TheOubliette
Fascism is a consequence of capitalism. Free (or very cheap) energy would not end capitalism outright, it would just reduce a cost in how profit is made.
The only hope for our collective future is socialist organizing. I highly recommend that anyone interested begin reading about the topic using books written by socialists and by joining a socislist organization or attending their events.
This video has some nice sentiments but it is also rife with inaccuracies and misleads. Of course, dividing and conquering is a core reason for marginalization, but who drives it? With whom did Nazis or the KKK find purchase? Why were they not suppressed? The deeper social forces, those with power, did not really oppose them, and in fact, they created or leveraged them as needed for their own purposes. Namely in response to the conditions they had already created - and the "they" were the liberal bourgeoisie and capitalism itself.
The Nazis built their ranks largely from the petty bourgeoisie and their children. The people that were beating up communists and lgbtq people were the sons of shop owners during a time of economic downturn. That downturn was itself created by the forces of imperialism and therefore capitalism: Germany had fought in an imperialist war (WWI) to stake a claim in the imperial core and lost. Its new position was that of an imperialized country in capitalist mode of production, stuck with infinite foreign debt, decreasing wages, and spiraling unemployment. In this context, there were backlashes and attempts to organize. The social democrats gained some power but repeatedly entrenched themselves in the liberal system, reinforcing it and therefore continuing its failures and oppressions. The communists broke with this and took more direct action, taking towns and cities through orgsnizational prowess. The socdems threw the police at them over things like this as well as the proto-fascist jackboots that would become the Nazi Party base, those sons of shop owners. In addition, there were monarchists, liberals, conservative nationalists, and fascists.
It is in this context that the fascists rose. Not simply by "dividing", but by reacting to the social forces that threatened a vulnerable bourgeoisie: the communists above all. They absolutely scapegoated minorities, yes, but the social function of the fascists and how they grew was actually their anticommunism. This is why they were funded and why they were tolerated, just like how the cops protect Proud Boys and fight BLM protesters. They serve to protect a subset of private property and are funded to do so. The Nazis did things not dissimilar to the cryptofascists taking their guns to "protect businesses" against BLM-adjascent property damage. But they operated over years of unrest from liberal (capitalist) policies and where it was largely communists that threatened capital.
The Nazis' rise shortly before Hitler became chancellor corresponded to two major kinds of events: first, economic downturn and therefore displeasure at the consequences if the capitalist status quo (with which most parties had associated themselves) and repeated decisions to build rightward coalitions against communists and, ultimately, simply give the position of chancellor to Hitler in order to expediently resolve a weak coalition.
So, when watching this video, literally a propaganda film from the US government's war department(s), ask whether there is any discussion of the material forces at hand, of political struggle, of anticommunism, of capitalism, of the reasons for economic decay, of who funded and worked with Nazis, and why. They tell a story of the "Aryan German" being taken in by the Nazis because his identity matched their propaganda. But there were many who supported or tolerated Nazis that did not match their propaganda and were even targets of it! They tended to be petty bourgeois or the children of them. The film says normal Germans asked themselves how this happened as if it were a surprise. This is a lie: these were open political developments spanning decades at the forefront of everyone's minds and were part of active and highly local political struggle. The film peddles the many falsehoods of American mythmaking about freedom and empty ripe land, lies to hide the reality of a country built on settler colonial genocide and racialized chattel slavery. There were people on that "empty" land already, they were killed or driven off by the same governmental organizations that commissioned this film. The film says the land is free and skin color doesn't matter even while at the same time Jim Crow waa in effect. The film says Nazis outlawed speech and that in America you can say your politics without such retribution and then America launched hard into the Cold War and an anticommunist, anti-black purge. The film says that what made Nazis wrong was race hate and militarism and then just a few yeara after thia film bombed out every population center in the north of Korea directly killing 20% of the population while constantly publishing racist claims against Koreans.
So yes, absolutely oppose Nazis and race hate. But don't trust a film like this for a valuable history lesson. You will be unable to recognize the patterns and harma that are currently right in front od you.
You're talking to people that want to continue rationalizing their tacit, frequently racist support for genocide, and their easiest out has always been to say, "but Trump is worse". They have never done the introspection required to look at their own personal role as a political being beyond what they're told to do by the Democratic Party and their donors: slacktivist vote shaming, always presuming the high ground for themselves (even while tolerating genocide!), and doing as little as possible on the ground outside of minor exercises in false catharsis like a cop-escorted, permitted march or an ignored letter writing campaign.
When challenged on this by people on the left that do read and do self-reflect, these are the folks that responded in bad faith, even when the context is genocide, because they have made politics into an extension of their egos rather than a project to which to subordinate yourself and devote real work to.
Whining about .ml is their way of pretending to be vindicated every time Trump does something bad, as they cannot actually argue against what the people in .ml say, they must rely on inventions and emotional implications.
In short, many on .ml vocally opposed supporting genociding Democrats. None that I'm aware of expected Trump to be better. At best, a roll of the dice.
The dying empire continues to lash out and pax americana is a myth.
Nazis executing civilians is bad. Partisans executing civilians is bad. A bad action is bad no matter the intention. Insert some quote about how the history is filled with good intentions.
Again, this is not a serious geopolitical thought.
Tell the 'unlawful' killed that it's ok, it was a growing power who haven't attacked someone for a long time and just tries to lift your country out of poverty that bombed you to bits not the cashking warmongerer, and see if they agree with your reasoning.
Respond to my reasoning in any way whatsoever.
This is just a stream of rhetorical posturing to avoid ever directly addressing any of the criticisms presented.
I think you missed my point, entirely. I wasn't saying that governments committing atrocities in other countries versus their own people were any different, morally speaking.
