is a politician which means by definition he is not a good sort, just a less bad sort than he could be. Did Bolivia’s interim president delete anti-indigenous tweets? Given that you are too lazy to do even the most mild amount of looking allow me to provide quotes
"The aymara new year! Satanic, an affront to Yahweh." There is no question this tweet was published.
I dream of a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous rites, the city is not a place for indians, they must go to the highlands or the plains.” This tweet is questioned but is in line with other things she is known to have said so I give it the benefit of the doubt.
She is not just a Christian but is a fundie who has expressed great distress with the Christian Church being removed from it's central place in Bolivia as an official state religion. The party she is a part of opposes the secularization of Bolivian Government and expresses fascist ideologies by any reasonable definition of fascism. So ya She is a fascist.

You were wrong when you called a quote from a character in Halo a white nationalist slogan.
For starters this is a political forum. Next we move to while you have taken that quote from halo it predates halo by just a tiny bit, as does the sentiment expressed by that quote. Do not play either dumb or innocent.

Why do you think that is? (Hint it's because these countries lack social mobility or a middle class.)
Which is what makes socialist movements in those countries dubious at best.

So why have only non-liberal democracies ever seen socialism as anything more than a fringe movement? (Hint, hint, it's because "the system" you rail against is tolerable for the majority of people).
A multi-billion dollar campaign by extremely wealthy corporations and governments to fund highly effective propaganda campaigns and tightly control the Overton window by selective coverage and intentional framing along with judicious application of information control and domestic and foreign intelligence operations (CoIntelPro) carried out to create internal conflict along side political assassinations. I remind you (or perhaps you didn't know to begin with) that the Civil Rights Movement was a socialist revolution carried out in a first world country. It's an uphill battle won by centimetres not inches. All of this is a matter of public record. Nearly all of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were Socialist.

They become authoritarians as soon as the evil bougies refuse to hand it all over to be collectivised. We've seen all this before, we know where the train ends.
So you are just going to ignore facts. Okay. You are also going to ignore anything I say because you have made up your mind ahead of time. Okay. Even though it is useless I will state it again. There is a difference between a centralized top down socialization and a bottom up socialization. What you are referring to is a top down approach which I reject categorically for exactly the reason that I do not believe they can work.

Let us say that a secret cabal libertarian socialists are in charge of the entire government top to bottom tomorrow. Aside from establishing independent districting commissions and expanding voting laws to cover all US Citizens of age nothing much would change immediately. The first step would be a dual approach which both simplifies the tax code and fixes any loopholes. In addition to this they would begin advocating a change in inheritance laws which place a restriction on monetary inheritance over $10,000,000 and place it before the people as a referendum. Most major reforms would be carried out through referendums. I say most because there are some reforms which it is legally impossible to carry out through referendum as the power is vested solely in the congress. Even there however passing such reforms without consent of the governed is at best dubious. A secret dirty little secret to politics that nobody talks about is that politicians lead from the rear. The primary role of a politician ought be that of the philosopher making sound and valid arguments which are convincing due to their truth value. The abolition of private property (and preservation of personal property) must come not from the politician but from the people. Anything else is doomed to misery and failure. Seizure of the means of production and of housing and of, etc, must not come de juri but de facto. Only then may the government formally recognize the fact of the matter.

Ideally however even that is not the optimum solution as the ideal push would be to establish banks which provide favorable lending to worker coops which have a proven track record of out preforming traditional firms. This in tandem with the above would nullify a violent revolution. Of all the most the reforms this would be the most simple appearing and have the longest and deepest impact. If you are wondering why this has not been done already it is because there are legal roadblocks in place that make establishing a workers coop more difficult than a traditional firm.

