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Thread: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

  1. #41

    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by pacifism View Post
    This is like pulling teeth. In what specific policies were they identical?
    How were they different?
    Quote Originally Posted by Muizer View Post
    Dutch state broadcaster pulls logo from vans after attacks




    Terrorism tsar warns about far right violence, as MPs and journalists face abuse



    It seem the crackpot conspiracy theorists have crossed yet another threshold. Apparently no longer content to congregate with like-minded people in internet echo chambers, they're taking to the streets to save us from the free press and elected representatives. Mind you, despite being associated with the far right, the motivations are often extremely diverse and more often opportunistic rather than ideological. Authority of any kind seems to be the common enemy though, which leads to bizarre marriages of ideas

    "Nooo, you can't just ignore our journooos because they keep making up, this is abuuuuse"
    Its funny how in reality (as opposed to crackpot claims from alphabet journos), far-left is the main threat. So much for "threat of right-wing violence", huh?
    Last edited by Heathen Hammer; October 19, 2020 at 10:50 AM.

  2. #42
    pacifism's Avatar see the day
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    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    How were they different?
    This is like pulling teeth. In what specific policies were they identical?
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  3. #43

    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by pacifism View Post
    This is like pulling teeth. In what specific policies were they identical?
    Economy? Same.
    Foreign policy? Same.
    State of democracy? Same.
    Individual freedoms? Same.
    Ideology - almost same, with slight cosmetic differences aside, revolutionary marxist basis was identical.
    I guess the only difference is that Lenin came to power because of German-backed coup, while NSDAP got elected because Weimar government was an inept mess. Heck, if Hitler didn't win, then commies would, most likely with similar results.

  4. #44
    Muizer's Avatar member 3519
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    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    "Nooo, you can't just ignore our journooos because they keep making up, this is abuuuuse"
    They're not just ignoring mainstream media and politicians. They are not just criticizing them. They are starting to seek them out up close and personal and intimidating/threatening them. They are in fact attacking other people's rights to follow the media of their choice and be represented by politicians of their choice.
    "Lay these words to heart, Lucilius, that you may scorn the pleasure which comes from the applause of the majority. Many men praise you; but have you any reason for being pleased with yourself, if you are a person whom the many can understand?" - Lucius Annaeus Seneca -

  5. #45
    alhoon's Avatar Comes Rei Militaris
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    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Ahh... Duterte news.

    https://apnews.com/article/asia-paci...1e0fbfeb5db383

    “If you get killed, it’s because I’m enraged by drugs,” <=== not the best defense against accusations for crimes against humanity.

    Now, let's go on with more gems:
    “If there’s killing there, I’m saying I’m the one ... you can hold me responsible for anything, any death that has occurred in the execution of the drug war,” Duterte said.
    +
    "At least two complaints for crimes against humanity and mass murder in connection with Duterte’s campaign are being examined"
    +
    when did “drugs become humanity?”
    Right. So... encouraging.

    Police have reported at least 5,856 drug suspects have been killed in raids and more than 256,000 others arrested since the start of the crackdown. Human rights groups have accused authorities of considerably under reporting the deaths.
    Oh, great 6000 dead in raids + 260K arrests are what the authoritarian regime reports. The numbers are probably much larger than 6000 suspects (i.e. not condemned in any court) killed.

    Well, I am all for being tough on drugs but I was never that radical.


    Random note: the drug dealers were bearing arms and still the government caught them!
    One would think that just having guns would not be enough to stop the government so the argument "guns protect my liberty!" is kinda trash...
    alhoon is not a member of the infamous Hoons: a (fictional) nazi-sympathizer KKK clan. Of course, no Hoon would openly admit affiliation to the uninitiated.
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  6. #46
    Morticia Iunia Bruti's Avatar Praeses
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    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Only because the drug dealers hadn't the newest automatic rifles! Our Liberty demands M16 for everyone!^^
    Cause tomorrow is a brand-new day
    And tomorrow you'll be on your way
    Don't give a damn about what other people say
    Because tomorrow is a brand-new day


  7. #47
    pacifism's Avatar see the day
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    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    Economy? Same.
    Foreign policy? Same.
    State of democracy? Same.
    Individual freedoms? Same.
    Ideology - almost same, with slight cosmetic differences aside, revolutionary marxist basis was identical.
    I guess the only difference is that Lenin came to power because of German-backed coup, while NSDAP got elected because Weimar government was an inept mess. Heck, if Hitler didn't win, then commies would, most likely with similar results.
    Thank you, that’s very helpful.

    Soviet Russia in the 1920s and Nazi Germany in the 1930s were both pretty disrespectful towards democracy and individual rights once they took power – guess which one had the slogan “collective interest over self” – so I won’t bother looking a meaningless distinction there. But to be honest, that is a pretty superficial similarity because it’s true for pretty much every dictatorship ever.

    I don’t see how their foreign policy is similar at. Lenin’s peace with Germany in WWI and willing offer of national secession movements allowed for the independence of the exact same lands that the Nazis conquered, pillaged, and attempted to turn into German blood and soil. All of that was – shall we say – some fairly significant parts of both of those countries’ history and foreign policy.

