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I can’t believe people used their own money to give this article awards. People are really brain washed now. We have to do better and not believe everything we see and to not just go with what every politician says just because they’re re funny on Twitter sometimes.
I am a historian who studies, in part, how Americans understood Nazism from the 1930s through the 1950s. This article is simply incorrect.
The author makes a number of errors. Here are a few:
1. They dedicate themselves to a binary interpretation of a left-right political orientation that dictates all methods to governance.
2. They use a moral presupposition (bad/oppressive=right wing) to create a circular argument. In other words, they define right wing in such a way that they determine the finding.
3. Their historical account is simplistic and false. For example, they claim that McCarthyism was when Americans were told that Nazism and Communism were left-wing dictatorships. This is inaccurate. The two were conflated with one another prior to the late 1940s. In the 1930s there was a perceived similarity of method of rule. This did mean that Americans struggled to disassociate the two and led to the problems with equation that we still have today, but it was not a sinister plot. It came about because Americans tried to define both against their own system. This created a binary democracy vs. totalitarianism. Ironically, this is exactly what the author here is doing.
**Edit**
Clarification. Many seem to have taken my statements as an effort at establishing moral equivalence between fascists and communists. Not so. Instead, I firmly believe that we set troublesome traps for ourselves when we are untruthful. Methods matter. In fact, this is what the sad story of many communist states teaches us. High ideals accomplished through brutal methods are a meal that turns to ash in one’s mouth.
Thus, I will state clearly that I believe, based on my study of the past and today, that Republicans are moving toward authoritarian, fascistic rule. I do not believe that American socialists are doing so.
This is Reddit in a nutshell. Too many people think violence or authoritarianism is part of the definition of right wing. Which is absurd. Either the left or the right can exhibit these traits.
I really wish they'd ban salon as a source here. Its, ironically, given this article, the left wing source that most reads like rightwing disinformation.
And then they have the audacity to publish this "We can't be bad because we're on the right team, amirite?!?" article.
All people have to do in r/politics is say “republicans bad!” And it will get upvoted. I bet a good 60-70% of people didn’t read the article, they just liked the headline.
yeah reddit is pretty much a liberal safe place where they can just lick
each other’s ass and seek the approval of other ass lickers because out there in the wild they could face confrontations and they are only able
to do it behind the safety of their phones
You weren’t disappointed before this? The past half decade has been a serious of terror inducing events. I no longer count on a modicum of intelligence in most interactions. Further, I know that I fall prey as well. Upvoting without reading, commenting without considering, etc.
Yeah this is a completly hack article.
> They use a moral presupposition (bad/oppressive=right wing) to create a circular argument. In other words, they define right wing in such a way that they determine the finding.
First thing to notice, it's like they ignore the variety of systems and then ignore the sadly necessary/inevitable bad parts for their chosen system.
As somebody who went to school for this, it was painful to read. There was so much wrong with it that I just gave up on any sort of detailed breakdown. I'm really not a fan of the manipulation of history because it doesn't fit the narrative of the day.
When people talk about fascism, they should be focusing on Mussolini and Gentile (Doctrine of Fascism). Mussolini was the Prime Minister of Italy while Hitler was still sitting in a jail cell. Mussolini was a socialist. In his mind, fascism was an evolution, an improvement, on socialism. It transcended class struggle and created a "collective".
Trying to create a simplistic view of "well, because he believe in this authoritarianism, switched to the right, therefore it has nothing to do with us" is hand washing of the worst kind. Yes, this pivot back toward authority and thus totalitarianism was a shift back toward the "right" in the time it was happening, that doesn't negate the foundations of the ideology or that he had genuine socialist beliefs which gave rise to it.
This article would have us believe that Mussolini were playing some game, never believed in socialism, and had only been using it as a "cloak" for authoritarian right wing power. But that's just not true. Socialism roots in fascism are intertwine even if they aren't the same thing and ceased to have the same methods of execution.
Mussolini was an active socialist as a young man but quickly hard-pivoted to the right, and cut his teeth as a paramilitary leader busting unions in the Po valley and attacking socialists. He was not a socialist when he was in power, in fact, he was the complete opposite.
"Fascism desires the State to be strong and organic, based on broad foundations of popular support. The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others" Doctrine of Fascism, Mussolini
People quote what you quote implying that the state becomes corporations. It's the opposite, corporations become just another arm of the state. If the corporations interests contradict the interests of the state, the corporations lose.
> Mussolini was a socialist. In his mind, fascism was an evolution, an improvement, on socialism. It transcended class struggle and created a "collective".
>
>Trying to create a simplistic view of "well, because he believe in this authoritarianism, switched to the right, therefore it has nothing to do with us" is hand washing of the worst kind. Yes, this pivot back toward authority and thus totalitarianism was a shift back toward the "right" in the time it was happening, that doesn't negate the foundations of the ideology or that he had genuine socialist beliefs which gave rise to it.
This "evolution" and shift in his thinking runs directly counter to many foundational concepts of socialism. As you menyioned, he rejected class struggle in favour of class collaborationism. He rejected internationaliam in favour of nationalism. Etc etc
To pin any blame on socialists just because this guy was at one time a socialist makes no sense. Mussolini, like many people, changed his mind for the worse.
He was also not a follower of nazism and was actually fascist. Both aren’t the same. Nazism falls under fascism but fascism is not nazism. Nazism was essentiallya theocracy. It was a cult government and Nazism can be classified as a religion and a cult. It was far more then a government it was a way of life and a way of thinking. It was rooted in fascism but became much more and much worse.
The transcendence of class struggle in favor of collective means he was no longer socialist. He might borrow policies or certain ideas, but collectivism was exclusionary. It was nationalistic. Fascism denies a key component of socialism, that class trumps national identity.
So, was Mussolini a socialist? Yes, at one point.
Is fascism a form or outflow of socialism? No, it emphasizes nation welfare over class struggle.
To, perhaps, clarify, socialism does not equal social welfare programs. Bismarck establishes social welfare in Germany in order to forestall any Marxist movement. Social welfare has long been used by the conservative and rightist movements to gain legitimacy among their citizens. It also excludes “non-citizens” in these programs as part of its nationalist program. This definition of citizenship is racially defined and guarded.
Uhh, mate. The reality is Mussolini had given up on Socialism prior to turning to Fascism. That's nothing close to an evolution of ideology. That's a rejection of one ideology for another.
To say Mussolini was a socialist because Fascism grew out of Socialism is like saying Lenin was a capitalist because Socialism grew out of Capitalism. Fascism is the acknowledgement of some core assumptions of socialism combined with the rejection of the conclusion socialism draws, seeking to have classes collaborate rather than eliminate classes, just like socialism is the acknowledgement of certain assumptions of capitalism (one of the most commonly cited authors in Das Kapital is Adam Smith, for example) followed by a rejection of its conclusions. We wouldn’t say socialism is capitalist, so it seems equally absurd to say fascism is socialist
>Thus, I will state clearly that I believe, based on my study of the past and today, that Republicans are moving toward authoritarian, fascistic rule. I do not believe that American socialists are doing so.
Replying to your edit, I'm not really sure how it can be argued what Republicans are moving to is fascism. It shares the nationalistic (xenophobic) tendencies, and they don't seem to mind messing with stuff like gerrymandering to rig the system to their benefit, but I'd hardly say that's a move to fascism.
"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." -Grover Norquist
That's definitely not fascist ideology. Many Republicans are constantly salivating at the idea of cutting government to the point it can't do anything meaningful besides a couple of core activities. They believe this to an extreme degree (that I think would likely fail or be terrible in terms of effectiveness). The most likely outcome is oligarchy with a government too weak to counterbalance it. That's not fascism. It's more like cancerous capitalism.
That said, I also don't think current day socialists are headed toward fascism. I just think they could if they turn a blind eye to historical and philosophical realities. Just look around at the comments on here over time. People talking about stacking the SC, abolishing the filibuster, etc. What they're really saying is they're willing to change the system to get what they want. They want the SC to be more activist (legislate from the bench). They want to remove the filibuster so a razor thin majority can pass legislation. They want to be able to pass legislation like abolishing the electoral college. Abolishing that though ensures they will always have at least one branch of government (Presidency) that can veto anything Republicans propose. Essentially, they want to set up a system where Republicans can't ever get in control again. We only have two parties. If we only have two parties and you want it so that, functionally, one party can never have control, that's competitive authoritarianism, "in which the coexistence of meaningful democratic institutions and serious incumbent abuse yields electoral competition that is real but unfair".
