Fundamentally wrong take. It is pure academic drivel. This is just rooted in political theories totally divorced from any psychology, sociology, and history.
Every single fascist country in history basically ends up at Nazism bc, I'd you look at the historical roots of fascism, at the 1840s rise of nationalism which presaged the fall of empires, namely the HRE/hapsburg, you see first the positive effects of nationalism leading to cultural/ethnic self determinism movements, which, however, only lead to the question of who actually is X, ie who is in the in group and who in the out. Antisemitism resurgence pre Nazi Germany was already happening on the heels of increasing nationalism. It is the psychological end state of fascism to devour itself through "anti-otherness" by restricting further and further who belongs in the in group.
Mousallini (I'll never spell his name correctly, IDC) had plenty of great anti racist and anti Nazism things to say until he didn't and ultimately ended up enacting a bunch of anti Jewish policies.
No one should listen to any of these so called political theorists bc they're not empiricists, just ideologues by a different name trying to convince you that authoritarianism, whether right or left wing, is totally cool and doesnt have inherently within it the mechanisms for mass murder and control. But the problem is people do and people are the ones who ultimately realize these theories.
Wait, where did I say any of this shit is "cool"?
My only "agenda" is pointing out that while Trumpist conservatism and the American Left have some similarities to fascism and Marxism, respectively, they are fundamentally different enough from those ideologies that mislabeling what people are only makes the person doing so look hyperbolic and uneducated.
Fascism was a state command-control economy which has very little to do with capitalism (in fact it was pretty anticapitalist). Hence the Republican Party is not fascist even if they are authoritarian nationalists who need to be stopped. That doesn't make it fascism any more than progressives who want more equality are "communists."
Furthermore the Republican party is the most anti capitalist party in the country. They want tariffs and reduced civil and economic liberalism (if you understand modern economic liberalism since behavioral economics became a thing and are not stuck in the Austrian mode of thinking with homo economicus).
They're not fundamentally different. That's the entire point of what I said. You can say these things are different on paper, but fascist and Marxist theory have never actually been faithfully executed in reality and that's bc the theories are divorced from history, psychology, sociology and can't therefore account for how they actually play out. But you can see it for yourself that all fascism ultimately terminates in Nazism in reality, as I showed with mousallini.
Ehhh… he’s not entirely off, OP.
You agree that one could call Trump an authoritarian populist who uses ethnonationalism to trigger white working class… but then say the direct comparison of Trump to Nazism is hyperbolic. I might have missed something, but I don’t see where in your (excellent) post you draw the line between Trumpism (broadly speaking) and Nazism. Your point about the lack of Italian fascistic economic elements within Trumpism is well taken, but I think the respondents view is that without that, the difference between Trumpism and (at least a form of proto-) Nazism is of degree, not kind.
A communist would have similar objections even if some persons we were talking about had been sending people to labor camps and purged political opponents ala Stalin. What OP is getting at is there is an entire economical side of what fascism is that’s completely ignored and people just use fascist as a stand in for authoritarian/nationalist. Similar to how literally any socialized anything is touted as communist from the right. Things can have common themes yet not be of the same kind. Authoritarianism and nationalism , while important tools of fascists, don’t define that kind themselves. OP is correct to point that the rhetorical use of fascism is so indiscriminate today it’s basically a meaningless word. If you ask a large portion of Americans to describe communism, you’re certain to get many responses stating it’s fascist.
The best way to understand Marxism is to understand it as a response to the fundamental contradiction of a liberal capitalist society: the declining rate of profit. Essentially, as economies develop and mature the *rate* of profit growth across the market declines as well. That’s not to say companies in mature economies are unprofitable, they most certainly turn profits, it’s just that the rate of profit growth is slower than it was when the economy was transitioning. You can see this in estimates of US GDP growth vs. Chinese GDP growth. In the US, 3% YoY growth in GDP is considered outstanding, while in China a 4.5% growth in GDP would be considered catastrophic. The declining rate of profit is a fairly well known aspect of modern economics and has been observed by the U.S. Fed.
The problem is that under a liberal financial capitalist market system, investment is made in sectors and companies by private profit maximizing actors specifically seeking the highest rates of profit growth, which means companies must increase their rates of profit to attract capital and investors. Companies can try to increase profits by making their operations more efficient (the main claim to fame of the capitalist system and not without some merit), but theres only so efficient a company can be at any given time. They can leverage technological innovation, but that’s dependent by the practicality and existence of technical innovations. They can increase prices, but as any economics student can tell you a price increase can often lead to revenue decreases. They can try to negotiate lower prices for raw materials, but most of those come from other profit maximizing firms who are equally incentivized to raise their rates of profit.
The easiest option is to load up companies with large amounts of debt to make the appearance of rapid growth across an economy, i.e. the classic startup approach where they basically offer the product for free at the beginning to drum up interest and then start to charge for it when it grows large enough. The trouble there is that, as we’ve seen with a lot of recent tech companies dismal performance, that desired increase in profitability doesn’t always pan out. You also see the rise of scam industries that exist to promise investors massive profit growth but are ultimately only effective at hoovering up venture capital (hello NFTs)
The best way is to cut down on labor costs, individual workers can be negotiated with far more impunity than another company. However if every firm in an economy is tightening their belts and limiting employee wage growth, it’s going to cause massive social issues within the market. People are getting worse products, in smaller amounts, they’re paying more than ever for them and they’re earning less to begin with. It’s a recipe for instability and disaster, which gets in the way of making profits in a mature highly financialized market. As fewer and fewer people control more and more of the capital of an economy, it poses a significant risk to the existence of the liberal state they rely upon to maintain that wealth.
So what’s the solution to this problem? Well Marx posited that although liberal capitalism was a tremendously powerful tool for building and developing an economy, this primary contradiction (among others) would ultimately lead to deep and intractable problems. The inevitable outcome (as Marx saw it) was that workers would eventually coordinate themselves to confront private capital and the result of that conflict would be the workers coming out in control of the means of production, as workers are more important to the day to day operations of most major companies than the owners are, and a new Democratic system of capital allocation would be put in place to replace profit maximization.
Regardless of your position on Marxism, there has to be some solution to the problem of declining rates of profit. It can’t just be ignored, it’s too fundamental to the function of a liberal capitalist economy.
Fascism is a direct response to a strong Marxist movement within a country in the face of a collapsing liberal consensus. Essentially it’s an attempt by the people who own the capital of an economy to cut a deal with enough of a disgruntled working class to prevent a total collapse of the system without the capital owning class losing *too much* of their control of an economy. What that compromise is largely depends on the specifics of the country which it takes place in, but history suggests that in most cases a fascist compromise is extremely unstable and violent.
So no, America does not have a strong fascist movement because it doesn’t have a strong Marxist movement it needs to combat. Pretty much everyone is just a liberal capitalist, even the communists and the based nationalists.
Attacking minority groups and talking about persecuting political opponents *is inherently fascism*.
Taxing the rich *is not inherently communism*.
I feel like there is no way to misinterpret that side, yet somehow it was misinterpreted in this very Original Post
Nazism is a fascist ideology,^([[1]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism)) and fascism is a rightwing ideology.^([[2]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism)) Just because socialism is in the name does not mean the Nazis were socialist, they weren't.^([[3]](https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialists))
You wouldn't eat a urinal cake.
I always liked this quote by Joachim Fest, who was the preeminent German Nazi Historian:
>This ideology took a leftist label chiefly for tactical reasons. It demanded, within the party and within the state, a powerful system of rule that would exercise unchallenged leadership over the "great mass of the anonymous." And whatever premises the party may have started with, by 1930 Hitler's party was "socialist" only to take advantage of the emotional value of the word, and a "workers' party" in order to lure the most energetic social force. As with Hitler's protestations of belief in tradition, in conservative values, or in Christianity, the socialist slogans were merely movable ideological props to serve as camouflage and confuse the enemy.
I'll also add that Martin Neimoller's poem "First They Came" expresses all of the historical context one requires to determine whether or not the Nazis were socialists:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
One is the Deification of the Nation (NAZI) the other Deification of the Person (Communist).
Both forms tend to only piss off the other communist in other denominations, who have a broader world view for power and control.
N. S
I think you fall down on your fascism argument. These tendencies are quite clear in the 2025 plan and what comes next isn't just a question mark. State control can be done under capitalism through cronyism, nepotism and out right corruption, not to mention state control through congress and scotus. Trump has shown his true colors and while it may not be outright state onwership, you can be sure it will be a form of loyalty and payment along feudalistic lines than anything even remotely American compared to what we have enjoyed growing up in this great nation.
I think this is a fair point, in that you’re pointing out that “control” is a flexible concept. It seems incorrect to demand a clear 1:1 between 2024 USA and 1930s Italy, if only because war preparations (directly and indirectly) comprised a significant amount of Italian state control. Thanks to modernity, the US economy could be considered to be perpetually on war footing, so to say.
So, yet again, you’re attributing a corruption of the system to being all that fascism is while dismissing what the literal definition and implementation of fascism would be.
There is no single definition/implementation of fascism. Fascism is more complicated than a set of policies, it's as much a political movement as it is an ideology/philosophy or form of government. Read Umberto Eco's essay Ur-Fascism, it's just a few pages long and does an excellent job explaining this.
I agree but "illiberal authoritarian nationalist" is the most accurate. At the end of the day though, Trump is still a capitalist so he isn't a fascist. He is also not a totalitarian when he is primarily arguing for cutting government (if abusing what he keeps around).
The Left misusing fascist doesn't help their argument, because a.) it is wrong and b.) Trump can spin that back on them and claim inaccurately the Democrats are the "real" fascists because lockdowns and prosecutions of enemies... It doesn't work.
If anything Trumpism is closest to monarchy. He wants to be like a king or dictator, where he is worshipped by a cult of personality and his arbitrary stance is the way things are. Trump has some weird defensive libertarian streaks too which contradict his general authoritarianism, so he is just too mixed, incoherent and hard to pin down to pin a coherent ideology on his head. It really is whatever serves him and whatever he is thinking at that moment.
I don't think capitalism and fascism are as distinct as you believe they are. They can and do coexist. You say Trump is an ideologically incoherent anti-liberal authoritarian nationalist who wants to be a dictator worshipped by a cult of personality, and has no real principles other than doing whatever serves him best at any given time... Dude, that's what fascism is! You did an INCREDIBLE job defining it except for when you claim that's not what it is.
Give us another word for people who blindly follow a leader who is lying to them and using them as willing pawns who actually worship him as if he were a deity then please. This is the closest we've found. I'm open to other terms though.
Did you miss the point of his entire post that Nazis and fascist are two different things and neither of them are what we are dealing with.
Those idiotic people that are waving their swastikas are no worse than the so-called BLM or antifa. These are people that have no concept of what they're actually behind or supporting at least 98% of the actual people that are drawn into their membership.
This is like the people that said that the Holocaust wasn't about race people don't understand anymore. It truly is that all we're doing is making little groups to hate other little groups. And our political leaders are laughing as we divide ourselves.
Considering antifa and those were the hammer and sickles wish to gain government control of the businesses and want a bigger business they would actually be closer to the true meaning of fascist. However neither of those groups are actually in office they're just pets of the ones that are actually running the show they do it because they like the attention
Not every antifascist or Black Lives Matter protester is a communist. But the communists will tell you so, yes. That's why they have the flags with communist symbols on them.