    It’s interesting that you said that their economic policies are the same. The Nazis actually a pretty unique economic policy in that they really didn’t have an economic policy. They didn’t emphasize economic policy at all because their ideology was centered around race. Their plan to alleviate their high deficit spending on the military buildup was to plunder the countries they were going to invade. Before the war, the NDSAP basically just did a lot of privatization and crony contracting, unlike most other countries at the time:
    http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capi...Scherner06.pdf
    http://www.ub.edu/graap/nazi.pdf

    Clearly, Nazi privatization is not an identical policy as Leninist policies of nationalizing major industries and land redistribution. The NDSAP let the economy run on anti-union corporatism, while Lenin was pretty clearly anti-corporate. Lenin moved in stages and ruled by decree (something his contemporaries criticized him for), but it was clearly pursuing a Marxist vision of the class struggle. It’s kind of obvious that the Nazis opposed a certain 19th-century laissez-faire capitalism, but so did a lot of people by that time, like FDR. What evidence do you have that there was a clear Marxist vision behind Nazi economic policy?

    I think it’s pretty clear that the Nazis portrayed an ideological difference between themselves and Marxism. For example, they claimed that The Jews were behind the Bolshevik revolution and Germany’s defeat in WWI. It was a part of the classic self-contradictory anti-Semitic canard: The Jews were somehow both the creators and masters of capitalism and Marxists plotting to overthrow capitalism at the same time. They called modern art that they disliked “Cultural Bolshevism” while mocking it as “degenerate art” and then suppressing and destroying it. If the Nazis equated communism with Jews, surely I don’t have explain to you what that says about their ideological differences. I’m not going to suggest that anyone actually read Mein Kampf, but if someone did, they would see strong anti-Semitism and anti-communism.

    I mean, really, read some Wikipedia articles. Fascists and Nazis described themselves as taking the third option between capitalism and Marxism. I don’t get how anyone can even have a good grasp of both ideologies and still think that communists and Nazis were secretly the same thing all along. Communism was meant to be a radical equality that abolished hierarchy; Nazism was the celebration and expansion of race-based hierarchies. Any similarities in their actions are derived from their mutual totalitarianism and just being extremists who enjoy killing their enemies, not identical ideology. To be blunt, everyone knows that right-wing and left-wing politics are broad generalizations that doesn’t mean good guys and bad guys. There are intra-wing disagreements and infighting just as much as their inter-wing ones as well.
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  8. #48
    alhoon's Avatar Comes Rei Militaris
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    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by pacifism View Post
    I don’t get how anyone can even have a good grasp of both ideologies and still think that communists and Nazis were secretly the same thing all along. Communism was meant to be a radical equality that abolished hierarchy; Nazism was the celebration and expansion of race-based hierarchies. Any similarities in their actions are derived from their mutual totalitarianism and just being extremists who enjoy killing their enemies, not identical ideology. To be blunt, everyone knows that right-wing and left-wing politics are broad generalizations that doesn’t mean good guys and bad guys. There are intra-wing disagreements and infighting just as much as their inter-wing ones as well.
    While the above is a good synopsis, I would defer you to HH's earlier distinctions:
    More or less he equates "Totalitarian" with "leftwing" as he considers this the most important distinction. As such, it is very difficult to speak with him as he blatantly refuses to use the actual vocabulary that the vast majority of other people use.

    It doesn't matter that 95% of people call Nazis and fascists "far right" and equate far-right with racial supremacist movements. From HH's posts in this thread it is apparent that he refuses to speak the same language as most of us. This is also true for a stubborn 3%-4% of alt-rights: They refuse to use the words like other people do.
    As such, while it is infuriating and makes communication difficult, all we can do is... rant. And that's the thread to do it.


    You can present as many arguments as you want but it doesn't matter. Communication with such a person that practically speaks a different language will be difficult and confusing.
    Last edited by alhoon; October 22, 2020 at 05:12 AM.
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  9. #49

    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by pacifism View Post
    It’s interesting that you said that their economic policies are the same. The Nazis actually a pretty unique economic policy in that they really didn’t have an economic policy. They didn’t emphasize economic policy at all because their ideology was centered around race. Their plan to alleviate their high deficit spending on the military buildup was to plunder the countries they were going to invade. Before the war, the NDSAP basically just did a lot of privatization and crony contracting, unlike most other countries at the time
    The war was the NSDAP's economic policy. It was a model planned around, and reliant upon, an Alexandrian scale conquest of the East which was intended to break the dominance of both international capitalism and Soviet communism.

    Spoiler for Prior comments on a similar topic
    Quote Originally Posted by Cope View Post
    Framing the Second World War as just another aristocratic/imperialist land grab is a mistake. The land and resources which the NSDAP aimed to acquire were not meant to be transferred from one elite to another. The party's economic intentions can be summarized in this way: (1) to reunite the German nation into a single polity; (2) to redistribute eastern lands from Slavic natives to German settlers; (3) to invest the great wealth and assets of Europe into the greater German community with a mind to elevating the German people; (4) to eradicate the so-called "degeneracy" of both international consumerism and international communism; (5) to break free of the external constraints of the international community (autarky) by ensuring the Reich's access to vital strategic resources and arable land.


