The FDP very definitely does not want this, and one would be justified in doubting if the top brass of the SPD wants it. Personally, I am inclined to believe they only suggest plans like this knowing full well nothing will come of them in this government constellation.
The first one isn’t necessary. Just need to tax the wealthy and ensure that companies cannot exploit immigrant labor to increase profits. Immigration isn’t the problem, the companies are.
Love to climb up on my high chair with my sippy cup. Looking down on everyone while pretending at intellectual superiority and yet making no actual statement at all.
Stalin should have kept going and made the entirety of Europe socialist. The USSR should have rounded up and executed every former Nazi officer, like the ones recruited in operation paperclip. Did @wombat stutter?
the correct answer (which germany will never land on) is to shoot the nazis. it has always been the only solution to a nazi infestation but germany has always found that difficult to swallow.
A socialist government, or an organized proletariat and their vanguard party.
Unfortunately the decades of suppressing the left since the Cold War and annexation of the GDR means an organized proletariat and a vanguard party has not emerged in Germany (though there is the DKP), hence the rise of the far-right. A socialist government like the GDR would correctly label these as nazis and would not have let the far-right grow to this point.
How do you know innocent people would not get included in the “Nazi” categorization? In america lots of people get called nazi that have no relationship to it.
Shoot the nazis, establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, establish capital controls and develop the productive forces so the material conditions that lead to fascism don’t come back.
In reality, far from stopping the far right, Germany is implementing a far right agenda. Increase police authority? Check. Scapegoat immigrants and other marginalized groups? Check. Build up the military? Check. Suppress protests and dissenters? Check. Impose austerity, providing the fertile ground for fascists? Check.
By the time the AfD comes to power, they won’t have to do anything. The liberals (including socdems and greens) will already have created a fascist society.
These are a lot of statements without sources. Also most people would disagree with the statement that a government that includes social democrats and greens is implementing a “far right agenda”.
Fucking Scholz said he wanted to “finally deport in a big way” (“endlich im großen Stil abschieben”). This is (well used to be) a far right agenda. They’re sending weapons to Israeli fascists while they commit genocide, and defend them at every opportunity. These people support fascists and fascist policies.
What exactly do you even dispute is untrue about what I said?
Scholz was talking about around 50000 people who came seeking asylum but we’re found to have no right to asylum. It’s not very humane but it’s the current law. The actual fascists of the far right are talking millions.
SPD is a relatively conservative party but it’s absolutely insane to call them fascists.
They changed the law so they can deport more people!
They are absolutely going far right with this one especially and their rhetoric around it. These used to be totally unacceptable far right slogans and policies, but here we are. Basic human rights suspended. Just because the AfD is worse does not mean the SPD has not shifted into what not long ago was far right territory. But oh no, calling out racism and how the SPD is effectively enabling a shift towards fascism is too far for you! That’s exactly how this rightward shift can happen, because people like you are making excuses for this shit.
The same is happening to France. As you said, they’ll have a field day when (at this point it’s not if, it’s when) they get to power.
Gotta love neoliberalism…
The Netherlands will very likely have a right wing government and will be heading down the same path. Same with Italy, Sweden, Denmark.
With the next European election this year the right wing parties in the European Parliament will gain a lot of traction.
We could be heading down the American path and lose a lot or the progress we made over the last 2 decades.
I will be a father in a couple or hours. Between the right taking to power and accelerating climate change i am just so fucking worried in what kind of world my kids will grow up.
Fascism is well defined, it is capitalism in decay, it is a desperate lashing out of the parasite class when they become incapable of forestalling the TRPF. Fascism is simply capitalism with the mask off. It is only “not a very well defined term” within the capitalist superstructure because they don’t want people oppose capitalism, so the definition deliberately muddied. There are many things that are not poorly understood, but must be made to be poorly understood.
Would be more accurate to say capitalists I suppose, who inevitably give way to fascism.
The US is a bourgeois/capitalist dictatorship built on the genocide of millions of native Americans. I think most socialists would say it’s not quite a fascist regime just yet, but it has a history of supporting such regimes and is currently supporting a fascist colony committing a genocide in Palestine.
The rise of right wing parties might be a consequence of the left wings failure to govern.
In Norway the Labour Party was the biggest party for decades. Now the party is infested with politicians using it for career paths to NGO’s or international organisations like UN and EU. The same party made for the labourers implements tax policies making it really hard to start industries.
Money are being spent on the most incredible projects bearing no fruit for future generations.
At a point people get fed up, and in desperation they have to vote further to the right. If you want less government spending on stupid projects you also have to get some fascism.
The problem is not the right wing parties or stupid people. The problem is worthless left wing politicians not contributing positive to the nation.