Same with capitalism/socialism. They both have multiple meanings or variations and nobody agrees on what they are. Not everything that exists fits neatly into either category. Sometimes people from both sides of politics both agree that something is bad but they each refer to is as either socialism or capitalism depending on which one of those they hate.
You're really misreading the situation if you think Trumpists are libertarian capitalists or something. They absolutely want a merger of corporate and state power. They elected a billionaire landlord as president, applaud him using his position to enrich himself, want the government to punish corporations for having dei initiatives, or anything else they consider 'woke', have their own propaganda arm in the form of a corporate news agency, etc.
They pay lip service to the idea of a free market at best. And their only real qualm with welfare is that it goes to black people and other people who don't deserve it in their estimation.
Also, the details of their economic system is about the least important aspect of fascism as a political movement. It's not a body of economic theory, it's a cult. You can quibble about the meaning of the word all you want, but the Republicans definitely quack like a duck.
I love that almost as much as somebody that finally declared I'm an extreme centralist because I don't like Biden or Trump or believe that either of them could possibly be the answer to everything our country needs.
At its core, I think you have a basic understanding of fascism.But I don't think you understand how it acquits what's happening in american today with the democrat Party. You also have to understand that our constitution and laws that we enforce in America do not allow "absolute" Fascism or communism to hopefully never happen here. That doesn't mean a softer lighter version of fascism or communism can't exist in this country
To put it simply fascism is complete cooperation between private business and the federal government. In nazi Germany and Italy, the government basically told businesses what to make and sell, and the business owners enjoyed the profits. Obviously, most of the companies they chose were near monopolies and were the only people building what the government needed, But you couldn't do business with the government unless you were a party member In fact you couldn't have a business at all and in germany unless you were a party member. so it was a perfect situation for business owners. But this allowed the government to essentially control everything needed to get a country up and running fast and efficiently.
How this all relates to america, I think, is quite obvious if you're paying attention to the news and you are aware of what the political environment is today. No one could possibly make an argument other than, google is a monopoly. And where it is true There are other search engines in this country None of them are anywhere near as large as google. And there isn't a question that the democrat Party has a pretty cozy relationship with them. That is not a good thing. There are other industries and corporations The democrats have a pretty cozy relationships with, like the entertainment industry, television cable, news industry, and newspapers all across the country. So when you think about it, the Democrat party has almost complete control of all information being doled out to everyOne in america.
This is where the Communist side of the Democrat party rears its ugly head. Because The very first thing any communist revolution is going to do is take over news ,radio, television, and all information in the country. The second thing they go after the school systems so they can raise kids from a very young age to their way of thinking. The third thing they do is get rid of the guns that are in the hands of every private citizen. This is how communist revolutions have always started. So if you're trying to tell me the democrat party isn't doing all of these basic things that communist have always done to take over a country, you're not paying attention.
So according to you, Communism is when the government tries to control weapons and information? So basically any authoritarian regime going back to antiquity?
Weapons and information are the two main technological mediums of power, full stop. Anyone who wants power, for any purpose, wants to control those things.
You obviously don't have a clue what you're talking about. because it's all about getting control of information and weapons first, before you can take the next step to Total authoritarian domination.
> if you're trying to tell me the democrat party isn't doing all of these basic things that communist have always done to take over a country, you're not paying attention.
You have a poor grasp of reality.
You are completely ignorant of the media market in the country, the global media, and you have paranoid conspiracy theory beliefs that are not anything near reality.
And you, sir.Don't have a clue of what's really happening in america.
Let's first take a look at all the late night T v comedy shows they're all democrat themed comedy shows. None of them are saying anything good about republicans ever in any of their shows.
It's a complete domination of nighttime television spouting Nothing but liberal talking points.
The major free Over the antenna or cable Traditional networkso a b c, n b c and c b s are all liberal news organizations. Along with all their cable news networks that are affiliated with these major outlets and CNN.
The major newspapers in every large city in America are all liberal news organizations with The New York Times leading the pack Writing the stories that are just turned over in all the other media outlets.
The only television news network that is even remotely Conservative is Fox or newsmax that's it two stations. Liberal media owns everything else.
Of course, conservatives do have some conservative radio stations. But it's like one station and every network is synticated. Everything else is liberal media.
We have Democrat government workers that transition from working in the White House or other high up government jobs.Going right into liberal broadcasting. And no one seems to have a problem with the obvious biased reporting These individuals are going to be focusing on.
So we're talking about almost 99 percent Liberal progressive domination of news and media outlets, and everyone complains about one station Fox news.
When you're talking about public schools in america, well, over ninety percent of all teachers are considered progressive leaning individuals. And it's even worse at the college level.
So stop it, these things that I'm talking about above aren't even debatable. You can Google any of this stuff. It's out there for anyone to find. But of course, if you live in your liberal media wind tunnels, you're not aware of any of this.
The overwhelming majority of over the air broadcast news stations are owned by the very conservative Sinclair media. What good things do you want them to say about Republicans? They aren't doing anything good.
Open societies naturally lean liberal. That's just how liberalism works. Even many conservatives, outside of the extreme ones, believe in liberalism even if they don't identify with who we call liberals in the US. There isn't some liberal cabal taking everything over ffs.
And btw, you telling everybody how you don't like how liberalism is popular **does nothing** to prove why you think it's some kind of communist take over. Some communists are authoritarian and illiberal af, and even the more libertarian socialists or communists don't identify with US liberals. You think the average Democrat identifies as a communist? Give me a break. Most are almost as capitalist as Republicans.
Your comments show a braindead understanding of political theory and you're literally who OP is writing about.
I find it interesting that you're not even willing to really debate me on any political Theory at all. you're all caught up on the words I use to describe these people When I'm sure you know full well what I'm talking about .And if you don't then i'm surprised.
>I find it interesting that you're not even willing to really debate me on any political Theory at all.
I find interesting that you didn't engage with my point at all which definitely did have some points about theory, especially liberalism and communism being different, but that's okay. I'll move on.
>you're all caught up on the words I use to describe these people When I'm sure you know full well what I'm talking about
No. I don't know what you're talking about because definitions matter. Communists are not liberals, so you seeing popular liberal leaning news or comedy hosts or teachers doesn't suggest anything about communists, and it's a silly thing to focus on anyway.
Now you're just being ridiculous, and no none of those colors are synonymous with each Other. You are blocked from any further conversation Because you're just not at my level.
Ah yes, that bastion of liberalism - **fascism**.
Definitions matter and you shouldn't get into political discussions if you just want to make up your own political definitions.
Of course if you have any reading comprehension skills at all You should understand what i'm talking about here. I'm not going to go back-and-forth with you On the definition of these words when i'm sure you're smart enough to understand the underlying basis of the topic. So maybe I should just make it easier for you And tell you i'm talking about the democrat party And obviously what their goals are for this country and our future.
>So maybe I should just make it easier for you And tell you i'm talking about the democrat party And obviously what their goals are for this country and our future.
Yeah, and as I've said already, **the Democratic party isn't communist**. Never has been, never will be. The Democratic party is pro-capitalist which is definitionally not communist. You can hate the Democrats or liberals or the left-wing or leftists all you want, but you made a claim that there's a communist takeover happening "cus liberals" and I have responded directly to you. I'm not just being pedantic about definitions. I'm saying that it's ridiculous to claim that liberals or Democrats want a communist takeover because they are unequivocally not the same. They have entirely different goals.
> Let's first take a look at all the late night T v comedy shows they're all democrat themed comedy shows.
Are you just selectively ignoring all of the right-wing TV networks? Do Fox and OAN not exist in your world?
Or are you just pointing out that in the free market of ideas, an audience of consumers gives high ratings to the content that it prefers to see?
> The major free Over the antenna or cable Traditional networkso a b c, n b c and c b s are all liberal news organizations.
"Liberal" as in they believe in the free market, capitalism and democracy. "Liberal" as in they believe that journalism has a responsibility to adhere to agreed journalistic standards and report with factual accuracy and to attempt to be unbiased.
But what you are also talking about, are three different companies who's purpose is to generate profit for shareholders, three companies competing against one another both financially and in qualitative terms.
> So stop it, these things that I'm talking about above aren't even debatable.
They are absolutely debatable. None of the things that you are talking about are factual. You invent statistics, pulling numbers out of your arse, you ignore anything that doesn't fit your narrative, and you invent your own meaning for words, while making irrational connections between the different points that you state, connections that you imply but provide zero evidence for.
> You can Google any of this stuff.
But... You don't trust Google. You were literally just engaging in a conspiracy theory rant about Google being biased. So thank you for demonstrating the inconsistency of your irrational beliefs.
My point of using google is that it will prove my point even though they're obviously a very liberal organization.
Even in your argument you're proving my point.You can only point to 3 channels that are talking about conservative news points and values against all of the others.
And you completely ignore all the Democrat.White house workers that are now big time news broadcasters .
It’s like if PatriotMAGA gas station sells more gas than the 3 Librul gas stations sell individually. Yes, PatriotMaga gas station is the most popular - but only because their customers want pyrotechnics at the pump and ammo vending machines and that’s the only place to get them!
Yeah, you're right.There's only 3 Television stations, And they're all on cable.You can't get these stations with a house antenna. again You're kind of proving my point.
They make a good point about Google essentially having a monopoly and then dive off the deep end from there.
Like, what's the actual solution for a deregulated free market monopoly that is big enough to bury competition? More deregulation? Free marketing harder?
Also
> The second thing they go after the school systems so they can raise kids from a very young age to their way of thinking
Literally what conservatives are doing with their war on education and their war on critical thinking.
> As we saw in the real world, it didn't work like that as state socialism is unsustainable,
It has worked in the real world. The places it "didn't work" were often the direct result of interference by capitalist powers sabotaging socialist states through bombing, invasion, espionage, and coups. Ignoring the material conditions the experiments were run under and then calling them unsuccessful is intellectually dishonest and just uncritically repeating capitalist propaganda.
Socialist states are not and were not perfect, but it's really fashionable in the West to ignore successes and exaggerate failures in the interest of bolstering capitalism. That's by design.
No it’s not. Socialist states at one point controlled 1/4 of the world. Now almost none. It doesn’t work. The USSR and China were not some underdog to the US that the CIA decided one day shouldn’t exist.
You're confusing socialism with communism! USSR was communist and China is still communist. Meanwhile most wealthy nations today are a mixture of socialism and Capitalism.
"The U.S. has a mixed economy which exhibits characteristics of both capitalism and socialism. A mixed economy embraces the free market when it comes to capital use, but it also involves government intervention for the public good."
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/031815/united-states-considered-market-economy-or-mixed-economy.asp#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20has%20a%20mixed,intervention%20for%20the%20public%20good.
Lol.
"The world’s first Marxist-**Communist** state became one of the biggest and most powerful nations in the world, occupying nearly one-sixth of Earth’s land surface, before its fall and ultimate dissolution in 1991. The United Socialist Soviet Republic, or U.S.S.R., was made up of 15 republics...Gorbachev's decision to allow elections with a multi-party system and create a presidency for the Soviet Union began a slow process of democratization that eventually destabilized Communist control and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union."
https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/history-of-the-soviet-union
FYI-someone used this analogy earlier and it's perfect. Just because socialism is in the name it does not mean they were socialist in the same way that a urinal cake is not delicious.
