The whole "social democracy is the moderate wing of fascism" thing really pisses me off. If liberals == fascists, then words don't fucking mean anything.
How is it any different? Because they kill 20 million communists in Indonesia and Latam instead of inside their own borders?
Edit: The DSA aren't in power nationally and have yet to truly confront the contradictions of imperialism and the welfare state. In the best case scenario where they take power they will be forced to confront them.
The party will eventually have to choose between taking a revolutionary stance or choose reform and thereby wither in consent to capitalist imperialism. That will be decided by whether the socialists can win out over the social democrats.
Berniecrats tend to not understand imperialism or completely support it through ways they think is different than right wingers.
The difference between saying that putting kids in immigrant cages is bad but unilateral bombings in the middle east is good is superficial, from the point of view of the victim both are fascist actions.
There is no such thing as something that is "fascist" according to the point of view of the victim. Fascism is not an action, or a relation between humans, it's a movement, or a way to organize a state. Imperialism alone isn't fascism, it is meaningful to make distinctions because we have historical precedent and we have to know what precisely something is similar to to know how to treat it.
The Bernie libs are by far the best allies you can have right now in the US, including for anti imperialism. It is fascinating that a sub full of people who were Bernie libs 2 years ago or less is so intent on calling them fascists.
I forget where I heard it (might have been on here), but someone once posted that a better way of looking at it is that social democracy is the left wing of capitalism and fascism is the right wing of capitalism. I never liked the original quote, there's no such thing as moderate fascism.
Except capitalism tends to exploit the wealth difference between regional and ethnic cohorts, while social democracy tends to smooth them over. As anyone familiar with the Volker-Era and the demand for a permanent tranche of unemployment can tell you, it's neither fascism nor social democracy that forces people into poverty through monetary policy. Neither are responsible for artificial shortfalls in food, health care, housing, or education.
The artificial scarcities of capitalism may polarize people into social democrat (we have enough if we redistribute it) and fascist (we only have enough for my people) camps. But they are not wings of capitalism, just political outgrowths of the material conditions capitalism creates.
I don't think it's any different when liberals kill and improvish millions of foreigners to maintain their hegemon and rate of profit but they're "nice" to people living within their borders.
Even then look at how Sweden and France reacting to refugees and how thin that veneer of civility and tolerance is. They don't really see the others as full and equal human beings. They still see themselves as more worthy than the poor under their boots, when they even think about them at all.
There's a real and ~ m a t e r i a l ~ difference between social democrats and fascists, like as an active leftist who do you need to know is in your neighborhood, social democrats going to brunch or actual fascists with guns and an explicitly extremist agenda for racial extermination?
See, I find that saying things that mangle words to the absolute limits of their meanings for shock value is actually a bad way to make people have better opinions.
Hot take here:
The whole "social democracy is the moderate wing of fascism" thing really pisses me off. If liberals == fascists, then words don't fucking mean anything.
How is it any different? Because they kill 20 million communists in Indonesia and Latam instead of inside their own borders?
Edit: The DSA aren't in power nationally and have yet to truly confront the contradictions of imperialism and the welfare state. In the best case scenario where they take power they will be forced to confront them.
The party will eventually have to choose between taking a revolutionary stance or choose reform and thereby wither in consent to capitalist imperialism. That will be decided by whether the socialists can win out over the social democrats.
Why do you think it has to do with how many people someone killed and where?
Berniecrats tend to not understand imperialism or completely support it through ways they think is different than right wingers. The difference between saying that putting kids in immigrant cages is bad but unilateral bombings in the middle east is good is superficial, from the point of view of the victim both are fascist actions.
There is no such thing as something that is "fascist" according to the point of view of the victim. Fascism is not an action, or a relation between humans, it's a movement, or a way to organize a state. Imperialism alone isn't fascism, it is meaningful to make distinctions because we have historical precedent and we have to know what precisely something is similar to to know how to treat it.
The Bernie libs are by far the best allies you can have right now in the US, including for anti imperialism. It is fascinating that a sub full of people who were Bernie libs 2 years ago or less is so intent on calling them fascists.
I forget where I heard it (might have been on here), but someone once posted that a better way of looking at it is that social democracy is the left wing of capitalism and fascism is the right wing of capitalism. I never liked the original quote, there's no such thing as moderate fascism.
social democracy is the carrot of capitalism, while fascism is the stick
Except capitalism tends to exploit the wealth difference between regional and ethnic cohorts, while social democracy tends to smooth them over. As anyone familiar with the Volker-Era and the demand for a permanent tranche of unemployment can tell you, it's neither fascism nor social democracy that forces people into poverty through monetary policy. Neither are responsible for artificial shortfalls in food, health care, housing, or education.
The artificial scarcities of capitalism may polarize people into social democrat (we have enough if we redistribute it) and fascist (we only have enough for my people) camps. But they are not wings of capitalism, just political outgrowths of the material conditions capitalism creates.
:this:
I don't think it's any different when liberals kill and improvish millions of foreigners to maintain their hegemon and rate of profit but they're "nice" to people living within their borders.
Even then look at how Sweden and France reacting to refugees and how thin that veneer of civility and tolerance is. They don't really see the others as full and equal human beings. They still see themselves as more worthy than the poor under their boots, when they even think about them at all.
There's a real and ~ m a t e r i a l ~ difference between social democrats and fascists, like as an active leftist who do you need to know is in your neighborhood, social democrats going to brunch or actual fascists with guns and an explicitly extremist agenda for racial extermination?
I don't literally believe that but I say it to be provocative to soc dems when they support US interventions and stuff like that
See, I find that saying things that mangle words to the absolute limits of their meanings for shock value is actually a bad way to make people have better opinions.
what's a better way to address a person trying to convince me there's a pragmatic number of children to blow up?
That's still imperialism. That's not a mangling of words.