I don’t know about other nations. In Germany we have had the Conservative Party ruling for 16 years as a right leaning Party, 4 years of a left party that implemented right wing neo fashist ideas, followed by another 16 years of conservative rule with more centeristic than right wing rule (the political void in the right was filled by the AFD, which has become a true fashist party in the last 10 years). The only “left” government we ever had in the last 36 years has been in the last 2, and they are heavily restricted by beeing in a coalition with a neo liberal right wing party.
So, at least for Germany, this just doesn’t hold true.
Yes. Pretty much everywhere has had capitalists ranging from moderate to hard-line in lead. Now they’re just seeing that they can form coalitions with open fascists. Leftists don’t even have the opportunity to try to achieve change… Maybe Uruguay or such are the exception
The only “left” government we ever had in the last 36 years has been in the last 2, and they are heavily restricted by beeing in a coalition with a neo liberal right wing party.
They’re all neoliberals. They wouldn’t be doing anything substantially different if the FDP didn’t exist.
The problem is worthless left wing politicians not contributing positive to the nation.
The problem isn’t a person. It’s class society itself and the capitalist mode of production.
Both Fascism and Socialism solve the problem of capitalism being in crisis; it always eventually will be, and it currently is in Europe. Fascism “solves” it by fully cementing capitalist rule and removing the veil of bourgeois “democracy”, while Socialism solves it by overthrowing capitalism entirely and establishing proletarian rule.
The far-right rising again in Europe was always the inevitable consequence of capitalists winning the Cold War and ruthlessly suppressing the Left since. The only other “solution” to the crisis is Fascism.
I am not very well read in political theory, but I would agree with the idea that capitalism HAS to end in crisis because exponancial groth just can’t be sustained.
I would further point out that, to my limited knowledge, capitalism is a (or even the) root cause of the current climate crisis (altough things like humans inability to solve long term problems, as well as other factors come into play too. After all, things like the ozon hole have been solved even under a capitalist system).
A great example of how this class operates. Our foreign minister from the Labour party had to step down due to suspicions of providing her husband with inside information on government contracts to public traded companies. The husband bought stocks and they made some cash.
The reward for this corruption is a new position as our ambassador to the US. She officially got the job two days ago.
We have seen this upper class of politicians never having to stand responsible for their actions for some years now. On both sides.
There’s no wonder people get desperate. The only solution they get provided is using their vote. And when they do use it they get called out for using it the “wrong” way.
Either the current politicians fix their shit, or the people will topple them. It’s fairly predictable.
Make immigration harder??? Nice euphemism for this fascist shit. They’re throwing human rights out of the window. They’re literally putting migrants into concentration camps, if they’re don’t drown first thanks to Frontex pushbacks. Greens defended this so-called compromise to their base while fascist Meloni was giving victory speeches.
“Endlich im großen Stil abschieben” (Scholz). I can’t tell the difference an NPD slogan and the SPD chancellor.
And for the other shit, there’s some extra police authority or surveillance law proposed every other month or so. Pro-palestine protests are criminalized and they’re threatening Muslims with deportation for not being loyal enough to Israel. All the parties are discussing what sort of services they can cut so they have more money for the military. Real wages are shrinking. You can’t open a newspaper without reading about how Germany needs to prepare for war. Things are not okay.
Yeah yeah, I remember all that shit from back in the day. Die Russen kommen! Die Russen kommen! Oldest trick in the book.
Natürlich, das einfache Volk will keinen Krieg […] Aber schließlich sind es die Führer eines Landes, die die Politik bestimmen, und es ist immer leicht, das Volk zum Mitmachen zu bringen, ob es sich nun um eine Demokratie, eine faschistische Diktatur, um ein Parlament oder eine kommunistische Diktatur handelt. […] Das ist ganz einfach. Man braucht nichts zu tun, als dem Volk zu sagen, es würde angegriffen, und den Pazifisten ihren Mangel an Patriotismus vorzuwerfen und zu behaupten, sie brächten das Land in Gefahr. Diese Methode funktioniert in jedem Land. – Hermann Göring
Also, I love that you want a source for something that was a top news story for months. You somehow heard, dass die Russen kommen!!! but not the Sondervermögen? You’re just fucking with me, aren’t you?
If it helps, I’m a (terrified) immigrant in Germany and it’s really confusing. I don’t know why there’s so much certainty in media reports about things that aren’t certain. It could be a language barrier, but I assume mild shade whenever Konjunktiv I comes up, so I’m probably interpreting that as unfairly noncommittal.
Examples: Scholz wanted to disallow immigrants from working, then make them work to be eligible for citizenship, whatever is happening with marijuana, I read about Wagenknechts new party more than a year before she actually formed it.