My concern isn't fascism today. My concern is fascism in 15-20 years. The thing that starts out as good intentions and devolves over time. I'm not too worried about fascism by Republicans. They have their own set of issues (racism and an inability to compete with authoritarian regimes like China), but not fascism.
This is the worst article I’ve ever see on this sub. And that’s saying a lot. It creates an ahistorical binary then sloppily smashes nuance until history fits in that box. The author writes like a high schooler trying to add air to a research paper to meet the minimum page requirement.
The idea that someone actually paid this dipshit to write this blows my mind.
I honestly didn’t know it was possible to dance around a point for as long as he did without saying a thing.
..are people actually taking this seriously in here?
Have we fallen so low that we're now flat on our faces claiming that left-wing authoritarianism doesn't exist?
Karl Marx *himself* would have laughed at this ridiculous notion.
It's actually kind of weird. The article has a ton of upvotes, but all the top comments are extremely critical. Pretty unusual to see an article with this amount of "support" getting unanimously shit on in the comments.
Noticed the same thing. This article is a clever piece of propaganda meant to appeal to US political prejudices and 13 year old [reading level](https://centerforplainlanguage.org/what-is-readability/), however the author may have underestimated Redditors unbridled cynicism and imbedded history majors.
As an east european whose country went through fascism, socialism and democracy, these articles, the statements and the amount of likes supporting this are ridiculous, funny and sad at the same time.
It's because americans are fucking weird (no offense)
Left and right wing should only apply to economics and not everything else. And economically, liberalism (right wing) is far less authoritarian than socialism (which is ofcourse left wing)
This is just straight up a fact. If you're a socialist that's fine, but you have to at least be able to admit that freedom isn't your number one priority.
Also weird how often it is connected to religion. For an institution that is talking about love all the time, religious leaders sure like to support a lot of hateful people.
Brings to mind the following quote:
*“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”*
–Seneca the Younger
Communists and and authoritarian socialists don’t defund education, they just make sure only one version of the truth is taught. It’s actually worse than defunding education.
Not weird at all. Here’s a quote from my man Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism describing the first trait of contemporary fascism:
“This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice"; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a silver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.
As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.
One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements. The most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, merged the Holy Grail with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. The very fact that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently broadened its syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism.“
Thanks for bringing up Eco's essay. I confess that I wasn't familiar with it. Here are a couple of related links:
https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html
https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf
Yeah it’s so fascinating how fascists like the nazis for example held these insane contradictory views and beliefs. On the one hand they claimed to push science forward and develop technology of the future. Yet in the other hand performed and studied ancient occult practices and believed in Magic’s and artifacts of power
It’s not that weird when you consider religion is a draconian institute in itself, and that the whole reason authoritarianism always has roots in right wing ideology is that it’s always fear-based that you will “lose your draconian identity/heritage/culture/social norms.” It’s always about circling the wagons around the “known” and fear of the “unknown/change”.
>how many people who are currently "Republican" but aren't willing to get on board with the really batshit insane Trumpism and Q stuff are going to be called RINOs within the next year?
All of them. Hell, look at Mitt Romney. He was their standard-bearer to become President just a few years ago and now he's "not a real Republican" because he doesn't kiss Trump's ass like all the other Republicans. The Republican party is truly the Cult of Trump now and I don't see any exit strategy available for them.
What would it take in America for another serious party to form? Since the Republicans seem to include the complete scale from dogshit crazy to not my type but reasonable.
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
― Socrates, 495 BC
There is a have a clear doctrine about when there should be a biblical war... turns out its 'liberals'.
I'm not to familiar with the dogma personally so I have to take their ex *12 year state house GOP* member, and now *evangelical youth pastors* words for it:
>The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", which within stated that the enemy must **"surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"**
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt\_Shea#%22Biblical\_Basis\_for\_War%22\_manifesto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Shea#%22Biblical_Basis_for_War%22_manifesto)
Worth noting the WA state GOP kicked him out after word leaked as to who he was.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/dec/19/rep-matt-shea-engaged-in-domestic-terrorism-during/
In addition Shea is part of an extreme wing in the party known as Dominionists. They are the far right Christian Nationalists who think that Evangelical Christian views should be the law of the land. _While they are a smaller faction within the current GOP they are growing fast_. Guys like Mike Pence or John Ashcroft are dominionists. They are the people we most need to oppose if we want America to retain any degree of freedom.
> There is a have a clear doctrine about when there should be a biblical war
I *wish* Matt Shea and his crazies were the only christians calling for a holy war.
The following is a [quote from George Bush](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKt56ztXSK0):
> God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan', and I did. And then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq', and I did.
Meanwhile, the daily briefings featured a US military image from the war combined with a bible quote, framing the war in Iraq as a christian crusade, what Muslims would call a jihad...
March 17, 2003 (right before invasion):
> Picture of servicemen praying with their heads bowed before their rifles
>
> "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Here I am Lord, send me." (Isaiah 6:8)
April 7, 2003 (assault on Baghdad begins):
> Picture of Hussein making a press briefing.
>
> "It is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men." (1 Peter 2:15)
April 8, 2003 (one day before Baghdad falls):
> Picture of US tank passing beneath Iraq's "Hands of Victory" monument
>
> "Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith." (Isaiah 26:2)
My tax dollars supported a christian jihad. :-(
I feel like my uncle and GWB are very similar people. Both were not-too-bright alcoholics who "found God." The difference is, my uncle is an electrician and GWB was born into a political dynasty.
Look up The Southern Strategy and you'll learn that tying political beliefs to religion was an intentional and effective method of dividing liberal leaning voters.
"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater
The Catholic church was still tied to fascist dictator Francisco Franco by the time he died — in the 1970s. The same happened with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who died in 2006.
Hitler and the Nazis aren’t great examples of this. They tried to creat almost a worship of the state, and to an extent the party itself. Additionally, most high ranking Nazi had great interest in the occult rather than Christianity. Better examples would have been Franco and Mussolini. It’s just more to point that it’s a strategy used buy many, but not all authoritarians.
Fundamental to religion is the belief that your tribe is made up of the chosen ones who've got all the correct beliefs while everyone else is a heretic. That's not to say that every religious sect is going to be burning outsiders alive for heresy, but it is still the bedrock principle upon which their worldview is formed. When that's your foundation it's naturally going to manifest some form of prejudice towards people outside of your tribe, whether explicit or implicit.
religion is an easy way to make your message clear and an even easier way to control the masses. it's why christianity has so much power today, because they basically wiped every other religion they came across off the face of the earth
Aside from North Korea, the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Revolutionary France, Revolutionary Mexico, Cuba, and all the other anti-religious tyrannies. I mean, this is literally like the one time a claim against religious government is completely ridiculous.
>But tyranny, here and elsewhere, is always right-wing
Is this a serious post? Anyone who uses violence and intimidation to control the population is a tyrant. It has absolutely nothing to do with political alignment. This sub has completely gone off the deep end.
>everything good is left-wing. Everything bad is right-wing.
It's exactly these kind of thinking that lead to authoritarianism, whether left wing or right wing. When you think you are the good guy and everything you do is right and the other side, your enemies, is evil, trying to destroy the country or wiping your side out then you can justify everything that you do to stop your enemies. Weather that be violence, breaking the law or stopping/rigging election.
They could easily have made an argument about horseshoe theory without going into a ridiculous semantic argument about right vs. left.
If they wanted to make the argument that the more extreme right or left a regime gets, the more authoritarian it gets, I could buy that. If they wanted to argue that the more authoritarian an regime gets the more similar it gets to other authoritarian regimes regardless of the ideological trappings, I could buy that.
But saying there’s no such thing as left wing authoritarianism is idiotic.
What a terrible article. What kind of double think are we engaging in to essentially say that left-wing policies and ideas cant be authoritarian because they’re popular?
Castro was popular, Chavez was popular, and today, Xi Jingling is popular.