    I don’t get how anyone can even have a good grasp of both ideologies and still think that communists and Nazis were secretly the same thing all along. Communism was meant to be a radical equality that abolished hierarchy; Nazism was the celebration and expansion of race-based hierarchies. Any similarities in their actions are derived from their mutual totalitarianism and just being extremists who enjoy killing their enemies, not identical ideology. To be blunt, everyone knows that right-wing and left-wing politics are broad generalizations that doesn’t mean good guys and bad guys. There are intra-wing disagreements and infighting just as much as their inter-wing ones as well.
    Communism and national socialism were not "the same", but they were both expressions of revolutionary Marxism:

    Spoiler for The Lost literature of Socialism
    It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Hitler and his associates believed they were socialists, and that others, including democratic socialists, sometimes thought so too. The title of National Socialism was not hypocritical. The evidence before 1945 was more private than public, which is perhaps significant in itself. In public Hitler was always anti-Marxist, and in an age in which the Soviet Union was the only socialist state on earth, and with anti-Bolshevism a large part of his popular appeal, he may have been understandably reluctant to speak openly of his sources...

    His private conversations, however, though they do not overturn his reputation as an anti-Communist, qualify it heavily. Hermann Rauschning, for example, a Danzig Nazi who knew Hitler before and after his accession to power in 1933, tells how in private Hitler acknowledged his profound debt to the Marxian tradition. ‘I have learnt a great deal from Marxism’, he once remarked, ‘as I do not hesitate to admit’. He was proud of a knowledge of Marxist texts acquired in his student days before the first world war and later in a Bavarian prison in 1924, after the failure of the Munich putsch. The trouble with Weimar Republic politicians, he told Otto Wagener at much the same time, was that ‘they had never even read Marx’, implying that no one who had failed to read so important an author could begin to understand the modern world; in consequence, he went on, they imagined that the October revolution in 1917 had been ‘a private Russian affair’, whereas in fact it had changed the whole course of human history...

    ‘I [Hitler] have put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers [communist intellectuals] have timidly begun’, adding revealingly that ‘the whole of National Socialism’ was based on Marx. That is a devastating remark, and it is blunter than anything in his speeches or in Mein Kampf; though even in the autobiography he observes that his own doctrine was fundamentally distinguished from the Marxist by reason that it recognised the significance of race – implying, perhaps, that it might otherwise easily look like a derivative. Without race, he goes on, National Socialism ‘would really do nothing more than compete with Marxism on its own ground’. Perhaps that remark is as near as he gets, in any public statement, to acknowledging his Marxian debt. And at all such moments an inner logic and consistency can be perceived through the untidy prose of an untrained mind. He was not arguing to Rauschning or in Mein Kampf that he was, or had ever been, a Marxist. He was arguing that National Socialism was based on Marx.

    As for communists, he [Hitler] opposed them because ‘basically they are not socialistic’; they created mere herds, Soviet-style, without individual life, and his own ideal was ‘the socialism of nations’ rather than the international socialism of Marx and Lenin. The one and only problem of the age, he told Wagener, was to liberate labour and replace the rule of capital over labour with the rule of labour over capital...

    These are highly socialist sentiments, and if Wagener reports his master faithfully they leave no doubt about the conclusion: that Hitler was an unorthodox Marxist who knew his sources and knew how unorthodoxly he handled them. He was a dissident socialist. His programme was at once nostalgic and radical. It proposed to accomplish something that Christians had failed to act on and that communists before him had attempted and bungled. ‘What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish’, he told Wagener, ‘we shall be in a position to achieve’.

    That was the National Socialist vision of history. It was an exciting vision, at once traditional and new. Like all socialist views it was ultimately moral, and its economic and racial policies were seen as founded on universal moral laws. By the time such conversations saw the light of print, however, the world had put such matters far behind it, and it was less than ever ready to listen to the sayings of a crank or a clown.

    The Lost Literature of Socialism (2nd ed.), George Watson, 2010.
    Last edited by Cope; October 22, 2020 at 11:56 AM.



  10. #50
    pacifism's Avatar see the day
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    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    National socialism was never Marxist. It was a non-Marxist alternative to the word socialist that was meant to refer to promoting the social good. Their similarities is that they were both against laissez faire capitalism, and Marxism came first. That's pretty much it. Did national socialists ever believe in the class struggle? What about the common ownership of the means of production? Or "workers of the world, unite!"? No.

    @alhoon, well, maybe I'll just use small words and pictures to explain that authoritarianism can be left-wing or right-wing, if it comes to that.
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  11. #51

    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by pacifism View Post
    National socialism was never Marxist. It was a non-Marxist alternative to the word socialist that was meant to refer to promoting the social good. Their similarities is that they were both against laissez faire capitalism, and Marxism came first. That's pretty much it. Did national socialists ever believe in the class struggle? What about the common ownership of the means of production? Or "workers of the world, unite!"? No.
    The NSDAP's Marxist roots and socialist associations have been discussed at length here (the short answer to both your questions is yes). If you're not interested in Watson's remarks (cited above) I would recommend Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" for a thorough introduction to the subject.