Yeah, yeah, you've said this a lot. Save that your definition of "in response to aggression" includes preemptive strikes.
My definition is in fact the legal definition which yes includes preemptive strikes against threats which are a clear and present danger in the moment. I am actually uncomfortable with the degree to which preemptive strikes are considered legally valid, but I am also unaware of how to tighten them to a point where force is not restricted to retaliatory force. Laws which protect you in the case of retaliation are useless to you if you are dead. This is why an individual must know not only when force is ethically justified, but also when it is practically justified before such a thing happens. I am less concerned with legal justification as it is overly permissive in my view.

Again, your definition of "defensive" includes pre-emptive strikes.
again as does the legal definition. Which I consider to be overly permissive.

Yeah, we know the system you're advocating for. It's the same one socialists have always tried to create, and always made nothing but mountains of skulls in trying.
Have you ever been judged for something a relative has done? This feels much like my experience when others judge me based on my brothers reputation (he is a self avowed Nazi who has been in and out of jail for a variety of crimes). It doesn't matter than I have never been arrested, people have already made up their mind and don't care one whit for how much I despise him or loath is actions.

It will be, because "the workers" won't be able to self-organise.
And this is the primary way you can tell the difference between an authoritarian socialist and a libertarian socialist. The moment someone believes that the workers cannot self organize they have failed the socialist experiment. If the workers cannot self organize then what is the point? Convince them they should self organize? Sure. Offer tips on how to self organize. Sure. "self-organize" for them. Epic Fail. Education not dictation is the only way socialism works.

Ah, so now we're at that excuse are we?
Wait? What!? You asked me a question. I answered your question which you are fully capable of self verifying is a demonstrable fact. Facts are not excuses. There are no excuses. The way to achieve an objective is to recognize a failure, identify the source of the failure, and plan around it for future attempts.



So a utopia built on science-fictional technology impossible IRL, and three rants about "smashing the system", in two cases via terrorism. And in the first case the system isn't even that bad, is the only reason humanity continues to exist, and ultimately isn't even overthrown.
WTF? I got whiplash you pivoted so hard. That particular line of conversation was about Socialist art. To which I was responding to the claim that you were unaware of any socialist art except that which was smoldering. I think pointed out socialist art. WTF are you on about? Am I in some alternate dimension? No I checked and my post specifically was a reply about Socialist art. There is an irrational hate boner and then there is just disconnecting from everything your interlocutor says.

Yes, and as I've shown "libertarian socialism" is an incoherent political ideology, so for real-world purposes it's irrelevant.
Making a claim and showing something are not the same thing. You have shown no such thing.

There weren't "hundreds of bloody failed attempts" at establishing liberal democracy. They arose within 60 years after the idea started percolating around - and you claim socialism has existed for 2,000.
Yes it has existed for 2,000 years and has even had minor success insofar as the theory was developed and it was attempted. Given that it is an egalitarian society by its nature however it's not exactly popular among those who think themselves "betters". Just like democracy is over 2,000 years old and yet it took until the relatively recent past in order to become somewhat established on a large scale and it disappeared outside of small aberrations for large swaths of history.

They'll be stomping you mercilessly, because they're both better-prepared for violence and better at organising than your "let's vote for officers and decide our battle plans by canvassing the grunts for ideas" level of military theory. And if they don't a neighbouring country will see your resources protected only by isolated decentralised communes and stomp you then.
This shows both a lack of imagination on your part and a lack of historical information. What you have put forward is an Anarkiddie vision of socialist military organization. While it is going up against one of the more powerful militarizes in the region much is being learned from Rojava as it is proving to be an effective military force based on socialist principles.

Socialism is an international project. It's not just cleaning your room, but starting with your room and moving outward until you are cleaning up the neighborhood, the town, etc. After the cleaning comes the improvements which again start with your room and move outward. You are acting like a move towards socialism is as simple as "seize control of a particular region and blamo". That is a childish view which some (particularly tankies) do hold. It's not like that. It's a process which can be made easier by doing some things and more difficult by doing others. It is pealing an onion one layer at a time. One goal of socialism is boarder abolition. Doing so immediately however would spell disaster. We know this. This is something we have considered as well as how to get from here to a world without boarders. We have considered why boarders exist and how to break them down systematically. We have also considered the need for defense forces.