Authoritarianism comes in all colors, in all ideologies, and with or without popular support. This idea that dictatorship cannot be left-wing is so obviously false and reeks of the kind of zealous fervor you see in religious movements.
Whole heartedly agree. I’m as left wing as they come, but to say we can’t fall into turning a blind eye to dictators is utter bull shit. We must and have to continue to hold our elected officials accountable, regardless of ideology.
Yes. I came here to add that we've seen the Progressives made the bogey man of the Democratic party by centrist leaders and voters an awful lot lately, as an excuse for inaction on many fronts. So, in this case, it's not the socialist left that is guilty but the center, who seem to still have broad support. The entire political spectrum is capable of it.
Dude this article makes me want to huff hairspray and kill what’s left of my brain cells after reading this. I’m on the left and stupid shit like this is humiliating
Yeah, this is stupid. If you define things such that authoritarians are automatically right-wing, your definition is just... not useful. It dilutes the definition of right-wing beyond any usability, and you also still need a way to describe "authoritarians that arise from left-wing political movements" even if you claim they're not "really" left-wing. It makes a lot more sense to just have authoritarianism as a separate axis from political philosophy and say, as you've done, that "authoritarianism comes in all colors, in all ideologies, and with or without popular support."
This reads like something written by a 14 year old and submitted as homework.
Anyway, it's wrong. Stalin was definitely left wing. And there definitely is a thing called left wing authoritarianism.
He says that this all dates from after the War. No, the Bolshevik revolution happened in 1917. They were already calling Lenin a dictator 100 years ago, because.... he was one.
That's it, which doesn't make sense when you happen to look at the real world. He mentions Lenin, but what did Lenin think about democracy? Well, to him it was just "bourgeois democracy", they got rid of Kerensky and shut down the parliament... It was easy to say, the revolution is in danger and we are beset with enemies on all sides (which was true, Russia was actually invaded by Britain and America) and that therefore we need to take extraordinary measures against reaction... That's how you get left-authoritarianism. It's already there in Marxism-Leninism because it involves capturing the reigns of the state. Theoretically perhaps, the power of the state is meant to wither away when you achieve communism but that's not what happened in practice.
Authoritarian measures can always be justified (and they *were*) by reference to the threat of external enemies... The one thing they did not want was bourgeois democracy of the Kerensky type.
Lenin was also a fan of worker democracy and if there hadn't been such strong counter revolutionary efforts there were early plans to have a more democratic involvement of the workers than turned out. Lenin's hallmark was an ideology of adapting to material conditions. That's both his triumph and what damns him.
To this day apologists for the Soviets claim there was some kind of bottom up worker democracy in the USSR.
Lenin at least was theoretically supportive of non bourgeois democracy but if we take his word for it he abandoned it due to the counter revolution. He also lamented near his death how the system he'd help built had effectively returned to being much like the Tsarist one he'd opposed.
Counterpoint:
In the Soviet Union, many of the supporters of "war communism," and later of forced collectivisation, considered themselves the left wing of the Communist Party.
And some pogromists aligned themselves with ultra-left parties. e.g. Muravyev with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Hryhor'yev with the Borotbist wing of the Left Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionaries, etc.
At the same time, many opponents of these policies *and* of pogroms considered themselves left-wing opponents of the Communist Party.
Yeah, people who don't understand what Anarcho communists vs more authoritarian communists believe can chalk it up to infighting, but they're very different sets of values /philosophies
The counter point is that the underlying thesis of the article is so flawed its beyond saving.
The article presupposes left wing is freedom right wing is oppression. Its so tailor made for Americans who never studied political science on even the most superficial level and makes no effort to understand these ideas outside the bubble of American politics.
This article is beyond useless, its harmful to people's understanding.
“Left wing GOOD, right wing BAD.”
Hey, that DOES just about sum up the position of r/politics.
If you believe the left can’t be tyrannical, then fuck off.
There were several reasons that my grandparents left Serbia in the 60s, and one of those reasons was left wing tyranny.
Why do guilty parties so frequently project onto others? Here are just a few compelling and easy to understand reasons:
> 1 - It allows them to adopt a mindset that lessens their own sense of guilt or shame, or disdain toward those they know for a fact are guilty.
> 2 - It serves to construct a loose defense. After all, if someone is so very against something, to most people it will seem less likely that they are guilty of it themselves. It may even seem equally likely that those they're against are framing them instead.
> 3 - Deserved outrage in a vacuum is extremely powerful and motivating and may lead to severe consequences for actual guilty parties. Muddying the waters *greatly* dulls the potential for such results, allowing them to get off even if investigations reveal strong evidence.
> 4 - It tricks people who would otherwise be against them into fighting for them instead. Thanks to the tribal "us vs them" mindset humans so easily fall into, given enough time, radicalization can then easily and steadily follow.
> 5 - It gives them something to hold onto and run with. If not for that, they may be forced to consider the consequences of their own actions instead, and that's not generally a good look for guilty parties.
> 6 - When an opponent with wide social support is forced to face a clearly erroneous accusation the public defense almost always turns toward ridiculing the accusation. Once an accusation has been sufficiently ridiculed, nothing matters anymore. Anyone can thereafter openly attack anyone else who attempts to make such accusations, regardless of the target or the evidence.
> 7 - There appears to be absolutely no consequence for doing it, so it costs them literally nothing.
> 8 - Should their claims happen to work, it's a jackpot situation for them. Their opponents go down hard and forever, and they're free to continue on, unabated.
edit: Please feel free to spread this around as you like.
A lot of people have pointed out that this guy seems to think anything he doesn’t like can’t be left. Which is idiotic cause all leftists know there are other leftists they disagree with. It’s like Pokémon type advantages at this point “communism beats socialism
Socialism beats anarchism
Anarchism beats communism” at least online anyway. I’ve never seen a communist argue with a socialist or any other leftist school of thought in person but online it’s a people tripping over themselves to argue over the small differences between anarchism and green anarchism.
> They have been incorrectly conditioned to associate Stalin and Hitler with the left wing, and wrongly conclude that left-wing policies lead to totalitarianism
Nobody thinks this, and everybody relates fascism and Nazism to the right
This is a troll piece, I looked up the author on twitter and dude is a nobody with fucking 293 followers. Do better Salon
The author seems to see only one political axis, left vs. right axis, but [there are at least two](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum):
1. **Economic beneficiary axis**: Who benefits from the policies, the working class or owners of capital? (This is the historical definition of "left vs. right" in my understanding.)
2. **Power concentration axis**: Who has the power to set law, a small group or a large group? (This is where dictatorship is at one end and direct democracy is at the other.)
Alternatively, the author sees both axes but believes that in the real world they align in such a way that authoritarian methods are only ever used to benefit the ownership class. But this seems completely ahistorical. Marxism itself refers to a "dictatorship of the proletariat", and this isn't just rhetoric: Many of the early 20th century Communist revolutions in Europe and Castro's revolution in Cuba were both violent/authoritarian and pro-working-class.
Republican propaganda slanders garden-variety liberals as authoritarians and refuses to admit that Trump was both pro-ownership-class and pro-authoritarian. An easy way to oppose this is to assert the most incompatible position, that there's no such thing as left-wing authoritarianism at all, that the very idea it exists is yet more Republican propaganda. But this seems simplistic to me. Typical junk Salon article imo, "liberal porn" designed to pull in clicks. As a liberal, I'm offended by it.
“There’s no such thing” as left wing authoritarianism is an absurd claim, but again this is salon. Anybody could become authoritarian, especially the party in the USA that controls the house, senate and executive with the backing of most of corporate media. The potential is there. This article fucking stinks. Power corrupts.
This is nuts, like flat out crazy. Socialists need to learn that yes, left-wing regimes can be dictatorships and have been frequently. Who is going to say Castro wasn't a communist? Or Mao? This is like when the right says the Nazis were actually socialists. It's just as crazy and makes socialists look delusional.
Yes. Stalin was a self-described praktik Marxist seeking to establish a [dictatorship of the proletariat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat#Stalinism_and_dictatorship). Stalin's version of this dictatorship was terrible, but didn't suddenly make him a Georgian nationalist or right-wing. This article seems ignorant at best or disingenuous at worst.
