angrymnk wrote:
Hmm. This is rather aggravating. Your answer clearly demands a deep dive and I do not think I will be able to sacrifice much time for it. Sadness.
If you're not willing to spend any time analyzing things, maybe you should not blanketly dismiss the other guy's position as "idiocy". You might just be looking into a mirror and aren't aware of it.
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I do find it amusing that you consider labels indoctrination of some sort; most people refer to it as basic education ( I mean yeah, if I was more cynical I could entertain the idea of the words being interchangeable ). I find it interesting that you need to upend established labels to fit your narrative. I also find it interesting that objective evaluation happens to fit your idea of fascism, but we will get to that later.
When you use a label, but are unwilling to dig into why that label is used, where it came from, what it meant historically, etc, then yeah... You're just spouting a word for the sake of spouting the word. And you're assuming that word has some kind of meaning and power, but not bothering to find out why.
You can apply any label to anything, right? Let me call my tax hike a "tax cut". No one will notice that their rates actually went up, right? Oh wait. Reality sets in at some point. Call a passenger car a "Truck" because right now Trucks are polling well, and we want people to buy them more. It's not uncommon for folks, especially in politics to find a good sounding label to apply to their policies or agenda, and bad sounding ones to their opponents. It's somewhat meaningless though, and a smart observer looks past the labels and examines what is actually happening. It's the reality of things that matter.
And the reality is that the overarching political mechanism of fascism is remarkably similar to that of socialism. Both are part of the same basic concept. That in a democracy, you can gain power by promising the voters to use the power of the government to take the direct kinds of actions that they want. It's differentiated from classical liberalism specifically because the later places limits on what government may do. And yes, one of the dangers of all socialist systems is that they can tend towards pandering to the mob.
Again, the only real difference is what the mob demands. If the mob is demanding better health care, you create government funded health care. If the mob is demanding better roads, you build roads. And if you get the mob whipped up in a frenzy about "undesirables", then guess what the government is going to tend to do?
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I could point that Il Duce himself stated:
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We declare war against socialism, not because it is socialism, but because it has opposed nationalism.... We intend to be an active minority, attract the proletariat away from the official Socialist party. But if the middle class thinks that we are going to be their lightning rods, they are mistaken.
Now it may be just my naive interpretation, but by your definition he would be declaring war against himself. He certainly was not opposed to nationalism. Guess who else is not opposed to blind jingoistic nationalism. The Republican party ( mild exaggeration here, but I hope you get the idea ).
He's talking about a particular branch of socialism, not "Socialism" as a broad concept. Again. Labels. He's using them too. "The socialists" were a specific set of people in Europe at the time, with a specific political agenda. One of the things you have to realize about Europe during that time period is that almost all of the political structures were (and most still are) socialist. More correctly, they are all variations of "Social Liberalism", which specifically differentiates itself from "Classical Liberalism" in that it believes that the government should act directly for the good of the people, and not just to protect the rights of the people. Social Liberalism is where you get the concept of "positive rights".
That concept is present in all forms of socialism, regardless of a given political party's specific name, or label. He's basically saying "we're not them!", referring to a specific political movement present at the time. But this is more like the method actor differentiating himself from the character actor. They are both still acting, right?
At the time, there were two major factions of socialism, and quite a bit of conflict between them. One was more or less a multi-national socialist movement. Where it didn't matter which country you were in. They were kind of the open borders folks of the day, arguing that if "the people" rose up and pushed for change, it would happen everywhere, and national borders wouldn't matter. Somewhat naive, but there you have it. Kind of comes directly from Marx really. The opposing theory was some form of socialism bounded by a single nation. So the nation came first and set up its own socialist system. This theory manifested in two different ways. Fascism and Communism. Again, not to be confused at all with the broader political ideologies themselves. That's just what they called themselves. Both were about instituting systems within the confines of a single government entity, just some of the specifics varied.
You should really look up the history of development of socialism in Europe. It's a pretty fascinating period. It's a lot more complex than just "there were socialists and fascists and communists". Honestly, they were all "socialist movements", just the latter two picked different names in order to differentiate themselves from the more common use. Um... All of them are still basically variations on the same basic ideology though.