We're not talking about dysphoria here. We're talking about the equivalents of those people who "self-identify" as animals or as fantasy elves. "Self-identification" is meaningless because it's subjective.
Sort of. Self-identification is meaningless except when it is not. Identity especially self identity can be a tricky thing. As a very serious question if someone does not self identify as a racist does that make them not a racist? I have met serious people who have told me they are not a racist because their racist beliefs are true, somehow implying that only if a racist belief is false that they would be racist. Or to use another less inflammatory example "Rock-n-Roll" was what we now term Doo-Wop. Did Doo-Wop stop being Rock-n-Roll? When/how did what we think of as Rock-n-Roll stop being Doo-Wop and become it's own thing? edges are a bitch.

With gender this is made even more complex because the edges are constantly moving around completely arbitrary characteristics. The definition of something like biological sex moves (there is no end all be all this is the definition of sex forever definition), but it tends to move much much more slowly. Masculine and Feminine on the other hand can vary wildly both within and without a given culture. Human minds hate floating concretes. We like epistemic certainty which is not possible, but we like to tell ourselves it is. We also tend to learn definitions on the fly and never develop them concretely for the most part.

There are some things like "other-kin" which we can dismiss as a clear violation of identity. To be an elf or a cat-person is to deny certain scientific truths. Culture and cultural identities are much more malleable on the other hand. For example define nerd in such a way that it does not exclude people who consider themselves a nerd or include people who do not consider themselves a nerd. Social roles and social identities are very elastic concepts and while they do have uses they are also major over simplifications. This is why black and white thinking is counter productive, because things are not black and white. They exist in degree's and spectrum's.
More like we simply don't believe you when you say that it wouldn't be.
then don't ascribe positions to me and push me on the positions I put forward. Don't strawman my position actually push me on my libertarianism. It's what I do with people who say they want an ethnostate (a question I have asked here to which I have gotten zero response). I ask how do you plan on bringing it about and how do you deal with X.
Look, we've had a few people already coming here claiming to represent Anarcho-Communism, or Libertarian Socialism, or whatever you call it. I've noticed a thing, as have a few others:
When asked for details on how their proposed society would actually function, such people evade or disengage.
I haven't evaded or disengaged I have laid out in small detail a few aspects. One problem might be the scope of your question as you must admit it is a rather broad thing to detail. Another problem might be a general understanding without specific understanding. Yet another problem might be lack of expertise. Factually speaking there are few people who do what I do in large part because of the sheer amount of work that is involved. Most people fall into one of two categories. Scholar or activist. Scholars may be activists and activists may be scholars but the second function is usually completely overshadowed by the primary function. Even within those two general categories though there is a lot of specialization. Randomly stumbling upon someone who can answer the question you are trying to ask is as much dumb luck as anything else.


