I am so irony poisoned I genuinely though
was the original orientationPermanently Deleted
The most important and foundational aspect of fascism is anti-communism
Can you elaborate?
XXth century fascism was the west's capitalists reaction to communists taking power all around them. Rich assholes started financing rabid anti-communists to kill leftists.
An early version of fascism is described in Marx's 18th Brumaire, in which he describes a failed revolution being followed by a period of terror, when anyone the cops thought was involved with workers movement could be killed in the street.
From the end of WWII to now, imperialists have been financing far-right groups to counter communists/leftist/progressive groups wherever they seem to be getting some power. See operations Gladio and Condor, and also the Jakarta Method
First and foremost, the Sturmabteilung was mainly formed out of the Freikorps, which was formed and used to crush the Spartakusbund and communist uprisings in 1918 Germany. The Nazis and Italian Fascist Party's first targets were always trade unions and the communist parties. The famous poem records the actual order of Nazi Priorities
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
As Moshe Postone elaborated in his analysis of Structural Anti-Semitism, that anti-semitism and using the Jew as a scapegoat allowed the separation of positive sides of modernity and capitalism (mass consumer goods, relative autonomy, etc.) from the negative aspects (alienation, volatility due to speculative finance, the parasitism of rent seeking, etc.) and say that the positive aspects were real capitalism, while the negative aspects were due to the Jewish controlled finance (a.k.a. cosmopolitanism, crony capitalism, woke-ism, etc.). Additionally, things like Judeo-Bolshevism allowed the Nazis to avoid questions like "who do we hate more, Jews or communists", and how they were opposed to finance capital and communism simultaneously.
But to be more direct, Fascism is fundamentally the white blood cells of capitalism. Where major cataclysms like the great depression, hyper-inflation, or the broader alienation of capitalist life prevents people from really believing in capitalism as this ever present progress that provides a "rising tide that lifts all boats". Fascism comes in to prevent any structural critiques or implication of capitalism by using scapegoats like the Jews controlling the banks or immigrants coming in and taking jobs. Fascism's fundamental material basis and mass support is based around people that don't want to give up on the idea of capitalism and their position in it (which is why the Petit Bourgeois is the most important basis of fascism and reaction) despite having to deal with the failures and consequences of capitalism by deflecting the blame onto socialism and some other group like the Jews. "The problem with the economy is that we still haven't privatized (Privatiserung) and deregulated enough of the economy. There is still some occluded socialism somewhere."
I wish anyone who throws around the word tankie could define it in real politik terms instead of "it means facist, to me" or "muh authoritarianism and imperialism." What are the "tankie" political theories that they disagree with? Anti-colonialism? Anti-capitalism? Peace before war when in power? Closed door approaches to capital infiltration as state defense tactics? Planned economy?
I guess this is just a normal response to the existential horror that you've been poisoned by capital and told it was medicine and now have to look the demons of capital in the face and try to deal with it.
The only common thread I've noticed is that it always refers to an imperial core person admiring something foreign. You're somehow not a tankie if you're actually from China and you're a Marxist-Leninist. In that case you're just an authoritarian. But if you're from Canada and you say nice things about China? Then you're a tankie.
There's some kind of nationalist brainworm built into the term. There's some kind of conception that foreigners just do socialism incorrectly, but white people can do it properly through...I don't know, voting every 4 years, or begging for it nicely or making a utopian settlement in the woods. But if you're a white person who wants revolutionary socialism, you've allowed scary foreign devils to pollute your mind and you're a tankie now. Telling liberals that being a "tankie" is the overwhelmingly most normal position for communists worldwide shortcircuits their brains. They can only conceive of three types of communists: Idiot white teenagers from imperialist countries, cynical dictators, and brainwashed foreigners who can't think properly because they're foreign.
Way too many times I've been talking with someone who called me a tankie, and I ask them why it seems like China and Vietnam have such high approval for their respective states. That's when it starts coming out. They'll say communism is just a better fit for their culture, or that the people there are more easily brainwashed, or that the approval ratings are all lies. It's so racist and disgusting.
Yeah, I can see that. Just inherent nationalism and racism but it's acceptable because gommunism bad
I get it. We're in our third financial crisis "of a lifetime." You can't afford a groceries, restaurants, cars, healthcare, or a house. Rights are stripped away from us daily. Neo-nazis are even more mainstream than Nazis in West Germany. We are told things are looking up, but we all know things are worse than ever. What can we do if all we know is vote blue (or UK labour)? Scream at the void. Blame someone, anyone. An amorphous blob with no more meaning than a comic book villain becomes the outlet for capitalism's torture, and it is not questioned until it is confronted by Lemmy users, in what you thought was a shitposting meme about le china.