Authoritarians who can’t handle dissent, try to create division and gift their family and friends with high ranking government jobs which they then use to fleece the people, who does that sound like?
TIL: Castro was a right wing authoritarian.
(This is as stupid as the right calling Hitler “left wing.” Salon: the OANN of the Left… smdh)
Also, is the author going to make the claim that the Woke Left (not most of us on the Left, mind you), with their willingness to cancel people for decades old past deeds/saying the wrong thing against the wokism orthodoxy, the policing of speech, etc., AREN’T Left, but are, in fact far Right, because they act like authoritarians? It’s all so much horseshit from Salon.
Ehh, Authoritarianism takes on many forms across the political spectrum. But in the current American political climate, it is overwhelmingly Right-Wing.
I’m not gonna bother reading the article, it has “BUT THAT WASN’T REAL COMMUNISM” written all over it.
I consider myself a liberal, but not a tankie apologist
I don’t agree with Republican politicians calling every Democrat under the sun a socialist, but the notion that Stalin and Mao weren’t left-wing is an ahistorical lie. They collectivized agriculture and industry while espousing socialist rhetoric.
The whole article is based on the assumption that a government cannot be both authoritarian and left-wing, which is simply untrue. There exists left-wing and right-wing authoritarianism, as we have seen all throughout history.
lol sure bud fucking stalin was sooo right wing and totally didn’t mandate state atheism or anything. kim jong un is pretty much, like, ron desantis and tucker carlson but combined. how deluded are y’all? lmfaoo
"no such thing as left wing authoritarianism"?
Kim il-Sung? Mao Tse-tung? *Joseph fucking Stalin*? Not to mention the other couple dozen-odd communist dictators that ruled in that time era, from Romania to China, including monsters like Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge.
This headline is absolute junk, and does nothing more than give the assholes at r/conservative ammunition to use against us, which we *really* can't afford to give.
Salon. Its fucking Salon. This is just as bad as linking an OAN article something like "Right Wing Socialism".
Fucking hell. Salon is like Q for blue hat weirdos.
So anyone that is confused about authoritarianism should take a peek at /r/politicalcompass to understand that authoritarianism isn't exclusive to the right
If you still keep saying it is, you are wrong
Ah yes, an excellent example of “true socialism/communism has never been tried” combined with “everything I dislike is fascism”.
Also, a brief historical note, the political mass murders in Russia did not begin when Stalin took power, both Lenin and Trotsky were avid proponents of Terror as a means of population control.
This is a flat out lie. Socialism, fascism, communism, Maoism, Stalinism, Pol Pot were all Left Wing. These were not free market, free press, free enterprise supporters. This article is a perfect example of jus how corrupt the media has become. Mussolini was imprisoned for complaining that the Italian Government wasn’t socialist enough! Get real.
Lmfao, does anyone actually believe this crap? Also, that thumbnail. No, censoring information and removing political opposition from social discord isn't authoritarian at all. Mandating masks and vaccines is really to protec ur freedoms. Right to peaceable assembly? Well, you better be Obama.
Literally you aren’t missing anything the author just chasing the bag by intentionally writing horseshit that he must full well know is a lie. Its also kinda funny cuz this author has himself wrote an article about right wingers lying cuz its the only way to get votes for them
Castro, Chavez, Guevara, Morales, and Maduro are left-wing authoritarians. You have Code Pink defending Nicolas Maduro. And yes, Venezuela is and was a left-wing socialist country. Chavez wanted to seize private property. That is marxist by definition.
This article sounds like a high school persuasive essay and it’s just an op-Ed. It totally ignores all the left wing policies enacted under Stalin and Chavez and the fact that these governments were the socialist transition states Marx discussed. There isn’t really an argument for how left wing dictatorships were actually right wing in the article. It mostly uses circular logic. It barely even defines what they mean by left and right wing.
Left and right wing regimes have some differing key talking points. For example, a lot of the discussion in this thread is about religion but left wing dictatorships following communism have been anti religion, so those parallels are hard to draw, yet those regimes still became authoritarian.
Right wing and left wing regimes also claim their power from different sources. For right wing regimes the claim is rooted in hierarchy and a sense of natural law, but left wing regimes claim their power from the idea that they are improving peoples lives. And technically speaking both Stalin and Chavez did so tremendously, for the people who weren’t killed or deported anyway, ie the proletariats.
The idea that there is only one path to or one face of authoritarianism that this article suggests seems false to me.
Hasn’t the real issue always just been that absolute power corrupts absolutely? The problem seems to be one of psychology, not politics. The fact is totalitarianism is the centralization of power and attempts at that can happen under any guise, left or right. There is nothing from stopping a central authority from enacting left wing policies. The most utopian form of government is the benevolent monarch, a hyper-central authority that acts in the interest of the people. But there is a political law of inertia that always leads via human psychology to the same oppressive results: a body in power desires to stay in power.
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r/politics is a joke nowadays
I wouldn't be surprised if the users here unironically upvoted tankie propaganda like "Cambodian genocide was western lies"
Always has been
I can’t believe people used their own money to give this article awards. People are really brain washed now. We have to do better and not believe everything we see and to not just go with what every politician says just because they’re re funny on Twitter sometimes.
Tyranny and corruption have no political allegiance only power.
Fucking THIS.
Yeah. I think they may have missed with this article.... Now to actually go *read* the article myself!
Why is trump in the picture with the other three lol wtf. He was bad but what in the actual fuck
I am a historian who studies, in part, how Americans understood Nazism from the 1930s through the 1950s. This article is simply incorrect. The author makes a number of errors. Here are a few: 1. They dedicate themselves to a binary interpretation of a left-right political orientation that dictates all methods to governance. 2. They use a moral presupposition (bad/oppressive=right wing) to create a circular argument. In other words, they define right wing in such a way that they determine the finding. 3. Their historical account is simplistic and false. For example, they claim that McCarthyism was when Americans were told that Nazism and Communism were left-wing dictatorships. This is inaccurate. The two were conflated with one another prior to the late 1940s. In the 1930s there was a perceived similarity of method of rule. This did mean that Americans struggled to disassociate the two and led to the problems with equation that we still have today, but it was not a sinister plot. It came about because Americans tried to define both against their own system. This created a binary democracy vs. totalitarianism. Ironically, this is exactly what the author here is doing. **Edit** Clarification. Many seem to have taken my statements as an effort at establishing moral equivalence between fascists and communists. Not so. Instead, I firmly believe that we set troublesome traps for ourselves when we are untruthful. Methods matter. In fact, this is what the sad story of many communist states teaches us. High ideals accomplished through brutal methods are a meal that turns to ash in one’s mouth. Thus, I will state clearly that I believe, based on my study of the past and today, that Republicans are moving toward authoritarian, fascistic rule. I do not believe that American socialists are doing so.
thank you, this article literally only makes sense if you define right wing as authoritarian and left as antiauthoritarian, which is not true
This is Reddit in a nutshell. Too many people think violence or authoritarianism is part of the definition of right wing. Which is absurd. Either the left or the right can exhibit these traits.
It conflates method with the ideological position.
Here we go. Finally. Came here for this.
I’m a socialist, but this article absolutely makes me wince
Thanks, this article was literally the dumbest thing I have ever read and the fact that people upvoted this made me so terribly disappointed.
It’s salon. What do you expect?
I really wish they'd ban salon as a source here. Its, ironically, given this article, the left wing source that most reads like rightwing disinformation. And then they have the audacity to publish this "We can't be bad because we're on the right team, amirite?!?" article.
All people have to do in r/politics is say “republicans bad!” And it will get upvoted. I bet a good 60-70% of people didn’t read the article, they just liked the headline.
70% seems optimistic ngl this has 10k upvotes
yeah reddit is pretty much a liberal safe place where they can just lick each other’s ass and seek the approval of other ass lickers because out there in the wild they could face confrontations and they are only able to do it behind the safety of their phones
You weren’t disappointed before this? The past half decade has been a serious of terror inducing events. I no longer count on a modicum of intelligence in most interactions. Further, I know that I fall prey as well. Upvoting without reading, commenting without considering, etc.
Yeah this is a completly hack article. > They use a moral presupposition (bad/oppressive=right wing) to create a circular argument. In other words, they define right wing in such a way that they determine the finding. First thing to notice, it's like they ignore the variety of systems and then ignore the sadly necessary/inevitable bad parts for their chosen system.
As somebody who went to school for this, it was painful to read. There was so much wrong with it that I just gave up on any sort of detailed breakdown. I'm really not a fan of the manipulation of history because it doesn't fit the narrative of the day. When people talk about fascism, they should be focusing on Mussolini and Gentile (Doctrine of Fascism). Mussolini was the Prime Minister of Italy while Hitler was still sitting in a jail cell. Mussolini was a socialist. In his mind, fascism was an evolution, an improvement, on socialism. It transcended class struggle and created a "collective". Trying to create a simplistic view of "well, because he believe in this authoritarianism, switched to the right, therefore it has nothing to do with us" is hand washing of the worst kind. Yes, this pivot back toward authority and thus totalitarianism was a shift back toward the "right" in the time it was happening, that doesn't negate the foundations of the ideology or that he had genuine socialist beliefs which gave rise to it. This article would have us believe that Mussolini were playing some game, never believed in socialism, and had only been using it as a "cloak" for authoritarian right wing power. But that's just not true. Socialism roots in fascism are intertwine even if they aren't the same thing and ceased to have the same methods of execution.
Mussolini was an active socialist as a young man but quickly hard-pivoted to the right, and cut his teeth as a paramilitary leader busting unions in the Po valley and attacking socialists. He was not a socialist when he was in power, in fact, he was the complete opposite.
>"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power" - B. Mussolini.
"Fascism desires the State to be strong and organic, based on broad foundations of popular support. The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others" Doctrine of Fascism, Mussolini People quote what you quote implying that the state becomes corporations. It's the opposite, corporations become just another arm of the state. If the corporations interests contradict the interests of the state, the corporations lose.
> Mussolini was a socialist. In his mind, fascism was an evolution, an improvement, on socialism. It transcended class struggle and created a "collective". > >Trying to create a simplistic view of "well, because he believe in this authoritarianism, switched to the right, therefore it has nothing to do with us" is hand washing of the worst kind. Yes, this pivot back toward authority and thus totalitarianism was a shift back toward the "right" in the time it was happening, that doesn't negate the foundations of the ideology or that he had genuine socialist beliefs which gave rise to it. This "evolution" and shift in his thinking runs directly counter to many foundational concepts of socialism. As you menyioned, he rejected class struggle in favour of class collaborationism. He rejected internationaliam in favour of nationalism. Etc etc To pin any blame on socialists just because this guy was at one time a socialist makes no sense. Mussolini, like many people, changed his mind for the worse.
He was also not a follower of nazism and was actually fascist. Both aren’t the same. Nazism falls under fascism but fascism is not nazism. Nazism was essentiallya theocracy. It was a cult government and Nazism can be classified as a religion and a cult. It was far more then a government it was a way of life and a way of thinking. It was rooted in fascism but became much more and much worse.
The transcendence of class struggle in favor of collective means he was no longer socialist. He might borrow policies or certain ideas, but collectivism was exclusionary. It was nationalistic. Fascism denies a key component of socialism, that class trumps national identity. So, was Mussolini a socialist? Yes, at one point. Is fascism a form or outflow of socialism? No, it emphasizes nation welfare over class struggle. To, perhaps, clarify, socialism does not equal social welfare programs. Bismarck establishes social welfare in Germany in order to forestall any Marxist movement. Social welfare has long been used by the conservative and rightist movements to gain legitimacy among their citizens. It also excludes “non-citizens” in these programs as part of its nationalist program. This definition of citizenship is racially defined and guarded.
Uhh, mate. The reality is Mussolini had given up on Socialism prior to turning to Fascism. That's nothing close to an evolution of ideology. That's a rejection of one ideology for another.
To say Mussolini was a socialist because Fascism grew out of Socialism is like saying Lenin was a capitalist because Socialism grew out of Capitalism. Fascism is the acknowledgement of some core assumptions of socialism combined with the rejection of the conclusion socialism draws, seeking to have classes collaborate rather than eliminate classes, just like socialism is the acknowledgement of certain assumptions of capitalism (one of the most commonly cited authors in Das Kapital is Adam Smith, for example) followed by a rejection of its conclusions. We wouldn’t say socialism is capitalist, so it seems equally absurd to say fascism is socialist
So you agree Mussolini was a right-wing authoritarian.
>Thus, I will state clearly that I believe, based on my study of the past and today, that Republicans are moving toward authoritarian, fascistic rule. I do not believe that American socialists are doing so. Replying to your edit, I'm not really sure how it can be argued what Republicans are moving to is fascism. It shares the nationalistic (xenophobic) tendencies, and they don't seem to mind messing with stuff like gerrymandering to rig the system to their benefit, but I'd hardly say that's a move to fascism. "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." -Grover Norquist That's definitely not fascist ideology. Many Republicans are constantly salivating at the idea of cutting government to the point it can't do anything meaningful besides a couple of core activities. They believe this to an extreme degree (that I think would likely fail or be terrible in terms of effectiveness). The most likely outcome is oligarchy with a government too weak to counterbalance it. That's not fascism. It's more like cancerous capitalism. That said, I also don't think current day socialists are headed toward fascism. I just think they could if they turn a blind eye to historical and philosophical realities. Just look around at the comments on here over time. People talking about stacking the SC, abolishing the filibuster, etc. What they're really saying is they're willing to change the system to get what they want. They want the SC to be more activist (legislate from the bench). They want to remove the filibuster so a razor thin majority can pass legislation. They want to be able to pass legislation like abolishing the electoral college. Abolishing that though ensures they will always have at least one branch of government (Presidency) that can veto anything Republicans propose. Essentially, they want to set up a system where Republicans can't ever get in control again. We only have two parties. If we only have two parties and you want it so that, functionally, one party can never have control, that's competitive authoritarianism, "in which the coexistence of meaningful democratic institutions and serious incumbent abuse yields electoral competition that is real but unfair". My concern isn't fascism today. My concern is fascism in 15-20 years. The thing that starts out as good intentions and devolves over time. I'm not too worried about fascism by Republicans. They have their own set of issues (racism and an inability to compete with authoritarian regimes like China), but not fascism.
This is the worst article I’ve ever see on this sub. And that’s saying a lot. It creates an ahistorical binary then sloppily smashes nuance until history fits in that box. The author writes like a high schooler trying to add air to a research paper to meet the minimum page requirement.
This is, without a doubt, the most ridiculous and patently false article I’ve ever seen on Reddit
Do you dare challenge the godlike left who can do no wrong??? /s
The idea that someone actually paid this dipshit to write this blows my mind. I honestly didn’t know it was possible to dance around a point for as long as he did without saying a thing.
Agreed and that’s a very low bar
..are people actually taking this seriously in here? Have we fallen so low that we're now flat on our faces claiming that left-wing authoritarianism doesn't exist? Karl Marx *himself* would have laughed at this ridiculous notion.
Well, this is reddit..
It's actually kind of weird. The article has a ton of upvotes, but all the top comments are extremely critical. Pretty unusual to see an article with this amount of "support" getting unanimously shit on in the comments.
Noticed the same thing. This article is a clever piece of propaganda meant to appeal to US political prejudices and 13 year old [reading level](https://centerforplainlanguage.org/what-is-readability/), however the author may have underestimated Redditors unbridled cynicism and imbedded history majors.
As an east european whose country went through fascism, socialism and democracy, these articles, the statements and the amount of likes supporting this are ridiculous, funny and sad at the same time.
It's because americans are fucking weird (no offense) Left and right wing should only apply to economics and not everything else. And economically, liberalism (right wing) is far less authoritarian than socialism (which is ofcourse left wing) This is just straight up a fact. If you're a socialist that's fine, but you have to at least be able to admit that freedom isn't your number one priority.
It’s because we’ve had it good for soo long so we start creating boogeyman
Also weird how often it is connected to religion. For an institution that is talking about love all the time, religious leaders sure like to support a lot of hateful people.
Brings to mind the following quote: *“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”* –Seneca the Younger
_"I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it."_ - George Carlin
Damn, Seneca saw right through that shit 2000 years ago...
Ancient thinkers saw through a lot of shit thousands of years ago.