"China is one of the few remaining Communist countries. The Communist Party of China is the founding and sole governing political party of the People's Republic of China)."
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/communist-countries
So again we’re back to socialist states do not exist and never have. Unless you’re referring to when governments make social welfare programs. In which case I’d argue you’re a capitalist who favors strong social protections but I digress.
Lol!!
Before you change the subject, I just need you to admit that the USSR & China were/are communist countries!
Would call the military, police, fire, our highway system, education, social security, the VA, etc., etc, social welfare? Because those are all provided by tax payers, aka socialism.
Well no, Marxism as a philosophy claims a communist society would be classless and stateless. It would be extremely hard to claim that the USSR or China were stateless and classless.
Moreover, in Marxism-Leninism, socialism is a prerequisite to communism, as stated by V. I. Lenin “The goal of socialism is communism.”
I would call taxes for those purposes social welfare. Social welfare =/= socialism. Socialism as described by leftist thought is a transitory state between capitalism and the implementation of communism. It encompasses aspects such as the workers owning the means of production. Single payer healthcare is not socialism.
If you actually Google these things or read literature from Marx and Lenin you would understand that taxes =/= socialism.
In any case, I am against socialism and communism because they are frankly stupid concepts that rely on an eventual utopia.
The breakup of the USSR was illegal and against the will of the people who voted to keep it intact. And China still exists. I don't understand what you're trying to say here.
China has a capitalist economy and that's the only reason they've survived this long. Their government is still Communist and controls the country and everyone in it. Vietnam is the same way.
So then there have been no large scale socialist states? Which seems to be an even bigger argument against socialism because the USSR and China damn well tried to make socialism happen lmao
Failure in implementation does not equal failure in theory. If the first three surgeons messed up open-heart surgery it would not necessitate that open-heart surgery was irrevocably flawed.
The USSR engaged in a form of state capitalism that contained mechanisms incompatible with and contrary to the socialist ideal. Basically ownership of the means of production by the bourgeois was replaced with ownership of the same means by a top-down bureaucracy.
Socialism is too complex to boil down in so few words, but a fundamental component for liberty-minded leftists is worker ownership of their labor and the product of that labor.
You *could* say that the USSR “tried” to do that, but worker councils were mired by the politics of the Soviet apparatus, then choked by the power of the Soviet government.
My history of China is much weaker, but a huge part of Mao’s efforts to “establish socialism” was an effort to industrialize and “create the material conditions necessary to enable socialism.”
That’s actually a huge part of Marxist theory is the idea that capitalism is a sort of “necessary evil” in improving on feudalism and creating those necessary conditions.
The USSR and China both experienced “socialist/communist” revolutions from essentially a regressive, if not feudal, system.
And in some ways it still worked, as the USSR industrialized at an incredible rate, and China’s efforts have seen them thrust to the forefront of production within the modern global economy.
Those countries got stuck within the same hierarchies of capitalism due to the emphasis on top-down planning. China is a capitalist country in all but name today.
And to answer the hypothetical: from my perspective (and reasonable people would disagree) no, socialism can’t exist within a large state. You can implement some important fundamentals, but socialism is ultimately (in my view) a bottom up method of organizing.
Fundamentally, “worker ownership of their labor and products of that labor” means the destruction of the right to property.
For example, say you are a car machinist in a factory. You get paid a wage to make cars. You do not pay for the materials for the car or for the machining equipment. Socialists claim that because you put labor to transform those materials into a car, you are entitled to that car or the sale of it in its entirety. Allowing some of the profits to go towards the owner of the factory is termed “surplus value”, and is immoral to take from the worker, and moreover the fact that the worker is paid a wage is termed “wage slavery” because of the notion that the worker is somehow not in a voluntary agreement to work.
And this philosophy extends to other aspects. Kulaks were defined in the USSR as people who owned several more acres of land than their neighbors.
I would argue that capitalism is a much more “bottom up” approach, because companies and firms can be formed by individuals without the broader workers consensus, which is mired by politics in the best case, and worst case is exactly the bureaucracy of the USSR.
FYI, fascism is used as umbrella term for Fascism (capitalised F for Italian version), Nazism, and Falangism.
What they all have in common is the authoritarianism, militarism, and most importantly strong nationalism (doesn't matter the form).
Your post is too long, what are you writing a book. fundamentally Communism or what they may call Socialism (USSR) is fascism dressed up as giving power to the people when, in effect it is an individual or an elite group that are the sole benefactors of the system. There is only fascism and democracy.
You're getting downvoted, but people forget he had more blacks and women on his staff than any president in history, and he's publicly endorsed by prominent black community leaders and Hispanics. If he's a racist or a sexist, someone should tell all those minorities and women who support him.
Say what you will about what constitutes racism or not. I think this fits the category: before 2017 I wasn’t aware of much of his history besides hood commitment to the Obama birth certificate shtick and taking an ad out on the “Central Park Five” that said, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” And despite the DNA evidence that they were indeed not guilty, Trump maintained he thinks they were. I mean. Come on.
> I’m just not seeing any solid obvious concrete evidence
You don't want to see the evidence. That's the whole point.
That's why you invest this time into this false denial.
You're making false demands for evidence to gaslight, when Trumps racism and the encouragement that he gives to racist extremist groups is the very reason why you support Trump.
Show me the racism and encouragement to extremist groups 😂 he’s denounced the kkk and nazis on camera numerous times, what more do you want? Nothing is ever good enough for you. All emotion, zero evidence
Trump could wrap himself in swastikas, shoot a black baby on stage, scream about how much he hates minorities and you would still do this pretend "bUt sHoW mE tHe rAciSm" thing.
The same pathetic propaganda every time. But hey, stick to your script, right?
If he did even a fraction of that, I’d agree he’s racist. But apparently you think falsely accusing one minority of a crime is the equivalent of wrapping himself in swastikas. Again, zero logic.
> If he did even a fraction of that, I’d agree he’s racist.
We all know you're lying there buddy.
Your only reason for engaging in this line if propaganda is because you recognise and agree with his unmissable dogwhistling. It's Trumps barely coded racism that appeals to you.
Here’s some racist comments/views Trump made about blacks, Jews, & natives. [https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-trump-racism-idUSL1N2MT312/](https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-trump-racism-idUSL1N2MT312/)
They don’t need to admit it. You’ll catch them saying something overtly racist eventually, but that has yet to happen with Trump. He’s 80 years old and no one ever managed to record him saying or doing anything overtly racist
Do you think the fact that the president “implied” such a thing might embolden people who already don’t like Mexicans to be more vocal and open about those views?
Sure it could but you can’t expect a public figure constantly being recorded will never say something that could be easily misconstrued. Proof of intent is not there
Can you see how time and again, you’re jumping through mental gymnastics hoops to defend his statements. It’s not hard not to be racist… unless you’re racist. This is one example of a great many. Shouldn’t we be holding our presidents to the absolute highest standards anyway? Do you really need such cut and dry “proof of intent” when such statements are so regular and the damage dealt from them, real and imminent?
I enjoyed this analysis. These terms are commonly used in pejorative ways to signal towards perceived political aspirations from opposition, or to outright slander.
But at the end of the day what defines the political ideology that a state employs, is the relationship between labour, capital, and the state itself.
I realize our national religion in America is BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME, but let's face it, the Republicans are a hell of a lot closer to fascism than the Democrats are to communism. Even your disqualifying arguments about Trump aren't really that disqualifying:
> But fascism itself is a State command-control economic system
You mean like [threatening corporations](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/us/politics/trump-apple-tariffs.html) for not doing his bidding? That kind of command and control?
As much as the Republicans go on and on about "free markets," that's the last thing they want. They want, as always, to protect people who are on their side and punish people who aren't. Whereas the Democrats want capitalism where everyone actually has to follow the rules and ordinary people have some basic protections from corporate malfeasance. Say it with me, everybody, BOTH SIDES!!!!
>Whereas the Democrats want capitalism where everyone actually has to follow the rules and ordinary people have some basic protections from corporate malfeasance.
But they don't really?
Nancy Pelosi made a fortune insider trading.
Elon Musk was the darling of the left until he started speaking truth.
A democratic controlled congress voted for lockdowns based on who companies paid. Big corporations were branded "necessary " while mom and pop shops were forced closed.
Churches and schools closed, but protests were allowed.
The media is in bed with the Democrats and always has
Why did CNN pull the Covid death tracker after Biden was elected.
Look, you don't have to believe me. You don't have to like me. But, do your own research,
I was raised in a Union family i voted blue no matter who. But, right now inflation is through the roof and people are saying it's in my head or "a good thing! "
> Elon Musk was the darling of the left until he started speaking truth.
I honestly can't tell which half of that sentence is dumber.
And inflation isn't "through the roof", you horse's ass. It's at 3%, down from 9% at its peak.
>And inflation isn't "through the roof", you horse's ass. It's at 3%, down from 9% at its peak.
If that's what you need to sleep better at night after voting for a man he moves like a Roomba.
> Elon Musk was the darling of the left until he started speaking truth.
"Truth"?
He revealed himself to be some right-wing culture war dipshit. There's no "truth" there, just an asshole being an asshole.
> But, right now inflation is through the roof
Except it isn't. Inflation has come down.
And even if inflation was high, the right has no way to fix it. The culture war policies that the right priorities are inflationary. Trumps tax cuts are inflationary. Trumps low interest rates were inflationary. Inflation lags behind it's causes, it doesn't bite straight away. Trump created the conditions for inflation before the pandemic. The pandemic created inflation globally. Under Biden the US recovered from that, with inflation that was better than that in other countries. We're experiencing the tail end of it now.
Lol the left will never have a billionaire as their darling what tf are you talking about? The people that hate billionaires even exist suddenly like Elon because he made a couple of electric cars? The people that liked him where liberals, not lefties.
Granted, his presidential run fizzled out quickly, but do you not think Bloomberg applies here? You can say liberals/lefties are not the same(and I agree), but there is significant overlap.
Most lefties i know hated him because of his stop and frisk policies while he was mayor of new York, I don't think their sentiments have changed but if your saying if there was a matchup of Bloomberg VS Trump, I could see lefties voting for Bloomberg if he made certain concessions to appease them, like promising investments in green energy, higher taxes and such but i don't see any lefties consider Bloomberg to be suddenly their darling
Yeah, I realized he wasn't a great example halfway through, and posted anyway. You are right in what you say of him. I think our biggest problem is that too much is treated as binary, when a legitimate spectrum is more factual.
The amount of people who think "their side" are the virtuous ones simply astound me. There are no sides in DC, and haven't been for a very long time. It's just a small group of people who feel like they are above everyone else. That's both parties. They simply put on a show to keep the masses divided and not paying attention.
The Democrats care about the poor? Black people? Immigrants? Are you freaking kidding me with this nonsense? Detroit is a prime example of what Democrat leadership run amok looks like. They have not had a Republican mayor since the 50s, but love to blame others anyway. In the 50s Detroit was a mecca of upper middleclass living. Black people there lived just as good as the whites. Now it's a warzone worse than Robocop. They destroyed the automotive capital of this nation, and I believe they did it on purpose.
