Very interesting how all those "pretend socialists" only exist in the third world, and all the "real socialists" existin the west. Yet all the successful revolutions have been done in the third world by "pretend socialists", and the so called "real socialists" in the west have accomplished nothing. Their biggest success of the "real socialists" in the west being capitalist welfare states or social democracies that rely on old school imperial relationships to fund their welfare in a select few areas.
No Eurocentrism present to this line of thought here at all...
What do you think of Nelson Mandela OP? He was a very good leader, right? You know that he considered Cuba an ally and supported their revolution as Cuba sent troops to fight against the apartheid government in the border wars, took inspiration from Mao and called the Chinese revolution a miracle, thanked the Soviets for giving unending support in the fight against apartheid while receiving the a Lenin Peace Prize? So is Nelson Mandela now a fascist according to your meme?
OP determining whether to believe the US about socialist movements
Also look up double genocide theory and stop trivializing the holocaust by calling communists fascists.
You have a lifetime of anti communist propaganda to overcome. You're close, take the last step and realize you've been lied to about AES countries. No place is a utopia, but those countries are lights in the dark.
I agree. Fascist countries like Denmark, Germany and Canada often get called "socialist" and they have been disastrous for the reputation of socialism.
Cuba is a beacon of progress and humanity in the Americas. Fidel Castro was a hero. Also a pro at dodging the CIA's kill squads.
Nothing more ‘socialist’ than supporting the current world order but with some welfare
Westerners deciding who's doing real socialism or not. Westerners expressing their most vile sentiment for foreign countries rather than their own imperialism. Westerners praising the words of their own imperialist intelligence agencies. Westerners unironically praising their own nations for civil liberties like the freedom of fascists to assemble, freedom of racists to express themselves, freedom of parents to own their children, and freedom of school districts to continue racial segregation. Westerners praising imperialist nations like Norway as socialist while using bold language like fascism to describe places under that same exact threat of imperialism, like Cuba and Vietnam.
Westerners claiming foreign governments are merely pretending to be socialist, while claiming unorganized misinformed chauvinistic westerners are the true heirs to socialism, despite all they do is post online and complain about foreign nations.
Westerners praising anarchist movements from 100 years ago despite having no common cause with those movements, no connection to the circumstances within them, and probably no actual admiration of them. Westerners praising a bastardized, sectarian, perverse form of anarchism rather than attempting unity with organizations in their areas. Westerners refusing to speak with actual anarchists in their area, who by and large don't give a shit and just want to hand out food or help at shelters. If Buenaventura Durruti were alive today he'd be regarded with scorn by western chauvinists.
Westerners continuing to bring up Trotsky of all people, who wasn't relevant to world affairs for the last 15 years of his life and certainly not the past 80 years. Westerners not reading a single word of Trotsky's work, westerners focusing entirely on Trotsky's feud with Stalin, westerners not knowing that Trotsky was a literal military commander. Westerners calling themselves Trotskyists in 2023 for some reason. Westerners deciding they have a feud with Joseph Stalin, a man who died in 1953.
Westerners attempting to praise their own socialist leadership, who happen to be a scattered group of imperialist-aligned social democrats, Twitch streamers, and actual antisemitic grifters such as in the case of Caleb Maupin.
Its hard to challenge your opinions when you gish gallup 500 talking points
You gish galloped, you ad homin-ed, you no true scotsman-ed, you one true scotsman-ed, and then you mot and bailey-ed.
Checkmate sir
Its ok to say you dont know what any of those mean. You dont have to make an ass out of yourself in the process
I believe you just engaged in a masked man fallacy taken to the ad absurdum.
Checkmate
I don't know what any debate words mean and I refuse to learn.
500 talking points and you couldn't find a single thing to call into question
I dont want to be a victim of hexbear road rage thanks. You guys just vomit out material in hopes that you can string it together to form a cogent argument. Then you come back smug as ever asking why i didnt respond to the 10k talking points as if I was a human encyclopedia.
How would I distinguish you, based only on your reply, from someone who took one look at two whole paragraphs and decided you weren't going to read that but had to keep arguing no matter what and spewed out some sour grape nonsense?
Why did you bother learning the phrase "gish gallop" but not how to respond to it. Isn't that the whole point of studying this shit?
How should we frame our arguments in response to a meme that paints every single prominent socialist and socialist country as fascist without addressing each one?
Really the burden of proof should be on the one making the claim, shouldn't it?People confuse facism and authoritarianism all the time, and people respond to this as if they've never figured this out.
So instead of anything productive these threads churn out:
Omg communist countries are fascist!
actually no socialist!
lol oppression
Vs
hey why do so many socialist states end up being super authoritarian?
hey yeah thats a huge problem, but lets ignore it because west bad
You dont need to address each one. Pick one. I dont need proof to see that its too much information
How do you feel about essays and books in general?
Their comment was 337 words long. According to google the average reader can do 238 words in a minute. 90 seconds.
It's hard to challenge my opinions because I'm cool as hell and I exude a pleasant aroma
If their post is short, accuse them of not engaging properly.
If their post is long, accuse them of gish gallop.
We're talking about 6 countries and at least 5 people in the first place, and that's only the ones named. Sorry, reality is complicated like that.
Nobody's interested in becoming an anti-communist. It's you who must change your opinions because they are wrong
Warning: 🚨 ⚠️ Hexbearian detected! Everyone, into the posting bunkers!
That it's fun to do and informative to others. It might be fun for them too.
The reason I was asking morality yesterday was because that was the main question of the post. America bad and Russia bad are moral questions, so I was asking them as such.
dude just shut the fuck up and never post again. You had all of hexbear trying to explain things plainly to you, but were too fucking ignorant and stupid to just read shit.
I disagreed with all of hexbear and was trying to explain things plainly to them.
Yes, because engaging with hexbears is a waste of time. They are not here in good faith. Either that or they don't know any better, which in practice amounts to the same thing.
My post was an inside joke based on that users previous posts on our instance.
Have you engaged with a hexbear in good faith?
That's a fair question and in all honesty the answer is no, because based on what I can easily see and understand of hexbears, they aren't intellectually serious people and to the contrary are more akin to a kind of 4-chan trolling community than anything worth actual intellectual engagement.
I could be wrong, but so far I have yet to see any evidence as such.
So you wouldn't engage with any of us in good faith, because you've decided that we aren't capable of that
That's precisely the point. These guys have a toolbox of fallacious arguments and techniques that they regularly trot out. The Gish gallop is one of them. Another, that you see being put to wide use in this thread, is redefining words and terms to fit their narrative.
When you give everyone in your nation a house, food, and healthcare while protecting yourself from the West that's actually fascism.
The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
"I'm socialist but i don't support AES and believe US State Department propaganda" is not the flex you think it is
It's funny that somebody who has made his account on here entirely to spread anti-communist propaganda calls other people a fascist. You're equating the people who built Auschwitz with those who liberated it, you're effectively a holocaust denier and a nazi. Eat shit and die, you fascist pig with your transparent wrecking attempts.
a lot of people in this thread should be thrown into volcanos to please the economy
What makes them a fascist, genuine question? I looked through their profile but couldn't find anything that would make me think they're fascist, just edgy Leftist humor. Do you say that simply just because they're on hexbear?
And what do you politically identify as? I could find even less about you to understand any of your politics.
I haven't seen any fascists, as far as I'm aware, on hexbear but I hate fascism so I'd be willing to agree with you if you can explain.
The only open-ish fascist I have seen on lemmy in a while was that dude on the Japan thread sneering about third world immigrants ruining society
Hmmm. Doesn't sound like the kinds of ideas that Japan would be open towards.
Non-credible defense. It's a millitary/conflict themed shit-posting community that started on on Reddit
The most active NCD lemmy community is on noncredibledefense@lemmy.world
Wait, this person who is bragging about going on a forum for praising NATO and war crimes is telling us we're not socialist enough?
What? I've lost the plot.
chronic social democratic brain syndrome. This one appears terminal. They'll support imperialism and anti-communism until they're executed by fascists anyway for being a tankie
What is imperialism to you? Is it when countries around the world put Russian imperialism in check? Should we be praising Russia for liberating Ukraine by blowing up maternity wards and hospitals? Should we just let Holodomor v2.0 occur?
