Kill the people who resist or disagree, or sometimes also if you just feel like killing them. For the rest, strip away basic rights so that they won’t rise up to dismantle the system.
–
As someone pointed out, perhaps things are a bit different in America, but this is how I see far left generally from Europe.
State-run communism as it has actually existed and fascism end up with very similar results, not the least because both believed in fast progress, dismantling traditional communities and value systems and everything being run by a strong man with an iron fist. The fascist dictator is supposedly a personification of the will of the “people” or “nation”, while the communist one is the same for the “proletariat” or, indeed, the “people”. The fact that both systems produce cleptocratic oligarchies that destroy lives of ordinary people is no accident.
This is also why the “extreme left” supposed by the OP is not extreme at all. Some just tend to confuse evend mild and moderate social democracy with genocidal communism, perhaps because their domestic political landscape is fucked up beyond recognition
It doesn’t help that the communists here usually deny the communist autocracies of the past as “not real communism, this time it’ll work bro trust me,” and when you press them on their beliefs you learn they find killing political dissidents not only acceptable, but they’re excited to line you up against the wall “the second they get a chance.”
And the milder, actually center leftists like you describe, deny the existence of Group A above outright instead of saying “yeah those guys are crazy, we’re not like them,” but then turn around and count the supposed nonexistent Group A as their compatriots against “the nazis.” (But when Group A’s genocide takes off guess who will quickly fail a purity test and be shot just after all the nazis and anarchists, yup, it’s Group B here.)
America’s left needs to realize that people like those represented by lemmy’s own tankie triad are real, are “left” not just “right playing dress up,” and are dangerous people to them as well and to normal people, not “just the nazis.” It reminds me of Trump not denouncing the KKK because they supported him, but you can disavow people who unironically support the Holodomor and want to do it again to their kulaks while also pushing for social policies that benefit the people.
The 4th point yes indeed. Hence the horseshoe theory. Fascists love tradition though and have not usually gone to seizing the means of production in a general way at least.
The original fascists of Italy went actually extra hard for Futurists (the avant garde movement in art and philosophy, whose main premise was “out with the old, in with the new guns and machines go brrrrrr”), who in turn celebrated Mussolini as a great leader. Nazis were good at incorporating traditionalist aesthetics to make their flair of violent modernism more palatable - it probably helped that industrialisation had developed much further in Germany than in Italy, having already done most of the work of dismantling traditional rural society and the structures it came with. And yeah, they didn’t seize the means of production directly, but it’s also not like German industrialists (who had significantly helped Hitler to power) really had much options in deciding what to produce and to whom, or what kind of opinions to publicly hold, once the Nazis really got their show going.
Really makes you think about the short-sightedness of the current American business elite propping up their own Fascists. I guess we’ll see who will be faster to eat who this time around
Yeah sure, and what is far lefts position then?
Seize the means of production.
Fuck tradition.
Fuck economics.
Kill the people who resist or disagree, or sometimes also if you just feel like killing them. For the rest, strip away basic rights so that they won’t rise up to dismantle the system.
–
As someone pointed out, perhaps things are a bit different in America, but this is how I see far left generally from Europe.
That sounds like fascism.
State-run communism as it has actually existed and fascism end up with very similar results, not the least because both believed in fast progress, dismantling traditional communities and value systems and everything being run by a strong man with an iron fist. The fascist dictator is supposedly a personification of the will of the “people” or “nation”, while the communist one is the same for the “proletariat” or, indeed, the “people”. The fact that both systems produce cleptocratic oligarchies that destroy lives of ordinary people is no accident.
This is also why the “extreme left” supposed by the OP is not extreme at all. Some just tend to confuse evend mild and moderate social democracy with genocidal communism, perhaps because their domestic political landscape is fucked up beyond recognition
It doesn’t help that the communists here usually deny the communist autocracies of the past as “not real communism, this time it’ll work bro trust me,” and when you press them on their beliefs you learn they find killing political dissidents not only acceptable, but they’re excited to line you up against the wall “the second they get a chance.”
And the milder, actually center leftists like you describe, deny the existence of Group A above outright instead of saying “yeah those guys are crazy, we’re not like them,” but then turn around and count the supposed nonexistent Group A as their compatriots against “the nazis.” (But when Group A’s genocide takes off guess who will quickly fail a purity test and be shot just after all the nazis and anarchists, yup, it’s Group B here.)
America’s left needs to realize that people like those represented by lemmy’s own tankie triad are real, are “left” not just “right playing dress up,” and are dangerous people to them as well and to normal people, not “just the nazis.” It reminds me of Trump not denouncing the KKK because they supported him, but you can disavow people who unironically support the Holodomor and want to do it again to their kulaks while also pushing for social policies that benefit the people.
yeah tankies are the real problem in america right now /s
All authoritarians are always a problem
You’re in the meme
You’re in the meme.
The 4th point yes indeed. Hence the horseshoe theory. Fascists love tradition though and have not usually gone to seizing the means of production in a general way at least.
The original fascists of Italy went actually extra hard for Futurists (the avant garde movement in art and philosophy, whose main premise was “out with the old, in with the new guns and machines go brrrrrr”), who in turn celebrated Mussolini as a great leader. Nazis were good at incorporating traditionalist aesthetics to make their flair of violent modernism more palatable - it probably helped that industrialisation had developed much further in Germany than in Italy, having already done most of the work of dismantling traditional rural society and the structures it came with. And yeah, they didn’t seize the means of production directly, but it’s also not like German industrialists (who had significantly helped Hitler to power) really had much options in deciding what to produce and to whom, or what kind of opinions to publicly hold, once the Nazis really got their show going.
Really makes you think about the short-sightedness of the current American business elite propping up their own Fascists. I guess we’ll see who will be faster to eat who this time around
horseshoe theory is a centrist nonsense contrivance. It suggests that the left and right both end up taking the public to the same outcomes.
how is that a bad thing? Right wingers deserve it
Reduce or eliminate private ownership of capital.