My guy, have you heard phrases like “100 Mrd. € Sondervermögen für die Bundeswehr”, “Wiedereinführung der Wehrpflicht” , shit like this? Or have you heard anything people like Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann have said in the past two years? Also, hasn’t the Russian army been struggling to overpower Ukraine for the past two years now? The poorest country in Europe with basically no functioning infrastructure to begin with that also is decidedly not a member of NATO? Wouldn’t the Russian Army have to cross the Baltic states and Poland to even reach Germany, triggering a response from all of NATO? Could it be they all the rhetoric about the Russkys expanding westwards is full of shit and nothing more but a fig leaf to sell austerity and a military buildup to the German populace?
Those are not sources, those are only talks and rumors. I’ve not seen any result of the 100Mrd. yet. And yes, the NATO would be triggered if they invaded Poland, but shouldn’t Germany as a member of NATO be able to help then?
This is the same fearful and paranoid mentality which caused Putin to invade Ukraine. If everyone continues with this catastrophic thinking, we will have world war in no time.
Living in fear of a Russian invasion of Europe is completely delusional.
Putin is going to come and finish the job for Stalin any day now. Just wait and see, tomorrow the Bolchevik hordes might be flooding into Germany, to eat your Dachshunds and turning the Oktoberfest into a vodka and balalaika festival.
Why would Putin do that? Simply because he is evil.
The only sensible response is to cut every social program to fund the construction of a German death star.
It’s tough to be critical of “liberalism” when everyone has a different idea of what it means. It might help to specify “economic liberalism”.
Along with it’s deep flaws, Liberalism is also associated with things like the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, LGBT+ rights, etc. Conservatives also muddy the waters by blaming these things for economic hardship.
Liberalism is associated with those things because it allowed them to happen to avoid a negative effect to property rights (revolution, riots) once more radical people pushed for them. Liberalism is reactionary and regressive, but some liberals are easier to convince of specific rights extensions than others. You’ve been lied to a lot if you think liberals did these things
Liberalism has a definition, which Marxists have never forgotten, though thanks to two red scares and a cold war, others have forgotten. Now in Orwellian fashion, “liberalism” and “socialism” are floating signifiers, so we have liberals like Sanders calling themselves socialists despite never calling for the abolition of private ownership of the means of production.
It’s basically just “classical liberalism and neoliberalism”, and whether politically illiterate Americans use that word that way doesn’t matter very much from an analytical standpoint, because in political science, history, philosophy, and even just popular discourse in most other countries, the term “liberal” mainly has that meaning.
willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own; open to new ideas.
relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise. Similar: tolerant, unprejudiced, unbigoted, broad-minded, open-minded, enlightened, forbearing, permissive, free, free and easy, easygoing, laissez-faire, libertarian, latitudinarian, unbiased, impartial, nonpartisan, indulgent, lenient, lax, soft
noun
a supporter of policies that are socially progressive and promote social welfare. “she dissented from the decision, joined by the court’s liberals”
a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.
Opposite: narrow-minded, bigoted,
You are free to argue with dictionaries, but if your enemy is liberalism as defined by civil rights, democracy, and welfare then you are the enemy of all people, in my eyes.
If one is trying to define liberalism against feudalism, that definition is fine, but it’s just redditor sophomorism to act like a dictionary is a replacement for an actual historical or academic definition of a political tendency.
Take it up with oxford, Words mean what the majority believes they currently mean. Anything else is just some shit somebody made up. This discussion is about the current meaning of Liberalism in today’s political context.
My point is that you are misusing the dictionary as a replacement for actually knowing about a subject. People still call John Locke a liberal, and they do it because fields have definitions that aren’t colloquial.
This discussion is about the current meaning of Liberalism in today’s political context.
Look anywhere outside of America and it readily refers to sniveling market-fetishists. In America it only implicitly does because everyone is a market fetishist.
Dictionaries do not exhaustively discuss topics and the scope of meanings of terms, they give you a colloquially-oriented summary of what they mean to help you, for example, parse a conversation that uses the word in passing.
John Locke being a liberal isn’t an “alternative fact”, you’re just a troglodyte.
nerd I read a dictionary entry and maybe skimmed a Wikipedia article and thus am an expert and qualified to discuss things I’m wholly ignorant of.
I. NO INVESTIGATION, NO RIGHT TO SPEAK
Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?
It won’ t do!
It won’t do!
You must investigate!
You must not talk nonsense!
Please. I’m begging you. Go to your local community/junior college, find a class in Philosophy and enroll in it. Take a class in political science. Engage in these subjects deeper than surface level. Actually try to internalize and understand these subjects. It will improve your life in many ways.
