I mean, the guy who said that went on to ally with social democracies against real fascists. And whatever the theoretical merits, I see no evidence that calling 90%+ of the U.S. population fascists will do anything to advance any leftist cause. It certainly doesn't help grow any sort of American left-wing movement.
It really is OK to say someone's take is bad without calling them a fascist. Fascists should be shot; anyone who thinks everyone from AOC to the right needs to be shot is (in the parlance of our times) deeply unserious.
Fascists should be shot; anyone who thinks everyone from AOC to the right needs to be shot is (in the parlance of our times) deeply unserious.
They clearly aid and abet fascism though. You'd be a fool not to see that they're ultimately enemies of real social change and they must be deposed or else nothing good can come.
Do you want to be (arguably) correct on some theoretical point, or do you want people to listen to you? Because the vast majority of people will immediately tune out "AOC is a fascist."
Clearly it's more complex than that, and I don't think I'd be upfront about that. I think, if you talked about how there's a historical precedence for people like AOC coming into power on a wave of radicalism and just being the same old same old, and how it's an unavoidable consequence of our system, people would be more willing to hear that. And it's the same damn concept.
I get that most leftists won't consciously lead with that hot of a take. But we have it all over this public forum that libs frequently wander into, so you can tell a lot of folks who'll lead with "AOC is not a path to revolutionary change" will break out "social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism" after about two beers. And I'd say those are two very different concepts.
Then when they push back we'll give historical precedence and evidence. My experience with MLs was having them be clearly correct in a way that a lot of others weren't and then they would say wack shit like "AOC is a fascist" but I'd stick around anyway and now I understand why it's true. I think it's generally good for us to always be honest
they would say wack shit like "AOC is a fascist" but I'd stick around anyway
How much of this is survivor bias? How many people punched out at that wack shit and never came back?
Being honest is important, but so is knowing the difference between a topic you are solidly, unambiguously correct on (stuff like the Nazis pulling directly from the U.S. treatment of natives) and a theoretical point that is debatable and ultimately has no provable answer. Honesty works when someone who desperately wants to believe you're lying digs deeper and only finds more evidence that you're right. It doesn't land the same when you're talking about a topic that a skeptical reader can't prove to themselves in the same way.
What is the point here? What do you think the left stands to gain by calling her a fascist?
The useful part of this discussion is "she's a dead end for any real leftist movement." Calling her a closet Nazi adds nothing and clocks as "wack shit" even to people who eventually become leftists!
We clown on Israeli officials for not realizing how unhinged they sound to people who don't already agree with them -- this is the exact same thing.
It breaks the illusion that she is an ally in any way or that the avenues she took to power can be pursued by ourselves. They cannot. We won't plan around her at all and will instead dismiss her praise and admonish her resistance; and if the time ever comes understand she'll advocate the same insane violence against us that the fascists will.
Edit: this isn't to reduce her to "just" a fascist. We don't treat her the same way we treat the proud boys. But she's a social democrat, which is the left wing of fascism and when push comes to shove she will absolutely side with capital.
It's still fundamentally the truth, provable with historical precedence and her clear actions. Besides, posters like you will appear to be a calm and rational voice to my outrageous rhetoric. I think ultimately it comes out to a balance with both of these socialist perspectives given.
Actually yes, the point of Marxism Leninism is that it follows Scientific Socialism, so the vast majority of things are no longer an opinion but simply a bank of knowledge that's grown over time with hypothesis and proven results, so that some issues are resolved and we need not seriously discuss them as they won't change in this mode of society (bourgeois led).
Firstly, it is not true that fascism is only the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. Fascism is not only a military-technical category. Fascism is the bourgeoisie’s fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism. There is no ground for assuming that the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of Social-Democracy. There is just as little ground for thinking that Social-Democracy can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie. These organisations do not negate, but supplement each other. They are not antipodes, they are twins. Fascism is an informal political bloc of these two chief organisations; a bloc, which arose in the circumstances of the post-war crisis of imperialism, and which is intended for combating the proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie cannot retain power without such a bloc.
~ 1924, nearly one hundred years ago in Concerning the International Situation
Historically this has been shown time and time again. SPD in Germany cooperating with the freikorps during the Spartacist Revolution. Italian Social Democrats cooperating with Mussolini. The failed unity against naziism of the socialists and social Democrats. Labour cooperating with the Anglo empire to liquidate those colonized, labour cooperating with the American empire to liquidate Iraqis, progressive elements in the US having dogshit foreign policy because it may lead to better outcomes here if they shut up (Bernie supporting Israel and bombing Yugoslavia to smithereens). Etc. We can simply look at the course of AOC's career and see the same things appear time and time again. Fascism isn't just Nazis, it's the entire apparatus the bourgeois state uses and will use to attempt to annihilate leftists when they present any challenge whatsoever. It's not wrong to apply these historical teachings to today's figures when the reasons for it happening haven't changed.
I also once would all read this and find it ridiculous, but frankly, the longer you spend organizing IRL and interacting with the state and other leftists, the clearer this all becomes. I've gone from an anarchist to a staunch ML because MLs are almost always correct and willing to correct themselves when they aren't (Cuba and LGBT). When I say AOC is a fascist, I know I won't convince those who haven't tried to organize IRL, but the real heads who know will know. And those who care about Palestinians being liquidated by the United States will come to this understanding as well.
Edit: the point is having a sound analysis for MLs so they can properly engage with and tear down the world's order. Figures like you can act as the milquetoast that gets others on board, whereas eventually when engaging with the reality of the world they will understand and appreciate our seemingly extreme rhetoric.
I'm aware of the concept of scientific socialism. It does not mean we can perfectly predict the future, and it certainly does not mean we can perfectly predict future actions down to an individual level (AOC's).
We could spend all day listing the differences between Germany and the USSR in the 1920s and the U.S. in the 2020s. If you want to be scientific, tell me how the predictive value of an experiment changes when you spend a century altering key inputs before running it again.
It depends, have the key inputs truly changed, or have the same incentives which cause social democrats to prop up empire and far right regimes when push comes to shove remained the same.
When push comes to shove, these social democrats abandon all realistic modes of progressive change and instead ask us to stay within the system. When we don't they support the system coming down on us hard; if any real revolution or change were to occur it's clear she would stand on the side of the bourgeoisie like an old fashioned uncle tom. The fundamental incentives have not changed in over one hundred years; they value staying in the master's house more than liberation.
There clearly is, but you'd be a fool not to see that the same incentives have not changed whatsoever for social democrats to continue aiding and abetting fascism. Has AOC even made a statement against bombing the only outside force who's taken clear and successful military action against the zionist entity? Is it only fascism when ? If we take a clear definition of fascism as a tool of the bourgeois class/liberals to forcibly cut down opposition to their rule by whatever means necessary when they're actually in genuine danger, would the attacks on Yemen not constitute utilization of a fascist machine? Is she not already carrying water for fascism? I don't mean this as hypotheticals or predicting the future; she's already doing exactly what I'm talking about and it's clear how this can and will escalate as things get worse.
We're repeating the same things to each other, so this is the last comment I'll make.
It does not matter if you are right
It does not matter if you are right
It does not matter if you are right
You still have to work to get people to agree with you, and Step Zero for that is getting them to listen. They will not listen if you say AOC is a fascist, whether it's right away or a few comments in.
It's also (charitably) not a great argument because you cannot in fact prove it objectively. It is still a political opinion, because while you can learn from history, societies do not follow laws so precisely defined that you can predict their development the way you can predict how long it takes a dropped object to hit the ground.
Clearly one of us reads the other's perspective and engages while the other does not, it's up to reader interpretation which perspective is more aligned with reality. I invite you to continue discussing your ideas though, as it will give Hexbear the balanced perspective you're looking for.
I mean, the guy who said that went on to ally with social democracies against real fascists.
You understood history wrong. The European powers wanted to use Nazi Germany, Poland and Japan to destroy the USSR. Many of them had signed military and economic cooperation agreements with Nazi Germany. The British literally just signed the Dusseldorf Agreement for the cooperation between British and German industries in March 1939, and the Munich Agreement before that with the British, France, Italy and Germany in 1938.
It was the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, engineered by the Soviet diplomatic team and supposedly without Hitler’s involvement, at the last minute that saved the day. It drove a wedge between Germany and Poland (who had just shared Czechoslovakia together), forcing Germany to invade Poland, and in turn forcing France and the Great Britain to declare war on Germany. The entire Japanese cabinet resigned over the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and backed down from interfering with the Soviets. Like, why do you think the Japanese government would resign over a pact signed by two foreign countries?
The European “social democracies” wanted the Soviet Union dead. They wanted to destroy communism. They simply did not expect to be outplayed at the last minute when the Soviets managed to turn Nazi Germany against the Europeans themselves.
I see no evidence that calling 90%+ of the U.S. population fascists will do anything to advance any leftist cause. It certainly doesn't help grow any sort of American left-wing movement.
Neither does allowing people to believe that fake shills like AOC represent any kind of actual leftist movement. At this point, this type of politician is an active hinderence to advancing any real left politics, with the exception of their actions and stances disillusioning people.
I don't disagree. My point is we can get all that across without flattening it to "AOC is a fascist," which sounds like crank shit to everyone who is not already a communist.
This is a communist forum if you can't quote Stalin here then where?
If libs are checking this out then good. Hopefully they'll learn something. If not then they'll engage with something else until they're ready. This really isn't a space where we should be concerned with optics and what libs might think of they're even looking to learn
Quote Stalin all you want, but his word isn't gospel, especially when he himself later allied with nations that would (at best) fall under his "moderate wing of fascism" umbrella. The CPC's line on Stalin is something like 70% good, 30% bad, so there's plenty of room for disagreement.