Is this instance another lemmmygrad? Supporting the CCP and all its antics?
call me when the SEESEEPEE has aircraft carriers in the gulf of mexico the way amerikkka has aircraft carriers in the south china sea. call me when china is building military bases in other countries without their consent the way Amerikkka keeps guantanamo bay open despite the cuban government not consenting to it for over 60 years. Call me when China has over 800 military bases all around the world. Call me when China is couping, sanctioning, embargoing, and assassinating anyone who inconveniences their foreign policy. Call me when you have something besides disproven atrocity propaganda from Adrian Zenz.
we're evil communists here to, uh, feed the poor, secure housing for everyone, oppose violence against innocent people. you know, all those horrible things liberals kill people for
China? What does china have to do with being anti-fascist? Umm sweety you just did an whataboutism
Why does being against facism trigger you Also its CPC not "See See Pee"
at what point in your life do you become the sort of person to get defensive over people making fun of Mussolini
没有共产党，就没有新中国
We're just a bunch of goofballs up to no good
yes
Ccp aint even communists... its like any other capitalistic country
They just have the word in their name. Doesnt mean shit.
Just like the countries with the word "democratic" in their full name, are the least democratic of all. (Democratic republic of congo... its actually a dictatorship)
Full disclosure I'm half educating half trolling:
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has a better constitution than the US. Instead of a president appointing all of the heads of executive departments people get to vote for them.
A party of 90 million members and 500,000 municipal level labor cohorts voting in local and regional elections to create a central goverment that defuses most of its authority to regional economic blocs is far more democratic than any of the horseshit top down neoliberal technocracy that passes as "democracy" in the west
Harvard University’s Ash Center released a 2020 study of Chinese public opinion showing that, as of 2016, “95.5 percent of respondents were either ‘relatively satisfied’ or ‘highly satisfied’ with Beijing,”
[...]
Li: At the moment, the Chinese the party state has proven an extraordinary ability to change. I mean, I make the joke: “in America you can change the political party, but you can’t change the policies. In China you cannot change the party, but you can change policies.” So, in the past 66 years, China has been run by one single party. Yet the political changes that have taken place in China in these past 66 years have been wider, and broader, and greater than probably any other major country in modern memory.
Pilger: So in that time China ceased to be communist. Is that what you’re saying?
Li: Well, China is a market economy, and it’s a vibrant market economy. But it is not a capitalist country. Here’s why: there’s no way a group of billionaires could control the Politburo as billionaires control American policy-making. So in China you have a vibrant market economy, but capital does not rise above political authority. Capital does not have enshrined rights. In America, capital — the interests of capital and capital itself — has risen above the American nation. The political authority cannot check the power of capital. That’s why America is a capitalist country, and China is not.
from https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
also hey look, you're in this picture:
Marxists view "success" as improving people's lives, i.e. increasing the amount of wealth each individual has, getting people out poverty, improving life expectancy, improving literacy, improving home ownership rates, improving access to health care, so on and so forth.
Liberals view "success" as bringing people "freedumb and democrazy", even if that entails completely destroying their living standards, killing tons of people, driving people into immense poverty, preventing their country from developing.
But it makes no sense because if "democracy" comes from the Greek, "demos kratia," meaning, "people's power." If the people actually had the power, why would they not use the political institutions to improve their livelihoods? So how do liberals reconcile this contradiction that you can have "democracy" while at the same time not having expected outcomes from democracy?
They resolve this contradiction by reducing "democracy" down to mere rituals. If you perform the rituals, you're a "democracy." If you don't, you're a ”dictatorship." The actual outcomes of the rituals don't matter, if people's lives aren't improving, if they're even getting worse, it's all justified as long as people are performing the correct rituals.
This makes liberal understanding of "democracy" better understood as a state religion rather than any actual real desire to give power to the people. They, in fact, always, consistently, praise the destruction of living standards as long as those rituals get to be performed. Libya is a great example of this, but so is all of eastern Europe, so is the million who died of COVID in the US while they call China "authoritarian" for protecting its people.
So if you look at global poverty over the last (say) 40 years or so, there's been a downward trend. Take China out, no downward trend. The World Bank likes to crow about how their policies have lead to the lowest levels of poverty in history, but if you look at places like sub Saharan Africa and Latin America where the World Bank and the IMF have been most active, poverty has been stagnant at best and actively increasing at worst - something the UN has remarked upon repeatedly.
So what gives? If China is just like any other capitalistic country, why is poverty going down there so much faster than anywhere else? Is the fact that China has been so apparently successful at reducing poverty and food insecurity an endorsement of authoritarianism?
