Fascism!
- Thread starter josef k.
- Start date
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
if the shoe fits.
scottdisco
rip this joint please
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I don't really believe you but if you say so then fine, benefit of the doubt & so on.
I'd still like to hear tho what anyone living in a liberal democracy - the situations of people under more totalitarian regimes obv being different - supposedly risks declaring themself a communist & advocating for communism (or the communist hypothesis or whatever). why, specifically, is post-Cold War communism not an easy out? I'm willing to be convinced but you haven't really done anything other than say "you're wrong" repeatedly.
on a possibly related note, I think that many people, especially radicals (as well as artists) - & this is by no means limited to communists - desire, subconsciously to varying degrees, to be repressed or censored. people who don't actually live under heavily repressive regimes of course. it is an understandable feeling but not, it would seem, a productive one. tbc, I don't mean in this instance in particular, I mean in general. just thinking out loud too - I feel like someone more learned could express what I'm trying to say better.
It's easier when people don't hallucinate shoes.
mistadubalina
Banned
Can someone please define for me a fascist state and name one.
Does it have to be absolutely fascist to qualify. Like is it an all or nothing thing ?
Can a state be 80% fascist or is it like the 'one drop rule' ?
Does it have to be absolutely fascist to qualify. Like is it an all or nothing thing ?
Can a state be 80% fascist or is it like the 'one drop rule' ?
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
alright, let's drop it then. in the name of fostering better communication. I'm still hardpressed to understand the (seeming) fixation on the U.S. in the 80s but since that seems to be holding up any other discussion, let's just drop it.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
a current one, you mean? cos the classic examples are obv Italy & (depending on how & how narrowly you define fascism) Nazi Germany.
definitions vary but as I understand it key elements include (but may not be limited to) - the ultimate valuing of the whole (& the state) over the individual, authoritarian, economy heavily regulated by the state tho not as heavily as in communism, favoring action over thought - anti-intellectualism, conformity & in turn fear/ostracization/attacks on those who are "different" & vulnerable - minorities etc., elitism- an obsession w/strength & contempt for the weak, reactionary, ultranationalism. there are other things too - cult of personality in a dictator, manipulative use of false populism. others may disagree & people may have said (or refuted) many of these things already in this thread but frankly I'm not going to read over 1000 posts - tho I certainly applaud scott for doing so!
& I don't think there are really "absolutes" - politics is a spectrum.
Last edited:
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Uhh...just out of curiosity--how would you know when I was born?
And that doesn't really matter, does it, since I've still spent much more time in the U.S. than you have. I live here.
When were you born? 5 years before me in a different country? That must make you an expert on what was going on in the U.S. in the early 80s. What were you, 4yo in 1980? Come on now...
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Oh, there's a huge amount of glamorization (among self-proclaimed radicals) of the "good old days" when fashionably communist artists were oppressed in the West...
The persecution complex is something you don't just see in artists, or communists, either...look at evangelicals in the U.S. They're one of the loudest political lobbies and biggest, most catered-to demographics, and they're still constantly howling about how tough they have/had it, and how persecuted they are for their beliefs. It's laughable.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Hey Padraig, it's not that massrock didn't communicate well, it's that you just "misread" him. Of course.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Do you have a learning disability? That was not serious, for fuck's sake. That came after my fucking LIFE had been threatened by Nikbee--which, of course, I had the good sense not to take seriously, either, but to make fun of instead--so who's the "victim" here? Get a grip.
See, it's ok for "communists" to go around talking about who they're going to send to labor camps when they get into power, as long as they're "joking", but then if anybody else makes similarly silly claims to draw out the inherent nonsensical nature of "communist" threats, that's no joke.
WTF? Who is this guy? Is he for real at all?
Last edited:
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Padraig, don't let him try to make you feel like you "hallucinated" that stuff about 80s fixation...he threw that out there at least 3 times before you even responded to it, and then continued the debate after you did. So fuck all of the "I didn't say that!" bullshit.
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
nomadthethird is dead, long live nomadthesecond....
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Ha! Didn't even notice...must be the admins turned it back on? I don't know. I used my fingerprint reader and it signed me into this one.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
the point i am about to make is a side-issue and irrelevant to the main thread and has nothing to do with any poster here, but i really like what Nomad says here. my own experiences are, of course, my own, and so very anecdotal and partial, but i have spent a long time living in the USA, and quite a long time bumming around a good deal of her territory, and - whether on the European mainland or back in my native Britain or Ireland - have very frequently encountered the sorts of attitudes from my fellow Europeans to the Yanks that Nomad mentions.
it's a two-way street of course, and some septic fuckwits have got my back up in the past with things, but in general the average relatively (or even totally) ignorant American - in my very partial, limited experience - has been far more respectful to my side of the pond than vice-versa.
(i know of other friends in my boat who would say the same. eg i remember a conversation with a mate who works nonstop and was real excited to take himself around Boston, NYC, and Albany for three weeks on public transport for a much needed holiday and his impeccably social-liberal Guardian reading co-worker back here in England really rained on his parade before with some very mean-spirited sweeping generalisations about the States and Yanks.)
i am sure this will not surprise anybody here, but just saying, like.
anyway, having spent about five beguiling weeks once getting from Montreal to Vancouver, i'm with Nomad on the lovely Canada tip
Thanks, Scott. I've encountered these attitudes everywhere I've been outside the U.S., and I have to say it's offputting. It really is.
And I'd never say Americans don't (some of them) have strange/silly/outdated ideas of what British people are like (you know, in their minds it's still Marry Poppins over there)...
But anyway, I've met ignorant people everywhere I've ever been. Europe most definitely included.
P.S. Most Americans laugh at the use of "yankees" to mean Americans, since that was a Confederate army slang term for Union soldiers and northerners.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
I would probably kill some communists for a house on Lake Como.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I was just thinking about this earlier, the way you always hear conservatives banging on about how "you can't say anything these days" because of "the liberal (sic) media". There's a comparable situation over here with the Daily Mail, which seems to regard the BBC as little more than a front for the Socialist Workers' Party, the coming EU superstate and/or al-Qaeda.
This despite the BBC's tendency, for example, to give Israel an unreasonably easy time in the news (as documented extensively here by droid a few months back).
Last edited: