The fascist mindset

[untermensche]

Yes. Let's all save her from herself.

The second option is a Trump presidency. There is no third option. Crying about doesn't change that.

No. The other option is she do something to earn the support of the left.

I know actually earning a vote is something foreign to some.

 

[Derec]

Are you saying these guys are "leftists" or "multiculturalists." They look like perhaps rich college kids drinking beer and basking in their newfound testosterone....having nothing at all to do with politics.

Which guys? From the gif? That would be Ray Liota playing Henry Hill in the 1990 movie Goodfellas. I just used it because of the awesome laugh.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Ok, realistic option then.

 

[Derec]

Do you seriously believe that "leftism" leads to these kinds of dictators? What's your evidence that it does?

Well they are all leftist dictators. They also have been supported by some on the left in this country. For example support for Chavez/Maduro that still goes on among many on the US left even as Venezuela is rapidly becoming a failed state. Or a Black Panther cum NYC councilman inviting Robert Mugabe to the city council. Or Bernie Sanders admiring Castro.

 

[untermensche]

Do you seriously believe that "leftism" leads to these kinds of dictators? What's your evidence that it does?

Well they are all leftist dictators. They also have been supported by some on the left in this country. For example support for Chavez/Maduro that still goes on among many on the US left even as Venezuela is rapidly becoming a failed state. Or a Black Panther cum NYC councilman inviting Robert Mugabe to the city council. Or Bernie Sanders admiring Castro.

You do not know the difference between elected representatives and dictators.

You are the dictator. Telling Bernie Sanders what he can admire.

 

[Derec]

You do not know the difference between elected representatives and dictators.

There is a line that sometimes gets crossed. Like with Chavez and Maduro. Others weren't elected but committed a coup, like Castro.

You are the dictator.

Telling Bernie Sanders what he can admire.

I am not telling him who he can admire. I am merely pointing out that he is a leftist politician who is admiring a leftist dictator.

I find it baffling that people reject the idea that leftist dictators have anything whatsoever to do with leftism.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Do you seriously believe that "leftism" leads to these kinds of dictators? What's your evidence that it does?

Well they are all leftist dictators. They also have been supported by some on the left in this country. For example support for Chavez/Maduro that still goes on among many on the US left even as Venezuela is rapidly becoming a failed state. Or a Black Panther cum NYC councilman inviting Robert Mugabe to the city council. Or Bernie Sanders admiring Castro.

But what is it specifically about "leftism" which produces those dictators?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Non sequitur. What's important isn't how much they frequent nude beaches but how much they support people in general for having the right to go to nude beaches. That's what tolerance is about. Being fine with other people disagreeing with them.

One can be extremely committed to civil rights, even call them a hardcore civil rights activist who gets in your face. But big fucking deal. In the end they want to increase voter participation. The right wants no such action. That's the difference, not whether they have an attitude.

This has nothing to do with either tolerance or being pro democracy. The right are typically against government manipulation in order to get people to do anything. The right tend to be for self empowerment. Ie, if a person wants to participate in the democracy he should be allowed to pursue it by their own accord. That's right wing freedom

I think you are confusing tolerance and acceptance. The people in the U.S. who opposed civil rights - and still do - are intolerant right wingers. They're certainly for self empowerment so long as it isn't those darkies, or those women who should be home cooking and making babies, so long as it isn't these kind of people that are being empowered. Eventually they may need to tolerate a change in the status quo but they will never accept it.

No I don't. Acceptance isn't necessary in a democracy. Only tolerance. I don't require from anybody to accept anything in a democracy. Merely that they tolerate the stuff that they don't like. And if they want to change it go the parliamentarian route

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Non sequitur. What's important isn't how much they frequent nude beaches but how much they support people in general for having the right to go to nude beaches. That's what tolerance is about. Being fine with other people disagreeing with them.

One can be extremely committed to civil rights, even call them a hardcore civil rights activist who gets in your face. But big fucking deal. In the end they want to increase voter participation. The right wants no such action. That's the difference, not whether they have an attitude.