As always, such a hot take from Hexbear.
https://www.villagevoice.com/in-search-of-a-soviet-holocaust/
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/holocaust-revisionism-ultranationalism-and-the-nazisoviet-double-genocide-debate-eastern
Read more than Wikipedia
Should we just let Holodomor v2.0 occur?
Stop spreading holocaust denial
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
NATO is leftist now, didn't you hear? China and all the gross non-white countries are fascists, and NATO and all the nice clean white countries are based and leftist!!!
I'm confused, are you saying he's using it wrong?
Here's a copy paste from Webster.
often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
Replace the word race with party and you've got an incomplete yes, but not necessarily inaccurate description of Stalins USSR.
Seriously not trying to just be a troll or shill here, so if you feel I'm wrong please let me know how and why. I am legitimately, in good faith, curious about the perspectives of some communist here. It is an ideology I am somewhat interested in.
Replace the word race with party
That's a pretty significant difference, don't you think? Exalting racism and exalting a political organization that opposes racism are diametrically opposed things, not equivalent.
Replace (good thing) with (bad thing). You looking pretty fucking bad now don't you tankie?
Not saying it is a fair exchange, you are correct. But do keep in mind the wording in the definition is "often". My suggestion of replacement was to emphasize that race is not a requirement to the definition, it's just pointing out that it is usually the characteristic used to define who is the most loyal or desired type of citizen. From what I understand party loyalty could be definitely be applied there.
There's a reason that race is included though, and that reason is that fascism aims to strengthen and reinforce existing hierarchies. That generally includes race, gender, sexual orientation, class, disabilities, etc. Theoretically it's conceivable that you could have a political project that includes all of that except for race, but in practice it's extremely unlikely that a fascist project would exclude it, which is why it's mentioned in the definition.
Communists (esp. Marxist-Leninists) believe in using political power to reduce or remove these hierarchies, even if it requires the use of force. For instance, I think it's good that slave owners in the US were forcibly suppressed and the people they enslaved were liberated. Does that "willingness to forcibly suppress the opposition" make me (and Lincoln) a fascist, even though my goals and values are completely opposite to those of fascists?
If "the opposition" in your definition is taken to include groups that would also forcibly suppress their opposition given the opportunity, then it seems that Webster's has unintentionally baked in assumptions from which the only conclusion is something like anarcho-pacifism, while labelling all states as inherently fascist. This is either a bad definition, or a bad interpretation of the definition.
That is a good point. It's a really interesting application of the tolerance paradox. This is some good perspective I'm getting, glad I made this comment thread.
Replace the word race with party and you've got an incomplete yes, but not necessarily inaccurate description of Stalins USSR.
Replace the Sodium in Sodium Chloride with Hydrogen and OH GOD IT BURNS IT BURNS OW OW OW OW!
You can't just swap words out and assume the framework is the same. It literally makes no sense. Changing one word can, and does, have a huge effect on overall meaning of a sentence.
I don't want to dogpile and axont already pointed out a pretty good scholar who talks about the subject, but I did want to add for clarity the reason that it's important to have a precise definition: We could look at, say, Victorian Britain, Ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire and Suleiman the Magnificent and argue that they were all unquestionably ruled by either a single or a small handful of rulers with no real checks on their power, that they oriented the economy and society around themselves, that they suppressed dissent etc. and conclude, from Webster there, that basically every government except modern American government is fascism. Simply in historical terms that would be an enormous problem, because it collapses all the nuance and distinctions that exist, obviously, between these extremely diverse forms of government.
When people talk about fascism, there's a reason they think of Hitler and Mussolini (who self-described, which makes that a bit easier I guess) even if it's hard to put a finger on exactly what the unifying factors are. Very clearly, Mussolini and Hitler thought their projects were incompatible with communism/socialism, it's why their first steps upon achieving power in their countries were to purge the left and ensure that left resistance couldn't be organized against them. Even if you have critiques of Stalin (I certainly do) I think there are pretty obvious differences between the USSR and the fascist axis that it ended up fighting against, reasons that were ultimately persuasive to Roosevelt and Churchill despite their own misgivings about communism. Everyone at the time understood there was a difference, and we need to be able to distinguish if we're going to talk intelligently about forms of government that western countries don't themselves use.