Philosophy absolutely has the ability to examine and propose better definitions when definitions (like the ones you linked) do not capture the phenomenon. Losurdo read more books than you’ve seen by liberals in order to write his “Liberalism” book. He understood the phenomenon deeper and further than its dictionary use.
How do you capture such a thing in your world view? Because he found flaws in definitions and worked deeper, he just did nothing because it wasnt the Oxford definition?
From where I’m sitting, and I’m trying to paint a picture for you to understand the topic through my eyes, I see a small subsection of society, a bubble so to speak, attempting to shame a much larger more commonplace section of society with absurd misconstruments and twisted definitions which do not reflect reality. The bubble is shaming what would likely be their only allies to achieve reforms in their favor, and in general one of the only sources of good in society and politics. It feels like I watched somebody train an AI on r/the_donald and then asked the AI to write communism pamphlets. My views are only further cemented when those “who understood the phenomenon further than its dictionary use” resort to petty namecalling when I bring up the dictionary definition of the terms they are misusing. It is further cemented when they have to provide their group’s own private dictionary separate from society’s use of language.
If you have a political stance directly opposing certain choices and beliefs, then use words to define that which people will understand and agree with, do not simply try to rewrite words and history as you see fit. Do you oppose Democracy? Do you oppose Civil Rights? Do you oppose equality and guaranteed standards of living? If you answered no to those questions then you are a Liberal. If you’re opposed to unchecked power of political entities or parties, if you’re opposed to the abolition of term limits, and if you’re opposed to economic disparity and inequality, then what you oppose is not Liberalism, what you oppose is fascism, authoritarianism, plutocracy, and capitalism.
Don’t say “so to speak” in a forum comment, you’re not Eugen Dühring. How do these definitions not fit reality? In Liberalism, Losurdo (referenced above by commiewithoutorgans) goes through history and explains what liberalism actually is, i.e. herrenvolk liberty. The currently recognized originators of liberalism were supporters of slavery, and now liberals are supporters of imperialism.
Liberals are not allies in reforms, both because reforms will never be enough, liberals as supporters of the status quo eventually becoming enemies regardless, but also because even in these “reforms” they are cowardly. US liberals can’t even stop an active genocide being perpetrated by their government, and a vast majority of those liberals in government actively support it.
Liberals oppose democracy for enemy nations (and under the guise of “promoting democracy” depose the elected/popular leaders of these nations), they oppose real democracy (rule of the majority) in any nation, they absolutely oppose real equality by upholding the privileges of landlords and capitalists, and they oppose guaranteed standards of living. Newsom, the liberal (recognized by the majority as such!) governor of California, has been in favor of the state’s use of violence to clear homeless encampments; every “liberal” US president has kept migrants in concentration camps at the border despite immigration being largely a result of US imperialism as well as refusing to provide guaranteed housing to the unhoused population. If you think they are not liberals, then you are “a small subsection of society, a bubble so to speak.” Is it fair to say that it’s the people that wear this label who’ve rewritten words and history to paint themselves as simply “supporters of liberty”?
And I am absolutely not opposed to the abolition of term limits. Talk about opposition to democracy, term limits are a check on democracy itself, telling the population they cannot vote for someone again. Term limits for the US presidency were introduced after the repeated elections of the overwhelmingly popular FDR.
Lastly, liberals are supporters of capitalism; half of the dictionary definitions available include “support for a free market” as a fundamental aspect of liberalism.
Shut the fuck up stupid piece of shit, go slam your head in a car door. Other comrades are gonna put up with your bullshit and try and educate you but I’m in ad-hominem mode.
Looking through your comment history you truly are the most trivial motherfucker I’ve encountered in a while. Coming in here and running an absolutely default smug liberal redditor dialogue tree.
You are not an “”“intellectual”“”, you’re an LLM trained on a fiftieth generation facsimile of a bad impression of a teleporter accident between Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. You would fail the Turing test. My fellows are trying to raise you to sentience, but personally I’d keep you in a museum as proof that p-zombies do exist.
Your next line is “UM ACKTUALLY- UM IN THE DICTIONARY-” instead just stop posting.
All successful labor movements and mass organizations in the past have included teaching others how things work, handing out pamphlets, etc.
And so we can choose to act towards restoring definitions to words with important meanings, so that we become capable of discussing the things they signify again.
If we don’t use words as they mean, but instead use unorthodox terminology, then we allow the significance of such words to be lost, with no standardized alternatives in common use - i.e., no alternatives that are any more clear than the original word.
There is a war on language. It’s primarily a subset of the class war. We can surrender, or fight what is probably the simplest fight of our life: We can use words as they were meant to be used.