This has nothing to do with either tolerance or being pro democracy. The right are typically against government manipulation in order to get people to do anything. The right tend to be for self empowerment. Ie, if a person wants to participate in the democracy he should be allowed to pursue it by their own accord. That's right wing freedom

I think you are confusing tolerance and acceptance. The people in the U.S. who opposed civil rights - and still do - are intolerant right wingers. They're certainly for self empowerment so long as it isn't those darkies, or those women who should be home cooking and making babies, so long as it isn't these kind of people that are being empowered. Eventually they may need to tolerate a change in the status quo but they will never accept it.

No I don't. Acceptance isn't necessary in a democracy. Only tolerance. I don't require from anybody to accept anything in a democracy. Merely that they tolerate the stuff that they don't like. And if they want to change it go the parliamentarian route

It seems you are insisting then, that this behavior now makes both camps identical when nothing could be less true. That certainly is a strange and convenient argument. You are agreeing that right wingers do not wish for equality but merely tolerate it because the law which they oppose forbids them to enforce inequality, so now they're just like their counterparts. That's hand-washing if there ever was some, and certainly illustrates at least one way right wingers justify their prejudice.

 

[untermensche]

I am not telling him who he can admire. I am merely pointing out that he is a leftist politician who is admiring a leftist dictator.

I find it baffling that people reject the idea that leftist dictators have anything whatsoever to do with leftism.

This is Bernie on the issue.

The moderator gave Sanders an opportunity to disavow his past praise for Castro, but the Vermont senator declined to do so.

"What that was about was saying that the United States was wrong to try to invade Cuba, that the United States was wrong to try to support people to overthrow the Nicaraguan government," Sanders said.

Asked whether he regretted praising Castro, Sanders, a self-termed democratic socialist, avoided the question and reiterated that the key question was whether or not the United States should be pushing for regime change in foreign countries.

"Cuba is, of course, an authoritarian, undemocratic country and I hope very much, as soon as possible, it becomes a democratic country," Sanders said.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box...5-sanders-defends-past-praise-of-fidel-castro

It is nuanced I know. Something neanderthals have trouble with and try to pretend doesn't exist.

In no way did Bernie praise dictatorship. To think so is simply to not think.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Non sequitur. What's important isn't how much they frequent nude beaches but how much they support people in general for having the right to go to nude beaches. That's what tolerance is about. Being fine with other people disagreeing with them.

One can be extremely committed to civil rights, even call them a hardcore civil rights activist who gets in your face. But big fucking deal. In the end they want to increase voter participation. The right wants no such action. That's the difference, not whether they have an attitude.

This has nothing to do with either tolerance or being pro democracy. The right are typically against government manipulation in order to get people to do anything. The right tend to be for self empowerment. Ie, if a person wants to participate in the democracy he should be allowed to pursue it by their own accord. That's right wing freedom

I think you are confusing tolerance and acceptance. The people in the U.S. who opposed civil rights - and still do - are intolerant right wingers. They're certainly for self empowerment so long as it isn't those darkies, or those women who should be home cooking and making babies, so long as it isn't these kind of people that are being empowered. Eventually they may need to tolerate a change in the status quo but they will never accept it.

No I don't. Acceptance isn't necessary in a democracy. Only tolerance. I don't require from anybody to accept anything in a democracy. Merely that they tolerate the stuff that they don't like. And if they want to change it go the parliamentarian route

It seems you are insisting then, that this behavior now makes both camps identical when nothing could be less true. That certainly is a strange and convenient argument. You are agreeing that right wingers do not wish for equality but merely tolerate it because the law which they oppose forbids them to enforce inequality, so now they're just like their counterparts. That's hand-washing if there ever was some, and certainly illustrates at least one way right wingers justify their prejudice.

I'm not justifying anything. I certainly don't agree with right wingers. But I'm not inclined to think them evil nor against freedom. They're for tolerance and equality in their own way.

Both the right and the left have a bad tendency of being blind to what virtues the other side has.

 

[untermensche]

They're for tolerance and equality in their own way

No they are for tolerance and equality for their own kind.

They have no use for the rights of the people they consider subhuman.

Like Mexicans here without their permission and Muslims.