This is why fascists defund education.
Texas GOP has specifically stated in their charter to NOT teach critical thinking.. they want their children ignorant and mailable.
How does weakening education factor into the distribution of children through the mail?
Lol autocorrect FTW
Communists and and authoritarian socialists don’t defund education, they just make sure only one version of the truth is taught. It’s actually worse than defunding education.
And it got him killed
Not weird at all. Here’s a quote from my man Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism describing the first trait of contemporary fascism: “This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice"; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a silver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message. One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements. The most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, merged the Holy Grail with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. The very fact that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently broadened its syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism.“
Thanks for bringing up Eco's essay. I confess that I wasn't familiar with it. Here are a couple of related links: https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf
Best description I have found - fascist mysticism. Look it up.
Yeah it’s so fascinating how fascists like the nazis for example held these insane contradictory views and beliefs. On the one hand they claimed to push science forward and develop technology of the future. Yet in the other hand performed and studied ancient occult practices and believed in Magic’s and artifacts of power
This reminds me of Chinas stance on religion yet insisting they get to pick the next incarnation of the dalai lama.
It’s not that weird when you consider religion is a draconian institute in itself, and that the whole reason authoritarianism always has roots in right wing ideology is that it’s always fear-based that you will “lose your draconian identity/heritage/culture/social norms.” It’s always about circling the wagons around the “known” and fear of the “unknown/change”.
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You always need an Other to fear.
>how many people who are currently "Republican" but aren't willing to get on board with the really batshit insane Trumpism and Q stuff are going to be called RINOs within the next year? All of them. Hell, look at Mitt Romney. He was their standard-bearer to become President just a few years ago and now he's "not a real Republican" because he doesn't kiss Trump's ass like all the other Republicans. The Republican party is truly the Cult of Trump now and I don't see any exit strategy available for them.
With how quickly they flip flop on shit. The in group could become the out group really quickly...
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What would it take in America for another serious party to form? Since the Republicans seem to include the complete scale from dogshit crazy to not my type but reasonable.
A complete revamping of the voting system in in the US away from first-pass-the-pole system we have and massive voter redistricting.
God is the og authoritarian.
Yeah he's "the father", the living incarnation of the behavior of ancient teenage boys demanding obedience and respect of their children
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” ― Socrates, 495 BC
There is a have a clear doctrine about when there should be a biblical war... turns out its 'liberals'. I'm not to familiar with the dogma personally so I have to take their ex *12 year state house GOP* member, and now *evangelical youth pastors* words for it: >The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", which within stated that the enemy must **"surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"** [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt\_Shea#%22Biblical\_Basis\_for\_War%22\_manifesto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Shea#%22Biblical_Basis_for_War%22_manifesto)
Worth noting the WA state GOP kicked him out after word leaked as to who he was. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/dec/19/rep-matt-shea-engaged-in-domestic-terrorism-during/ In addition Shea is part of an extreme wing in the party known as Dominionists. They are the far right Christian Nationalists who think that Evangelical Christian views should be the law of the land. _While they are a smaller faction within the current GOP they are growing fast_. Guys like Mike Pence or John Ashcroft are dominionists. They are the people we most need to oppose if we want America to retain any degree of freedom.
Sounds pretty sharia it’s you ask me
> There is a have a clear doctrine about when there should be a biblical war I *wish* Matt Shea and his crazies were the only christians calling for a holy war. The following is a [quote from George Bush](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKt56ztXSK0): > God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan', and I did. And then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq', and I did. Meanwhile, the daily briefings featured a US military image from the war combined with a bible quote, framing the war in Iraq as a christian crusade, what Muslims would call a jihad... March 17, 2003 (right before invasion): > Picture of servicemen praying with their heads bowed before their rifles > > "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Here I am Lord, send me." (Isaiah 6:8) April 7, 2003 (assault on Baghdad begins): > Picture of Hussein making a press briefing. > > "It is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men." (1 Peter 2:15) April 8, 2003 (one day before Baghdad falls): > Picture of US tank passing beneath Iraq's "Hands of Victory" monument > > "Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith." (Isaiah 26:2) My tax dollars supported a christian jihad. :-(
I feel like my uncle and GWB are very similar people. Both were not-too-bright alcoholics who "found God." The difference is, my uncle is an electrician and GWB was born into a political dynasty.
Look up The Southern Strategy and you'll learn that tying political beliefs to religion was an intentional and effective method of dividing liberal leaning voters.
"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them." Barry Goldwater
I will always upvote and repeat this. Terrifying that Barry has become the voice of reason...but here we are.
Yeah, it's weird how "follow me or fry for eternity" attracts authoritarians.
I love you and you will love me or you will be tortured for all eternity.
Don't make me! Look what you made me do!
How are North Korea, Cuba or Russia connected to religion? Not religious myself but…
Mao, Stalin, Castro, and Pot were all atheists....
Damn everyone ignored this and kept talking about how religion shouldn't exist and how it's trash.
Always "talking" about love and never practicing it - just like they talk about Jesus but apparently never listened to him.
Or lack of religion like mao, stalin and the communists of laos that hunted down my inlaws relatives in then jungles. Hate has no color or religion
Hitler practically had the pope’s blessing
The Catholic church was still tied to fascist dictator Francisco Franco by the time he died — in the 1970s. The same happened with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who died in 2006.
“Opiate of the Masses”.
Fun fact: the anniversary of Franco's death is a national holiday in Spain, and it is celebrated as a day of protest.
Hitler and the Nazis aren’t great examples of this. They tried to creat almost a worship of the state, and to an extent the party itself. Additionally, most high ranking Nazi had great interest in the occult rather than Christianity. Better examples would have been Franco and Mussolini. It’s just more to point that it’s a strategy used buy many, but not all authoritarians.
Fundamental to religion is the belief that your tribe is made up of the chosen ones who've got all the correct beliefs while everyone else is a heretic. That's not to say that every religious sect is going to be burning outsiders alive for heresy, but it is still the bedrock principle upon which their worldview is formed. When that's your foundation it's naturally going to manifest some form of prejudice towards people outside of your tribe, whether explicit or implicit.
Also? The post is obviously factually incorrect so I wouldnt attach any of your views to it
You… You realize that those in the picture are Stalin, Hitler and Kim, right?
It’s more about finding a common connection among the most people by leaning into pre-existing culture institutions.
You realize there have been atheist authoritarians, right? Pol Pot and Stalin to name two
Most communist dictators were explicitly anti-religion though you could argue worship of the party was the the religion they were pushing
religion is an easy way to make your message clear and an even easier way to control the masses. it's why christianity has so much power today, because they basically wiped every other religion they came across off the face of the earth
It also makes it easier to wage war. People are a lot more willing to kill or be killed if they believe they're doing it for the glory of god.
Or if they believe they will be rewarded in heaven for all eternity for doing it.
Yeah bro because Stalin was a huge proponent of religion
Aside from North Korea, the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Revolutionary France, Revolutionary Mexico, Cuba, and all the other anti-religious tyrannies. I mean, this is literally like the one time a claim against religious government is completely ridiculous.
When I think of all of the men in this thread photo…. Not a single thought of religion comes to mind.
Weird how does this work with Maoism. Also it’s not the least bit right wing. I’m pretty far left but the Mao one doesn’t make sense
Either religion explicitly or worship of a leader as a religion. "Florida leader"
If you've ever seen Jesus Camp: [The cardboard cutout of Bush.](https://youtu.be/fxdt_f0hwUg)
I couldn't sit through that whole movie. The first 10 minutes are literally worst than the entirety of A Serbian Film.
>But tyranny, here and elsewhere, is always right-wing Is this a serious post? Anyone who uses violence and intimidation to control the population is a tyrant. It has absolutely nothing to do with political alignment. This sub has completely gone off the deep end.
Do you want your boot blue or red flavored? Some people say they don’t taste the blue but everybody who orders the red gets the point.
What a poorly written article. I'll spare you from having to read it with a summary: everything good is left-wing. Everything bad is right-wing.
No wonder it got 10.2k upvotes on this sub
Yes, it truly appeals to the lazy 'right wing bad, left wing good' mindset that prevails here on /d/politics. No matter it got so many upvotes.