Yeah, I’m glad you’re slowly starting to comprehend the conversation. I’m informing you that making up definitions for words is wrong and is the source of confusion when you try and fail to converse with others.
Overthrowing liberalism/capitalism and stopping fascism requires mass organization and class consciousness, part of which is often understanding these basic concepts. And people did. They have to again.
These weren’t egghead concepts back when we had a labor movement large enough to support a labor press.
All I’m saying is that if you don’t take your audience into consideration, your message will be misunderstood. If you want to use the “correct” (more debatable than you think) terminology when that terminology isn’t well understood in the culture, then take the time to explain the language. Or keep scratching your head about why your getting downvotes and convincing nobody.
I’m getting downvotes because I’m telling a bunch of bubble communists that actual communication is more important than in-group signalling. No head scratches required. It’s why the left has been hopelessly ineffective for at least half a century.
It doesn’t have to be sexier terminology, or even different terminology. Just don’t drop the word “liberalism” into a conversation and expect the average person to understand what your talking about.
You could use “corporatism” which has kind of taken over that definition in common language. I know it’s technically incorrect, but language also isn’t static outside of academic disciplines. But ultimately you can use whatever language you want, just don’t assume a particular definition will be understood without explanation.
You could use “corporatism” which has kind of taken over that definition
“Neoliberalism” rather. Though that’s more like mask-off imperialism. And “corporatism” is just capitalism but when you don’t want to admit that the problem is capitalism.
Either way liberalism is the same idealist, individualist culture/ideology that emerges under capitalism to maintain that capitalist mode of production, and must be destroyed along with the mode of production it sustains.
nOOooOOOoooooo you can’t blame capitalism! We have to make up a word that means “capitalism” but isn’t capitalism and fix that (through reform! because we shouldn’t try to abolish capitalism).
The only people I know of who don’t know what the word “liberal” means, especially in the context the person above was using it, are very ignorant Americans. To be clear, even though I don’t like most Americans, I’m not blaming them for being ignorant in this particular case because they have been subjected to decades of mostly uncontested propaganda deliberately obfuscating the term. But most of the rest of the world knows what everyone is talking about when saying “liberal” and knows it’s a right wing ideology. And everyone shouldn’t have to hold up the conversation to preemptively explain what the word means to those who don’t already know. People are generally expected to pick up the gist of a sentence or point via the context of what’s being said. The context was perfectly clear and it just sounds like concern trolling to go on about needing to hand-hold and dumb down the terminology being used for “the average person.”
And everyone shouldn’t have to hold up the conversation to preemptively explain what the word means to those who don’t already know
Well, if you know that the person doesn’t know, giving definitions can be a helpful way of setting up your argument, but obviously these lemmitor assholes are just wasting your time.
Almost nobody knows the academic definitions of most political ideologies, they’re just all cable news buzzwords now. If you took a sample of the population I’d be surprised if even 5% could give you the correct academic definitions for the vast majority of political ideology terms.
Along with it’s deep flaws, Liberalism is also associated with things like the abolition of slavery . . .
Liberalism is also associated with the invention and virtually entire existence of chattel slavery along with the exporting of the criminalization of queer people to cultures that did not feature such things.
Is it though? In the common consciousness? I really don’t think it is. Whether or should be is a different discussion, but the bubble in which those concepts are innately connected is pretty small. You can’t just say “liberal” today and expect it to be understood in that way.
Yes, it is responsible for those things, like when we say smoking is associated with higher risk of lung cancer.
In the common consciousness?
Moving the goalposts. Good job observing that liberal propaganda takes credit for good things and not for bad things.
Though outside of America, you get a much more accurate view of the term because liberal means “sniveling, centrist, market-fetishist” in most other countries.
I never said it wasn’t. It’s about language and perception.
Moving the goalposts.
Nope. This was my exact goalpost from the beginning.
Good job observing that liberal propaganda takes credit for good things and not for bad things.
Not at all. I have no objection to telling people what liberalism is all about. However, the reality is that decades of propaganda from liberals and conservatives has successfully shifted the definition to a point where it’s foolish to just drop the word without further explanation.
The lgbt liberation movement would wave the flag of the legitimate vietnamese government during the US invasion. Marsha Johnson, Leslie fienberg, communists.
Adding to this: if you like weekends, overtime, safety standards, or simply not working 19 hours a day in the dirt factory, you have communist violence to thank.
Yeah you’re the one being pedantic here. Liberalism has exactly two definitions that get used 99% of the time. Someone might say liberal to mean “socially liberal,” which means open-mindedness in regards to progressive movements such as feminism, promotion of gay rights, acceptance of trans people, and all that stuff. This is usually the only definition used in the USA.