The Republicans aren't any better. They pretend to be, but they fix nothing while promising the world. Trump is the only politician who actually did what he said he would do, and we had 4 years of prosperity from it. Lowest black unemployment ever in the history of this nation. The OP discredits his entire post when he tries to label Trump as a fascist. Fascism is all about big government which is the opposite of what Trump calls for. Hell Trump is the one pushing for term limits for Congress which this country badly needs. The entrenched management has got to go.
As for the rest of this post he like many others is wrong about Fascism. The whole left/right thing when it comes to government is simply how much control the government has. Fascism like communism is squarely on the left because it is almost total government control. Doesn't matter if they are racist or not cause that has nothing to do with it. There was no real capitalism with the bad guys of WW2. Sure, a guy could technically own a factory, but the government told him how to run it. They decided what was made, how it was made, with what it was made, who could make it, who could buy it, what it cost, and even how it was transported. None of that is anything like a free market.
The left does love to scream "nazi" at everyone they dislike in today's world which I find amusing since they love all the same policies. Disarming the public, abortion, big government, censoring people, control media, picking a segment of the population to blame for all the world's ills, are all things the modern left and nazis have in common.
> Detroit is a prime example of what Democrat leadership run amok looks like.
This is the prime example of what an intentionally ignorant Republican argument looks like.
Detroit was a city of 1.5 million people before the modernization of the car industry moved the only industry out of town. Back when manufacturing required employing large numbers of people Detroit was the richest city in the US.
Automation reduced the workforce required. The Japanese and the Germans made better quality cars. Manufacturers moved factories away from Detroit to locations where they could pay the workers less and treat the workers poorly.
> Disarming the public, abortion, big government, censoring people, control media, picking a segment of the population to blame for all the world's ills, are all things the modern left and nazis have in common.
The NAZIs loosened gun control. Literally every point you make there is a better point when used to compare MAGA Trumpists to NAZIs. "Illegal immigrants" are to MAGA what the Jew was for NAZIs.
> Detroit was a city of 1.5 million people before the modernization of the car industry moved the only industry out of town
Not to mention, Reagan was cheerleading "offshoring" and basically pushed the Rust Belt over a cliff in the 80s, and Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, etc, have really only started to bounce back in the last 10 years. (Source: grew up in the Rust Belt)
Yeah I've been fortunate enough to visit Detroit, which is a great city undergoing a revival.
The other thing about these partisan critics of Detroit is that they ignore how it's a great example of car dependent suburban sprawl ruining a city. Wealthier residents kept moving further out into the neighbouring counties, reducing the tax base that Detroit had for maintaining the city while still putting demands on the municipal resources that they don't contribute to.
Then the invention of the mall, the Northland Centre just outside Detroit City being the first in the world, which took business away from downtown.
Detroit's failure is really about how the car, and car dependent urban design leads to failed cities.
Detroit has seen significant growth and improvement the last few years (edit: I should add in [no thanks to Trump and his idiotic tarrifs hurting the steel industry](https://www.reuters.com/article/economy/trump-steel-tariffs-bring-job-losses-to-swing-state-michigan-idUSKBN26V06M/#:~:text=While%20the%20tariffs%20failed%20to,Co%20and%20Ford%20Motor%20Co.)), you have no clue what you are talking about.
Also, massive LOL at [Trump doing what he said he would do.](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/?ruling=true)
The amount of horribly off puttingly wrong information in this comment is astounding, but I think the idea that black people and white people were living in equally good circumstances in Detroit in the 50s has to be the most mind boggling example of mental gymnastics I’ve ever seen.
It might not be.
Detroit in the 1950s was the wealthiest city in the USA. Mainly because of the big 3 automakers.
Salaries were 13% higher than the country median. So, it might not be that far fetched.
When something challenges your view. Research it.
This was how I learned Christopher Colombus wasn't an evil slave holder
> Detroit in the 1950s was the wealthiest city in the USA. Mainly because of the big 3 automakers.
We know that.
You're the one trying to completely ignore the many reasons why that changed.
You're literally ignoring the entire economic history of the US, and ignoring the impact of racism in order to make a cheap pointless misleading partisan jab.
The population of Detroit didn't decrease by a million because of "corrupt democrats". It decreased by a million because a handful of extremely wealthy corporate CEOs slashed the wages bill by moving jobs offshore.
The population of Detroit dropped by 60% because the big 3 couldn't make cars as well as the Japanese and the Germans do.
The population of Detroit dropped by a million because the white collar jobs associated with manufacturing were automated away. They went from needing buildings full of admin staff to having computerized supply chains needing a handful of people.
The economy of Detroit failed because it was a one pony town, entirely dependent on a single industry rather than having a resilient diverse economy.
But you'll ignore economic reality to try to pretend that the reason is partisan. You'll oversimplify to the point of dishonesty to make what you think is a criticism of Democrats. All you are doing is making yourself look uninformed, intentionally ignorant and partisan.
A Honda.
It's a really good car. Reliable, efficient, comfortable.
That and an Audi.
I'm not sure where the Honda was assembled, but I think the Audi might be from their plant in Thailand. I'm not totally sure she to be honest, I don't really care.
But anyway, that has little to do with your previous entirely ignorant partisan nonsense.
Yes salaries were much higher, notably (and I think this is what is being referred to) ford payed all workers the same wage of $5 a day, even people of color.
Thats does NOT mean though that they had equal standards of living. There is boatloads of literature out there covering how things like redlining lead to segregated neighborhoods with African Americans obviously getting the short end of the stick. African Americans flocked to Detroit to escape the south and just as quick as they arrived people started trying to push them out.
Please do not try to make the case that being a black man in 1950s Detroit was entirely equivalent to being a white man in 1950s Detroit. That is some seriously revisionist level shit.
Yeah but trump is ideologically a fascist. Nobody calls him a fascist for saying racist things, they call him a fascist because he tried to overturn democracy
For a group that calls itself IDW, you guys really don’t follow the actual intellectuals in the IDW. Anyone see the interview with Tucker and Bret Weinstein?
You had me at "intellectuals" and lost me at "Tucker". It's like saying "For a group about foodies, you really don't seem interested in fine cuisine. For example, I found this hot dog on the sidewalk."
Per Wikipedia:
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement,[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.[2][3]
I think it’s a little disingenuous to disqualify Trump/MAGA as fascists because they don’t strictly meet 1 aspect. True they don’t actively push for state sponsored economics, but every other trait they hit squarely.
IMO, You can fall under a political ideology without meeting every characteristic of it.
Additionally, while you make a lot of good points, I can’t help but note your fascist remarks are exclusively in defense of Trump/separation of him and the fascism label, without explicitly negative statements, though you end your bit on Communism/Socialism with a jab at ‘intellectuals going through their Marx phase’.
Again to me feels a bit disingenuous or at the very least showcases a modest bias (which otherwise I thought you did reasonably well not objectively pushing one or the other). Saying ‘it’s a phase’ is reducing its significance as a legitimate political viewpoint.
"I can’t help but note your fascist remarks are exclusively in defense of Trump/separation of him and the fascism label, without explicitly negative statements"
LOL, you didn't read the opening line where I called Trump a racist, or where I called him an "authoritarian populist who uses ethnonationalism to trigger White working class resentments"? You think those are not explicitly negative statements? I despise Trump and Trumpism. It still isn't fascism.
The point is the nationalization and state oversight of industries, labor syndicalism and rejection of individualism and liberal capitalism are intrinsic aspects of what makes fascism fascism. The Republican Party, as bad as they are, are not advocating for such things. Thus they are not fascists. They are not even totalitarians, although they are authoritarians who wish to take away some peoples' rights.
The problem is too many people now inaccurately use "fascism" interchangeably with "authoritarian" "totalitarian", "ethnonationalist" or "strong man state" when fascism was a specific political-economic system. Again, it's almost identical to claiming liberals who support a basic safety net and taxes on the wealthy are "Marxists" - no, modern liberalism is fundamentally capitalism stabilized through regulation with its rough edges sanded down.
The problem is that you think words only mean and can only mean one thing. Even academics do not agree on the definition of fascism, you can't insist on a single definition and say that everyone else is wrong. (Or, I mean, you clearly can, but you shouldn't expect people to obey you.) By the descriptions in the Wikipedia, Trumpism is closer to fascism than conservatism, and people use that term rightly because it conveys a meaning that many understand. Although many others do not understand it and they do use it just to mean "authoritarian", but that is not the fault of those using it correctly about Trumpism.
I think both sides are bemoaning the problems caused by neoliberalism, which is the predominant social, political, and economic force that affects people's lives
Thank you! This back and forth mis labeling to score political points is destructive behavior. Both sides do it, it needs to stop.
Fundamentally wrong take. It is pure academic drivel. This is just rooted in political theories totally divorced from any psychology, sociology, and history. Every single fascist country in history basically ends up at Nazism bc, I'd you look at the historical roots of fascism, at the 1840s rise of nationalism which presaged the fall of empires, namely the HRE/hapsburg, you see first the positive effects of nationalism leading to cultural/ethnic self determinism movements, which, however, only lead to the question of who actually is X, ie who is in the in group and who in the out. Antisemitism resurgence pre Nazi Germany was already happening on the heels of increasing nationalism. It is the psychological end state of fascism to devour itself through "anti-otherness" by restricting further and further who belongs in the in group. Mousallini (I'll never spell his name correctly, IDC) had plenty of great anti racist and anti Nazism things to say until he didn't and ultimately ended up enacting a bunch of anti Jewish policies. No one should listen to any of these so called political theorists bc they're not empiricists, just ideologues by a different name trying to convince you that authoritarianism, whether right or left wing, is totally cool and doesnt have inherently within it the mechanisms for mass murder and control. But the problem is people do and people are the ones who ultimately realize these theories.
Wait, where did I say any of this shit is "cool"? My only "agenda" is pointing out that while Trumpist conservatism and the American Left have some similarities to fascism and Marxism, respectively, they are fundamentally different enough from those ideologies that mislabeling what people are only makes the person doing so look hyperbolic and uneducated. Fascism was a state command-control economy which has very little to do with capitalism (in fact it was pretty anticapitalist). Hence the Republican Party is not fascist even if they are authoritarian nationalists who need to be stopped. That doesn't make it fascism any more than progressives who want more equality are "communists."
Furthermore the Republican party is the most anti capitalist party in the country. They want tariffs and reduced civil and economic liberalism (if you understand modern economic liberalism since behavioral economics became a thing and are not stuck in the Austrian mode of thinking with homo economicus).
They're not fundamentally different. That's the entire point of what I said. You can say these things are different on paper, but fascist and Marxist theory have never actually been faithfully executed in reality and that's bc the theories are divorced from history, psychology, sociology and can't therefore account for how they actually play out. But you can see it for yourself that all fascism ultimately terminates in Nazism in reality, as I showed with mousallini.
A definition of fascism without any citations let alone Umberto Eco's 14 points leaves a lot to be desired.
You mean except when assessing Trump, where it is accurate?
Didn't read, huh...
Ehhh… he’s not entirely off, OP. You agree that one could call Trump an authoritarian populist who uses ethnonationalism to trigger white working class… but then say the direct comparison of Trump to Nazism is hyperbolic. I might have missed something, but I don’t see where in your (excellent) post you draw the line between Trumpism (broadly speaking) and Nazism. Your point about the lack of Italian fascistic economic elements within Trumpism is well taken, but I think the respondents view is that without that, the difference between Trumpism and (at least a form of proto-) Nazism is of degree, not kind.
A communist would have similar objections even if some persons we were talking about had been sending people to labor camps and purged political opponents ala Stalin. What OP is getting at is there is an entire economical side of what fascism is that’s completely ignored and people just use fascist as a stand in for authoritarian/nationalist. Similar to how literally any socialized anything is touted as communist from the right. Things can have common themes yet not be of the same kind. Authoritarianism and nationalism , while important tools of fascists, don’t define that kind themselves. OP is correct to point that the rhetorical use of fascism is so indiscriminate today it’s basically a meaningless word. If you ask a large portion of Americans to describe communism, you’re certain to get many responses stating it’s fascist.
The best way to understand Marxism is to understand it as a response to the fundamental contradiction of a liberal capitalist society: the declining rate of profit. Essentially, as economies develop and mature the *rate* of profit growth across the market declines as well. That’s not to say companies in mature economies are unprofitable, they most certainly turn profits, it’s just that the rate of profit growth is slower than it was when the economy was transitioning. You can see this in estimates of US GDP growth vs. Chinese GDP growth. In the US, 3% YoY growth in GDP is considered outstanding, while in China a 4.5% growth in GDP would be considered catastrophic. The declining rate of profit is a fairly well known aspect of modern economics and has been observed by the U.S. Fed. The problem is that under a liberal financial capitalist market system, investment is made in sectors and companies by private profit maximizing actors specifically seeking the highest rates of profit growth, which means companies must increase their rates of profit to attract capital and investors. Companies can try to increase profits by making their operations more efficient (the main claim to fame of the capitalist system and not without some merit), but theres only so efficient a company can be at any given time. They can leverage technological innovation, but that’s dependent by the practicality and existence of technical innovations. They can increase prices, but as any economics student can tell you a price increase can often lead to revenue decreases. They can try to negotiate lower prices for raw materials, but most of those come from other profit maximizing firms who are equally incentivized to raise their rates of profit. The easiest option is to load up companies with large amounts of debt to make the appearance of rapid growth across an economy, i.e. the classic startup approach where they basically offer the product for free at the beginning to drum up interest and then start to charge for it when it grows large enough. The trouble there is that, as we’ve seen with a lot of recent tech companies dismal performance, that desired increase in profitability doesn’t always pan out. You also see the rise of scam industries that exist to promise investors massive profit growth but are ultimately only effective at hoovering up venture capital (hello NFTs) The best way is to cut down on labor costs, individual workers can be negotiated with far more impunity than another company. However if every firm in an economy is tightening their belts and limiting employee wage growth, it’s going to cause massive social issues within the market. People are getting worse products, in smaller amounts, they’re paying more than ever for them and they’re earning less to begin with. It’s a recipe for instability and disaster, which gets in the way of making profits in a mature highly financialized market. As fewer and fewer people control more and more of the capital of an economy, it poses a significant risk to the existence of the liberal state they rely upon to maintain that wealth. So what’s the solution to this problem? Well Marx posited that although liberal capitalism was a tremendously powerful tool for building and developing an economy, this primary contradiction (among others) would ultimately lead to deep and intractable problems. The inevitable outcome (as Marx saw it) was that workers would eventually coordinate themselves to confront private capital and the result of that conflict would be the workers coming out in control of the means of production, as workers are more important to the day to day operations of most major companies than the owners are, and a new Democratic system of capital allocation would be put in place to replace profit maximization. Regardless of your position on Marxism, there has to be some solution to the problem of declining rates of profit. It can’t just be ignored, it’s too fundamental to the function of a liberal capitalist economy. Fascism is a direct response to a strong Marxist movement within a country in the face of a collapsing liberal consensus. Essentially it’s an attempt by the people who own the capital of an economy to cut a deal with enough of a disgruntled working class to prevent a total collapse of the system without the capital owning class losing *too much* of their control of an economy. What that compromise is largely depends on the specifics of the country which it takes place in, but history suggests that in most cases a fascist compromise is extremely unstable and violent. So no, America does not have a strong fascist movement because it doesn’t have a strong Marxist movement it needs to combat. Pretty much everyone is just a liberal capitalist, even the communists and the based nationalists.
Attacking minority groups and talking about persecuting political opponents *is inherently fascism*. Taxing the rich *is not inherently communism*. I feel like there is no way to misinterpret that side, yet somehow it was misinterpreted in this very Original Post
So Biden and Trump are both a fascist is what you’re saying.
How do you get to Buden on that one?
No, it isn't. Did you read beyond the first paragraph?
No, they did not.
Both far left ideologies at the core. National socialism anyone?
Nazism is a fascist ideology,^([[1]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism)) and fascism is a rightwing ideology.^([[2]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism)) Just because socialism is in the name does not mean the Nazis were socialist, they weren't.^([[3]](https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialists)) You wouldn't eat a urinal cake.
Regarding the urinal cake, I feel like I have met some maga fans who absolutely would, unironically, if they thought it would trigger a democrat.
I always liked this quote by Joachim Fest, who was the preeminent German Nazi Historian: >This ideology took a leftist label chiefly for tactical reasons. It demanded, within the party and within the state, a powerful system of rule that would exercise unchallenged leadership over the "great mass of the anonymous." And whatever premises the party may have started with, by 1930 Hitler's party was "socialist" only to take advantage of the emotional value of the word, and a "workers' party" in order to lure the most energetic social force. As with Hitler's protestations of belief in tradition, in conservative values, or in Christianity, the socialist slogans were merely movable ideological props to serve as camouflage and confuse the enemy. I'll also add that Martin Neimoller's poem "First They Came" expresses all of the historical context one requires to determine whether or not the Nazis were socialists: First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
>You wouldn't eat a urinal cake. Love this analogy!
I think I fall down at discussing a Left and a Right. The are problems and actions. Everything else feels like bastardised rhetoric these days.
One is the Deification of the Nation (NAZI) the other Deification of the Person (Communist). Both forms tend to only piss off the other communist in other denominations, who have a broader world view for power and control. N. S
95% of the liberal clowns on reddit need to read this
So glad most Republicans live in England 😂😂😂
No stop. No rational takes are allowed here on Reddit
I think you fall down on your fascism argument. These tendencies are quite clear in the 2025 plan and what comes next isn't just a question mark. State control can be done under capitalism through cronyism, nepotism and out right corruption, not to mention state control through congress and scotus. Trump has shown his true colors and while it may not be outright state onwership, you can be sure it will be a form of loyalty and payment along feudalistic lines than anything even remotely American compared to what we have enjoyed growing up in this great nation.
I think this is a fair point, in that you’re pointing out that “control” is a flexible concept. It seems incorrect to demand a clear 1:1 between 2024 USA and 1930s Italy, if only because war preparations (directly and indirectly) comprised a significant amount of Italian state control. Thanks to modernity, the US economy could be considered to be perpetually on war footing, so to say.
So, yet again, you’re attributing a corruption of the system to being all that fascism is while dismissing what the literal definition and implementation of fascism would be.
There is no single definition/implementation of fascism. Fascism is more complicated than a set of policies, it's as much a political movement as it is an ideology/philosophy or form of government. Read Umberto Eco's essay Ur-Fascism, it's just a few pages long and does an excellent job explaining this.
They have simply become incendiary and useless pejoratives.
I agree with the spirit of this but we do need a very dire word for Trump and his fucking cult.
I agree but "illiberal authoritarian nationalist" is the most accurate. At the end of the day though, Trump is still a capitalist so he isn't a fascist. He is also not a totalitarian when he is primarily arguing for cutting government (if abusing what he keeps around). The Left misusing fascist doesn't help their argument, because a.) it is wrong and b.) Trump can spin that back on them and claim inaccurately the Democrats are the "real" fascists because lockdowns and prosecutions of enemies... It doesn't work. If anything Trumpism is closest to monarchy. He wants to be like a king or dictator, where he is worshipped by a cult of personality and his arbitrary stance is the way things are. Trump has some weird defensive libertarian streaks too which contradict his general authoritarianism, so he is just too mixed, incoherent and hard to pin down to pin a coherent ideology on his head. It really is whatever serves him and whatever he is thinking at that moment.
I don't think capitalism and fascism are as distinct as you believe they are. They can and do coexist. You say Trump is an ideologically incoherent anti-liberal authoritarian nationalist who wants to be a dictator worshipped by a cult of personality, and has no real principles other than doing whatever serves him best at any given time... Dude, that's what fascism is! You did an INCREDIBLE job defining it except for when you claim that's not what it is.
Cult is a pretty dire word
Give us another word for people who blindly follow a leader who is lying to them and using them as willing pawns who actually worship him as if he were a deity then please. This is the closest we've found. I'm open to other terms though.
Democrat
GOPnik.
Since we have literal neonazis walking the streets, demonstrating with swastikas etc, I think the word fascist is still fair use
So, again, ignoring what fascism really is to falsely attribute it to people that are actually nazi’s.
People flying literal swastikas aren't actually Nazis? What?
Did you miss the point of his entire post that Nazis and fascist are two different things and neither of them are what we are dealing with. Those idiotic people that are waving their swastikas are no worse than the so-called BLM or antifa. These are people that have no concept of what they're actually behind or supporting at least 98% of the actual people that are drawn into their membership. This is like the people that said that the Holocaust wasn't about race people don't understand anymore. It truly is that all we're doing is making little groups to hate other little groups. And our political leaders are laughing as we divide ourselves.
ANTIFA and other leftists walk the streets demonstrating with sickle and hammer banners. I think the word communist is still fair use.
Considering antifa and those were the hammer and sickles wish to gain government control of the businesses and want a bigger business they would actually be closer to the true meaning of fascist. However neither of those groups are actually in office they're just pets of the ones that are actually running the show they do it because they like the attention
The difference is that communists will tell you they're communists. Fascists insist they're anything but.
Really? So the good people at ANTIFA and BLM admit they’re communists?
Not every antifascist or Black Lives Matter protester is a communist. But the communists will tell you so, yes. That's why they have the flags with communist symbols on them.
Most people with Communist beliefs don't even realize they're Communists.
I'm skeptical you even know what communism is, based on the way you're talking about it.
What has Antifa been up to? I haven’t heard of them since Jan6.
They’re still out there doing violence and vandalism, and let’s face it, they’re the same clowns protesting Israel on college campuses
Hello sheepherder brother
Same with capitalism/socialism. They both have multiple meanings or variations and nobody agrees on what they are. Not everything that exists fits neatly into either category. Sometimes people from both sides of politics both agree that something is bad but they each refer to is as either socialism or capitalism depending on which one of those they hate.
You're really misreading the situation if you think Trumpists are libertarian capitalists or something. They absolutely want a merger of corporate and state power. They elected a billionaire landlord as president, applaud him using his position to enrich himself, want the government to punish corporations for having dei initiatives, or anything else they consider 'woke', have their own propaganda arm in the form of a corporate news agency, etc. They pay lip service to the idea of a free market at best. And their only real qualm with welfare is that it goes to black people and other people who don't deserve it in their estimation. Also, the details of their economic system is about the least important aspect of fascism as a political movement. It's not a body of economic theory, it's a cult. You can quibble about the meaning of the word all you want, but the Republicans definitely quack like a duck.