Then why say "their own people"? It doesn't make sense. Parent didn't use that qualifier. Maybe you used it because it is so often used in combination with the other terms? Either way, I am singling out this qualifier because it is a way that PR and propagandistic terms color our thinking. It does not mean I think you were being malicious.
I was simply pointing out that the quality of life for the working class, and low amount of wealth disparity, etc in this country is largely due to Socialist policies keeping Capitalism in check, and also pointing out that Capitalist policies cause atrocities, in general.
But these countries don't have socialist policies! They are capitalist countries run by capitalists and capitalist parties. I already described the causes behind their social safety nets.
This was in response to the comment saying that countries were hiding atrocities behind the banner of Socialism.
I understand. I actually interpreted parent as being critical of the Eastern bloc, but I didn't comment on this.
Atrocities of any kind are abhorrent and I agree that they need to be denounced.
I agree in the abstract sense but just like with "their own people", what gets called an atrocity, how its veracity is established, and how often it enters discourse are all subject to the propaganda we are all immersed in. In addition, the context in whicj atrocities are "denounced" matters. Were the people tallying up lists of Saddam's crimes in 2003 just denouncing atrocities like good, empathetic humans? Were they not helping to build consent for a much worse invasion? What about the US' genocidal sanctions on the country for the prior decade plus? We, of course, do not live in a vacuum and what we are told to denounce is often aligned with ruling class agendas.
The overall topic of this thread is that baby leftists want to keep criticizing and denouncing the targets of US empire that they are told to hate. They have not engaged critically with the denunciations themselves and when others do so they begin insulting and deflecting. And they certainly don't exist within any project to actually achieve anything against atrocities, because if they did they would be laser-focused on their own country where they can do actual organizing work, which will largely be in the US and Europe.
As an example of liberals' having their attention to atrocities dictated by think tanks and imperialist media, we can look to Yemen. I could not get liberals to care about the US-backed bombing campaigns and US blockade of Yemen. Schoolbuses bombed, weddings bombed, basic civilian infrastructure bombed out to attack food, water, and electricity. Aid rotting on ships because the US prevented them from docking and unloading for 8+ months. Nobody even talked about Yemen in the US or Europe. Not regularly. You don't see lemmy.worlders bringing it up all the time as atrocities you should denounce every time the topic of the US itself comes up. Every time target countries of US empire are mentioned, hiwever, it is time for kneejerk denunciation ans bad faith insults at anyone with a modicum of understanding of geopolitics.
I also agree with pretty much everything else that you said. Socialism is near dead and dying in Europe.
It's gone. It fell with the USSR and then NATO-led balkanization of Yugoslavia. Europe is capitalist.
I just think that the sprinkle of Social policies that is left in the EU still holds back Capitalism from being quite as horrible as it could be.
I might agree but I frame it differently. The social policies remain because they are too popular to remove, but capitalism is eating away at them from multiple directions. Privatization is everywhere, as are benefit cuts to siphon into militarization. The latter is only possible due to fearmongering over Russia. But more dangerously, European countries oppress the left, such as banning communist parties or even expressions of solidarity with Palestine. That results in "the discourse" being dominated by liberald and protofascists. But the liberals are presiding over declines in conditions due to capitalism, so when they lose popularity, protofascists gain it. This will produce repeated one-two punches of austerity, dismantling social programs, and scapegoating marginalized people. And all while the US drains Europe's industrial base. Europe's utility as a forward base against the USSR is gone and they are now a bloodbag for US' vampires.
"Neighbor" was never an important detail, and only someone struggling to string together some type of deflection from the point would focus so deeply on it.
Neighbor is the only qualifier that makes your claim arguably true for, say, 30-40 years. You included it yourself, I didn't make you so it. If you get rid of the term "neigbor", you are simply wrong.
Instead of running away from it and trying to blame me for noticing, you could just acceot where I am correct and try to synthesize.
You will get into conflicts and be consistently wrong if this is how you respond to correction.
The point, as is abundantly clear to anyone with a couple of braincells to rub together, is that these countries are doing that now, as in at this moment, and are targeting civilians, which the person in responding to gladly ignored with their "but no, everyone says Russia is bad" bullshit.
That applies to several countries, including US-backed Israel and the US-backed reactionaries in Syria, which is why the term "neighbor" does so much work. And in providing that obfuscatory defense, you are doing the thing you claim others are doing, which is excusing and minimizing war and death on civilians.
And you have the gall to accuse me of making a bad faith argument. Once again, pathetic.
It requires very little gall. You are putting on quite the display at the moment with the flurry of insults and deflections.
Notice that rather than address the absurdity if an "anarchist" ahistorically defending US imperialism, you've decided to make things up on my behalf.
Kill the Redditor in your brain.
This is one of the problems with treating class as an inherent identity, not a person's relation to the means of production. A person that begins as a direct wage laborer is working class, but if they ascend the ladder they become closer and closer to carrying out the functions of the owner class (i.e. becoming upper management) they lose proletarian character and gain bourgeois character. So the UHC CEO may have started out working class but obviously he became a bourgeois monster.
There's a similar pitfall, which is the uncritical moralization of the working class. The working class has a world historical role to play and is the class oppressed by the bourgeoisie, but it can easily have reactionary elements that should not be embraced, esoeciskky not as "working class values". The working class exists in the society shaped by the bourgeoisie, with marginalizations baked in by the bourgeoisie that can become self-perpetuating (e.g. racism), so we must not simply accept whstever the majority opinion of the working class is, let alone some random guy that ended up facilitating death and pain for profit.
This is already in blue cities they just use it against BLM and pro-Palestine organizers.