Or they mean liberalism as the broad ideological foundation of capitalism, with a belief in the promotion of free enterprise, distribution, public-private separation, and the primacy of individual rights. This definition is almost never used in the USA except by socialists, but outside of the USA this is understood as the primary definition of the term whereas “socially liberal” is regarded as a secondary definition.
And it’s very easy to determine which one a person is talking about if you look at the context clues. The only other context I can think of where liberal is used is the academic term “liberal arts,” but that refers to scholarly topics that would have been taught to people who weren’t slaves.
Liberalism has always been right wing, and Orwell is the lowest garbage anyone can reference in political analysis. You didn’t even do it correctly, assuming that “newspeak” just means a new euphemistic way of referring to something, and this is the way it’s commonly used by people who didn’t actually read 1984 (not to say that they should), but really it’s a language based around contractions, abbreviations, and simplifications meant to make communication more efficient, and also (somehow) make people lose the ability to think independently.
Liberals believe all ideologies other than basic western liberalism are based on confusion or ignorance at a personal level. And that’s the entirety of where ideology comes from. They don’t believe it’s rooted in history, conditions, wealth, anything. They see fascism as a complicated misunderstanding that could potentially be cured through a big speech or exposing fascists to the musical Hamilton. They think ideology is pathogen that spreads more easily through who they regard as ignorant and malleable. They believe racism is simply a matter of confusion over human biology that can be instructed away.
They’re very similar to conservatives like that. They both think societies are built by IQ scores and being “civilized.” Liberals may dress up their goofy theories in fancy academic language, but ultimately they believe the following: “Stupid people are more prone to fascism simply because they’re stupid and didn’t read enough Margaret Atwood books like me. People are more stupid now because of Tiktok.” And that’s how liberals would explain why fascism is on the rise again
And to elaborate on what you said, liberals believe that the “stupid” people are the proles. The uncultured, unwashed and financially unsuccessful masses who deserve every punch the invisible hand of the market throws at them. Liberals simply can’t conceive of someone with a fancy education, an expensive suit and good table manners being a fascist.
Today, German lawmakers are rewriting bylaws and pushing for constitutional amendments to ensure courts and state parliaments can provide checks against a future, more powerful AfD. Some have even launched a campaign to ban the AfD altogether.
Are you surprised that the country that ushered the Nazis into power is more vigilant about making sure they never head remotely in that direction again?
Even the party’s leader resigned in 2022 because he saw that the party was becoming more totalitarian and incompatible with German democracy.
Yes. Democracy is when you refuse to allow the people a party that wants to dismantle the democratic state and bringing in nothing than hate to have a say in their systems of governance.
Maybe if you want to prevent such a hypothetical future the democratic solution is to offer something better for people to vote for, instead of using threats of violence by employing the law to enforce your systems.
There is and never will be a perfect system of whatsoever. I’d rather watch them nazi party get forbidden than waiting for a solution that will come in place when it is already too late.
And unless you aren’t a nazi, putin follower or trumpist, I don’t know why I even have to explain why a German future with a nazi party at its front will be no good for nobody.
Are you actually referencing the “first they came for the Jews but I wasn’t a Jew” thing to argue that we should let nazis go ahead and take the power?
The solution being proposed here to prevent authoritarian systems is… other authoritarian systems. Can you understand why people see this as a problem brewing?
The situation is nowhere near that simple. You just want to pretend it is so you don’t have to ask difficult questions that challenge your perspective, like why the current government is wildly unpopular.
Those two questions are only somewhat related. The question “should we ban an undemocratic party that wants to work against core values of our constitution” has only become really pressing because the current government is so unpopular. The actual reasoning for or against the ban do not relate to the popularity of the government.
Taking the current state of affairs and concluding that voting enemies of the constitution into the government would be the solution is not something the majority has to accept as a valid political point of view.
You may call that antidemocratic but there are good reasons we have these non-negotiable core values in our constitution.
If you want to protest against the current government go ahead and I’ll probably support you, there are many good reasons to do that. As long as you are not supporting the movement against our country itself.
Checks and balances are about preventing a small faction of the government from gaining absolute control of the entire government. It’s not about preventing a say, it’s about preventing a total takeover that prevents anyone else from having a say in the future.
You see, we call it Wehrhafte Demokratie. According to Wikipedia this can be translated as battlesome democracy, though I find that clunky.
The entire idea of our constitution is to keep a democracy, we even have a constitutional right to disobedience, if democracy is threatened.
The constitution is deliberately very open, but there’s one thing that’s non-negotiable: FDGO, liberal-democratic basic order. If you’re operating outside of that, you’re not supposed to be part of the political landscape.
