Fascism!

massrock

Well-known member
i applaud your line of enquiry and know what you mean.
Though in terms of now I can see that what it means to be a communist has changed quite a bit since the fall of the Soviet Union so I wouldn't want to get too hung up on that point.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I would move to Switzerland like a shot.

I've lived there, it's very nice. Though as you can imagine there's a sort of trade-off between pretty and boring. Not that there's anything boring about skiing or walking in the mountains...but, y'know.

Lots of great cheese. Some surprisingly drinkable domestic wine.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I once drove around Europe and the most beautiful part of the whole journey was from Zurich down to Luzern and the breathtaking Swiss-Italian border (I eventually came to a standstill at Lake Como).. I've been yearning to go back ever since.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
How about, do you think to some degree a sense of pride in nation, maybe even destiny, has been revived in America?

excellent question Massrock.

Obama's a far more eloquent 'city on the hill' testifier than his predecessor, and the fact that there are some fine steps he's taken to cleanse some of the worst excesses - black sites, torture debates, intention to close Gitmo, respectful language toward other states - of Dubya, must mean many, many more Americans are re-energised? (though there's a vocal Tea Party minority busy cleaning their weapons, of course.)

the flip-side of my Swiss/Portuguese question is of course, in the 80s, which democracy had the most antipathy among its general population toward Iron Curtain countries?

USA - as Massrock and others discussing - must be a candidate, and also i'm sure the likes of Finland. (though i of course hear what P and Nomad are saying.) but again this is just me thinking aloud on a curio.

i didn't know that about their wine, T. sounds cool.
any recommendations spring to mind?

and how long did you live there for?

when was that journey undertaken, again, Ollie? i remember you mentioning before now.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
There is a bad dialectic about that: one party says: "Communism was murderous" the other party says: "Communism was a beautiful dream/betrayed by Stalin/contained some good points/etc." Not mich progress is made.

quite true - an excellent summation Josef, as usual.

parts of both statements are partly true & I don't think they are mutually exclusive. I reckon the debate, such as it is, is more over what is inherently "murderous" about Communism-in-practice, what can be chalked down to "honest mistakes", & what could actually be called a "betrayal", i.e. Stalin's many excesses.

personally I find much of worth in communism, both in theory & in lessons that can be learned from its successes & failures in application. I am also, however, exceedingly wary, which I think quite warranted.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
so is america a fascist state ?

no, neither economically nor politically. unless we're using "fascist" as an utterly meaningless pejorative. which I thought this thread was about in the first place...?

there are many criticisms one can make of the US but "fascist" is not one of them.

How about, do you think to some degree a sense of pride in nation, maybe even destiny, has been revived in America?

this, on the other hand, is a valid question.

it heavily depends on what you mean by "pride in nation". for the Tea Party/Palin/etc. part of population I don't think anything needs to be revived. also, resistance to Obama may/probably go hand in hand with what they view as national pride. for people who were largely appalled by the Bush administration I think you could say that. I dunno about destiny - frankly I don't most ppl think about national destiny that much, they're too busy worrying about their job security, bills, etc. - but definitely a sense that Obama will come in & clean things up as Scott mentioned.

not that those categories are clearly delineated or that everyone fits into one of them, of course.

& in the sense you mean I think things were much worse in 2004.
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
And yes most people may not have been immediately worried about communism so much as nuclear war but I would still say that the general attitude to someone declaring themselves to be a communist would have a been a hostile one from many, many American residents, whether this be justified, ill-informed or whatever.

there's declaring yourself to be a communist & there's being a communist academic.

& the point is not that there was no hostility to communism, it's that it didn't/doesn't compare in the least to the hysteria & paranoia of the 50s, when it in fact took a lot of courage to call yourself a communist, was a serious risk, could have severely negative implications for your career, etc. keeping in mind that many, many of the people persecuted during the Red Scare were not communists/fellow travelers & that many of them were in fact hostile to communism & the Soviets. keep in mind also that the Red Scare itself was a political tool the Republicans used to get back into power as much as it was an actual fear of communism & infiltration. McCarthy took up his crusade largely to have on an issue on which to be re-elected & the Republicans used him as a blunt object to smash against Truman (also the claim that he "lost China", etc.) - of course the monster they created got out of their control before the Senate & Murrow & so on were able to reel him in.