So let me ask you: how would your proposed society defend itself? If the Tankies come tanking, how would you stop them?
Ditto for if it's "The Company" instead.
I will take this in three parts.
Part 1: Establishment
There is no possible way to lay out a detailed A,B,C. As the old saying goes "The enemy get's a vote" thus any step by step concrete plan would be highly subject to change based on what is viable when. For socialists in the US however there are key objectives which we need to achieve. Winning the culture war is one major step in the right direction. I have detailed it prior but in short it operates using the seven mountains of influence model. Which was designed by the Frankfurt School and refined by Reactionaries. next I gave a general outline above with some minor changes that have major consequences but one such is setting up independent districting commissions to address gerrymandering. Also there is an expansion of voting rights to cover all US citizens of age. Caps on inheritance. And also create a more favorable loaning environment for worker cooperatives by removing barriers to entry. There is a lot more in this area ranging from healthcare reform to judicial reform to monetary reform and more. It's too expansive and too much to cover at once. One of the more drastic changes however would be incorporation of all US territories as states or expulsion of territories which do not incorporate.
Part 2: Expansion
As conditions permit begin investing capital into Mexico to bring them up to parity with the US and thus removing the thorn in the side at the southern boarder. Build and repair is something the US has experience with and it can be done in much less predatory ways. Upon reaching parity the two nations would merge at some point. Don't ask for a timeline that is impossible. The focus is on achieving particular objectives not on when they are achieved. Haste makes waste. If the merger is de facto or de juri is not relevant. Then with Mexico's help we began providing education and material for other areas with a focus on uplifting third world countries to first world status. While initial investment may come from MexAmerica there would be a strong focus on creating interlocking trade between various underdeveloped countries to provide a mutual bootstrapping effort. The primary export of MexAmerica would be education with it covering shortfalls in available resources as necessary.
Part 3: Assuming as I have that things will not go neatly as planned and that there is a tankie/fascist uprising the means to deal with both is much the same. A gorilla counter insurgency with a heavy emphasis on HumInt. This takes place in a number of ways.
Infiltration: Any movement that wants to grow opens itself up for infiltration which is something the left has made itself particularly good at over the past 40 years having had excellent teachers (Thanks FBI). Being able to identify the opposition and to learn their plans ahead of time is crucial to any intelligence operation.
Subversion: The left has also had excellent teachers on how to destroy movements from the inside which doesn't work quite the way most people think. The common narrative is that an agent saboteur works themselves into positions of authority and does flashy things. In reality the saboteur is usually the last person you expect and the first person you should expect. Operating in teams of two to three the Saboteur's act in two distinct and independent functions. One agent acting strictly as an informer, the other works subtly to foster and ferment interpersonal conflicts within the group. This can be especially effective if the group is large enough so as to need other branches and smaller branches start getting picked off. It can cause massive paranoia among a mindset that is already ripe for paranoia. Less than a handful of agents can bring down an organization of thousands.
Informant: Of all this is the most useful and which will both frighten the other Counter-Revolutionaries the most. Being able to provide detailed information about the oppositions plans and movements as well as to ferment discord must leave the other counter-revolutionaries always wondering how many of our own agents we have managed to embed in their own numbers. Thus regardless of our actual size we guarantee a seat at the table.

This is again an overview and has been developed by studying both at home and abroad intelligence operations as carried out by the US government.

Feel free to ask for more details but please be as specific as possible as the more specific you are the better I can answer your question.

It's about this time someone pops in and calls me an evil devious son of a bitch.
 
D

Deleted member 88

Guest
If the USSR was in fact a socialist country it would have no baring whatsoever on me as I am not an authoritarian socialist and hold a fundamentally different set of core values which lead to the execution of Libertarian and Authoritarian socialism being carried out in fundamentally different ways.

The difference between Authoritarians and Libertarians seems to be that Authoritarians believe in a great man perspective where as Libertarians seem to adhere to a zeitgeist perspective. To use an analogy it would be like saying that breaking a horse and gentle "breaking" are the same thing. Sure the effect is the same but the methods and the results are radically different. One method relies heavily on domination and beating the horse into submission as quickly as possible, while the other is about working together with the horse to build a relationship of trust over a long period of time. Having grown up around horses when both methods were in use, and having known different people that have used the two methods I can state from first hand knowledge that the two methods are nothing alike and neither are the results.

History nor the future are shaped by "great men" but rather they are shaped by everyone alive at the time, from the most insignificant pauper to presidents and kings. Both the pauper and the king are shaped by the zeitgeist and both shape the zeitgeist. But if they try to control the zeitgeist both will equally be crushed. Libertarians (socialists and non-socialist alike) operate on the nudge principle. Authoritarians operate on the domination principle.
Maybe I am misunderstanding you, having not followed the past ten pages.

First question, are you a revolutionary? From your past posts, I'm going to presume that you are. You want to rebuild civilization from the ground up, getting rid of Christianity, among many other things foundational to the current order.