I think they’re saying that liberal “democracies”, as soon as they need to, will use the exact same censorship that they claim “autocracies” use, and which not using is the entire source of their supposed moral superiority.
Banning fascist organizations is not only democratic, it’s one of the bare minimum tasks a democratic society should perform in order to protect itself. Personally I think their solution is a little weak. Fascists will always wiggle around courts and laws, then use those very same laws to their advantage. It’s what they do. They fill in the gaps that liberal societies are always going to have, yet endlessly try to repair.
The best option is to shoot fascists in the head, without hesitation. That’s not a metaphor for anything, I mean literally line them up against a brick wall and shoot them with guns. Then announce you’ll do the same to any further fascists you discover. Drive all potential fascists into hiding, make them cower in fear and remain powerless. That’s the only thing that has ever worked.
Yes, because it’s so easy to murder a few people. We just need to label people we don’t like as Nazis and shoot them. What could possibly go wrong? And when we are at it, I think my neighbour is a nazi too, let me shoot him.
It’s way easier to shoot a few nazis than to let them form political organizations, raise money, and present themselves as a threat. Yes, that’s true.
You talk like it’s difficult or debatable who qualifies as a nazi. It’s not. They always expose themselves and announce their intentions clearly. This isn’t a matter of people who we have a disagreement with. They’re not simply people we don’t like, they’re people who threaten to kill us. This is a matter of fascists who publicly announce their intentions to pursue racist, bigoted murder against me and people like me. It is part of AfD’s standard platform that LGBTQ people receive fewer rights than straight people, and that all foreigners should be rounded up and deported. Those are fascist threats, not some disagreement on who we like. They only historical method of dealing with these fascists is to destroy them before they destroy us.
sounds like you see more nazis than we do. We don’t have this kind of problem of not understanding who is who. We know who the enemy is and what they deserve. if your understanding of fascists is this shallow it’s no wonder you’d sympathize with them
If you wanna insult me please call me a queer Marxist Stalinist devil worshiper or something, because that would be more accurate. Call me a North Korea apologist because that’s true. I’d also readily accept insults like baizuo or first world crakkker, because those are unfortunately also true.
i think fascist for you just means “scary person with bad ideas.” if it’s only a pejorative to you, rather than a specific identifiable movement, then you’re not gonna get it. I recommend reading Robert O. Paxton, or Marxist theorists like Antonio Gramsci or (my personal favorite) the historian Perry Anderson. They’ve all written on the particular contours of fascist ideology and how to identify it, rather than treating it as simply a set of violent tendencies.
If you’re fascist and antifascists come for you, you have a choice. You can give it up. You can go renounce what you said. You could just go on with the rest of your life and stop turning up at fascist rallies. Anti fascists probably aren’t going to buy you a pint and be your best friend but they’ll move on. But if you’re a person of color, if you’re trans, or a person with a disability or gay or Jewish, and fascists come for you, there is nothing you can do to make them happy except stop existing. If you’re a political enemy of antifa, you can become a friend. If you’re a political enemy of fascism, either they lose or you die.
It is part of AfD’s standard platform that LGBTQ people receive fewer rights than straight people,
They’ve supported civil unions but not gay marriage, but consider it a settled issue. Their leader, Alice Weidel, is a lesbian woman with a Sri Lankan partner.
and that all foreigners should be rounded up and deported
The AfD has many immigrant supporters and members. That secret meeting they supposedly had, about “deporting immigrants who refuse to assimilate”? It was a random far-right crank meeting in which a single AfD member attended, and was alienated from his party for doing so. This is what Alice Weidel had to say about it, translated:
Untrue allegations of the most outrageous media and political scandals, ladies and gentlemen. These are DDR methods. I think it’s great that they’re now writing everything down in detail. Private encounter between personalities with different backgrounds, including one AfD member and people without party reservations. It wasn’t a secret meeting either, just a private gathering that these corrective activists used secret service methods to construct a conspiracy theory from.
The Bundestag faction on how to deal with the millions of irregular and illegal migration since 2015 is not set in alleged secret meetings, but in party conference committees. It is based on the basic program of 2016 in the EU election program and the numerous statements and parliamentary speeches you can read and listen to. All right state resources to prevent illegal border crossings through more effective border controls. To revoke citizenships obtained illegally from criminals who are not entitled to naturalization. To expel and deport migrants who are criminals and terrorist suspects who do not have a right to stay.
Whoever is a German citizen belongs without question, without a doubt, to the German people. This is precisely why German citizenship must not be lost and distributed with a watering can. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the enforcement of applicable law and regulations that have been neglected by the government for almost a decade in this process.