    Spoiler for The Road to Serfdom
    The connection between socialism and nationalism in Germany was close from the beginning. It is significant that the most important ancestors of National Socialism - Fichte, Rodbertus, and Lassall - are at the same time acknowledged fathers of socialism. While theoretical socialism in its Marxist form was directing the German labour movement, the authoritarian and nationalist element receded for a time into the background. But not for long. From 1914 onwards there arose from the ranks of Marxist socialism one teacher after another who led, not the conservatives and reactionaries, but the hardworking labourer and idealist youth into the national-socialist fold. It was only thereafter that the tide of nationalist socialism attained major importance and rapidly grew into the Hitlerian doctrine. The war hysteria of1914, which, just because of the German defeat, was never fully cured, is the beginning of the modern development which produced National-Socialism, and it was largely with the assistance of old socialists that it rose during this period.

    The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek, 1944, pp. 173.
    Last edited by Cope; October 22, 2020 at 12:22 PM.



  12. #52
    Abdülmecid I's Avatar ˇAy Carmela!
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    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    I doubt partisan literature is a good introduction to anything, to be honest. Hayek's book is not even concerned with political science and history and was written in the midst of World War II. Both Hayek and Watson were ardent libertarians (the latter was also a member of the Liberal Party in the United Kingdom), whose aim is to push a specific agenda. The quoted passage of Hayek is too generic for any substantial criticism, but his partiality can still be easily detected. For example, he mentions that old Socialists assisted Nazis in their rise in politics, a claim that is only somewhat accurate and completely misleading. Namely, the SPD deployed far-right paramilitaries to crush the Spartacist Uprising the Red Army of the Rhur. So, the old Socialists used the predecessors of the Nazis with the goal of actually preventing a socialist revolution. He also fails to mention the alliance between Hitler and mainstream conservatives that allowed the former to install the dictatorship of the Nazi party. Hayek is silent about these unconvenient facts, because they dispute the central thesis of his book, which is not the roots of Nazism, but the inherent advantages of libertarian economics.

    As for Watso, his methodology is simply terrible. This is not the result of professional incompetence, but of bias, as Watson has quite a record of falsification. Memoirs definitely have a place in contemporary historiography as primary sources, but you cannot rely on them (Rauschning's especially are not viewed very positively) to reach such radical conclusions, which are not corroborated by supporting evidence. In fact, although Cope presents Watson's opinion as a fact, his position is considered fringe and not endorsed by academia. Presumably because it lacks any actual basis on more concrete criteria, like the party's manifesto and actual policy. In reality, Nazis appealed to the middle-class, not the proletariat, advocated for social welfare being limited to certain races, rejected socialisation in favour of profit-sharing, opposed internationalism, divided society along ethnic, not class lines, despised Marxism and considered militant leftists and trade unions as insidious and treacherous actors. Their last trait was manifested in several violent attacks of the far-right against politically organised workers, from 1920 and Biennio Rosso in Italy to 2012 and Perama in Greece. The efficiency of Nazis in combating Communist activism was immensely appreciated by oligarchs and conservatives, who either financed the Nazi party (Fritz Thyssen, Emil Kirdorf, Hjalmar Schacht, the Stiffen dynasty, Kurt von Schröder etc.) or praised it extraordinarily (conservative politician Winston Churchill being the most notorious but far from only example).

    The only ''Marxist'' element of Nazis was the criticism of a specific segment of the upper classes as morally nefarious and politically disloyal, which they labelled as Jewish and, rather ironically, blamed for defending the interests of foreign enemies, including the Soviet Union. However, you can't extrapolate from this that Communism and Nazism are ideologically close. By that logic, someone could assume that Nazism and everything between them and the center is the same thing, as the hostility against the left unites them in a common struggle. That being said, remnants of Nazism's primitive anti-establishment rhetoric still persist in the contemporary trend of accusing certain companies and members of the elite (not so coincidentally often composed of Jews, such as George Soros and the coastal urbanites of the United States) of being ''woke'', cosmopolitan, leftist or whatever.
    Last edited by Abdülmecid I; October 22, 2020 at 01:43 PM.

  13. #53
    pacifism's Avatar see the day
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    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cope View Post
    The NSDAP's Marxist roots and socialist associations have been discussed at length here (the short answer to both your questions is yes). If you're not interested in Watson's remarks (cited above) I would recommend Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" for a thorough introduction to the subject.
    Egad, you've both been at this for years. If you took a moment to think about what I wrote instead of covering for Heathen Hammer like an older brother whenever I criticize him, you would notice that I said NDSAP was not a capitalist movement. Twice. So I don't see what Hayek's criticism of central planning has to do with anything.

    Let's just take a step back. The Nazis were deeply critical and vicious rivals with the only Marxist state at the time. They called Soviet Russia the orchestrations of a Jewish conspiracy. They did not hold to anything close to Marxist values, follow a Marxist views of economics, or do anything to move towards Marx's post-capitalist vision for the world (not just the Nordic race). They were active enemies of communists, socialists, and trade unionists in Germany. So either they were some kind of weird, anti-communist Marxists who hated all the other Marxists and didn't in any way follow Marxism, or ... maybe they weren't all that Marxist at all.