So in short, I'd say that definition from Webster is too vague to be useful, I'd say there are factors like palingenetic ultranationalism and hostility to the left that seem to be constant in any real fascist regime that should really be a part of a definition of the term. Otherwise 'fascist' just means 'mean' or 'bad' because all of its distinctives are gone.
Mussolini and Hitler thought their projects were incompatible with communism/socialism, it's why their first steps upon achieving power in their countries were to purge the left and ensure that left resistance couldn't be organized against them
I think something liberals trip on is that Hitler and Mussolini didn't just attempt to suppress leftists. They did that after gaining power. Before gaining power they did any number of weasel-like things to convince the average person that fascists were in fact better socialists than the socialists. They appealed hard to working class interests, especially the ones with national chauvinist tendencies. They appealed to racism and scorned international cooperation. It didn't help that the average person in this was often confused, coming out of the problems of post WW1 Europe, and mainly wanted a party that would put food on the table. The so called "beefsteak nazi" was a type of person who'd join the Nazis believing they'd put forward more genuine socialist policies. Beefsteak, red on the inside, brown on the outside. Then you had people like Ernst Röhm and Strasser, who identified publicly as socialist. Then once gaining power in 1934, they were killed.
Fascists don't really have beliefs so much as they're an emergency tool for capital to rid itself of its primary internal enemies.
Personally I like the definition that the historian Robert O. Paxton uses. Now, he's a liberal, but he does have good insight into fascism and he doesn't fall into that trap of deciding that communists and fascists must be the same thing. His definition isn't materialist, but it's a good start.
To paraphrase, his definition is "a suppression of the left among popular sentiment." By left he means things like socialists, labor organizations, communists, etc. Fascism is a situation where a country has found its theater of democracy has failed and the capitalists need anything at all to keep themselves in power, even if it means cannibalizing another sector of capitalists. The fascists are the ideological contingent of this, who put forward a policy of class collaboration between working class and capitalist, instead of what socialists propose, which is working class dominance in the economy. Fascists exalt nationality or race because that extends through class sentiments. It brushes aside concerns like internal economic contradictions. I once had a comrade say something like "Fascism is capitalists hitting the emergency button until their hand starts bleeding."
Communists using a vanguard party is to defend their own interests against capitalists or outside invaders. The praise of the CPSU in Stalin's era was precisely because it acted as a development and protection tool for the working class. It did its job and people were wary of any return to the previous Tsarist or liberal governments. Women began going to school, women were given the vote for the first time. Pogroms ceased. In less than one lifetime of the CPSU administrating the country, people went from poor farmers to living in apartments with plumbing, heating, and clean medical care. That's why there was such praise of the party, because they actually did things people liked, and they didn't want anything to threaten them.
Also, what does it matter if there's one party or two? The working class have a singular, uniting interest to overthrow capitalism. Why are multiple parties needed? Anything the working class needs to negotiate for can be handled within a socialist, democratic structure, not two or three competing structures against one another. Take a look at Cuba, which has one party, but doesn't use their party to endorse candidates. Everyone's officially an independent in the National Assembly.
This was an enlightening comment and I appreciate it. I may not agree with all of it but it definitely shows there are some perspectives I haven't considered. A parliamentary or council type system could definitely provide enough representation of different working class communities within a single party. I wonder if they had term limits, or if their representatives would fall into the same hole as the US Congress.
You might be interested in Cuba's representative system then. Politicians there aren't allowed to propose policy or platforms, instead they act purely as representatives from community interests. Cubans can initiate votes of non-confidence in their politicians as well, at any point to have them removed from office. They don't make great salaries either, and if they're party members they're required to pay regular dues. There aren't term limits. I remember there was some kind of referendum a while ago about Cuban term limits and they were declared undemocratic, plus they didn't make sense in regards to Cuba's long term economic plans.
Cuba has one of the most robust democracies in the world. Their constitution was rewritten in 2019 and it was a countrywide effort, starting at things like local union halls and referendums sent to people's homes.
See that's how you fuckin do it. I've always been angry with the US for holding Cuba back. I would love to see where they would be now without the sanctions.
Wouldn't party dues be a bad thing here because they gate poorer members?