I certainly don’t agree with them, but their platform is basically American Republican “tough on border and illegal immigrants” and “limiting and prioritizing skills based immigration” style.
This kind of disinformation is exactly how 2016 happened in the US. Trump says he wants to build a wall and curb illegal immigration, liberals say he wants to kick every Latino out of the country, his supporters get to shout “fake news” at everything. Calling them Nazis only feeds their supporters’ victim complex; it’s like Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” but 100x worse, and AfD politicians get to go “you’re upstanding citizens, but the woke left see you as evil for caring about your country. They’re the real Nazis.”
There are extremist minority politicians of the AfD who like to dogwhistle of course, which is also functionally the same as the GOP. Except if an AfD politician ever said something like “immigrants poison the blood of our country” as Trump did, they would be arrested.
I don’t understand your point of saying the AfD are comparable to standard American Republicans as if that’s a defense of them. I also believe Republicans should all be lined up and shot.
When have Republicans mass murdered their political dissidents? Another tool of fascists: extreme hyperbole.
If you think they’re so dangerous to society, VOTE THEM OUT, reshape the system, hell the bar them from office! Massacring them just makes YOU the fascist
When have Republicans mass murdered their political dissidents?
Every war America has ever involved itself in, plus an absurd amount of massacred and lynched prisoners, civil rights activists and random black and indigenous people, plus every victim of America’s fascist puppet governments abroad, plus everyone who starves to death in capitalist countries where food is locked up to rot, plus everyone who dies of covid due to our non-response, ect. We would literally be here all day if I wanted to list out everyone the American capitalist oligarchy and it’s decorative “parties” has slaughtered on the altar of capital.
If you think they’re so dangerous to society, VOTE THEM OUT, reshape the system
michael-laugh Oh, is it the most important election of our lifetime again already? vote
Massacring them just makes YOU the fascist
Lol, there’s no shame in admitting you don’t know what fascism is dude. It’s not transmissible like Lycanthropy, and it’s not When Violence. Also, how the fuck do you think the nazis were stopped. You think they were voted out?
Although if massacring nondescript “dissenters” is what makes a government fascist, I’m glad we at least share the correct opinion that the US is fascist.
"So, you compare a country from what it came from, with all it’s imperfections. And those who demand instant perfection the day after the revolution, they go up and say “Are there civil liberties for the fascists? Are they gonna be allowed their newspapers and their radio programs, are they gonna be able to keep all their farms? The passion that some of our liberals feel, the day after the revolution, the passion and concern they feel for the fascists, the civil rights and civil liberties of those fascists who are dumping and destroying and murdering people before. Now the revolution has gotta be perfect, it’s gotta be flawless. Well that isn’t my criteria, my criteria is what happens to those people who couldn’t read? What happens to those babies that couldn’t eat, that died of hunger? And that’s why I support revolution. The revolution that feeds the children gets my support. “
Michael Parenti, 1986, “US Interventionism, the 3rd world, and the USSR,”
Yeah I just don’t care about right-wingers and their precious civil rights. They’re a fungus growing on the world from decaying capitalism. I have no sympathy for them whatsoever and don’t regard them as valid political opponents. They’re a death spiral menace to the world with nothing meaningful to contribute
The majority of the world aren’t people actively involved in organizing and maintaining fascist organizations, right? If that’s the case I don’t give a shit about them. Keep those types powerless and isolated, remove the material conditions that give rise to fascist tendencies in the first place.
Why not kill Republicans by the way? Bush Jr. killed a million Iraqis. Trump mediated a genocide against Yemen. Mitch McConnell is already a walking zombie. What is gained from keeping them alive? I’m not talking about killing Republican voters or someone who has a bumper sticker. That’s too much work to bother with. I’m talking about Republicans directly managing American empire for the benefit of capital. The average right wing voter is just some loser who deserves re-education.
I don’t think it’s especially productive to kill people when imprisoning them is easy, as it would be with the resources in America, but I don’t see why you are clutching your pearls this hard at a butcher of countless thousands being killed.
Somehow I doubt that the millions of us in the lower classes who suffered from his régime would be that restrained.
In any case, it isn’t a question of one individual’s prescription. It is more a question of historic inevitability and necessity. I can’t say anything for sure, but should the lower classes directly confront Donald Trump and Mike Pence one day, I have a feeling that we’ll be just as forgiving as lower‐class Italians were of Benito Mussolini. Only a guess, though.
YMMV on the CDU vis a vis being fascists but I’d argue you can look back at Adenauers “Radikalenerlass” (“Radical Decree” or something) that purported to stop extremists from both sides from holding certain important jobs and somehow managed to find 1000 left wing extremists for every right winger in '70s germany.
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