    This conversation did not start out of a discussion of history. It didn't even start as a serious discussion of politics. This was started by the petty e-crusade by our resident alt-right-lite talking points poster trying to imply that the Nazis were actually left-wing in a desperate bid to justify defining "the left" as a euphemism for "all the bad guys". I don't think that summarizing politics into a one-dimensional gradient of left and right is particularly useful, but please, let's at least be honest about what they actually refer to.
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  14. #54

    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by Muizer View Post
    They're not just ignoring mainstream media and politicians. They are not just criticizing them. They are starting to seek them out up close and personal and intimidating/threatening them. They are in fact attacking other people's rights to follow the media of their choice and be represented by politicians of their choice.
    That's not what the article says though. A bunch of people are criticizing partisan and oikophobic journos, and journos confirm those accusations by trying to paint objective criticism as "abuse by evil racists". I guess the conclusion here is that Western journos for mainstream media need to stop acting like spoiled house pets.


    Quote Originally Posted by pacifism View Post
    Thank you, that’s very helpful.

    Soviet Russia in the 1920s and Nazi Germany in the 1930s were both pretty disrespectful towards democracy and individual rights once they took power – guess which one had the slogan “collective interest over self” – so I won’t bother looking a meaningless distinction there. But to be honest, that is a pretty superficial similarity because it’s true for pretty much every dictatorship ever.

    I don’t see how their foreign policy is similar at. Lenin’s peace with Germany in WWI and willing offer of national secession movements allowed for the independence of the exact same lands that the Nazis conquered, pillaged, and attempted to turn into German blood and soil. All of that was – shall we say – some fairly significant parts of both of those countries’ history and foreign policy.

    It’s interesting that you said that their economic policies are the same. The Nazis actually a pretty unique economic policy in that they really didn’t have an economic policy. They didn’t emphasize economic policy at all because their ideology was centered around race. Their plan to alleviate their high deficit spending on the military buildup was to plunder the countries they were going to invade. Before the war, the NDSAP basically just did a lot of privatization and crony contracting, unlike most other countries at the time:
    http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capi...Scherner06.pdf
    http://www.ub.edu/graap/nazi.pdf

    Clearly, Nazi privatization is not an identical policy as Leninist policies of nationalizing major industries and land redistribution. The NDSAP let the economy run on anti-union corporatism, while Lenin was pretty clearly anti-corporate. Lenin moved in stages and ruled by decree (something his contemporaries criticized him for), but it was clearly pursuing a Marxist vision of the class struggle. It’s kind of obvious that the Nazis opposed a certain 19th-century laissez-faire capitalism, but so did a lot of people by that time, like FDR. What evidence do you have that there was a clear Marxist vision behind Nazi economic policy?

    I think it’s pretty clear that the Nazis portrayed an ideological difference between themselves and Marxism. For example, they claimed that The Jews were behind the Bolshevik revolution and Germany’s defeat in WWI. It was a part of the classic self-contradictory anti-Semitic canard: The Jews were somehow both the creators and masters of capitalism and Marxists plotting to overthrow capitalism at the same time. They called modern art that they disliked “Cultural Bolshevism” while mocking it as “degenerate art” and then suppressing and destroying it. If the Nazis equated communism with Jews, surely I don’t have explain to you what that says about their ideological differences. I’m not going to suggest that anyone actually read Mein Kampf, but if someone did, they would see strong anti-Semitism and anti-communism.

    I mean, really, read some Wikipedia articles. Fascists and Nazis described themselves as taking the third option between capitalism and Marxism. I don’t get how anyone can even have a good grasp of both ideologies and still think that communists and Nazis were secretly the same thing all along. Communism was meant to be a radical equality that abolished hierarchy; Nazism was the celebration and expansion of race-based hierarchies. Any similarities in their actions are derived from their mutual totalitarianism and just being extremists who enjoy killing their enemies, not identical ideology. To be blunt, everyone knows that right-wing and left-wing politics are broad generalizations that doesn’t mean good guys and bad guys. There are intra-wing disagreements and infighting just as much as their inter-wing ones as well.
    I'd say they were both socialist dictatorships, which is the primary uniting factor here.

    Their foreign policy was very similar - Hitler felt entitled to former German Empire's territories, while Lenin felt entitled to former Russian Empire's territories. Lenin's violent Rusophobia wasn't really that different from Hitler's xenophobic views. Clearly Lenin had no consideration for self-determination, be it Russians of South and East who didn't want communism, or be it Poles (who refused to provided assistance to the former and got history's Karmatic vengeance two decades later).

    Hitler's economic policies weren't that different from Lenin, as both used "mixed" formula to keep the balance between maintaining functioning economy and implementing marxist revolutionary gobbeldygook of their early economic programs.
    Pretty much why Hitler's privatization mirrored Lenin's NEP, when market economy had to be introduced and maintained for practical reasons.
    I guess the only difference is that it was Hitler's late-war economy that started screwing over Germans, while Lenin managed to cause a famine during peacetime after Russian Civil War. So I guess there is a slight difference - Hitler's regime was slightly better at economic matters then that of Lenin.
    Another, also slight difference is that Hitler didn't attempt to wipe out all of the society's elites for being part of Weimar, while Lenin literally went after anyone in the nation who had education and thus could potentially threaten him - priests, doctors, scientists, teachers, the list goes on. Hitler only went full concentration camp and everything after he started losing the war, not in 1935.
    What communists and fascists themselves say about differences in their ideologies is irrelevant - after all the only people that refuse to recognize functional equivalence of fascism and communism are fascists and communists themselves. Its kinda similar to People's Front of Judaea antagonism with Judea's People's Front.