I'm not overly concerned with optics on this site, but what we meme about here pops up elsewhere, and if we want people to agree with us we do have to put thought into how to present our ideas.
Once again you misquote “social fascist” as “fascist” despite being corrected on this very error in another conversation. You are here in bad faith. Social fascist is a specific thing.
Fascists shouldn’t be shot, they should be re-educated. Only those who engage in crimes should be shot. I explained this to you and you still regress back to your liberal baseline
It’s repeating the same objectively incorrect argument over and over, changing the definitions of terms to twist it into what you want. Social fascism is not just simply “fascism”. This is a fact that you ignore. All fascists don’t deserve to be shot, not even the most hardline Stalinists shot every single fascist - they re-educated them if possible
You refuse to use the accepted definition of social fascists among communists and instead jump to a different term. Even when you know you shouldn’t and have been corrected on this leap, you do it again and again because you are a Liberal incapable of processing new information
I don't think that he is truely here in bad faith, but they do seem to get hung up about optics for a wide general audience over things we say on a communist forum for reasons i don't understand. I argued with him before about how he took some issue with how we use the word cracker here, and it was more or less the same thing as this.
There's such a thing as knowing your audience. If you want to get your message across you have to do it differently to different people. Stating that social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism should only be done to an audience that already knows what fascism and social democracy is, such as here on this forum.
This doesn't mean that it is not true though, it just means that if you were to say those exact words to a general audience they would believe you were some crank who thought AOC was itching to put on an armband and do the goose-step. A more general audience would be more perceptive to hearing about how the system corrupts even the most well-meaning individuals, how politicians all end up doing the same shit etc.
This is a public forum that's federated with plenty of non-leftist instances, and that's well known to even more non-leftist instances we aren't federated with. We have occasional efforts to direct more people back here, including lifeboat comms for reddit communities. There are even more ties to the much larger reddit through shared users and the whole history of the CTH sub.
We're not speaking to the most general of audiences, but there is a benefit to not looking like cranks. This isn't even a particularly good hot take to cling to, as Stalin himself eventually allied with social democracies against fascists.
I wouldn't be too worried about what the imagined liberals in the walls might think. There can't be too many of them and bad faith actors will always be able to find something and take it out of context. And if you can't speak freely as a communist on a communist niche forum where can you?
Stalin, unlike any of the morally pure western leftists, actually held power and had to defend it and he did so successfully. It's not like aligning the USSR with "moderate" imperialist nations didn't have it's downsides but the alternative was to be overrun and slaughtered by the more radical fascists.
A pragmatic alliance made for lack of better alternatives doesn't change the analysis of the nature of social democracy. They serve the same master as the fascists. Where the social democrats wants to preserve capitalism by bribing a select labour aristocracy into complementary the fascists use more direct violence but ultimately they will both tend to side with capital if it's rule is threatened.
How are they imagined? They comment here regularly. Our threads show up in their feeds. Their threads show up on ours, and we comment on them. We talk to mods of reddit communities looking to move somewhere better. None of this is hypothetical.
I've made the the exact "Stalin actually held power and had to defend it against hostile empires and genocidal fascists" argument online and in person many times. From those conversations I've learned that calling (for instance) FDR and everyone to his right (including all modern Democrats) "moderate fascists" comes across as crank shit, and most people tune out when they hear crank shit. Even people who stick it out and eventually become leftists clock it as crank shit! It doesn't work, so why are we so dug in on it? (My guess: a mix of contrarianism and residual "he was a Great Man so his word is infallible" thinking.) It's not even a good point to go to the mat on; see below.
pragmatic alliance made for lack of better alternatives
This is "if 99% Hitler and 100% Hitler are on the ballot, you should pragmatically vote for 99% Hitler." We rightly point out the problems with this logic when libs tell it to us. There are two ways to resolve this contradiction:
Argue that WWII was a more dire situation than we face today, so more compromises were necessary. This has some merit, but is undermined by the USSR seeking anti-Nazi alliances well before the war and seeking continued peace with the Allies in its immediate aftermath. It's further undermined by how bad the Allies were (the "99% Hitler" countries' genocides were the blueprint for the Holocaust, and they had recently invaded the USSR), and how dire the situation is today (climate change is on track to be more destructive than WWII).
Argue that Stalin was not infallible, and got some things wrong, and that his "moderate wing of fascism" take was not his best work. Argue that as bad as social democracies are, there is some meaningful difference between them and Nazis (what Stalin actually did).
The second approach is at least as theoretically sound as the first, and it does not cause most people to think "oh I'm dealing with a crank, I can disregard."
The quote that social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism, doesn't mean the same thing as saying social democrats are fascist. The quote acknowledges the subjective difference, the fact that social democrats view themselves differently. What the quote neans is that, despite this subjective difference, despite the intentions of social democrats, their efforts ultimately only serve to help and enable fascism, because it accepts capital and the liberal democratic framework.