Yet you say you are not authoritarian.

Let's quote Friedrich Engels, "Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?"

TBH, Engels is right. Revolutions are violent and authoritarian by their essential nature. This whole thread, I get the notion you are trying to dance around this fact.

"But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one." Friedrich Engels.

His point here is that hierarchy and a "great man" or authority figure giving orders are just necessary regardless. To speak of the zeitgeist-compare it to waves, he is carried as much like his crew, but he tilts the ship in one direction or another. The tide of history, of popular consciousness, of changing technology, etc... affect both, but leaders and "great men" determine where the ship goes and how fast they move with the tide or if they move with it at all.

Every socialist state in history has understood Engels, I am wondering why you can't. Violence and repression are fundamental to revolutions.

TBH, I would have more respect for you if you just came out and said, "we need to line up the reactionaries, petite bourgeoise white army officers, religious obscurantists, big capitalists and their lumpen proletariat foot soldiers and machine gun them and dump their corpses into the furnaces."

Actual historical socialists didn't dance around the fact they felt the above was to greater or lesser extents necessary, and required of them-whether they were bloodthirsty and liked killing, or considered it a grim necessary to bring a better world into being.

In short, they believed violence was not a absolute moral wrong, but a conditional moral right.
 
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PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
What makes me a bad person?
You want to make the kind of change that always results in sea of blood, but hide your intentions behind mountains of hypocrisy. You are completely incapable of accepting of facts that disprove ideas you champion, throwing around various victimhood bullshit, like race card to claim imaginary moral high ground. But in general your morality play was fairly amusing, almost at the level of Youtube cat videos I watch sometimes, albeit nowhere as intellectually stimulating.
Now if you'll excuse me, need to leave the tread so there is no accidental pileup.
 
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Bear Ribs

Well-known member
So Yahweh did not commit genocide by drowning, or by slaying all of the first born of Egypt? He wasn't capricious when he punished adam and eve who didn't know good from evil. He didn't scatter man kind to the four corners of the earth because he feared what a united mankind was capable of (tower of babel)? You are lying or morally degenerate.
Your assumption that nobody can disagree with you without either lying, arguing in bad faith, or being a degenerate is troublesome. You really should lighten up and accept that it's possible for two people to actually disagree, and as the Boot said, perhaps participate in some other threads so that everything doesn't feel like you against the board. Really I think it would work better for you.

Yahweh did indeed destroy the world in a flood... and had His servants spend somewhere between 70-120 years warning everybody else, who only had to walk into the Ark to be saved. In fact it's specifically stated in the Bible that God will never bring destruction on anything without sending a prophetic warning and chance to repent first (Amos 3:7). The same is true in Egypt, there was advanced warning given by Moses and a very easy way out of the death, just splatter a bit of blood on the doorpost. After there'd already been 9 divine plagues of obvious supernatural power only the most hard-nosed and stubborn of fools wouldn't have splattered a few drops of blood up there.

God punished Adam and Eve for breaking a ridiculously simple commandment. "Don't eat fruit off this one tree right in the center, the other 16,000 trees I planted for you are fine." A three-year-old can follow a command that simple. The fact that Adam and Even broke a command that incredibly easy to follow made them worthy of punishment. Even then God continued to care for them afterwards, providing them with clothes and giving them a prophecy that there was hope for the future.

Yahweh did indeed scatter mankind after Babel... not because the Being who created the sun and stars was afraid of the firepower of this fully armed and operational brick building, but because it was dangerous for the entire human species to gather in a single spot vulnerable to any random plague or famine, and it was His will that mankind fill the Earth, not all be slaves under Nimrod's despotic regime. So He took steps to ensure mankind would actually spread out and have a higher standard of living.