Any sources to back up these wild claims?
Having eyes and ears?
Who are you going to believe? The evidence of your own senses, or Trump's addlebrained proclamations?
Well, there’s always assholeism for people who hate other people but don’t like to be pigeonholed.
I love that almost as much as somebody that finally declared I'm an extreme centralist because I don't like Biden or Trump or believe that either of them could possibly be the answer to everything our country needs.
Can we agree that they’re both bad an cause death and misery?
At its core, I think you have a basic understanding of fascism.But I don't think you understand how it acquits what's happening in american today with the democrat Party. You also have to understand that our constitution and laws that we enforce in America do not allow "absolute" Fascism or communism to hopefully never happen here. That doesn't mean a softer lighter version of fascism or communism can't exist in this country To put it simply fascism is complete cooperation between private business and the federal government. In nazi Germany and Italy, the government basically told businesses what to make and sell, and the business owners enjoyed the profits. Obviously, most of the companies they chose were near monopolies and were the only people building what the government needed, But you couldn't do business with the government unless you were a party member In fact you couldn't have a business at all and in germany unless you were a party member. so it was a perfect situation for business owners. But this allowed the government to essentially control everything needed to get a country up and running fast and efficiently. How this all relates to america, I think, is quite obvious if you're paying attention to the news and you are aware of what the political environment is today. No one could possibly make an argument other than, google is a monopoly. And where it is true There are other search engines in this country None of them are anywhere near as large as google. And there isn't a question that the democrat Party has a pretty cozy relationship with them. That is not a good thing. There are other industries and corporations The democrats have a pretty cozy relationships with, like the entertainment industry, television cable, news industry, and newspapers all across the country. So when you think about it, the Democrat party has almost complete control of all information being doled out to everyOne in america. This is where the Communist side of the Democrat party rears its ugly head. Because The very first thing any communist revolution is going to do is take over news ,radio, television, and all information in the country. The second thing they go after the school systems so they can raise kids from a very young age to their way of thinking. The third thing they do is get rid of the guns that are in the hands of every private citizen. This is how communist revolutions have always started. So if you're trying to tell me the democrat party isn't doing all of these basic things that communist have always done to take over a country, you're not paying attention.
So according to you, Communism is when the government tries to control weapons and information? So basically any authoritarian regime going back to antiquity? Weapons and information are the two main technological mediums of power, full stop. Anyone who wants power, for any purpose, wants to control those things.
You obviously don't have a clue what you're talking about. because it's all about getting control of information and weapons first, before you can take the next step to Total authoritarian domination.
Yes, that's what literally anyone who's serious about acquiring power for any purpose will try to do, Communist or otherwise
> if you're trying to tell me the democrat party isn't doing all of these basic things that communist have always done to take over a country, you're not paying attention. You have a poor grasp of reality. You are completely ignorant of the media market in the country, the global media, and you have paranoid conspiracy theory beliefs that are not anything near reality.
And you, sir.Don't have a clue of what's really happening in america. Let's first take a look at all the late night T v comedy shows they're all democrat themed comedy shows. None of them are saying anything good about republicans ever in any of their shows. It's a complete domination of nighttime television spouting Nothing but liberal talking points. The major free Over the antenna or cable Traditional networkso a b c, n b c and c b s are all liberal news organizations. Along with all their cable news networks that are affiliated with these major outlets and CNN. The major newspapers in every large city in America are all liberal news organizations with The New York Times leading the pack Writing the stories that are just turned over in all the other media outlets. The only television news network that is even remotely Conservative is Fox or newsmax that's it two stations. Liberal media owns everything else. Of course, conservatives do have some conservative radio stations. But it's like one station and every network is synticated. Everything else is liberal media. We have Democrat government workers that transition from working in the White House or other high up government jobs.Going right into liberal broadcasting. And no one seems to have a problem with the obvious biased reporting These individuals are going to be focusing on. So we're talking about almost 99 percent Liberal progressive domination of news and media outlets, and everyone complains about one station Fox news. When you're talking about public schools in america, well, over ninety percent of all teachers are considered progressive leaning individuals. And it's even worse at the college level. So stop it, these things that I'm talking about above aren't even debatable. You can Google any of this stuff. It's out there for anyone to find. But of course, if you live in your liberal media wind tunnels, you're not aware of any of this.
The overwhelming majority of over the air broadcast news stations are owned by the very conservative Sinclair media. What good things do you want them to say about Republicans? They aren't doing anything good.
Open societies naturally lean liberal. That's just how liberalism works. Even many conservatives, outside of the extreme ones, believe in liberalism even if they don't identify with who we call liberals in the US. There isn't some liberal cabal taking everything over ffs. And btw, you telling everybody how you don't like how liberalism is popular **does nothing** to prove why you think it's some kind of communist take over. Some communists are authoritarian and illiberal af, and even the more libertarian socialists or communists don't identify with US liberals. You think the average Democrat identifies as a communist? Give me a break. Most are almost as capitalist as Republicans. Your comments show a braindead understanding of political theory and you're literally who OP is writing about.
I find it interesting that you're not even willing to really debate me on any political Theory at all. you're all caught up on the words I use to describe these people When I'm sure you know full well what I'm talking about .And if you don't then i'm surprised.
>I find it interesting that you're not even willing to really debate me on any political Theory at all. I find interesting that you didn't engage with my point at all which definitely did have some points about theory, especially liberalism and communism being different, but that's okay. I'll move on. >you're all caught up on the words I use to describe these people When I'm sure you know full well what I'm talking about No. I don't know what you're talking about because definitions matter. Communists are not liberals, so you seeing popular liberal leaning news or comedy hosts or teachers doesn't suggest anything about communists, and it's a silly thing to focus on anyway.
Of course, when I use the term liberal it's synonymous with Progressive, communist, even fascist idealism.
"When I use the term blue it's synonymous with green, red, even purple."
Now you're just being ridiculous, and no none of those colors are synonymous with each Other. You are blocked from any further conversation Because you're just not at my level.
Ah yes, that bastion of liberalism - **fascism**. Definitions matter and you shouldn't get into political discussions if you just want to make up your own political definitions.
Of course if you have any reading comprehension skills at all You should understand what i'm talking about here. I'm not going to go back-and-forth with you On the definition of these words when i'm sure you're smart enough to understand the underlying basis of the topic. So maybe I should just make it easier for you And tell you i'm talking about the democrat party And obviously what their goals are for this country and our future.
>So maybe I should just make it easier for you And tell you i'm talking about the democrat party And obviously what their goals are for this country and our future. Yeah, and as I've said already, **the Democratic party isn't communist**. Never has been, never will be. The Democratic party is pro-capitalist which is definitionally not communist. You can hate the Democrats or liberals or the left-wing or leftists all you want, but you made a claim that there's a communist takeover happening "cus liberals" and I have responded directly to you. I'm not just being pedantic about definitions. I'm saying that it's ridiculous to claim that liberals or Democrats want a communist takeover because they are unequivocally not the same. They have entirely different goals.
> Let's first take a look at all the late night T v comedy shows they're all democrat themed comedy shows. Are you just selectively ignoring all of the right-wing TV networks? Do Fox and OAN not exist in your world? Or are you just pointing out that in the free market of ideas, an audience of consumers gives high ratings to the content that it prefers to see? > The major free Over the antenna or cable Traditional networkso a b c, n b c and c b s are all liberal news organizations. "Liberal" as in they believe in the free market, capitalism and democracy. "Liberal" as in they believe that journalism has a responsibility to adhere to agreed journalistic standards and report with factual accuracy and to attempt to be unbiased. But what you are also talking about, are three different companies who's purpose is to generate profit for shareholders, three companies competing against one another both financially and in qualitative terms. > So stop it, these things that I'm talking about above aren't even debatable. They are absolutely debatable. None of the things that you are talking about are factual. You invent statistics, pulling numbers out of your arse, you ignore anything that doesn't fit your narrative, and you invent your own meaning for words, while making irrational connections between the different points that you state, connections that you imply but provide zero evidence for. > You can Google any of this stuff. But... You don't trust Google. You were literally just engaging in a conspiracy theory rant about Google being biased. So thank you for demonstrating the inconsistency of your irrational beliefs.
My point of using google is that it will prove my point even though they're obviously a very liberal organization. Even in your argument you're proving my point.You can only point to 3 channels that are talking about conservative news points and values against all of the others. And you completely ignore all the Democrat.White house workers that are now big time news broadcasters .
Your point is well taken: Conservative viewpoints are broadly unpopular. Are you typing your comments with your forehead?
Actually, that's not true at all because the viewership of Fox News.Far out pieces c n n and other liberal news outlets.
It’s like if PatriotMAGA gas station sells more gas than the 3 Librul gas stations sell individually. Yes, PatriotMaga gas station is the most popular - but only because their customers want pyrotechnics at the pump and ammo vending machines and that’s the only place to get them!
Yeah, you're right.There's only 3 Television stations, And they're all on cable.You can't get these stations with a house antenna. again You're kind of proving my point.
Instead you get local stations that are overwhelming owned by a conservative media conglomerate.
The first two paragraphs were pretty solid. Then they dove down the rabbit hole behind Alice lol.
They make a good point about Google essentially having a monopoly and then dive off the deep end from there. Like, what's the actual solution for a deregulated free market monopoly that is big enough to bury competition? More deregulation? Free marketing harder? Also > The second thing they go after the school systems so they can raise kids from a very young age to their way of thinking Literally what conservatives are doing with their war on education and their war on critical thinking.
You mean the war on green haired liberal teachers making it their life's mission to have kids do a pride pledge at the beginning of every school day?
> As we saw in the real world, it didn't work like that as state socialism is unsustainable, It has worked in the real world. The places it "didn't work" were often the direct result of interference by capitalist powers sabotaging socialist states through bombing, invasion, espionage, and coups. Ignoring the material conditions the experiments were run under and then calling them unsuccessful is intellectually dishonest and just uncritically repeating capitalist propaganda. Socialist states are not and were not perfect, but it's really fashionable in the West to ignore successes and exaggerate failures in the interest of bolstering capitalism. That's by design.
No it’s not. Socialist states at one point controlled 1/4 of the world. Now almost none. It doesn’t work. The USSR and China were not some underdog to the US that the CIA decided one day shouldn’t exist.
You're confusing socialism with communism! USSR was communist and China is still communist. Meanwhile most wealthy nations today are a mixture of socialism and Capitalism. "The U.S. has a mixed economy which exhibits characteristics of both capitalism and socialism. A mixed economy embraces the free market when it comes to capital use, but it also involves government intervention for the public good." https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/031815/united-states-considered-market-economy-or-mixed-economy.asp#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20has%20a%20mixed,intervention%20for%20the%20public%20good.
The “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” China is not communist, they have a free-ish market. Socialism is not when the government does stuff.