Repeating the quote now, today, is not the same thing as saying AOC is a fascist. You are misunderstanding the quote. And are further misunderstanding the history, and using a misunderstanding of that history to justify your misunderstanding of the quote
I get that you care about optics on this site and think that it should be the same as irl organizing. I don't agree with that, but if that's your point, okay. I can accept that's what you think and you care about it even if i don't. But i want to point out how you are misinterpreting the quote. Not because i think Stalin is a "great man" or "infallible", and not because I'm "contrarian," but because i think the quote is right, and important for communists or peoole who want to be on an actual left to understand. If you want our optics held to the same standard as irl organizing, then i insist we hold our education to the same standard. Because if we're organizing, it should be with people that are capable of understanding this quote - otherwise we'll end up organized with the kind of people this quote refers to who will betray and destroy any real left efforts
Calling someone a moderate fascists is calling them a fascist the same way calling someone a moderate Democrat is calling them a Democrat. We don't make any real distinction when we add "moderate" ("if the time ever comes understand she'll advocate the same insane violence against us that the fascists will"), people don't hear a distinction, and it's ridiculous to try and retroactively try and create some thin theoretical difference when this is pointed out.
The only reason people (sometimes) add the "moderate" modifier is they're memeing about a Stalin quote they haven't actually interrogated, and it seems most people haven't even read:
Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism... They are not antipodes, they are twins. Fascism is an informal political bloc of these two chief organisations; a bloc, which arose in the circumstances of the post-war crisis of imperialism, and which is intended for combating the proletarian revolution.
We can't say "if you sit down at a table with fascists you're a fascist" all day then pretend "moderate fascist, fascism's twin" means "not fascist."
think that it should be the same as irl organizing
I never said anything like this. I said this place is useful for moving people left, and that it will be less useful for that if we get so up our own online asses that we can't tell when we're saying crank shit that doesn't even have a good theoretical basis.
Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism... They are not antipodes, they are twins. Fascism is an informal political bloc of these two chief organisations; a bloc, which arose in the circumstances of the post-war crisis of imperialism, and which is intended for combating the proletarian revolution.
Even with the full quote you still misunderstand it. I'm not sure how you can look at that and not see hiw what i just told you is correct.
We can't say "if you sit down at a table with fascists you're a fascist" all day then pretend "moderate fascist, fascism's twin" means "not fascist."
They are "Twins" because they were "born" at the same time from the same material conditions. He's not using twin to mean "identical." They aren't identical, but they both exist to serve capital and defebd it from proletarian revolution. That's why social democracy is "objectively tge moderate wing if fascism." This is not saying "AOC us a fascist" its not even saying "AOC is a moderate fascist." Its saying that social democracy serves the same purpose. Conflating it with the "sit down with fascists..." saying is just you running with your misinterpretation and justifing yourself.
it's ridiculous to try and retroactively try and create some thin theoretical difference when this is pointed out.
I'm not doing anything retroactively. I'm just telling you what Stalin meant when he wrote it, and what we mean when we say it. Once again you're misinterpreting it and calling us cranks based on your misinterpretation
I never said anything like this. I said this place is useful for moving people left, and that it will be less useful for that if we get so up our own online asses that we can't tell when we're saying crank shit that doesn't even have a good theoretical basis.
This isn't crank shit. Your misinterpretation definitely is though. And you've been corrected on this multiple times it sounds like, and you really want to die on this hill over some kind of optics argument that we're "cranks" when the crank opinion your argueing against is just your own misinterpretation.
I'm sorry if you think the niche communist internst forum is "too online" if we read Stalin, understand him, and quote him about things he was correct about.
I'm just telling you what Stalin meant when he wrote it
You aren't a mind reader and you aren't some authority on the subject. We are both reading the same 100-year-old text and coming to different conclusions. I am not misinterpreting, you are not correcting, and the condescension is obnoxious.
My point from the beginning is that when people hear "XYZ is a moderate fascist," they interpret that to mean "XYZ is basically a fascist, even if this person thinks some other fascist is worse." No amount of quoting Stalin and claiming to know What He Truly Meant will change that this is what people hear.
Okay, you're not engaging in anything approaching good faith on this issue with me or anyone else here.
We are both reading the same 100-year-old text and coming to different conclusions.
Except your conclusion is a willful misunderstanding.
I am correcting, because you are wrong. I'm not condescending. I'm talking to like an adult and an equal. Its okay to be wrong about something. Ive been generous by using the term misinterpretation because the text is so clear its not even open fir interpretation. I've gone out of my way to not be condescending despite your choice to mischaracterise the incredibly blatant text. your inability to engage in good faith is not only obnoxious but tedious.
My point from the beginning is that when people hear "XYZ is a moderate fascist," they interpret that to mean "XYZ is basically a fascist, even if this person thinks some other fascist is worse." No amount of quoting Stalin and claiming to know What He Truly Meant will change that this is what people hear.