  15. #55
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    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    That's not what the article says though. A bunch of people are criticizing partisan and oikophobic journos, and journos confirm those accusations by trying to paint objective criticism as "abuse by evil racists". I guess the conclusion here is that Western journos for mainstream media need to stop acting like spoiled house pets.

    I suppose you missed the relevant passages:

    The broadcaster, NOS, said it had been forced to take the unprecedented step because “almost daily, journalists and technicians on the road to report are confronted with verbal abuse, garbage is thrown, vans are blocked [and] people bang on their sides or urinate on them”.

    The warning was issued shortly after parliamentary chairwoman Khadija Arib said she is extremely concerned about the rise in online attacks made against politicians, and the daily demonstrations outside parliament. In the first eight months of this year, politicians have made 44 reports and 17 formal police complaints about threats, Arib told Nieuwsuur on Thursday evening. Parliamentary staff and visitors often now avoid using the main entrance to the complex because of the ‘ugly atmosphere’ outside. The demonstrators ‘harass MPs, touch them, and they jeer at journalists and politicians,’ Arib said.
    Last edited by Muizer; October 23, 2020 at 03:03 PM.
    "Lay these words to heart, Lucilius, that you may scorn the pleasure which comes from the applause of the majority. Many men praise you; but have you any reason for being pleased with yourself, if you are a person whom the many can understand?" - Lucius Annaeus Seneca -

  16. #56

    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    The broadcaster, NOS, said it had been forced to take the unprecedented step because “almost daily, journalists and technicians on the road to report are confronted with verbal abuse, garbage is thrown, vans are blocked [and] people bang on their sides or urinate on them”.
    Sounds like any major city during a sporting event.

    extremely concerned about the rise in online attacks made against politicians, and the daily demonstrations outside parliament. In the first eight months of this year, politicians have made 44 reports and 17 formal police complaints about threats, Arib told Nieuwsuur on Thursday evening. Parliamentary staff and visitors often now avoid using the main entrance to the complex because of the ‘ugly atmosphere’ outside.


    This is the world's smallest violin, it is playing for all the poor members of the elites that have to live with such terrible hardships as being criticized online and protested against.
    Seriously, politicians need to learn their real place. They are hired government servants, not royalty, they don't have immunity from criticism, and the fact that they are trying to present negative feedback by the public as "abuse" only confirms that perhaps such politicians deserve the jeering.

  17. #57
    pacifism's Avatar see the day
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    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    That's not what the article says though. A bunch of people are criticizing partisan and oikophobic journos, and journos confirm those accusations by trying to paint objective criticism as "abuse by evil racists". I guess the conclusion here is that Western journos for mainstream media need to stop acting like spoiled house pets.
    I would like to suggest the number of times anyone should have to put up with people banging on your car and peeing on it, having garbage thrown at them, or subject to verbal abuse, is zero. That’s a little more than just criticism.

    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    Their foreign policy was very similar - Hitler felt entitled to former German Empire's territories, while Lenin felt entitled to former Russian Empire's territories. Lenin's violent Rusophobia wasn't really that different from Hitler's xenophobic views. Clearly Lenin had no consideration for self-determination, be it Russians of South and East who didn't want communism, or be it Poles (who refused to provided assistance to the former and got history's Karmatic vengeance two decades later).
    Even if I kept this historical analysis as simplistic as you have, Lenin and Hitler still had opposite foreign policy. Lenin made peace with Germany at great cost of his own territory, and ceded eastern European territories to form independent countries, which he then tried to make communist. Hitler made war with Russia and conquered eastern Europe for Lebensraum. As you might notice, those are not the same thing.

    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    Hitler's economic policies weren't that different from Lenin, as both used "mixed" formula to keep the balance between maintaining functioning economy and implementing marxist revolutionary gobbeldygook of their early economic programs.
    Pretty much why Hitler's privatization mirrored Lenin's NEP, when market economy had to be introduced and maintained for practical reasons.
    Just a quick tangent, but most of the deaths in the Holocaust were in 1941 and 1942, when Germany wasn’t clearly losing yet.

    Lenin’s economics policies were based on gradual shifts towards communism. He nationalized large business and allowed smaller ones to exist so he could nationalize them as needed. The Nazis, as I showed in the links, privatized industries like banks, railways, and mining, ones that Lenin nationalized. That’s not a pragmatic economic approach towards a developing Marxist economy, that’s moving in the complete opposite direction from what Marxism calls for.

    They’re both totalitarian, so their methods are pretty similar: putting the state above all. But their goals were completely different. Commies were internationalists seeking a radical sense of equality and against classes (far-left). Nazis were racists seeking to advance “the Nordic race” as supreme and made almost everything about racial class (far-right). That’s why they were not the same. That’s why they were in conflict.
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  18. #58

    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by pacifism View Post
    I would like to suggest the number of times anyone should have to put up with people banging on your car and peeing on it, having garbage thrown at them, or subject to verbal abuse, is zero. That’s a little more than just criticism.
    Context is important. But since its just another smear-piece I doubt we will see any evidence to plight of corporate jorunos other their own anecdotal claims.
    Even if I kept this historical analysis as simplistic as you have, Lenin and Hitler still had opposite foreign policy. Lenin made peace with Germany at great cost of his own territory, and ceded eastern European territories to form independent countries, which he then tried to make communist. Hitler made war with Russia and conquered eastern Europe for Lebensraum. As you might notice, those are not the same thing.
    A German spy who uses German funding to stage a violent coup now benevolently wants to sign a peace treaty with Germany? Imagine my shock.
    The reality is that Brest was hardly a testament to bolshevistic pacifism, given how reds incited civil war within Russia and pretty much violently conquered all of its territories minus areas surrendered to the Germans and even tried to take over Poland.
    So Reds had no problem making war for ideological justifications, just like Germans under NSDAP.