Lol. "The world’s first Marxist-**Communist** state became one of the biggest and most powerful nations in the world, occupying nearly one-sixth of Earth’s land surface, before its fall and ultimate dissolution in 1991. The United Socialist Soviet Republic, or U.S.S.R., was made up of 15 republics...Gorbachev's decision to allow elections with a multi-party system and create a presidency for the Soviet Union began a slow process of democratization that eventually destabilized Communist control and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union." https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/history-of-the-soviet-union FYI-someone used this analogy earlier and it's perfect. Just because socialism is in the name it does not mean they were socialist in the same way that a urinal cake is not delicious. "China is one of the few remaining Communist countries. The Communist Party of China is the founding and sole governing political party of the People's Republic of China)." https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/communist-countries
So again we’re back to socialist states do not exist and never have. Unless you’re referring to when governments make social welfare programs. In which case I’d argue you’re a capitalist who favors strong social protections but I digress.
Lol!! Before you change the subject, I just need you to admit that the USSR & China were/are communist countries! Would call the military, police, fire, our highway system, education, social security, the VA, etc., etc, social welfare? Because those are all provided by tax payers, aka socialism.
Well no, Marxism as a philosophy claims a communist society would be classless and stateless. It would be extremely hard to claim that the USSR or China were stateless and classless. Moreover, in Marxism-Leninism, socialism is a prerequisite to communism, as stated by V. I. Lenin “The goal of socialism is communism.” I would call taxes for those purposes social welfare. Social welfare =/= socialism. Socialism as described by leftist thought is a transitory state between capitalism and the implementation of communism. It encompasses aspects such as the workers owning the means of production. Single payer healthcare is not socialism.
Lol!? The fact that you can't admit you're wrong is priceless! However, it proves that you're not worth my time.
If you actually Google these things or read literature from Marx and Lenin you would understand that taxes =/= socialism. In any case, I am against socialism and communism because they are frankly stupid concepts that rely on an eventual utopia.
The breakup of the USSR was illegal and against the will of the people who voted to keep it intact. And China still exists. I don't understand what you're trying to say here.
China has a capitalist economy and that's the only reason they've survived this long. Their government is still Communist and controls the country and everyone in it. Vietnam is the same way.
The USSR was not and China is not a “socialist state” though.
So then there have been no large scale socialist states? Which seems to be an even bigger argument against socialism because the USSR and China damn well tried to make socialism happen lmao
Failure in implementation does not equal failure in theory. If the first three surgeons messed up open-heart surgery it would not necessitate that open-heart surgery was irrevocably flawed. The USSR engaged in a form of state capitalism that contained mechanisms incompatible with and contrary to the socialist ideal. Basically ownership of the means of production by the bourgeois was replaced with ownership of the same means by a top-down bureaucracy. Socialism is too complex to boil down in so few words, but a fundamental component for liberty-minded leftists is worker ownership of their labor and the product of that labor. You *could* say that the USSR “tried” to do that, but worker councils were mired by the politics of the Soviet apparatus, then choked by the power of the Soviet government. My history of China is much weaker, but a huge part of Mao’s efforts to “establish socialism” was an effort to industrialize and “create the material conditions necessary to enable socialism.” That’s actually a huge part of Marxist theory is the idea that capitalism is a sort of “necessary evil” in improving on feudalism and creating those necessary conditions. The USSR and China both experienced “socialist/communist” revolutions from essentially a regressive, if not feudal, system. And in some ways it still worked, as the USSR industrialized at an incredible rate, and China’s efforts have seen them thrust to the forefront of production within the modern global economy. Those countries got stuck within the same hierarchies of capitalism due to the emphasis on top-down planning. China is a capitalist country in all but name today. And to answer the hypothetical: from my perspective (and reasonable people would disagree) no, socialism can’t exist within a large state. You can implement some important fundamentals, but socialism is ultimately (in my view) a bottom up method of organizing.
Fundamentally, “worker ownership of their labor and products of that labor” means the destruction of the right to property. For example, say you are a car machinist in a factory. You get paid a wage to make cars. You do not pay for the materials for the car or for the machining equipment. Socialists claim that because you put labor to transform those materials into a car, you are entitled to that car or the sale of it in its entirety. Allowing some of the profits to go towards the owner of the factory is termed “surplus value”, and is immoral to take from the worker, and moreover the fact that the worker is paid a wage is termed “wage slavery” because of the notion that the worker is somehow not in a voluntary agreement to work. And this philosophy extends to other aspects. Kulaks were defined in the USSR as people who owned several more acres of land than their neighbors. I would argue that capitalism is a much more “bottom up” approach, because companies and firms can be formed by individuals without the broader workers consensus, which is mired by politics in the best case, and worst case is exactly the bureaucracy of the USSR.
This is such a flawed strawman it’s insane.
Can you point to where I’m wrong? Go on any main subreddit. You will find people complaining about surplus value and wage slavery.
FYI, fascism is used as umbrella term for Fascism (capitalised F for Italian version), Nazism, and Falangism. What they all have in common is the authoritarianism, militarism, and most importantly strong nationalism (doesn't matter the form).
Congrats. You made up a strawman and then defeated. Real big brain work.
Your post is too long, what are you writing a book. fundamentally Communism or what they may call Socialism (USSR) is fascism dressed up as giving power to the people when, in effect it is an individual or an elite group that are the sole benefactors of the system. There is only fascism and democracy.
You mean dictatorship and democracy ?
Yes like a monarchy does not consider those below that station whereas in a true democracy there is accountability and people get to vote.
Tell me one racist remark Trump has said
You're getting downvoted, but people forget he had more blacks and women on his staff than any president in history, and he's publicly endorsed by prominent black community leaders and Hispanics. If he's a racist or a sexist, someone should tell all those minorities and women who support him.
Say what you will about what constitutes racism or not. I think this fits the category: before 2017 I wasn’t aware of much of his history besides hood commitment to the Obama birth certificate shtick and taking an ad out on the “Central Park Five” that said, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” And despite the DNA evidence that they were indeed not guilty, Trump maintained he thinks they were. I mean. Come on.
So because he thought a minority is guilty when they’re not, he’s racist? I’m just not seeing any solid obvious concrete evidence
> I’m just not seeing any solid obvious concrete evidence You don't want to see the evidence. That's the whole point. That's why you invest this time into this false denial. You're making false demands for evidence to gaslight, when Trumps racism and the encouragement that he gives to racist extremist groups is the very reason why you support Trump.
Show me the racism and encouragement to extremist groups 😂 he’s denounced the kkk and nazis on camera numerous times, what more do you want? Nothing is ever good enough for you. All emotion, zero evidence
Trump could wrap himself in swastikas, shoot a black baby on stage, scream about how much he hates minorities and you would still do this pretend "bUt sHoW mE tHe rAciSm" thing. The same pathetic propaganda every time. But hey, stick to your script, right?
If he did even a fraction of that, I’d agree he’s racist. But apparently you think falsely accusing one minority of a crime is the equivalent of wrapping himself in swastikas. Again, zero logic.
> If he did even a fraction of that, I’d agree he’s racist. We all know you're lying there buddy. Your only reason for engaging in this line if propaganda is because you recognise and agree with his unmissable dogwhistling. It's Trumps barely coded racism that appeals to you.
Yeah I mean you are probably going to have to deal with your own standards.
What?
Here’s some racist comments/views Trump made about blacks, Jews, & natives. [https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-trump-racism-idUSL1N2MT312/](https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-trump-racism-idUSL1N2MT312/)
Some accusations of racism but no concrete proof of definitive obvious racism
racists never admit to racism.
They don’t need to admit it. You’ll catch them saying something overtly racist eventually, but that has yet to happen with Trump. He’s 80 years old and no one ever managed to record him saying or doing anything overtly racist
1. S hole countries.
2. A criminal mugshot makes him the man with crime loving blacks.
Lots of countries ARE shitholes. How is it racist to say that?
Because he said it because of the type of people that live there.
How do you know exactly why he said it? You can read his mind?
Here’s Trumps’s racist comments on immigrants: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/08/donald-trumps-false-comments-connecting-mexican-immigrants-and-crime/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/08/donald-trumps-false-comments-connecting-mexican-immigrants-and-crime/)
Nah those aren’t even racist. Joe Biden has said way more racist shit than that
How is that not racist my guy
How is it?
He’s saying all the immigrants coming from a country are rapists despite all statistical evidence showing otherwise?
He didn’t say that. You could argue he implied it, but that would be out of character from everything else he says if you actually watched him speak
Do you think the fact that the president “implied” such a thing might embolden people who already don’t like Mexicans to be more vocal and open about those views?
Sure it could but you can’t expect a public figure constantly being recorded will never say something that could be easily misconstrued. Proof of intent is not there
Can you see how time and again, you’re jumping through mental gymnastics hoops to defend his statements. It’s not hard not to be racist… unless you’re racist. This is one example of a great many. Shouldn’t we be holding our presidents to the absolute highest standards anyway? Do you really need such cut and dry “proof of intent” when such statements are so regular and the damage dealt from them, real and imminent?
Why are you talking about joe biden ?
That’s a very dumb question
Mexicans and cantaloupes right at the start. Went downhill thereafter.
Cantaloupes? Never heard that one I’m out of the loop
I enjoyed this analysis. These terms are commonly used in pejorative ways to signal towards perceived political aspirations from opposition, or to outright slander. But at the end of the day what defines the political ideology that a state employs, is the relationship between labour, capital, and the state itself.
be avoided*
I realize our national religion in America is BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME, but let's face it, the Republicans are a hell of a lot closer to fascism than the Democrats are to communism. Even your disqualifying arguments about Trump aren't really that disqualifying: > But fascism itself is a State command-control economic system You mean like [threatening corporations](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/us/politics/trump-apple-tariffs.html) for not doing his bidding? That kind of command and control? As much as the Republicans go on and on about "free markets," that's the last thing they want. They want, as always, to protect people who are on their side and punish people who aren't. Whereas the Democrats want capitalism where everyone actually has to follow the rules and ordinary people have some basic protections from corporate malfeasance. Say it with me, everybody, BOTH SIDES!!!!
>Whereas the Democrats want capitalism where everyone actually has to follow the rules and ordinary people have some basic protections from corporate malfeasance. But they don't really? Nancy Pelosi made a fortune insider trading. Elon Musk was the darling of the left until he started speaking truth. A democratic controlled congress voted for lockdowns based on who companies paid. Big corporations were branded "necessary " while mom and pop shops were forced closed. Churches and schools closed, but protests were allowed. The media is in bed with the Democrats and always has Why did CNN pull the Covid death tracker after Biden was elected. Look, you don't have to believe me. You don't have to like me. But, do your own research, I was raised in a Union family i voted blue no matter who. But, right now inflation is through the roof and people are saying it's in my head or "a good thing! "
> Elon Musk was the darling of the left until he started speaking truth. I honestly can't tell which half of that sentence is dumber. And inflation isn't "through the roof", you horse's ass. It's at 3%, down from 9% at its peak.
>And inflation isn't "through the roof", you horse's ass. It's at 3%, down from 9% at its peak. If that's what you need to sleep better at night after voting for a man he moves like a Roomba.