I'm not presenting what I'm saying as "What he truly meant" as some sort of divination. I'm basically just repeating what the literal text said because it makes its point extremely clearly. That's why I'm even telling you your misunderstanding it and saying that I'm correcting you because its such a clear statement that its not even open to interpretation. Its not cryptic in the slightest, yet you choose to argue over it, and need to paint it like I'm divining its intent like a religious text to prove your point. Bad faith bullshit on your part, and for no reason.
Yeah, your point is just some dumb optics shit that has nothing to do with the quote. But we're all just cranks who are too online to see the truth lol.
I'm not talking with you anymore about this, because this is pointless and tedious. We're all just "too online" and you're the one true leftist. Congratulations
Lmao if you spoke to a stranger like this -- "you keep misinterpreting this," "you've now been corrected a few times," -- they'd either walk away or tell you to fuck off.
your point is just some dumb optics shit
Another sign of engaging in good faith -- "your point is dumb shit, why can't we talk about my point instead"!
"The mask of humanity fall from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone — everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed. And then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death... the sweetest, most courageous people in the world. You see the fear and power in its eyes. Then you know."
social-democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism
The key word is objectively. If you disagree, it's not a difference of opinion. You're just wrong
I mean, the guy who said that went on to ally with social democracies against real fascists. And whatever the theoretical merits, I see no evidence that calling 90%+ of the U.S. population fascists will do anything to advance any leftist cause. It certainly doesn't help grow any sort of American left-wing movement.
It really is OK to say someone's take is bad without calling them a fascist. Fascists should be shot; anyone who thinks everyone from AOC to the right needs to be shot is (in the parlance of our times) deeply unserious.
social democracy is the moderate wing of fascism
moderate fascists are better than extreme fascists
no contradiction here
tldr
Lol yep it's word-for-word Biden voter logic
They clearly aid and abet fascism though. You'd be a fool not to see that they're ultimately enemies of real social change and they must be deposed or else nothing good can come.
Do you want to be (arguably) correct on some theoretical point, or do you want people to listen to you? Because the vast majority of people will immediately tune out "AOC is a fascist."
Clearly it's more complex than that, and I don't think I'd be upfront about that. I think, if you talked about how there's a historical precedence for people like AOC coming into power on a wave of radicalism and just being the same old same old, and how it's an unavoidable consequence of our system, people would be more willing to hear that. And it's the same damn concept.
I get that most leftists won't consciously lead with that hot of a take. But we have it all over this public forum that libs frequently wander into, so you can tell a lot of folks who'll lead with "AOC is not a path to revolutionary change" will break out "social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism" after about two beers. And I'd say those are two very different concepts.
Then when they push back we'll give historical precedence and evidence. My experience with MLs was having them be clearly correct in a way that a lot of others weren't and then they would say wack shit like "AOC is a fascist" but I'd stick around anyway and now I understand why it's true. I think it's generally good for us to always be honest
Amber.
Amber
Amber.
How much of this is survivor bias? How many people punched out at that wack shit and never came back?
Being honest is important, but so is knowing the difference between a topic you are solidly, unambiguously correct on (stuff like the Nazis pulling directly from the U.S. treatment of natives) and a theoretical point that is debatable and ultimately has no provable answer. Honesty works when someone who desperately wants to believe you're lying digs deeper and only finds more evidence that you're right. It doesn't land the same when you're talking about a topic that a skeptical reader can't prove to themselves in the same way.
That's the difference between you and I I think, I know AOC is a fascist in waiting, you don't believe so.
What is the point here? What do you think the left stands to gain by calling her a fascist?
The useful part of this discussion is "she's a dead end for any real leftist movement." Calling her a closet Nazi adds nothing and clocks as "wack shit" even to people who eventually become leftists!
We clown on Israeli officials for not realizing how unhinged they sound to people who don't already agree with them -- this is the exact same thing.
It breaks the illusion that she is an ally in any way or that the avenues she took to power can be pursued by ourselves. They cannot. We won't plan around her at all and will instead dismiss her praise and admonish her resistance; and if the time ever comes understand she'll advocate the same insane violence against us that the fascists will.
Edit: this isn't to reduce her to "just" a fascist. We don't treat her the same way we treat the proud boys. But she's a social democrat, which is the left wing of fascism and when push comes to shove she will absolutely side with capital.
It doesn't! People ignore it as "wack shit," exactly how you did!
It's still fundamentally the truth, provable with historical precedence and her clear actions. Besides, posters like you will appear to be a calm and rational voice to my outrageous rhetoric. I think ultimately it comes out to a balance with both of these socialist perspectives given.
Actually yes, the point of Marxism Leninism is that it follows Scientific Socialism, so the vast majority of things are no longer an opinion but simply a bank of knowledge that's grown over time with hypothesis and proven results, so that some issues are resolved and we need not seriously discuss them as they won't change in this mode of society (bourgeois led).