 

[BH]

I think we have been diverted from the true explanation of what a fascist is. It is a person who thinks that certain superior people are on this earth to rule society. Only their great leadership will keep us on the right track. Fascists always create conditions that lead to a security environment and to a government that makes its decisions in private, with discussions only happening between those authorized to discuss the tactics the government will resort to to enforce its secretly derived policies. Knowing your power relies on secrecy and lying at times is part of the mantra of Fascism. Leaders in the end represent their deeply held convictions...those often they dare not discuss but always at the base of their policies is the notion: "Only those who can be trusted to obey me can be trusted with knowledge of what I do." Lying is the outcome of Fascist beliefs.

If Mussolini was so great why did he and his mistress end up strung up on a rope? And if Hitler was so great why did he end up with a bullet in his head, self inflicted on top of that?

This idea of who is "superior" and who is "best" is relative. How long would one of these superior guys have held up against a professional mugger when no police or security was around, or in the ring with a boxer, or against someone's armed mother whose child they had unjustly condemned to death with the mother being told "have at 'em"?

 

[fast]

nm

 

[SimpleDon]

Do you seriously believe that "leftism" leads to these kinds of dictators? What's your evidence that it does?

Well they are all leftist dictators. They also have been supported by some on the left in this country. For example support for Chavez/Maduro that still goes on among many on the US left even as Venezuela is rapidly becoming a failed state. Or a Black Panther cum NYC councilman inviting Robert Mugabe to the city council. Or Bernie Sanders admiring Castro.

To say that "leftism" leads inexorably to communistic dictatorship, ala Hayek's Road to Serfdom, is just as insensible as saying that "rightism" leads inexorably to fascist dictatorship. Neither makes any sense.


As I constantly caution you in any of these threads where you bring up Venezuela as a failed state because it is socialistic, the main reason that Venezuela is a failed state is because it has an economy totally dependent on a single commodity, oil. When the price of oil goes down the country's economy completely tanks. If are going to insist that the reason that Venezuela has failed is because of the country's politics you are going to have to declare that Venezuela in the late 1980's was a failed state because of its neoliberal, oligarchic government. Neither is true.

 

[SimpleDon]

These threads always end up in the same place, posters cheering for their own team and booing the other team.

The problem is that if any one of the "teams" dominates politics for too long as movement conservatism has in the US, its policies begin to exceed their "best if used by date," they spoil. While when they were first adopted they may have been needed to counter the policies that they replaced, after a while they push the country too far.

In the US we have become too conservative. We have gone too far, much further than we had to go to correct the excesses of the previous left leaning social and economic policies. Now the conservative social and the neoliberal economic policies have gone too far and they are creating their own problems.

 

[untermensche]

These threads always end up in the same place, posters cheering for their own team and booing the other team.

The problem is that if any one of the "teams" dominates politics for too long as movement conservatism has in the US, its policies begin to exceed their "best if used by date," they spoil. While when they were first adopted they may have been needed to counter the policies that they replaced, after a while they push the country too far.

In the US we have become too conservative. We have gone too far, much further than we had to go to correct the excesses of the previous left leaning social and economic policies. Now the conservative social and the neoliberal economic policies have gone too far and they are creating their own problems.

Some of us have no team in the game.

Bernie is somebody mildly on the left. He is an FDR Democrat in support of national social services like many European nations and Canada have. He is hardly calling for violent revolution.

But he is alone and appears to be off far to the left.

Because all the teams are now right of center from Obama and Hillary Clinton to the far right Republicans.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

These threads always end up in the same place, posters cheering for their own team and booing the other team.

The problem is that if any one of the "teams" dominates politics for too long as movement conservatism has in the US, its policies begin to exceed their "best if used by date," they spoil. While when they were first adopted they may have been needed to counter the policies that they replaced, after a while they push the country too far.

In the US we have become too conservative. We have gone too far, much further than we had to go to correct the excesses of the previous left leaning social and economic policies. Now the conservative social and the neoliberal economic policies have gone too far and they are creating their own problems.

Left agenda? It has been a while since FDR.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The left is about tolerance.

It is the only place where tolerance is even talked about.

Not the only place.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I think you'll have to back that up. Because my impression of the right is clearly way different than yours.

I've heard it a million times from the right.

About the dangers of mob rule and how we need to keep democracy in check to prevent this.

I don't know where you've been living.

You also believe in keeping democracy in check. You have explicitly stated that the majority shall not infringe certain fundamental rights of the minority.

By your stated standards, you are now an anti-democratic right-winger dictator. Do you dispute that you also believe in keeping democracy in check?