this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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I mean, the guy who said that went on to ally with social democracies against real fascists. And whatever the theoretical merits, I see no evidence that calling 90%+ of the U.S. population fascists will do anything to advance any leftist cause. It certainly doesn't help grow any sort of American left-wing movement.
It really is OK to say someone's take is bad without calling them a fascist. Fascists should be shot; anyone who thinks everyone from AOC to the right needs to be shot is (in the parlance of our times) deeply unserious.
social democracy is the moderate wing of fascism
moderate fascists are better than extreme fascists
no contradiction here
tldr
Lol yep it's word-for-word Biden voter logic
They clearly aid and abet fascism though. You'd be a fool not to see that they're ultimately enemies of real social change and they must be deposed or else nothing good can come.
Do you want to be (arguably) correct on some theoretical point, or do you want people to listen to you? Because the vast majority of people will immediately tune out "AOC is a fascist."
Clearly it's more complex than that, and I don't think I'd be upfront about that. I think, if you talked about how there's a historical precedence for people like AOC coming into power on a wave of radicalism and just being the same old same old, and how it's an unavoidable consequence of our system, people would be more willing to hear that. And it's the same damn concept.
I get that most leftists won't consciously lead with that hot of a take. But we have it all over this public forum that libs frequently wander into, so you can tell a lot of folks who'll lead with "AOC is not a path to revolutionary change" will break out "social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism" after about two beers. And I'd say those are two very different concepts.
Then when they push back we'll give historical precedence and evidence. My experience with MLs was having them be clearly correct in a way that a lot of others weren't and then they would say wack shit like "AOC is a fascist" but I'd stick around anyway and now I understand why it's true. I think it's generally good for us to always be honest
Amber.
Amber
Amber.
How much of this is survivor bias? How many people punched out at that wack shit and never came back?
Being honest is important, but so is knowing the difference between a topic you are solidly, unambiguously correct on (stuff like the Nazis pulling directly from the U.S. treatment of natives) and a theoretical point that is debatable and ultimately has no provable answer. Honesty works when someone who desperately wants to believe you're lying digs deeper and only finds more evidence that you're right. It doesn't land the same when you're talking about a topic that a skeptical reader can't prove to themselves in the same way.
That's the difference between you and I I think, I know AOC is a fascist in waiting, you don't believe so.
What is the point here? What do you think the left stands to gain by calling her a fascist?
The useful part of this discussion is "she's a dead end for any real leftist movement." Calling her a closet Nazi adds nothing and clocks as "wack shit" even to people who eventually become leftists!
We clown on Israeli officials for not realizing how unhinged they sound to people who don't already agree with them -- this is the exact same thing.
It breaks the illusion that she is an ally in any way or that the avenues she took to power can be pursued by ourselves. They cannot. We won't plan around her at all and will instead dismiss her praise and admonish her resistance; and if the time ever comes understand she'll advocate the same insane violence against us that the fascists will.
Edit: this isn't to reduce her to "just" a fascist. We don't treat her the same way we treat the proud boys. But she's a social democrat, which is the left wing of fascism and when push comes to shove she will absolutely side with capital.
It doesn't! People ignore it as "wack shit," exactly how you did!
It's still fundamentally the truth, provable with historical precedence and her clear actions. Besides, posters like you will appear to be a calm and rational voice to my outrageous rhetoric. I think ultimately it comes out to a balance with both of these socialist perspectives given.
Actually yes, the point of Marxism Leninism is that it follows Scientific Socialism, so the vast majority of things are no longer an opinion but simply a bank of knowledge that's grown over time with hypothesis and proven results, so that some issues are resolved and we need not seriously discuss them as they won't change in this mode of society (bourgeois led).
~
1924, nearly one hundred years ago in Concerning the International Situation
Historically this has been shown time and time again. SPD in Germany cooperating with the freikorps during the Spartacist Revolution. Italian Social Democrats cooperating with Mussolini. The failed unity against naziism of the socialists and social Democrats. Labour cooperating with the Anglo empire to liquidate those colonized, labour cooperating with the American empire to liquidate Iraqis, progressive elements in the US having dogshit foreign policy because it may lead to better outcomes here if they shut up (Bernie supporting Israel and bombing Yugoslavia to smithereens). Etc. We can simply look at the course of AOC's career and see the same things appear time and time again. Fascism isn't just Nazis, it's the entire apparatus the bourgeois state uses and will use to attempt to annihilate leftists when they present any challenge whatsoever. It's not wrong to apply these historical teachings to today's figures when the reasons for it happening haven't changed.
I also once would all read this and find it ridiculous, but frankly, the longer you spend organizing IRL and interacting with the state and other leftists, the clearer this all becomes. I've gone from an anarchist to a staunch ML because MLs are almost always correct and willing to correct themselves when they aren't (Cuba and LGBT). When I say AOC is a fascist, I know I won't convince those who haven't tried to organize IRL, but the real heads who know will know. And those who care about Palestinians being liquidated by the United States will come to this understanding as well.