Not sure how Cuban party dues work, but I do know there's an application process and not everyone gets membership. Not sure how it works in regards to income level either
The common socialist position is that term limits are anti-democratic not just because they keep people from voting for who they want to but, more significantly, it tilts the scales in favor of structures that do not have term limits. In the US, for example, elections are essentially completely controlled by private companies from the media to the National Conventions, and term limits check the power of popular candidates (and therefore popular sentiment) versus capital, which does not expire in 8 years.
I'm confused how he could make these observations and remain a lib, what happened?
He was a professor at Harvard most of his career, if that explains anything. He's also on record calling the January 6th capitol thing a fascist coup attempt.
I do think it was an attempt. They just didn’t even know that a coup attempt involved more than walking in the door and demanding Trump be president. The next one in America will involve mass killing, and it will be from a similar demographic.
Yeah we're still in a position where American fascism doesn't even recognize itself in the mirror. It doesn't realize it's a movement that needs coherent aims. It's still stuck in the American paradigm of politics as consumerism. A comrade the other day here said the explicit kind of American fascism is having a hard time getting off the ground because they refuse to adopt socialist rhetoric, like European fascist movements in the past.
Yea that’s well said, also American fascists luckily have no history to look back to that’s before the US state formation. So instead of wanting a new system, they just want their guy to play President as they sit on the couch.
If i remember his book correctly, at start he explicitly denies marxist definition of fascism, and then in course of the book his research lead straight to it being correct on at least two separate occasions, them makes full stop and end the topic when he realise what would he have to write next.
I don't know if thats merely ritually exorcising communism in order to have his book accepted by liberal academia (like in case of Geza Alfoldy for example) or he really is this intellectually dishonest, because he clearly did realised. Anyway it was funny as hell and the book isn't even bad.
Possibly because of the way he's found his career. Paxton is very popular in France and was very instrumental in introducing liberal historiography into French WW2 history. For him to throw a bone to Marxists would be undermining how he earned a name for himself in the first place.
Yeah i see that in polish social sciences too, especially by older authors, it's hard here to keep position in the academia without paying at least lip service to anticommunist witchhunt. Unfortunately even those people are already dead and the new ones are not even shy about being opportunists, most books publish nowadays are almost worthless since it's either anticommunist propaganda, pophistory or bland compilations from older ones.
"Replace the word 'pollution' with the word 'jews' and captain planet looks pretty fascist!"
I'm sure a lot of people will chime in, I just want to add this short vid with Domenico Losurdo.Here.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/kMxrFxDKDiw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
A different response, which comes from a different angle to those pointing out that Marxism-Leninism is not fascist:
The word 'fascism' is used so fast and loosely outside of a technical context that I wouldn't say one interpretation is necessarily right or wrong. It depends on context. (Incidentally, same for 'socialism', even principled well-read communists can't agree on a definition.)
For example, if we're talking about the actual Fascist ideology (think of Mussolini and associates) then I would even hesitate to include Nazism due to the very different roots: they're both nationalist anti-liberal anti-democratic, anti-socialist 'third way' ideologies and they did ally in the war, sure, but to group them both as 'fascism' trivializes core differences in how they formed, why they successfully formed, how they appealed to their followers (fascism actually recruited many self-identifying socialists in Italy and its important to recognise why to prevent it), and why they were ultimately antisocial and unsuccessful in their goals.
This isn't just some academic masturbation nitpicking or anything: I believe that the ignorance of Classical Fascism by lumping it in with the far more obvious and baseless idiocy of Nazism makes it harder to recognize and counter, especially when neo-Nazis are such ridiculous cartoonish farces. Fascism stemmed from National Syndicalism and has core economic ideas like corporatism (from 'corpus') that could fool people, and sounds much less stupid that Hitler's bizzare esoteric fantasies about Aryan racial supremacy: even Mussolini considered Hitler crazy.
The point of me making this distinction is that the dictionary definition you gave isn't even wrong in describing fascist ideologies, but, I don't think that list of common traits should be mistaken for a definition. Those traits are the results, not the foundation of the ideology, and a neo-liberal state like the USA can easily match many of those traits despite being a very distinct ideology. Any you will absolutely see people saying 'USA is fascist' as a shorthand for nationalist, racist, imperialist, oppressive, blah blah blah, but it's definitely not post-National-Syndicalist faux-socialist corporatist collectivism. We should obviously fight both but they are not the same and manifest differently.
in that one episode