Skip Navigation
chapotraphouse @hexbear.net
Frank [he/him, he/him] @hexbear.net

I have been informed that there were no left-wing participants in WWII.

Because the USSR was "authoritarian" and that makes them right wing.

Political Science is a real field of inquiry and Political Scientists are real scientists who deserve to be taken seriously, and other lies.

The shit political scientists say is just baffling. Like whether you like the USSR or not, defining right wing politics as being "authoritarian" is just bizzarely ignorant and weird. And, like, the definition of a nation state is partially an entity which effectively monopolizes the legitimate use of force within it's borders, so what the fuck does authoritarian even mean? Authority is the definition of a state, it's what makes a state a state. Fucks sake.

13 comments

  • this is all articulated by arendt project of shoveling ussr nazi germany into authoritatian bucket and enlightened whitey empire into democracy bucket

    With that goal in mind you can easily clock the person for those views (outside of anarchists, but they don't make whitey empire bucket separate)

  • Analyzing right/left dynamics in this way seriously requires a full and total ignorance or misunderstanding of everything. Willful, purposeful, ideologically driven ignorance I'd argue (in most cases).

    It also totally deletes discussion of class (this is why I said it's done purposely- of course capitalists want to delete that discussion altogether). It boils everything down to "Is the state exerting power somewhere?" "Is that force justified?" This effectively equates suppressing capitalist/liberal ideas like private property ownership being sacred and actually where value flows from (business owners- which hurts my brain even typing bc it's so dumb, but moving on) to, I dunno, police coming and killing striking workers because a private owner demanded the strike end. Both of these are examples of authoritarianism, the state exerting force on individuals to force an outcome, but one is in the interest of workers/society as a whole, and the other is in the interest of a handful of owners. Under the bullshit definition some want to push, the class aspect doesn't matter, all that matters is someone was forced.

    When neoliberals know they've got no answer to questions around class and legitimacy of private property, they just change the definitions to fit whatever they need. Convenient and not unexpected

  • I have no idea what they teach in political science classes, but I honestly think that they could get a better understanding of politics from playing Paradox games than whatever they teach in them. The way they talk it just seems to be "ignore every single actual bit of useful information about politics and use big words to cover up the fact that you have a toddler's understanding of politics."

  • Anyone who uses the word 'authoritarian' sicnerely should be dismissed as a fool immediately. It's also fun to ask where the line between acceptable authority and authoritarian is to them and then describe an example of it happening where they are or they'll.just describe probable falsehoods regarding the authoritarian we like that clearly mark them as different than the Hitler authoritarian because the term is simply a crude cudgel to bash two different shaped blocks through the fascist shaped hole

13 comments