~
1924, nearly one hundred years ago in Concerning the International Situation
Historically this has been shown time and time again. SPD in Germany cooperating with the freikorps during the Spartacist Revolution. Italian Social Democrats cooperating with Mussolini. The failed unity against naziism of the socialists and social Democrats. Labour cooperating with the Anglo empire to liquidate those colonized, labour cooperating with the American empire to liquidate Iraqis, progressive elements in the US having dogshit foreign policy because it may lead to better outcomes here if they shut up (Bernie supporting Israel and bombing Yugoslavia to smithereens). Etc. We can simply look at the course of AOC's career and see the same things appear time and time again. Fascism isn't just Nazis, it's the entire apparatus the bourgeois state uses and will use to attempt to annihilate leftists when they present any challenge whatsoever. It's not wrong to apply these historical teachings to today's figures when the reasons for it happening haven't changed.
I also once would all read this and find it ridiculous, but frankly, the longer you spend organizing IRL and interacting with the state and other leftists, the clearer this all becomes. I've gone from an anarchist to a staunch ML because MLs are almost always correct and willing to correct themselves when they aren't (Cuba and LGBT). When I say AOC is a fascist, I know I won't convince those who haven't tried to organize IRL, but the real heads who know will know. And those who care about Palestinians being liquidated by the United States will come to this understanding as well.
Edit: the point is having a sound analysis for MLs so they can properly engage with and tear down the world's order. Figures like you can act as the milquetoast that gets others on board, whereas eventually when engaging with the reality of the world they will understand and appreciate our seemingly extreme rhetoric.
I'm aware of the concept of scientific socialism. It does not mean we can perfectly predict the future, and it certainly does not mean we can perfectly predict future actions down to an individual level (AOC's).
We could spend all day listing the differences between Germany and the USSR in the 1920s and the U.S. in the 2020s. If you want to be scientific, tell me how the predictive value of an experiment changes when you spend a century altering key inputs before running it again.
If you think you can perfectly predict the future, I don't know what to tell you.
If you think there is no significant difference between late-czarist Russia or Weimar Germany and the modern U.S., I don't know what to tell you.
There clearly is, but you'd be a fool not to see that the same incentives have not changed whatsoever for social democrats to continue aiding and abetting fascism. Has AOC even made a statement against bombing the only outside force who's taken clear and successful military action against the zionist entity? Is it only fascism when
? If we take a clear definition of fascism as a tool of the bourgeois class/liberals to forcibly cut down opposition to their rule by whatever means necessary when they're actually in genuine danger, would the attacks on Yemen not constitute utilization of a fascist machine? Is she not already carrying water for fascism? I don't mean this as hypotheticals or predicting the future; she's already doing exactly what I'm talking about and it's clear how this can and will escalate as things get worse.
We're repeating the same things to each other, so this is the last comment I'll make.
It does not matter if you are right
It does not matter if you are right
It does not matter if you are right
You still have to work to get people to agree with you, and Step Zero for that is getting them to listen. They will not listen if you say AOC is a fascist, whether it's right away or a few comments in.
It's also (charitably) not a great argument because you cannot in fact prove it objectively. It is still a political opinion, because while you can learn from history, societies do not follow laws so precisely defined that you can predict their development the way you can predict how long it takes a dropped object to hit the ground.
Clearly one of us reads the other's perspective and engages while the other does not, it's up to reader interpretation which perspective is more aligned with reality. I invite you to continue discussing your ideas though, as it will give Hexbear the balanced perspective you're looking for.
You understood history wrong. The European powers wanted to use Nazi Germany, Poland and Japan to destroy the USSR. Many of them had signed military and economic cooperation agreements with Nazi Germany. The British literally just signed the Dusseldorf Agreement for the cooperation between British and German industries in March 1939, and the Munich Agreement before that with the British, France, Italy and Germany in 1938.
It was the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, engineered by the Soviet diplomatic team and supposedly without Hitler’s involvement, at the last minute that saved the day. It drove a wedge between Germany and Poland (who had just shared Czechoslovakia together), forcing Germany to invade Poland, and in turn forcing France and the Great Britain to declare war on Germany. The entire Japanese cabinet resigned over the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and backed down from interfering with the Soviets. Like, why do you think the Japanese government would resign over a pact signed by two foreign countries?
The European “social democracies” wanted the Soviet Union dead. They wanted to destroy communism. They simply did not expect to be outplayed at the last minute when the Soviets managed to turn Nazi Germany against the Europeans themselves.
What further reading can I do regarding all this?
Agreed -- and Stalin would go on to ally with those exact same countries.
Stalin was often foolish and would have done well listening to more of zhukovs wisdom.
That isn't the point; it's that your rhetoric is self-defeating.
Neither does allowing people to believe that fake shills like AOC represent any kind of actual leftist movement. At this point, this type of politician is an active hinderence to advancing any real left politics, with the exception of their actions and stances disillusioning people.
I don't disagree. My point is we can get all that across without flattening it to "AOC is a fascist," which sounds like crank shit to everyone who is not already a communist.
This is a communist forum
if you can't quote Stalin here then where?
