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lol at the middle classes (and affiliated fannies) having a ten point preference over the actual working class. It looks as though it would be more if the C1 people were shunted down a level as well.
No one knows what either of them are.
Vomiting or diarrhoea? Tough one.
What a question. :harold:
That may be the stupidest poll I've ever seen.
No option for joining the armed resistance to either?
I worked at YouGov once and have seen this in action. What happens is that the manager of a particular team - a tall, languid, impossibly good looking chap called Freddie - strolls into the office with his soya latte and asks his minions, more the studious types with thick glasses, to throw him ideas for the daily poll.Quote:
Originally Posted by ItalAussie
'Do you prefer glamping or caravanning?'
'What's your favourite mollusc?'
'Which member of the Rolling Stones would be best suited to the post of Environment Secretary?'
He then chews his pen for a bit, says 'What about... preference between communism and fascism? If you HAD to choose?' and they all nod and go back to their data graphics.
It's funny a poll like that came about because I was talking to someone the other day about the disproportionate stigma attached to the 'politics of the right'. Ask someone to imagine a fascist and they'll think of a neo-nazi skinhead whereas a communist is much more likely to be a Jeremy Corbyn-esque 'yogurt-knitter', in the words of Wor Yev. It's impressive that Hitler and co so comprehensively fucked a wing of politics (without even being in it) whereas actual communists who were just as bad get an almost completely freehand from tainting their supposed ideology.
There has a to be a point where it becomes quite self-reinforcing as well, almost cultish (see Scotland and Thatcher).
Isn't that more a byproduct of the teaching that Stalin/China aren't/weren't actually communists so get disassociated from the Marxist ideas of the Communist Manifesto. Therefore allowing the argument that there hasn't ever been a communist society outside of a few cults like that weird place in Denmark with no laws.Quote:
Originally Posted by niko_cee
That's what I was taught growing up at least.
I don't think there's any general doubt that Stalin and Mao were communists. It's more rooted in the absolute obsession with Hitler and Nazis in our culture at the expense of all other history, which oddly, in this context, usually comes from the same people who in other contexts urge us to dismiss World War II from our memories and focus more on the evils of the British Empire.
We concentrate on the Nazis/WWII because it's the only unambiguous Good V Evil war in history.
Aye, but I'm not sure gassing Jews and experimenting on the disabled are really central tenets of fascism, or even Nazism, but, as you say, communism gets away with beardy Das Kapital nostalgia and the other side gets skinheads, swastikas and a supposed desire to exterminate anything vaguely different.Quote:
Originally Posted by phonics
You never hear much about the Khmer Rouge, who were surely the worst of them all. I guess that's a natural consequence of non-white lives having literally zero value in the white imagination (left and right wing).
I don't see that as being any better than Hitler and the Nazis, and if anything it's worse.Quote:
The Khmer Rouge government arrested, tortured, and eventually executed anyone suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed "enemies", including:
Anyone with connections to the former Cambodian government or with foreign governments.
Professionals and intellectuals – in practice this included almost everyone with an education, people who understood a foreign language and even people who required glasses (which, according to the regime, meant that they spent too much time reading books instead of working). Ironically, Pol Pot himself was an educated man with a taste for French literature and spoke fluent French. Many artists, including musicians, writers, and filmmakers were executed. Some like Ros Serey Sothea, Pan Ron, and Sinn Sisamouth gained posthumous fame for their talents and are still popular with Khmers today.
Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Thai, and other minorities in the Eastern Highlands, Cambodian Christians (most of whom were Catholic, and the Catholic Church in general), Muslims, and the Buddhist monks. The Roman Catholic cathedral of Phnom Penh was razed. The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they regard as forbidden (ḥarām). Many of those who refused were killed. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed.
"Economic saboteurs" – many former urban dwellers were deemed guilty of sabotage due to their lack of agricultural ability.
Wrong continent for people to care about them. Same with Latin America.
What's going on in Brazil should be in the news every other day but you barely hear a peep about one of the worlds largest nations turning into a Banana Republic.