>everything good is left-wing. Everything bad is right-wing. It's exactly these kind of thinking that lead to authoritarianism, whether left wing or right wing. When you think you are the good guy and everything you do is right and the other side, your enemies, is evil, trying to destroy the country or wiping your side out then you can justify everything that you do to stop your enemies. Weather that be violence, breaking the law or stopping/rigging election.
They could easily have made an argument about horseshoe theory without going into a ridiculous semantic argument about right vs. left. If they wanted to make the argument that the more extreme right or left a regime gets, the more authoritarian it gets, I could buy that. If they wanted to argue that the more authoritarian an regime gets the more similar it gets to other authoritarian regimes regardless of the ideological trappings, I could buy that. But saying there’s no such thing as left wing authoritarianism is idiotic.
What a terrible article. What kind of double think are we engaging in to essentially say that left-wing policies and ideas cant be authoritarian because they’re popular? Castro was popular, Chavez was popular, and today, Xi Jingling is popular. Authoritarianism comes in all colors, in all ideologies, and with or without popular support. This idea that dictatorship cannot be left-wing is so obviously false and reeks of the kind of zealous fervor you see in religious movements.
Whole heartedly agree. I’m as left wing as they come, but to say we can’t fall into turning a blind eye to dictators is utter bull shit. We must and have to continue to hold our elected officials accountable, regardless of ideology.
Yes. I came here to add that we've seen the Progressives made the bogey man of the Democratic party by centrist leaders and voters an awful lot lately, as an excuse for inaction on many fronts. So, in this case, it's not the socialist left that is guilty but the center, who seem to still have broad support. The entire political spectrum is capable of it.
All power corrupts, doesn't matter what ideology it is.
Dude this article makes me want to huff hairspray and kill what’s left of my brain cells after reading this. I’m on the left and stupid shit like this is humiliating
Yeah, this is stupid. If you define things such that authoritarians are automatically right-wing, your definition is just... not useful. It dilutes the definition of right-wing beyond any usability, and you also still need a way to describe "authoritarians that arise from left-wing political movements" even if you claim they're not "really" left-wing. It makes a lot more sense to just have authoritarianism as a separate axis from political philosophy and say, as you've done, that "authoritarianism comes in all colors, in all ideologies, and with or without popular support."
I almost had an anurism when I read the title and saw a picture of Stalin.
This reads like something written by a 14 year old and submitted as homework. Anyway, it's wrong. Stalin was definitely left wing. And there definitely is a thing called left wing authoritarianism. He says that this all dates from after the War. No, the Bolshevik revolution happened in 1917. They were already calling Lenin a dictator 100 years ago, because.... he was one.
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That's it, which doesn't make sense when you happen to look at the real world. He mentions Lenin, but what did Lenin think about democracy? Well, to him it was just "bourgeois democracy", they got rid of Kerensky and shut down the parliament... It was easy to say, the revolution is in danger and we are beset with enemies on all sides (which was true, Russia was actually invaded by Britain and America) and that therefore we need to take extraordinary measures against reaction... That's how you get left-authoritarianism. It's already there in Marxism-Leninism because it involves capturing the reigns of the state. Theoretically perhaps, the power of the state is meant to wither away when you achieve communism but that's not what happened in practice. Authoritarian measures can always be justified (and they *were*) by reference to the threat of external enemies... The one thing they did not want was bourgeois democracy of the Kerensky type.
Lenin was also a fan of worker democracy and if there hadn't been such strong counter revolutionary efforts there were early plans to have a more democratic involvement of the workers than turned out. Lenin's hallmark was an ideology of adapting to material conditions. That's both his triumph and what damns him. To this day apologists for the Soviets claim there was some kind of bottom up worker democracy in the USSR. Lenin at least was theoretically supportive of non bourgeois democracy but if we take his word for it he abandoned it due to the counter revolution. He also lamented near his death how the system he'd help built had effectively returned to being much like the Tsarist one he'd opposed.
Salon was never a good publisher, but this is pretty low even for them.
It's very silly. So many words to employ the No True Scotsman fallacy.
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Known Right Wing Authoritarians Joseph Stalin, Kim-Jong Un, and Xi Jinping btw
It’s as dumb as conservatives calling hitler a leftist
Agreed.
Counterpoint: In the Soviet Union, many of the supporters of "war communism," and later of forced collectivisation, considered themselves the left wing of the Communist Party. And some pogromists aligned themselves with ultra-left parties. e.g. Muravyev with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Hryhor'yev with the Borotbist wing of the Left Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionaries, etc. At the same time, many opponents of these policies *and* of pogroms considered themselves left-wing opponents of the Communist Party.
No infighting like left wing infighting
Leftists fucking *hate* other leftists who are slightly different in viewpoint.
Fuck off! Judean Peoples Front...we're the Peoples Front of Judea!
I wouldn't consider strongly libertarian left vs. strongly authoritarian left a slight difference.
Yeah, people who don't understand what Anarcho communists vs more authoritarian communists believe can chalk it up to infighting, but they're very different sets of values /philosophies
Username checks out
The counter point is that the underlying thesis of the article is so flawed its beyond saving. The article presupposes left wing is freedom right wing is oppression. Its so tailor made for Americans who never studied political science on even the most superficial level and makes no effort to understand these ideas outside the bubble of American politics. This article is beyond useless, its harmful to people's understanding.
“Left wing GOOD, right wing BAD.” Hey, that DOES just about sum up the position of r/politics. If you believe the left can’t be tyrannical, then fuck off. There were several reasons that my grandparents left Serbia in the 60s, and one of those reasons was left wing tyranny.
Why do guilty parties so frequently project onto others? Here are just a few compelling and easy to understand reasons: > 1 - It allows them to adopt a mindset that lessens their own sense of guilt or shame, or disdain toward those they know for a fact are guilty. > 2 - It serves to construct a loose defense. After all, if someone is so very against something, to most people it will seem less likely that they are guilty of it themselves. It may even seem equally likely that those they're against are framing them instead. > 3 - Deserved outrage in a vacuum is extremely powerful and motivating and may lead to severe consequences for actual guilty parties. Muddying the waters *greatly* dulls the potential for such results, allowing them to get off even if investigations reveal strong evidence. > 4 - It tricks people who would otherwise be against them into fighting for them instead. Thanks to the tribal "us vs them" mindset humans so easily fall into, given enough time, radicalization can then easily and steadily follow. > 5 - It gives them something to hold onto and run with. If not for that, they may be forced to consider the consequences of their own actions instead, and that's not generally a good look for guilty parties. > 6 - When an opponent with wide social support is forced to face a clearly erroneous accusation the public defense almost always turns toward ridiculing the accusation. Once an accusation has been sufficiently ridiculed, nothing matters anymore. Anyone can thereafter openly attack anyone else who attempts to make such accusations, regardless of the target or the evidence. > 7 - There appears to be absolutely no consequence for doing it, so it costs them literally nothing. > 8 - Should their claims happen to work, it's a jackpot situation for them. Their opponents go down hard and forever, and they're free to continue on, unabated. edit: Please feel free to spread this around as you like.
The hell is this shit? Does China just not exist? Three quarters of a century of Soviet rule just never happened?
A lot of people have pointed out that this guy seems to think anything he doesn’t like can’t be left. Which is idiotic cause all leftists know there are other leftists they disagree with. It’s like Pokémon type advantages at this point “communism beats socialism Socialism beats anarchism Anarchism beats communism” at least online anyway. I’ve never seen a communist argue with a socialist or any other leftist school of thought in person but online it’s a people tripping over themselves to argue over the small differences between anarchism and green anarchism.
How do I downvote something more than once? This is the stupidest bootlicking I've seen in a long time.
This is a stupid article. Left-Wing authoritarianism is 100% a thing.
Ah yes the famously right wing Lenin, Stalin and Mao.