Whatever, maybe as you suggest it's a nice safe path to take which doesn't entail meeting lots of massively unfavourable associations.

really, tell me what risks Alain Badiou or you or anyone else in America or Western Europe is taking by calling themself a communist in 2009?

what enormous prejudices are you facing?

come on now.
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
also massrock, I dunno why you're so fixated on whether Americans were by & large more critical than Western Europeans of communism during the 80s (the answer - yes, but not by an overwhelming margin).

with respect to you (& considerably more respect to Scott) it comes off rather like 3rd rate Tocqueville-ism.

I'm also amused by the claim that I'm/we're deaf to the pulse of America, or what have you, cos I'm wrapped up in some kind of "far left" cocoon.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
i didn't know that about their wine, T. sounds cool.
any recommendations spring to mind?

and how long did you live there for?

Heh, not likely, they don't export any of it. I dunno if it was world-class or anything, just pleasantly priced because it was local (Switzerland, as you can imagine, being on the whole Not Cheap). And one day a year, in the spring, all les caves in the canton (Geneva) open their doors and do free tastings...mostly whites and rosés. I had a very lovely, and by the end mildly sozzled, bike ride through bucolic Suisse Romande with some mates - then we went back to someone's flat and watched Eurovision, which is followed all the typical small-country enthusiasm you'd expect.

I was there for a year, working at the Death Donut (TM). :)

Ollie is right, it's daan saaf that the really stunning scenery is to be found. Had a walk in the early autumn around the Interlaken region, the landscape is so beautiful it's almost too much - I think the adjective that sprang to mind at the time was 'pornographic'.
 

massrock

Well-known member
I was going to let it go at first - but now you're clearly trying to imply that our critiques of communism are tainted by some kind of American anti-Communist hysteria. as if being suspicious & loathsome of an ideology that has done a great deal more harm than good & spilt rivers of utopian blood could only be motivated by Cold War paranoia. as if anyone who is suspicious of the Catholic Church must be anti-Catholic, and everyone critical of Israel is an anti-Semite. if that's the best smear you've got, then really, stop embarassing yourself.

it is laughable. it also ignores that we're, of course, far more critical of capitalism. the main word here being critical as in, yunno, the ability to think critically.
Would that be critiques such as this padraig.

http://dissensus.com/showpost.php?p=181316&postcount=831

Embarrassing myself, tsk. I think it's embarrassing when that sort of thing is tacitly endorsed by a community really. No, not embarrassing, disappointing though, there's other ways to handle disagreements.

That's why I was wondering about current attitudes to communism in the US and where they might have come from but of course I see now that was an overly generous reading of what was going on there.
 
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massrock

Well-known member
also massrock, I dunno why you're so fixated on whether Americans were by & large more critical than Western Europeans of communism during the 80s (the answer - yes, but not by an overwhelming margin).

with respect to you (& considerably more respect to Scott) it comes off rather like 3rd rate Tocqueville-ism.
I'm not and I have no idea what that is lol.
 

massrock

Well-known member
I'm also amused by the claim that I'm/we're deaf to the pulse of America, or what have you, cos I'm wrapped up in some kind of "far left" cocoon.
Never made that claim, that's a gross misreading on both counts. With respect.

nomadthethird said:
There are actually tons of far left people in the U.S. All kinds of them. They are pretty damn vocal, too, and were especially in the 90s. Funnily enough, the U.S. has been on the "vanguard" of many equal rights movements--feminism, civil rights, gay rights, etc. (Of course, all of that is just "traitor" "liberal" bullshit...)
Just said that's obviously not the milieu I had in mind when thinking about wider attitudes to the com.

God, the common language barrier!
 
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massrock

Well-known member
You have this way of making a statement, then when you're called out on it, insisting that you've been misread. But not offering any explanation as to how, or why, or what you actually meant.

Convenient.
Not only is that a massive generalisation based on no evidence at all, it's just completely untrue in the first instance.

And this is because I don't want to bore everyone to death explaining it to you.
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
nny29zv.jpg
 
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