Can I just say the saga of the Tory copycat group of Momentum has been a stellar journey.
When they're not posting gold #social #media #content like this:
http://esquireuk.cdnds.net/17/35/150...-at-112705.jpg
Their infighting amongst each other after banning a bunch of members for making fun of the poor leading to stuff like this
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJJxkmyWsAEFYuI.jpg
No wonder Theresa May would like to just ban the internet.
The REAL COMMUNISM stuff seems to be based (other than people just kidding themselves) on the fact that the original omelette recipe fails to give explicit mention to breaking millions of eggs. A spectre is haunting Europe. The spectre of hunger. We're all peckish, so if we get some ham in, maybe some cheese... The capitalists are using their ovens for cakes, but people are sick of unhealthy cake, so as long as everybody likes omelette - and why wouldn't they? - we're good to go. Then a bunch of ineffectual fannies sat around in Paris and Berlin for years rowing over whether the cheese or the ham goes in first, and how much you need of each, until Vladimir Lenin came in with a box of eggs and said 'Lads...' That marks the point where it became perverted and wrong; but the intentions were good obviously mate.
Assuming you were a 'normal' person, it's hard to see how you would have been better off under any communist (as in societies influenced by Marxism and subsequent interpretations) society than the fascist (as in authoritarian nationalists) alternatives. Even Nazi Germany only really went apeshit with a war on, by which point the Soviet Union had already done about ten million people in. Italy, Spain, Portugal would all have been better bets, and if you chuck all of the Asian and Latin American strongmen in, which wouldn't be unfair, then for all the excesses you have roaring successes like Chile and South Korea (maybe even Singapore). The only communist countries that don't appear to have been absolute crap were Yugoslavia and East Germany, and in their case only because their residual Germanism meant that most things still worked properly.
It's because, as phonics said, the Second World War (although some ambiguity creeps in when you ask what the Soviet Union was doing for the first two years), and because there are enough idiots who give communist countries a pass because they were murdering millions of people for the right reasons.
Curious to hear what you think are the 'central tenets' of fascism.Quote:
Originally Posted by niko_cee
European history would have been infinitely better if someone had just torched Paris in about 1800.
Does anyone really give credence to the "not real communism" thing? Aside from idiots on the internet, that is.
I'm a latte-sipping liberal lefty with the best of them, and I'm 100% behind the "we tried it, it sucked, it doesn't work" acknowledgement.
The Robert Paxton and Stanley Payne definitions are the best ones (here), and the former has a checklist of 'mobilizing passions' (here [pp.6-7]) that, as an aside, makes the bedroom-dwelling wing of the Trump Train seem rather more fascistic than I had previously considered.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
Failing that, just find some pinko pamphlets and replace all mentions of class/people with country/state.
Wasn't asking you mate.
Still, if we go by 'central tenets,' it is hard to see how fascism is any more appealing than communism.
Throw me in the 'dunno, lol' section of that poll.
I mostly have an issue with the idea that poor ol' fascism somehow gets the wrong end of the stick while communism gets all the good rep. Both words get misused by the other side to represent all that is bad.
Speaking of which, I saw a great 'article' recently on why the communist death toll is a myth:Quote:
Originally Posted by ItalAussie
'I have had more hot dinners than a five year old.'Quote:
If the allegation against communism is that it killed 100 million people, how many people did naziism kill? The Holocaust death toll is estimated to be between 17 million to 20 million people. That is about 1.5 million people killed each year from the year nazi Germany was born until it’s death— compared to communism’s alleged one million deaths. If naziism kept that pace of 1.5 million people killed each year, it would reach 150 million deaths in a century— compared to communism’s alleged 100 million. Comparing the alleged deaths of 100 years of communism to the death toll from 12 years of naziism is intellectually dishonest, you are comparing apples to oranges. When you realize that you are comparing 17 million deaths in 12 years versus 100 million deaths in 100 years, the claim that “communism killed more people than naziism” starts to become more visible as the nazi propaganda that it is.
'Hmm. Seems a bit intellectually dishonest. What if he lives to two-hundred and doesn't require any sleep?'