    Just a quick tangent, but most of the deaths in the Holocaust were in 1941 and 1942, when Germany wasn’t clearly losing yet.

    Lenin’s economics policies were based on gradual shifts towards communism. He nationalized large business and allowed smaller ones to exist so he could nationalize them as needed. The Nazis, as I showed in the links, privatized industries like banks, railways, and mining, ones that Lenin nationalized. That’s not a pragmatic economic approach towards a developing Marxist economy, that’s moving in the complete opposite direction from what Marxism calls for.

    They’re both totalitarian, so their methods are pretty similar: putting the state above all. But their goals were completely different. Commies were internationalists seeking a radical sense of equality and against classes (far-left). Nazis were racists seeking to advance “the Nordic race” as supreme and made almost everything about racial class (far-right). That’s why they were not the same. That’s why they were in conflict.
    In 1941 and 42 Germany failed to take Moscow and lost more men in few months then all other theaters put together in first 2 years of the war. Propaganda remained optimistic, but the brass mast have realized that they were in deep , at least as per the memoirs of the generals like Huderian.
    Actually just like NSDAP, Lenin introduced NEP - New Economic Policy, which pretty much replaced "war communism" with market economy and private ownership which lasted Dzhugashvili's collectivization and some of its aspects remained even after, such as "artels" that functioned even after WW2.
    So both regimes were socialistic, but had to resort to market capitalism to keep their economies afloat.
    I think overall it is fair to point out that "goals" of such regimes were largely irrelevant. It is simply pointless to try and say that Reds massacring thousands of innocents in Russia were better then when Germans did it. At the very least Hitler targeted non-Germans, while majority of victims of Lenin and Stalin were Russian working class, the very people they claimed to protect and support.
    Last edited by Heathen Hammer; October 26, 2020 at 04:01 PM.

  19. #59

    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by pacifism View Post
    Even if I kept this historical analysis as simplistic as you have, Lenin and Hitler still had opposite foreign policy. Lenin made peace with Germany at great cost of his own territory, and ceded eastern European territories to form independent countries, which he then tried to make communist. Hitler made war with Russia and conquered eastern Europe for Lebensraum. As you might notice, those are not the same thing.
    It is worth commenting upon the fact that Hitler's Lebensraum was, in practice, remarkably similar to Stalin's dekulakization programme. Both were centrally planned efforts to forcibly appropriate, and then redistribute, eastern European lands from "undesirable" classes; both relied on the rhetoric of dehumanization (the denigration of the kulaks as grasping, exploitative, enemies of the people was analogous to the NSDAP's vilification of the Jews); both occurred within (roughly) a decade of one another; and both were responsible for the exile, enslavement and/or deaths of millions of civilians.

    Spoiler for Dekulakization
    The primary means by which the countryside would be transformed into collective farms was a radical—one could maintain—genocidal attack on the so-called kulaks, the supposed rich farmers who impeded the socialization of the land and exploited the poor and middle peasants,forcing them to work for little gain and depriving them of the land. (Kulak means fist; these peasants ostensibly were tightfisted and cheap with their supposed stashes of money gained at the expense of poor and landless peasants.) Historians of the Soviet countryside have concluded that the images of a socially diverse Russian peasantry, riven by class struggle and economic inequality, does not at all fit the real picture of rural life. Instead, there was considerable solidarity among peasants, richer and poorer,especially when facing the incursions of urban communists. Nevertheless, the kulaks became an imagined social enemy, a group that in practice was often defined by owning a few head of cattle and oxen or having a tin roof over their huts, but also by real and alleged opposition to collectivization and to communism, and sometimes merely by their religiosity or adherence to Old Believer communities. “From the first days of the Civil War,” wrote Izvestiiain February 1930, at the outset of the dekulakization campaign, “the kulak stood on the opposite side of the barricades from us.” The image of the kulak was absolutely consistent in Soviet rhetoric, remembered the later Soviet dissident Piotr Grigorenko; “this was a bloodsucker, an oppressor, and parasite.”

    On March 15, 1931, the OGPU (security police) issued a memorandum on the kulak problem, which stated that the dekulakization goal of deporting the kulaks from all agricultural regions was “to totally cleanse [them] of kulaks.” There were essentially two categories of kulaks to be dealt with: the most dangerous would be “immediately eliminated,” while the second would be exiled, a simple formula for punishment of alleged “enemies of the people” that was to be repeated throughout the 1930s. Meanwhile, Soviet activists in the countryside repeated slogans: “We will exile the kulak by the thousands and when necessary—shoot the kulak breed.” “We will make soap of kulaks.” “Our class enemy must be wiped off the face of the earth.” These were no mere slogans; the violence perpetrated by the dekulakization gangs, which sometimes included criminals among the rural poor and landless, was horrific. “These people,”noted one OGPU report, “drove the dekulakized naked in the streets, beat them, organized drinking-bouts in their houses, shot over their heads, forced them to dig their own graves, undressed women and searched them, stole valuables, money, etc.”