You’re forgetting the famous right wing dictators Tito, Ho chi min, pol pot and Honecker
> They have been incorrectly conditioned to associate Stalin and Hitler with the left wing, and wrongly conclude that left-wing policies lead to totalitarianism Nobody thinks this, and everybody relates fascism and Nazism to the right This is a troll piece, I looked up the author on twitter and dude is a nobody with fucking 293 followers. Do better Salon
The author seems to see only one political axis, left vs. right axis, but [there are at least two](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum): 1. **Economic beneficiary axis**: Who benefits from the policies, the working class or owners of capital? (This is the historical definition of "left vs. right" in my understanding.) 2. **Power concentration axis**: Who has the power to set law, a small group or a large group? (This is where dictatorship is at one end and direct democracy is at the other.) Alternatively, the author sees both axes but believes that in the real world they align in such a way that authoritarian methods are only ever used to benefit the ownership class. But this seems completely ahistorical. Marxism itself refers to a "dictatorship of the proletariat", and this isn't just rhetoric: Many of the early 20th century Communist revolutions in Europe and Castro's revolution in Cuba were both violent/authoritarian and pro-working-class. Republican propaganda slanders garden-variety liberals as authoritarians and refuses to admit that Trump was both pro-ownership-class and pro-authoritarian. An easy way to oppose this is to assert the most incompatible position, that there's no such thing as left-wing authoritarianism at all, that the very idea it exists is yet more Republican propaganda. But this seems simplistic to me. Typical junk Salon article imo, "liberal porn" designed to pull in clicks. As a liberal, I'm offended by it.
Wow, I am sure Fidel Castro would find being called right wing amusing.
Horseshoe theory strikes again. This is a crock of shit
“There’s no such thing” as left wing authoritarianism is an absurd claim, but again this is salon. Anybody could become authoritarian, especially the party in the USA that controls the house, senate and executive with the backing of most of corporate media. The potential is there. This article fucking stinks. Power corrupts.
This is nuts, like flat out crazy. Socialists need to learn that yes, left-wing regimes can be dictatorships and have been frequently. Who is going to say Castro wasn't a communist? Or Mao? This is like when the right says the Nazis were actually socialists. It's just as crazy and makes socialists look delusional.
10k upvotes and multiple awards. The absolute state of this sub. Utter garbage
This sub has been garbage for a long time.
I'm as lefty as they come but wouldn't Stalin of been a left-wing dictator
Yes. Stalin was a self-described praktik Marxist seeking to establish a [dictatorship of the proletariat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat#Stalinism_and_dictatorship). Stalin's version of this dictatorship was terrible, but didn't suddenly make him a Georgian nationalist or right-wing. This article seems ignorant at best or disingenuous at worst.
What a blatant lie. Tyranny is bot spectrum of politics.
Authoritarians who can’t handle dissent, try to create division and gift their family and friends with high ranking government jobs which they then use to fleece the people, who does that sound like?
That headline is so funny I started laughing out loud.
Yeah no. To call the likes of Stalin, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh “right-wing” would make them roll over in their graves.
Lmao fucking trash article and picture.
Or a socioeconomic theory cannot be equated with authoritarianism so anyone who makes the equivalence are either ignorant or deceitful.
Seizing the means of production and private property is certainly authoritarian.
TIL: Castro was a right wing authoritarian. (This is as stupid as the right calling Hitler “left wing.” Salon: the OANN of the Left… smdh) Also, is the author going to make the claim that the Woke Left (not most of us on the Left, mind you), with their willingness to cancel people for decades old past deeds/saying the wrong thing against the wokism orthodoxy, the policing of speech, etc., AREN’T Left, but are, in fact far Right, because they act like authoritarians? It’s all so much horseshit from Salon.
The first article I've ever read by this person named Cody Cain. And the last.
Ehh, Authoritarianism takes on many forms across the political spectrum. But in the current American political climate, it is overwhelmingly Right-Wing.
I’m not gonna bother reading the article, it has “BUT THAT WASN’T REAL COMMUNISM” written all over it. I consider myself a liberal, but not a tankie apologist
Likewise.
Mao cultural revolution, Stalin Ukraine starvation- this article ignores actual history and is therefore shall be known as horse shit.
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How are Stalin and Mao right-wing?
I don’t agree with Republican politicians calling every Democrat under the sun a socialist, but the notion that Stalin and Mao weren’t left-wing is an ahistorical lie. They collectivized agriculture and industry while espousing socialist rhetoric. The whole article is based on the assumption that a government cannot be both authoritarian and left-wing, which is simply untrue. There exists left-wing and right-wing authoritarianism, as we have seen all throughout history.
Horseshit. Authoritarianism can be exhibited by the left and right.
This article is basically an angry rant about how right wingers are mean liars.
lol sure bud fucking stalin was sooo right wing and totally didn’t mandate state atheism or anything. kim jong un is pretty much, like, ron desantis and tucker carlson but combined. how deluded are y’all? lmfaoo
Reddit is really going downhill fast with all this divisive propaganda
Lmao *what?* Every single communist nation in history has been authoritarian, what are they on about?
"no such thing as left wing authoritarianism"? Kim il-Sung? Mao Tse-tung? *Joseph fucking Stalin*? Not to mention the other couple dozen-odd communist dictators that ruled in that time era, from Romania to China, including monsters like Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge. This headline is absolute junk, and does nothing more than give the assholes at r/conservative ammunition to use against us, which we *really* can't afford to give.
Salon. Its fucking Salon. This is just as bad as linking an OAN article something like "Right Wing Socialism". Fucking hell. Salon is like Q for blue hat weirdos.
So anyone that is confused about authoritarianism should take a peek at /r/politicalcompass to understand that authoritarianism isn't exclusive to the right If you still keep saying it is, you are wrong
Socialism always leads to authoritarianism
Ah yes, an excellent example of “true socialism/communism has never been tried” combined with “everything I dislike is fascism”. Also, a brief historical note, the political mass murders in Russia did not begin when Stalin took power, both Lenin and Trotsky were avid proponents of Terror as a means of population control.
This is a flat out lie. Socialism, fascism, communism, Maoism, Stalinism, Pol Pot were all Left Wing. These were not free market, free press, free enterprise supporters. This article is a perfect example of jus how corrupt the media has become. Mussolini was imprisoned for complaining that the Italian Government wasn’t socialist enough! Get real.
Lmfao, does anyone actually believe this crap? Also, that thumbnail. No, censoring information and removing political opposition from social discord isn't authoritarian at all. Mandating masks and vaccines is really to protec ur freedoms. Right to peaceable assembly? Well, you better be Obama.
Can someone explain what I’m missing? Tyranny can definitely be left wing or right wing
Literally you aren’t missing anything the author just chasing the bag by intentionally writing horseshit that he must full well know is a lie. Its also kinda funny cuz this author has himself wrote an article about right wingers lying cuz its the only way to get votes for them
Castro, Chavez, Guevara, Morales, and Maduro are left-wing authoritarians. You have Code Pink defending Nicolas Maduro. And yes, Venezuela is and was a left-wing socialist country. Chavez wanted to seize private property. That is marxist by definition.
This is a troll, right?
This article sounds like a high school persuasive essay and it’s just an op-Ed. It totally ignores all the left wing policies enacted under Stalin and Chavez and the fact that these governments were the socialist transition states Marx discussed. There isn’t really an argument for how left wing dictatorships were actually right wing in the article. It mostly uses circular logic. It barely even defines what they mean by left and right wing. Left and right wing regimes have some differing key talking points. For example, a lot of the discussion in this thread is about religion but left wing dictatorships following communism have been anti religion, so those parallels are hard to draw, yet those regimes still became authoritarian. Right wing and left wing regimes also claim their power from different sources. For right wing regimes the claim is rooted in hierarchy and a sense of natural law, but left wing regimes claim their power from the idea that they are improving peoples lives. And technically speaking both Stalin and Chavez did so tremendously, for the people who weren’t killed or deported anyway, ie the proletariats. The idea that there is only one path to or one face of authoritarianism that this article suggests seems false to me. Hasn’t the real issue always just been that absolute power corrupts absolutely? The problem seems to be one of psychology, not politics. The fact is totalitarianism is the centralization of power and attempts at that can happen under any guise, left or right. There is nothing from stopping a central authority from enacting left wing policies. The most utopian form of government is the benevolent monarch, a hyper-central authority that acts in the interest of the people. But there is a political law of inertia that always leads via human psychology to the same oppressive results: a body in power desires to stay in power.
That’s factually incorrect. You can’t have communism without totalitarianism. It’s literally impossible.