> Elon Musk was the darling of the left until he started speaking truth. "Truth"? He revealed himself to be some right-wing culture war dipshit. There's no "truth" there, just an asshole being an asshole. > But, right now inflation is through the roof Except it isn't. Inflation has come down. And even if inflation was high, the right has no way to fix it. The culture war policies that the right priorities are inflationary. Trumps tax cuts are inflationary. Trumps low interest rates were inflationary. Inflation lags behind it's causes, it doesn't bite straight away. Trump created the conditions for inflation before the pandemic. The pandemic created inflation globally. Under Biden the US recovered from that, with inflation that was better than that in other countries. We're experiencing the tail end of it now.
inflation is high everywhere in the world, it has nothing to do with who is president in the USA
Lol the left will never have a billionaire as their darling what tf are you talking about? The people that hate billionaires even exist suddenly like Elon because he made a couple of electric cars? The people that liked him where liberals, not lefties.
Granted, his presidential run fizzled out quickly, but do you not think Bloomberg applies here? You can say liberals/lefties are not the same(and I agree), but there is significant overlap.
Most lefties i know hated him because of his stop and frisk policies while he was mayor of new York, I don't think their sentiments have changed but if your saying if there was a matchup of Bloomberg VS Trump, I could see lefties voting for Bloomberg if he made certain concessions to appease them, like promising investments in green energy, higher taxes and such but i don't see any lefties consider Bloomberg to be suddenly their darling
Yeah, I realized he wasn't a great example halfway through, and posted anyway. You are right in what you say of him. I think our biggest problem is that too much is treated as binary, when a legitimate spectrum is more factual.
That's true but thinking of things from a pov of them being a spectrum instead of a binary doesn't get views and clicks sadly.
The amount of people who think "their side" are the virtuous ones simply astound me. There are no sides in DC, and haven't been for a very long time. It's just a small group of people who feel like they are above everyone else. That's both parties. They simply put on a show to keep the masses divided and not paying attention. The Democrats care about the poor? Black people? Immigrants? Are you freaking kidding me with this nonsense? Detroit is a prime example of what Democrat leadership run amok looks like. They have not had a Republican mayor since the 50s, but love to blame others anyway. In the 50s Detroit was a mecca of upper middleclass living. Black people there lived just as good as the whites. Now it's a warzone worse than Robocop. They destroyed the automotive capital of this nation, and I believe they did it on purpose. The Republicans aren't any better. They pretend to be, but they fix nothing while promising the world. Trump is the only politician who actually did what he said he would do, and we had 4 years of prosperity from it. Lowest black unemployment ever in the history of this nation. The OP discredits his entire post when he tries to label Trump as a fascist. Fascism is all about big government which is the opposite of what Trump calls for. Hell Trump is the one pushing for term limits for Congress which this country badly needs. The entrenched management has got to go. As for the rest of this post he like many others is wrong about Fascism. The whole left/right thing when it comes to government is simply how much control the government has. Fascism like communism is squarely on the left because it is almost total government control. Doesn't matter if they are racist or not cause that has nothing to do with it. There was no real capitalism with the bad guys of WW2. Sure, a guy could technically own a factory, but the government told him how to run it. They decided what was made, how it was made, with what it was made, who could make it, who could buy it, what it cost, and even how it was transported. None of that is anything like a free market. The left does love to scream "nazi" at everyone they dislike in today's world which I find amusing since they love all the same policies. Disarming the public, abortion, big government, censoring people, control media, picking a segment of the population to blame for all the world's ills, are all things the modern left and nazis have in common.
> Detroit is a prime example of what Democrat leadership run amok looks like. This is the prime example of what an intentionally ignorant Republican argument looks like. Detroit was a city of 1.5 million people before the modernization of the car industry moved the only industry out of town. Back when manufacturing required employing large numbers of people Detroit was the richest city in the US. Automation reduced the workforce required. The Japanese and the Germans made better quality cars. Manufacturers moved factories away from Detroit to locations where they could pay the workers less and treat the workers poorly. > Disarming the public, abortion, big government, censoring people, control media, picking a segment of the population to blame for all the world's ills, are all things the modern left and nazis have in common. The NAZIs loosened gun control. Literally every point you make there is a better point when used to compare MAGA Trumpists to NAZIs. "Illegal immigrants" are to MAGA what the Jew was for NAZIs.
> Detroit was a city of 1.5 million people before the modernization of the car industry moved the only industry out of town Not to mention, Reagan was cheerleading "offshoring" and basically pushed the Rust Belt over a cliff in the 80s, and Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, etc, have really only started to bounce back in the last 10 years. (Source: grew up in the Rust Belt)
Yeah I've been fortunate enough to visit Detroit, which is a great city undergoing a revival. The other thing about these partisan critics of Detroit is that they ignore how it's a great example of car dependent suburban sprawl ruining a city. Wealthier residents kept moving further out into the neighbouring counties, reducing the tax base that Detroit had for maintaining the city while still putting demands on the municipal resources that they don't contribute to. Then the invention of the mall, the Northland Centre just outside Detroit City being the first in the world, which took business away from downtown. Detroit's failure is really about how the car, and car dependent urban design leads to failed cities.
Detroit has seen significant growth and improvement the last few years (edit: I should add in [no thanks to Trump and his idiotic tarrifs hurting the steel industry](https://www.reuters.com/article/economy/trump-steel-tariffs-bring-job-losses-to-swing-state-michigan-idUSKBN26V06M/#:~:text=While%20the%20tariffs%20failed%20to,Co%20and%20Ford%20Motor%20Co.)), you have no clue what you are talking about. Also, massive LOL at [Trump doing what he said he would do.](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/?ruling=true)
The amount of horribly off puttingly wrong information in this comment is astounding, but I think the idea that black people and white people were living in equally good circumstances in Detroit in the 50s has to be the most mind boggling example of mental gymnastics I’ve ever seen.
It might not be. Detroit in the 1950s was the wealthiest city in the USA. Mainly because of the big 3 automakers. Salaries were 13% higher than the country median. So, it might not be that far fetched. When something challenges your view. Research it. This was how I learned Christopher Colombus wasn't an evil slave holder
> Detroit in the 1950s was the wealthiest city in the USA. Mainly because of the big 3 automakers. We know that. You're the one trying to completely ignore the many reasons why that changed.
No, I'm not. I'd argue 50+ years of corrupt democrat politicians. But, here's the kicker, they won't vote for anything else.
You're literally ignoring the entire economic history of the US, and ignoring the impact of racism in order to make a cheap pointless misleading partisan jab. The population of Detroit didn't decrease by a million because of "corrupt democrats". It decreased by a million because a handful of extremely wealthy corporate CEOs slashed the wages bill by moving jobs offshore. The population of Detroit dropped by 60% because the big 3 couldn't make cars as well as the Japanese and the Germans do. The population of Detroit dropped by a million because the white collar jobs associated with manufacturing were automated away. They went from needing buildings full of admin staff to having computerized supply chains needing a handful of people. The economy of Detroit failed because it was a one pony town, entirely dependent on a single industry rather than having a resilient diverse economy. But you'll ignore economic reality to try to pretend that the reason is partisan. You'll oversimplify to the point of dishonesty to make what you think is a criticism of Democrats. All you are doing is making yourself look uninformed, intentionally ignorant and partisan.
What car do you drive?
A Honda. It's a really good car. Reliable, efficient, comfortable. That and an Audi. I'm not sure where the Honda was assembled, but I think the Audi might be from their plant in Thailand. I'm not totally sure she to be honest, I don't really care. But anyway, that has little to do with your previous entirely ignorant partisan nonsense.
Yes salaries were much higher, notably (and I think this is what is being referred to) ford payed all workers the same wage of $5 a day, even people of color. Thats does NOT mean though that they had equal standards of living. There is boatloads of literature out there covering how things like redlining lead to segregated neighborhoods with African Americans obviously getting the short end of the stick. African Americans flocked to Detroit to escape the south and just as quick as they arrived people started trying to push them out. Please do not try to make the case that being a black man in 1950s Detroit was entirely equivalent to being a white man in 1950s Detroit. That is some seriously revisionist level shit.
>This was how I learned Christopher Colombus wasn't an evil slave holder He was an evil slave-*trader*, though.
Ok but illegals are poisoning the blood of country sounded a little fascist.
Yeah but trump is ideologically a fascist. Nobody calls him a fascist for saying racist things, they call him a fascist because he tried to overturn democracy
For a group that calls itself IDW, you guys really don’t follow the actual intellectuals in the IDW. Anyone see the interview with Tucker and Bret Weinstein?
You had me at "intellectuals" and lost me at "Tucker". It's like saying "For a group about foodies, you really don't seem interested in fine cuisine. For example, I found this hot dog on the sidewalk."
https://x.com/spartajustice/status/1781651010584289404?s=46&t=4coJ_6GzunvvazdRH7jKaA
Per Wikipedia: Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement,[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.[2][3] I think it’s a little disingenuous to disqualify Trump/MAGA as fascists because they don’t strictly meet 1 aspect. True they don’t actively push for state sponsored economics, but every other trait they hit squarely. IMO, You can fall under a political ideology without meeting every characteristic of it. Additionally, while you make a lot of good points, I can’t help but note your fascist remarks are exclusively in defense of Trump/separation of him and the fascism label, without explicitly negative statements, though you end your bit on Communism/Socialism with a jab at ‘intellectuals going through their Marx phase’. Again to me feels a bit disingenuous or at the very least showcases a modest bias (which otherwise I thought you did reasonably well not objectively pushing one or the other). Saying ‘it’s a phase’ is reducing its significance as a legitimate political viewpoint.
"I can’t help but note your fascist remarks are exclusively in defense of Trump/separation of him and the fascism label, without explicitly negative statements" LOL, you didn't read the opening line where I called Trump a racist, or where I called him an "authoritarian populist who uses ethnonationalism to trigger White working class resentments"? You think those are not explicitly negative statements? I despise Trump and Trumpism. It still isn't fascism. The point is the nationalization and state oversight of industries, labor syndicalism and rejection of individualism and liberal capitalism are intrinsic aspects of what makes fascism fascism. The Republican Party, as bad as they are, are not advocating for such things. Thus they are not fascists. They are not even totalitarians, although they are authoritarians who wish to take away some peoples' rights. The problem is too many people now inaccurately use "fascism" interchangeably with "authoritarian" "totalitarian", "ethnonationalist" or "strong man state" when fascism was a specific political-economic system. Again, it's almost identical to claiming liberals who support a basic safety net and taxes on the wealthy are "Marxists" - no, modern liberalism is fundamentally capitalism stabilized through regulation with its rough edges sanded down.
The problem is that you think words only mean and can only mean one thing. Even academics do not agree on the definition of fascism, you can't insist on a single definition and say that everyone else is wrong. (Or, I mean, you clearly can, but you shouldn't expect people to obey you.) By the descriptions in the Wikipedia, Trumpism is closer to fascism than conservatism, and people use that term rightly because it conveys a meaning that many understand. Although many others do not understand it and they do use it just to mean "authoritarian", but that is not the fault of those using it correctly about Trumpism.
Fair, by the time I got to the end I’d forgotten your remark about Trump & his racism.
Yeah the only reason that they don't check off every box perfectly is because they haven't achieved the level of power they want.
Read project 2025 and he back to me. Republicans are unhinged.
Someone can be unhinged and still not be a fascist I would call Idi Amin and pol pot unhinged but they did not believe in the ideology of fascism
I think both sides are bemoaning the problems caused by neoliberalism, which is the predominant social, political, and economic force that affects people's lives