    Stalin's Genocide, Norman Naimark, 2010, pp. 55-57.


    Lenin’s economics policies were based on gradual shifts towards communism. He nationalized large business and allowed smaller ones to exist so he could nationalize them as needed. The Nazis, as I showed in the links, privatized industries like banks, railways, and mining, ones that Lenin nationalized. That’s not a pragmatic economic approach towards a developing Marxist economy, that’s moving in the complete opposite direction from what Marxism calls for.
    There is a growing consensus, particularly among people on the left, that Leninism was not Marxist (reasoning which is agreeable to the extent that no form of utopianism can be actualized):

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


    Lenin And The Mensheviks: The Persecution Of Socialists Under Bolshevism, Vera Broido, 1987.


    They’re both totalitarian, so their methods are pretty similar: putting the state above all. But their goals were completely different. Commies were internationalists seeking a radical sense of equality and against classes (far-left). Nazis were racists seeking to advance “the Nordic race” as supreme and made almost everything about racial class (far-right). That’s why they were not the same.
    The ideological undercurrents of National Socialism and Bolshevism were more alike than they were divergent. It is no coincidence that these radical, collectivist, utopian, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist and totalitarian movements emerged at the same point in history, on the same continent and as consequence of defeat of the same war (the First World War). Nor is it a coincidence that the founders of these parties were self-described socialists who understood, and presented their respective movements as, socialist.

    That’s why they were in conflict.
    National Socialism and Bolshevism came into conflict precisely because they were competing for the same political and ideological spaces. To that extent, their rivalry mirrored (albeit more brutally) that of the imperial Christian monarchies in 1914.
    Last edited by Cope; October 27, 2020 at 04:51 AM. Reason: Added Source



  20. #60
    Abdülmecid I's Avatar ˇAy Carmela!
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    Default Re: Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cope View Post
    It is worth commenting upon the fact that Hitler's Lebensraum was, in practice, remarkably similar to Stalin's dekulakization programme. Both were centrally planned efforts to forcibly appropriate, and then redistribute, eastern European lands from "undesirable" classes;
    That's demonstrablu false, though, as the Nazis and their allies did not target undesirable classes, but undesirable ethnicities.
    Quote Originally Posted by Cope View Post
    The ideological undercurrents of National Socialism and Bolshevism were more alike than they were divergent. It is no coincidence that these radical, collectivist, utopian, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist and totalitarian movements emerged at the same point in history, on the same continent and as consequence of defeat of the same war (the First World War). Nor is it a coincidence that the founders of these parties were self-described socialists who understood, and presented their respective movements as, socialist.
    Most of these claims have already been disproven in my previous comment that was left unanswered, but there are still some inaccuracies I would like to address. Most of it is based on the fallacy of correlation, but even the aforementioned fallacy is based on factually wrong assumptions. For example, as already explained, Hitler described himself as a social Darwinist in economic affairs and only opposed laissez-faire economics, which conflicted with his mercantilistic views. Moreover, Communism and Nazism didn't emerge simultaneously. Communism was firstly established in the 19th century and firstly prevailed in sovereign states after World War I. Nazism, on the other hand, was created in the 1920s from digruntled right-wingers, but only rose to prominence in the 1930s, following the 1929 Great Depression that ruined the lower segments of the middle-class.
    Quote Originally Posted by Cope View Post
    National Socialism and Bolshevism came into conflict precisely because they were competing for the same political and ideological spaces. To that extent, their rivalry mirrored (albeit more brutally) that of the imperial Christian monarchies in 1914.
    This is an unsubstantiated assertion, on which you need to ellaborate. As a matter of fact, Nazism, contrary to the Communist Party, attracted a disproportionately lower number of workers in its ranks. It clashed with Communists, because opposition to Marxism and to "Judeo-Bolshevism" was fundamental to its core beliefs. In fact, Nazism was the only right-wing movement that succeeded in acquiring a mass following. This was of tremendous importance to business magnates and conservative politicians, who had previously consistently failing in surpassing the capabilities of Communists in assembling large, popular protests. As I described previously, Italian fascists were the first example in Biennio Rosso, but capitalists and the moderate right also endorsed Nazis in Germany to use them against a Communist revolution and the syndicalism of leftist trade unions. If you are interested in the subject, I recommend "The Anatomy of Fascism" by Robert Paxton (2005) and especially the pages 102-130:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    Overall, if we are to draw modern analogies, I would argue that Nazism shares a worryingly large number of similarities with the modern revival of right-wing extremism, which encompass pretty much everything in the spectrum between the alt-right and populist conservatives. Their views on capitalism are almost the same, as the origins of the vitriolic attacks against "woke" enterprises, globalisation, liberal establishment and cosmopolitan are eeringly similar to Hitler's railings over treacherous Jewish bankers. Soros and Gillette are the Shylocks of the 21st century. Other similarities include the somewhat paranoid aversion to anything to the left of Reagen and Thatcher and the scornful dismissal of intellectuals. The latter is mainly the result of tribalism, but also of the demographics of the 2016 presidential elections, as the choice between Hillary and Donald was more determined by education than wealth.

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