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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
That isn’t the point; it’s that your rhetoric is self-defeating.
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
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.
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
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.