Edit: the point is having a sound analysis for MLs so they can properly engage with and tear down the world's order. Figures like you can act as the milquetoast that gets others on board, whereas eventually when engaging with the reality of the world they will understand and appreciate our seemingly extreme rhetoric.
I'm aware of the concept of scientific socialism. It does not mean we can perfectly predict the future, and it certainly does not mean we can perfectly predict future actions down to an individual level (AOC's).
We could spend all day listing the differences between Germany and the USSR in the 1920s and the U.S. in the 2020s. If you want to be scientific, tell me how the predictive value of an experiment changes when you spend a century altering key inputs before running it again.
If you think you can perfectly predict the future, I don't know what to tell you.
If you think there is no significant difference between late-czarist Russia or Weimar Germany and the modern U.S., I don't know what to tell you.
There clearly is, but you'd be a fool not to see that the same incentives have not changed whatsoever for social democrats to continue aiding and abetting fascism. Has AOC even made a statement against bombing the only outside force who's taken clear and successful military action against the zionist entity? Is it only fascism when
? If we take a clear definition of fascism as a tool of the bourgeois class/liberals to forcibly cut down opposition to their rule by whatever means necessary when they're actually in genuine danger, would the attacks on Yemen not constitute utilization of a fascist machine? Is she not already carrying water for fascism? I don't mean this as hypotheticals or predicting the future; she's already doing exactly what I'm talking about and it's clear how this can and will escalate as things get worse.
We're repeating the same things to each other, so this is the last comment I'll make.
It does not matter if you are right
It does not matter if you are right
It does not matter if you are right
You still have to work to get people to agree with you, and Step Zero for that is getting them to listen. They will not listen if you say AOC is a fascist, whether it's right away or a few comments in.
It's also (charitably) not a great argument because you cannot in fact prove it objectively. It is still a political opinion, because while you can learn from history, societies do not follow laws so precisely defined that you can predict their development the way you can predict how long it takes a dropped object to hit the ground.
Clearly one of us reads the other's perspective and engages while the other does not, it's up to reader interpretation which perspective is more aligned with reality. I invite you to continue discussing your ideas though, as it will give Hexbear the balanced perspective you're looking for.
Neither does allowing people to believe that fake shills like AOC represent any kind of actual leftist movement. At this point, this type of politician is an active hinderence to advancing any real left politics, with the exception of their actions and stances disillusioning people.
I don't disagree. My point is we can get all that across without flattening it to "AOC is a fascist," which sounds like crank shit to everyone who is not already a communist.
This is a communist forum
if you can't quote Stalin here then where?
If libs are checking this out then good. Hopefully they'll learn something. If not then they'll engage with something else until they're ready. This really isn't a space where we should be concerned with optics and what libs might think of they're even looking to learn
Quote Stalin all you want, but his word isn't gospel, especially when he himself later allied with nations that would (at best) fall under his "moderate wing of fascism" umbrella. The CPC's line on Stalin is something like 70% good, 30% bad, so there's plenty of room for disagreement.
I'm not overly concerned with optics on this site, but what we meme about here pops up elsewhere, and if we want people to agree with us we do have to put thought into how to present our ideas.
Once again you misquote “social fascist” as “fascist” despite being corrected on this very error in another conversation. You are here in bad faith. Social fascist is a specific thing.
Fascists shouldn’t be shot, they should be re-educated. Only those who engage in crimes should be shot. I explained this to you and you still regress back to your liberal baseline
There's such a thing as knowing your audience. If you want to get your message across you have to do it differently to different people. Stating that social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism should only be done to an audience that already knows what fascism and social democracy is, such as here on this forum.
This doesn't mean that it is not true though, it just means that if you were to say those exact words to a general audience they would believe you were some crank who thought AOC was itching to put on an armband and do the goose-step. A more general audience would be more perceptive to hearing about how the system corrupts even the most well-meaning individuals, how politicians all end up doing the same shit etc.
You understood history wrong. The European powers wanted to use Nazi Germany, Poland and Japan to destroy the USSR. Many of them had signed military and economic cooperation agreements with Nazi Germany. The British literally just signed the Dusseldorf Agreement for the cooperation between British and German industries in March 1939, and the Munich Agreement before that with the British, France, Italy and Germany in 1938.
It was the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, engineered by the Soviet diplomatic team and supposedly without Hitler’s involvement, at the last minute that saved the day. It drove a wedge between Germany and Poland (who had just shared Czechoslovakia together), forcing Germany to invade Poland, and in turn forcing France and the Great Britain to declare war on Germany. The entire Japanese cabinet resigned over the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and backed down from interfering with the Soviets. Like, why do you think the Japanese government would resign over a pact signed by two foreign countries?
The European “social democracies” wanted the Soviet Union dead. They wanted to destroy communism. They simply did not expect to be outplayed at the last minute when the Soviets managed to turn Nazi Germany against the Europeans themselves.
What further reading can I do regarding all this?
Agreed -- and Stalin would go on to ally with those exact same countries.
Not my fault you're objectively wrong, chief
I made the mistake of arguing with them, when this is, objectively, the best response
It's completely objective!
Should and Would are diffrent. It would fix a good part of the world's problems.