If libs are checking this out then good. Hopefully they'll learn something. If not then they'll engage with something else until they're ready. This really isn't a space where we should be concerned with optics and what libs might think of they're even looking to learn
Quote Stalin all you want, but his word isn't gospel, especially when he himself later allied with nations that would (at best) fall under his "moderate wing of fascism" umbrella. The CPC's line on Stalin is something like 70% good, 30% bad, so there's plenty of room for disagreement.
I'm not overly concerned with optics on this site, but what we meme about here pops up elsewhere, and if we want people to agree with us we do have to put thought into how to present our ideas.
Once again you misquote “social fascist” as “fascist” despite being corrected on this very error in another conversation. You are here in bad faith. Social fascist is a specific thing.
Fascists shouldn’t be shot, they should be re-educated. Only those who engage in crimes should be shot. I explained this to you and you still regress back to your liberal baseline
Good faith is phrasing your side of a disagreement as "I corrected you"
It’s repeating the same objectively incorrect argument over and over, changing the definitions of terms to twist it into what you want. Social fascism is not just simply “fascism”. This is a fact that you ignore. All fascists don’t deserve to be shot, not even the most hardline Stalinists shot every single fascist - they re-educated them if possible
You refuse to use the accepted definition of social fascists among communists and instead jump to a different term. Even when you know you shouldn’t and have been corrected on this leap, you do it again and again because you are a Liberal incapable of processing new information
I don't think that he is truely here in bad faith, but they do seem to get hung up about optics for a wide general audience over things we say on a communist forum for reasons i don't understand. I argued with him before about how he took some issue with how we use the word cracker here, and it was more or less the same thing as this.
You know what, i ending up argueing more with them and you're right lol.
They refuse to accept what the quote actually means, but we're all "cranks" and "too online" for understanding it. Just total liberal bullshit.
Some people may think I go to hard but I’m quite good at smelling these people out
Disengage
There's such a thing as knowing your audience. If you want to get your message across you have to do it differently to different people. Stating that social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism should only be done to an audience that already knows what fascism and social democracy is, such as here on this forum.
This doesn't mean that it is not true though, it just means that if you were to say those exact words to a general audience they would believe you were some crank who thought AOC was itching to put on an armband and do the goose-step. A more general audience would be more perceptive to hearing about how the system corrupts even the most well-meaning individuals, how politicians all end up doing the same shit etc.
This is a public forum that's federated with plenty of non-leftist instances, and that's well known to even more non-leftist instances we aren't federated with. We have occasional efforts to direct more people back here, including lifeboat comms for reddit communities. There are even more ties to the much larger reddit through shared users and the whole history of the CTH sub.
We're not speaking to the most general of audiences, but there is a benefit to not looking like cranks. This isn't even a particularly good hot take to cling to, as Stalin himself eventually allied with social democracies against fascists.
I wouldn't be too worried about what the imagined liberals in the walls might think. There can't be too many of them and bad faith actors will always be able to find something and take it out of context. And if you can't speak freely as a communist on a communist niche forum where can you?
Stalin, unlike any of the morally pure western leftists, actually held power and had to defend it and he did so successfully. It's not like aligning the USSR with "moderate" imperialist nations didn't have it's downsides but the alternative was to be overrun and slaughtered by the more radical fascists.
A pragmatic alliance made for lack of better alternatives doesn't change the analysis of the nature of social democracy. They serve the same master as the fascists. Where the social democrats wants to preserve capitalism by bribing a select labour aristocracy into complementary the fascists use more direct violence but ultimately they will both tend to side with capital if it's rule is threatened.
How are they imagined? They comment here regularly. Our threads show up in their feeds. Their threads show up on ours, and we comment on them. We talk to mods of reddit communities looking to move somewhere better. None of this is hypothetical.
I've made the the exact "Stalin actually held power and had to defend it against hostile empires and genocidal fascists" argument online and in person many times. From those conversations I've learned that calling (for instance) FDR and everyone to his right (including all modern Democrats) "moderate fascists" comes across as crank shit, and most people tune out when they hear crank shit. Even people who stick it out and eventually become leftists clock it as crank shit! It doesn't work, so why are we so dug in on it? (My guess: a mix of contrarianism and residual "he was a Great Man so his word is infallible" thinking.) It's not even a good point to go to the mat on; see below.
This is "if 99% Hitler and 100% Hitler are on the ballot, you should pragmatically vote for 99% Hitler." We rightly point out the problems with this logic when libs tell it to us. There are two ways to resolve this contradiction:
The second approach is at least as theoretically sound as the first, and it does not cause most people to think "oh I'm dealing with a crank, I can disregard."
The quote that social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism, doesn't mean the same thing as saying social democrats are fascist. The quote acknowledges the subjective difference, the fact that social democrats view themselves differently. What the quote neans is that, despite this subjective difference, despite the intentions of social democrats, their efforts ultimately only serve to help and enable fascism, because it accepts capital and the liberal democratic framework.