I was literally taught it in the same school Mert went to. But thinking about it, he did wear socks and sandals.Quote:
Originally Posted by ItalAussie
I think the argument is more of a "no social change succeeds in one try" nature, no? At least that's what I typically hear.Quote:
Originally Posted by ItalAussie
I quite like that Payne one, but I'd have probably said something less comprehensive/refined, and as to your second point, that's not really what I was getting at, more that one is seen as inherently evil, whilst the other inherently decent (if we could only do it properly!) and that this bias/attitude permeates a good deal of society, which I think is odd.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pepe
Does sound a bit 'inherently evil' don't you think?Quote:
A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
I think I might understand what you mean, in that there is an 'all right-wingers are bad ones' speech. But then there is also an 'all left-wingers are stupid' speech, so it all evens out.
Only if being evil and being stupid are equivalent, which I'm not sure they are.
They're not, but they are stupid generalizations done by stupid people based on dodgy team allegiances.
I might have to brush up on my Communism 101, but does any of the 'central tenets' sound as 'inherently evil' as that definition of fascism?
In the Communist Manifesto no, but when Lenin sought to 'organise violence in the interests of the people' simply to make it work you can see how it all unfolded as it did.
For sure, but then one can separate the ideology from the application, which is what justifies the different treatment they get, even if historically they were both a bit shit.
See Ital's post up there. It's fair to say 'it doesn't work' but then I think it's also fair to say that fascism is a bit evil.
We'll get it right next time. ;)
Not really. If you just went off what was written down then fascist doctrine is also much milder than what came about. The Doctrine of Fascism (half written by Benito Mussolini) is hardly extreme; what Oswald Mosley imagined for a fascist Britain just reads like a modern 'progressive' programme (mind you, that was before he started indulging anti-Semitism; but even then it was not really violent); and even all of Adolf Hitler's balls, whilst obviously openly anti-Semitic, contains nothing to suggest that they were going to set about doing them all in.
Other than the nature of the collective, does the Paxton definition - which is based on what happened rather than what little written doctrine existed - you quoted actually sound any different from communism (as realised)? If anything the 'uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites' necessitates that it is inherently less violent.
That's why I asked, because I don't really know what the good fascists are supposed to stand for.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Not really.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
What, you mean the fascist equivalent of somebody who believes in Marxism in its pure (and impossible) form? I suppose they would just be into benevolent dictatorship and everybody putting the country first. Mosley's The Greater Britain was a bit like that. It isn't necessarily repressive and violent in theory, but it would obviously have to be in reality.
Like socialism, then.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Or capitalism.
I don't see a Gestapo-like organisation rounding up dissenters for imprisonment and execution.
Yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Everything seems to fail when a dictator is needed in charge.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewis
Well, yeah. There is probably something in there being less theoretical stuff around (by the important people then, and by people going on now) to cling to. If there was a fascist equivalent of the Communist Manifesto that just went 1) globalists ruining it mate; 2) everyone becoming patriots; 3) .....; 4) profit then maybe everyone could just come back to that and say Mussolini and Hitler weren't real fascists.
Lots of campaigns run on that, so I reckon you're right.
You should get on it.
When 'The Donald' implodes people can say it wasn't real Bannonism.
Martin Lewis is continuing to fight the good fight on tuition fees, this time with regards to the supposedly high interest rates. It's been met by a wall of idiots who don't understand mathematics.
Is this Twitter again?
It is. He means well too, given he doesn't want thick people making thick decisions based on misinformed bollocks but there surely comes a point where you just have to leave them to it.
Deadly Dom is back and firing twitter darts at all comers. It's both surprising and not at all surprising that no one listens to him, given the magnitude of his influence on the referendum.
I wonder what he normally does all day.
He's baiting Continuity Remain now, too.
lol at that. Speaking of polls, the consistency of them is pretty interesting. Both parties are locked on 41/42 each, and have been for months. Normally the government would be shitting support right about now, so I am pretty convinced by 'Peak Corbyn'.