I'm honestly surprised that you're not more in favor of the Bible given how well it meshes with your beliefs, for instance Leviticus lays out an actual socialist system where the workers own the means of production, and yet there's still incentive for hard workers to get ahead avoiding those normal problems. Leviticus 25 spells out the Jubilee system, where land could only be purchased for fifty years, and at the end of that time it would revert back to the original family so that no one person's stupidity could land his descendants into eternal poverty and (barring untimely death) every person would own their own farmland, their own means of production, at least once per lifetime. At the same time those who worked harder could earn more and temporarily buy the land from others, solving the normal wage problems Socialism brings.
 

ShieldWife

Marchioness
Black's are prone to sickle cell anemia. That statement is not a racist statement. What makes a statement racist is not an observation about traits exhibited by different clines. A cline however is not the same thing as race. Race is determined by arbitrary external characteristics, where as clines refer to a graduated phenotype within a species. Race on the other hand carries the perception of humans near speciation, a claim which if made outright would be laughable.

But even general claims about race are wildly inaccurate as was the claim about sickle cell. Firstly because saying they are prone to sickle cell is only a small portion of the picture which leaves people with the wrong impression. Sickle cell evolved several times independently within different clines. Second and of broader interest is that when the selection pressure for the sickle cell mutation is removed the mutation disappears within a few generations even when it is dominant within a population.

What makes something racist is not the bringing up or even discussing relative traits. What makes something racist is what is being either outright stated or implied. One can lie by telling only the truth selectively. Take Katrina. FoxNews showed imagines of white people "scavenging" during Katrina and images of Black people "looting". These images and words leave the viewer with a specific image. They did not show white people "looting" which they did, or black people "scavenging" which they also did. The impression which the viewer was left with was that white people in a crisis scavenge necessary supplies, while blacks are stealing TV's that don't work. The impression was not "some people do what it takes to survive and some people do shitty things.". It is not necessarily the subject which makes something racist it is the framing.

If for example I start talking about the statistics of race and IQ that would be racist not because blacks tend to score lower on IQ but because IQ is linked to socio-economic status and a number of other factors. This is why when you control for confounding variables that gap vanishes. But if I frame it in terms of race anyone listening is left with the impression that race is linked to IQ. Or if I start talking about how 13% of the population accounts for 50% of the crime, again there is a certain impression someone is left with even though that impression is demonstrably false as again crime is directly related to socio-economic status.

There is no such thing as "Just stating a fact". Regardless of how innocuous the "raw fact" there are implications built into it which the hearer is supposed to accept and walk away with. For example if we were more honest and said that 3% of the population accounts for 50% of the crime (which is more accurate) there is still a built in implication. The implication being that race is still somehow a factor. For starters that 50% accounts for incarcerated individuals not individuals who were convicted but not incarcerated. Given that someone is far more likely to be incarcerated if they are poor and more blacks than non-blacks that is going to skew the numbers heavily against blacks. On average blacks are also more likely to receive longer sentences than other races for the same crime with the same criminal background. This is going to again skew those numbers.

It's not about the facts its about the narrative being shaped out of the facts, narratives which are false.
Needless to say, you're wrong about a number of issues here, but the definition of racism is a tangent of a tangent. Maybe we should discuss it in another thread if we're going to discuss it at all.

It's about this time someone pops in and calls me an evil devious son of a bitch.

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Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
I'm honestly surprised that you're not more in favor of the Bible given how well it meshes with your beliefs, for instance Leviticus lays out an actual socialist system where the workers own the means of production, and yet there's still incentive for hard workers to get ahead avoiding those normal problems. Leviticus 25 spells out the Jubilee system, where land could only be purchased for fifty years, and at the end of that time it would revert back to the original family so that no one person's stupidity could land his descendants into eternal poverty and (barring untimely death) every person would own their own farmland, their own means of production, at least once per lifetime. At the same time those who worked harder could earn more and temporarily buy the land from others, solving the normal wage problems Socialism brings.

To be fair to him, most people in the modern world don't know about those laws - which I'm not sure were ever actually put into practice the way the Torah specified.
 

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