Lost Arguments Never Lost

[Speaker to Animals]

I would caution you all against adopting this economic liberal reframing of social and political issues according to some bogus economic spectrum.

It makes no sense historically or philosophically.

If you truly are this ideologically opposed to all forms of socialism, and have nothing but chub for economic liberalism, then you really are a kind of liberal. Maybe not "left" as we have made the term, but you do essentially the same thing to the economic sphere that they do to the personal morals sphere.

I find it interesting when conservatives plainly see the negative costs to society of the progressives' personal license, and the progressives see the conservatives' cost to soceity from averace and money obsession, but neither can see that both are essentially the enormous costs of liberalism applied to different spheres of human life.

We allowed economic liberals to reframe "right" to mean free market capitalism, which makes no historical sense whatsoever. It is no less disengenuous than the progressives redefining national socialism to mean "not socialism".

[BjornP]

You did not "learn" that in school or from a dictionary in your youth, StA.

And National Socialism was never Socialism, either. Soviets, Maoists, Khmer Rouge, Che Guevara... all Socialists, all mass murderers. But calling oneself "Socialist", never made anyone Socialist. The Nazis never nationalized their industries, never called for a revolution of the international proletariat. When you stick medals on the chests of capitalists... you're not a "Socialist" tyranny. You are a different flavor of tyranny.

In case anyone's wondering: The Democratic Republic of North Korea isn't actually a democracy, either.

I don't get the motive for turning NS into Socialism. USSR, China, Cambodia. Cuba, Venezuela, DDR, etc.... isn't there enough REAL evidence of Socialism having caused more murder, more oppression? Does the fact that you can oppress and mass murder people for other bullshit reasons, somehow "invalidate" criticism of Socialism?

Seriously, I don’t fucking get it.

[Speaker to Animals]

You did not "learn" that in school or from a dictionary in your youth, StA.

And National Socialism was never Socialism, either. Soviets, Maoists, Khmer Rouge, Che Guevara... all Socialists, all mass murderers. But calling oneself "Socialist", never made anyone Socialist. The Nazis never nationalized their industries, never called for a revolution of the international proletariat. When you stick medals on the chests of capitalists... you're not a "Socialist" tyranny. You are a different flavor of tyranny.

In case anyone's wondering: The Democratic Republic of North Korea isn't actually a democracy, either.

I don't get the motive for turning NS into Socialism. USSR, China, Cambodia. Cuba, Venezuela, DDR, etc.... isn't there enough REAL evidence of Socialism having caused more murder, more oppression? Does the fact that you can oppress and mass murder people for other bullshit reasons, somehow "invalidate" criticism of Socialism?

Seriously, I don’t fucking get it.

You don't get it perhaps because you grew up in the wake of the socialist curve.

National socialism was, in fact, a form of socialism.


Also, don't tell me where or how I learned it. I know damned well how I learned it: in school and from normal adults in my life.

Socialism is a broad concept. It's not necessarily good or bad. The public library, fire department, and armed forces are fine with me. So is social security and Medicare. I do not have to play word games to redefine those things as something other than socialism.

Nazis we're bad not because they socialized things but because they tried to exterminate races and subjugate every other ethnic group in Europe.

Communists we're bad because Marxism is fucking evil and leads to the same kinds of scape-goating and subsequent genocide as Nazism.

People need to be realistic about what actually happened rather than reframe history to push contemporary political and economic goals. This "filthy collectivist" meme is dangerous.

[BjornP]

Ah, "the broad concept".. So we're back to the convo I had with both Harry and Martin yesterday: That "Socialism" as an American term has nothing to do with what the rest of the world understand the term. It's just another word for collectivist.

The problem with that is obvious: If your definition of Socialism, is completely removed from everyone else's, then every single one of your SJW college kids are right to love and worship Socialism. Because just like you have the right to have your own definition, so do they. Like they did with "racism".

It's fundamentally stupid post modernism.

At best, SJWs will get you your dream society, by simply being manipulated into thinking Socialism is whatever dream society * you* like. At worst, you will get Khmer Rouged, I guess. Except they will be using makeup... because they only skimmed that chapter of "how to do Socialist revolution".

[Speaker to Animals]

Ah, "the broad concept".. So we're back to the convo I had with both Harry and Martin yesterday: That "Socialism" as an American term has nothing to do with what the rest of the world understand the term. It's just another word for collectivist.

The problem with that is obvious: If your definition of Socialism, is completely removed from everyone else's, then every single one of your SJW college kids are right to love and worship Socialism. Because just like you have the right to have your own definition, so do they. Like they did with "racism".

It's fundamentally stupid post modernism.

At best, SJWs will get you your dream society, by simply being manipulated into thinking Socialism is whatever dream society * you* like. At worst, you will get Khmer Rouged, I guess. Except they will be using makeup... because they only skimmed that chapter of "how to do Socialist revolution".

No.

Socialism literally just means socializing the means of production. That can be through state socialism (the library) or through common ownership (open source projects).

National socialists used state socialism all over the place, and the private industries they allowed to remain private were still subordinated to state interests, as Obamacare did to the health insurance companies.

Indeed, private control of the means of production in Nazi Germany was really in name only. The business was subordinate to the state, and the state ordered businesses to do what the state deemed in the public interest. That's just what industries were not outright socialized.

[Martin Hash]

Martin, unless Mormons use their own language, your dictionary really did not say Fascism was a form of Socialism when you were any age. It would have described Fascism like Carlus does, as one of the collectivist ideologies.

Guy, Nazis are Fascists. Of course, the word "Socialism" has always been associated with Fascists. (Until now.)

p.s. "Collectivism" has only recently come into vogue - maybe last decade. A much better descriptive word for what most people call socialism but it wasn't used much when I was a kid.

[Martin Hash]

Query:

How is Antifa different than Mussolini's Black Shirts?

[SuburbanFarmer]

Query:

How is Antifa different than Mussolini's Black Shirts?

They don’t have a charismatic leader, poised to take over.

[Martin Hash]

So, with 5 minutes of Googling, yes, Nazi Germany DID nationalize many businesses and trusts, especially Jewish ones. Then these businesses were given to their cronies. Italy was also Crony Capitalism. Crony Capitalism may not exactly be Socialism but it smells the same.

[Speaker to Animals]

Sorry, Martin. They abandoned that trench when they realized that Nazis also socialized entire industries. Their new trench is about five hundred yards farther back, and now you have to argue against Nazis being not real socialists because of charismatic leaders.

This is how they always operate. Never honest.