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Now, in the real world, political spectrum is simplified thusly
mostly to avoid retarded conversations such as these. And before you will accuse me of simplifying it with only 2 poles, you just tried to squish fascism onto simple small government vs big government spectrum. And that is before we can talk about whether, the fasci portion, the ****** effect of bundling together is a function of just fascism or, surprise, ******* all ******* political movements out there.
I'm sure those guys are well meaning and all, but they are just plain wrong. Here's the problem. "Left" and "Right" are relative terms. The site gets it correct, that they are terms regarding change versus status quo. The terms originated from the French Parliament during the revolution, to signify the relative positions of the members regarding how far they were willing to go towards keeping the status quo (which in their case meant Monarchy), versus change (Democracy/Republic/Liberalism/etc).
The problem is that the terms don't stay consistent past any given point of time. What is viewed as "leftist" is based on what is "new", while "right wing" is what is "current". But sometimes, they harken back to their origin, meaning "authoritarian" versus "libertarian". But... well... not always. They are poor terms to use, because a "left wing" movement is not always about freedom and liberty, and a "right wing" movement is not always about increased government power. In fact, in the 20th century, since most countries had already adopted liberalism to some degree, this had become the "political right". Hence the term "Classical Liberalism". The "new thing" was this concept that arose in the mid 19th century called "Social Liberalism". This was certainly a "Leftist" movement, but was in fact a movement away from the very liberalist "status quo" and towards a more authoritarian state. Of course, even back then they played on the idea that they were "leftist" or "liberals" to claim to be on the liberlist side of things, and not the authoritarian side.
But the reality is that moving from a system with small weak governments to strong central governments engaged in direct manipulation of the industry and economic condition of the citizens is by any measure an increase in authoritarianism. And that includes all forms of socialist movements. And yes, that includes both fascism and communism as well. All rest on the basic premise that it's not enough to have a government that simply provides the people with the freedom to pursue their own outcomes, but that the government must step in and ensure some degree of positive outcome for the people, else some of them will fail and be left in poverty.
All of these ideologies share that concept. Every. Single. One.
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Is your argument that with less government, we would have less institutionally sanctioned violence?
With less government, we would have more individual freedom. That is my argument. And I wouldn't just restrict it to "violence". I'd say that with less individual freedom, there's greater chance of a government coming to power that will infringe our freedoms in ways we really don't want, including ways that harm us. That's not going to always happen, but it certainly enables it. Also, let's recall that we're also limiting this conversation to modern democracies, since that's where the two primary ideologies I'm talking about sit. Clearly, a dictatorship might also be violent to its citizens (or it could be benevolent, who knows?), but it would not fall within the parameters of either socialism or liberalism at all. Terms like "left and right", and "liberal and conservative" simply don't apply to that form of government. You don't have "leftist movements" within a monarchy. You can only have them within some form of democracy/republic. Just making sure we're clear here.
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And just in case you were going with "but Republican Party" is totally against all those ( it is only the Democratic Party and its policies !!1 ) :
Republican party does not have a problem to use big nanny state to tell me MJ is bad for me.
Republican party does not have a problem with big nanny state telling women what to do with their bodies.
Those are terrible examples of "big government", since both fall into legitimate areas of law enforcement. We can debate the particulars of each, but in both cases we're talking about laws that correctly act in a negative manner "tell people what they may not do". That isn't related to the issue of socialism at all. The "nanny state" is about the government stepping in and "helping" you, in many cases, whether you want that help or not, or whether the "help" actually helps you in the long run.
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Is your argument is that Republican Party is a big nanny state supporter and beneficiary as well?
No. It's not. The GOP is broadly opposed to federal programs that have as their primary purpose "helping people". We believe that this is often more harmful than helpful, and the cost is often hidden or ignored. We believe that the people are best when they are allowed to provide for themselves and that the very presence of government "help" acts as a crutch and often results in less optimal base outcomes for many people. The government's primary role is to provide an environment in which people can thrive, and otherwise leave them alone. At the federal level, this means national defense, foreign affairs, some standard setting, managing interactions between states, etc. But that's about it.
It's almost like you honestly don't understand what I mean by "big government".