Repeating the quote now, today, is not the same thing as saying AOC is a fascist. You are misunderstanding the quote. And are further misunderstanding the history, and using a misunderstanding of that history to justify your misunderstanding of the quote
I get that you care about optics on this site and think that it should be the same as irl organizing. I don't agree with that, but if that's your point, okay. I can accept that's what you think and you care about it even if i don't. But i want to point out how you are misinterpreting the quote. Not because i think Stalin is a "great man" or "infallible", and not because I'm "contrarian," but because i think the quote is right, and important for communists or peoole who want to be on an actual left to understand. If you want our optics held to the same standard as irl organizing, then i insist we hold our education to the same standard. Because if we're organizing, it should be with people that are capable of understanding this quote - otherwise we'll end up organized with the kind of people this quote refers to who will betray and destroy any real left efforts
Calling someone a moderate fascists is calling them a fascist the same way calling someone a moderate Democrat is calling them a Democrat. We don't make any real distinction when we add "moderate" ("if the time ever comes understand she'll advocate the same insane violence against us that the fascists will"), people don't hear a distinction, and it's ridiculous to try and retroactively try and create some thin theoretical difference when this is pointed out.
The only reason people (sometimes) add the "moderate" modifier is they're memeing about a Stalin quote they haven't actually interrogated, and it seems most people haven't even read:
We can't say "if you sit down at a table with fascists you're a fascist" all day then pretend "moderate fascist, fascism's twin" means "not fascist."
I never said anything like this. I said this place is useful for moving people left, and that it will be less useful for that if we get so up our own online asses that we can't tell when we're saying crank shit that doesn't even have a good theoretical basis.
Even with the full quote you still misunderstand it. I'm not sure how you can look at that and not see hiw what i just told you is correct.
They are "Twins" because they were "born" at the same time from the same material conditions. He's not using twin to mean "identical." They aren't identical, but they both exist to serve capital and defebd it from proletarian revolution. That's why social democracy is "objectively tge moderate wing if fascism." This is not saying "AOC us a fascist" its not even saying "AOC is a moderate fascist." Its saying that social democracy serves the same purpose. Conflating it with the "sit down with fascists..." saying is just you running with your misinterpretation and justifing yourself.
I'm not doing anything retroactively. I'm just telling you what Stalin meant when he wrote it, and what we mean when we say it. Once again you're misinterpreting it and calling us cranks based on your misinterpretation
This isn't crank shit. Your misinterpretation definitely is though. And you've been corrected on this multiple times it sounds like, and you really want to die on this hill over some kind of optics argument that we're "cranks" when the crank opinion your argueing against is just your own misinterpretation.
I'm sorry if you think the niche communist internst forum is "too online" if we read Stalin, understand him, and quote him about things he was correct about.
You aren't a mind reader and you aren't some authority on the subject. We are both reading the same 100-year-old text and coming to different conclusions. I am not misinterpreting, you are not correcting, and the condescension is obnoxious.
My point from the beginning is that when people hear "XYZ is a moderate fascist," they interpret that to mean "XYZ is basically a fascist, even if this person thinks some other fascist is worse." No amount of quoting Stalin and claiming to know What He Truly Meant will change that this is what people hear.
Okay, you're not engaging in anything approaching good faith on this issue with me or anyone else here.
Except your conclusion is a willful misunderstanding. I am correcting, because you are wrong. I'm not condescending. I'm talking to like an adult and an equal. Its okay to be wrong about something. Ive been generous by using the term misinterpretation because the text is so clear its not even open fir interpretation. I've gone out of my way to not be condescending despite your choice to mischaracterise the incredibly blatant text. your inability to engage in good faith is not only obnoxious but tedious.
I'm not presenting what I'm saying as "What he truly meant" as some sort of divination. I'm basically just repeating what the literal text said because it makes its point extremely clearly. That's why I'm even telling you your misunderstanding it and saying that I'm correcting you because its such a clear statement that its not even open to interpretation. Its not cryptic in the slightest, yet you choose to argue over it, and need to paint it like I'm divining its intent like a religious text to prove your point. Bad faith bullshit on your part, and for no reason.
Yeah, your point is just some dumb optics shit that has nothing to do with the quote. But we're all just cranks who are too online to see the truth lol.
I'm not talking with you anymore about this, because this is pointless and tedious. We're all just "too online" and you're the one true leftist. Congratulations
Lmao if you spoke to a stranger like this -- "you keep misinterpreting this," "you've now been corrected a few times," -- they'd either walk away or tell you to fuck off.
Another sign of engaging in good faith -- "your point is dumb shit, why can't we talk about my point instead"!
Tell me more, O Master of Discourse!
Not my fault you're objectively wrong, chief
I made the mistake of arguing with them, when this is, objectively, the best response
It's completely objective!
Should and Would are diffrent. It would fix a good part of the world's problems.
I always said it, but I never understood it till I watched Bernie’s stance on Gaza in real time.
"The mask of humanity fall from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone — everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed. And then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death... the sweetest, most courageous people in the world. You see the fear and power in its eyes. Then you know."
" What?"
"That the bourgeois are not human."