pafret wrote:
Sometimes I have to marvel at how confused and ignorant those of you on the left can be.
Confusion and ignorance is not limited to one side of the political spectrum pafret.
pafret wrote:
Communism, Fascism, Nazism are all leftist, socialist, totalitarian forms of government.
So I guess you're an example of confusion and ignorance ;)
Let's take this one step at a time...
Communism is indeed socialist and therefore leftist, but I'm betting you have no clue why. So I'll tell you. Socialism aims to give workers a share in the means of production that's why. Democratic societies will typically implement this through government ownership, which means the workers, who are also citizens, will have some voice in matters pertaining to the means of production.
But is communism totalitarian? No, it's not. In fact totalitarianism defeats the entire purpose of socialism (and therefore communism) because totalitarian systems deny the voices of citizens. Now, the reason why so many people like yourself *think* communism is totalitarian is because instead of reading Karl Marx to understand the theory they associate the word "communism" with it's failed implementations, such as the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China.
On the other hand, Nazism is a German implementation of fascism and fascism is on the extreme right. Obviously, you don't why this is the case either. So. I'll tell you. Fascism is deeply nationalist and often racist, two conditions based on the exclusion of others, using the Nazi example, these others would be Jews, Romano, Homosexuals and any other ethnic group considered to be inferior to the "master race". It's this exclusion that makes fascism a right-wing ideology.
Is Nazism socialist? Well, Nazism rose at a time where EVERYONE was socialist. The world was dragging it's ass through a global depression, where people didn't have enough to eat and they knew capitalism was to blame. Socialism was a promise of a better world and every political movement that wanted to tap into populism made socialist promises, including FDR in America where socialism reached it's peak popularity. Here's a little fact for you... Every German party competing with the Nazis was making socialist promises.
So you may ask.. How can Nazism be right-wing AND socialist if I just said socialism is leftist? Well things can get complex, which is why so many people get confused. But I'll try to make this as a simple as possible. Socialism is an economic system, not a political one. So in theory, you can have a left-leaning socialist system inside the political structure of a right-leaning government, in which case the workers that are NOT excluded by the right-wing political system are included in the process of governing the means of production.
As it happened, the reality of socialism in Nazi Germany was never as big as it's promise and once the democracy (another leftist concept) was replaced by totalitarianism, socialism was hardly evident at all. The Nazis were far more capitalist than socialist. In fact many American capitalists including the Rockefellers and the Bush family expressed admiration for Hitler's economic views and developed business ties with his regime.
What the Nazis are far more famous for is their ethnic, and frequently violent, purges... which is extremely right-wing, which is what any encyclopedia or text book will tell you.
Fascism, Nazism are all leftist, socialist, totalitarian forms of government.
pafret wrote:
While the right may be reactionary, the further right you go, the further into anarchy you are immersed.
Well, you're partially correct. Anarchy is the extreme end of Libertarianism but completely unrelated to the left-right perspective. Here's a chart that I'm sure you've seen before (many versions of the same thing) that illustrates what I mean...
http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/uploads/1/politicalcompass_usprimaries_2007a.jpg Notice how some of the political leaders line up... pretty much opposite to what you are suggesting and it makes sense too, at least in a somewhat democratic context such as our Republic because the farther right you go the more people you exclude, therefore the more value placed on the authoritarian approach to control. This is why you see the red dots representing Republicans lined up farther to the right AND closer to the authoritarian extreme. Some of the people missing from this chart are Bill Mahr a self-professed Libertarian AND very left and even more to the point, Noam Chomsky, a self-professed anarchist and very, very left.
pafret wrote:
Right of center are Libertarians and to their right are all of the militias and reactionaries.
If you're following the left-right spectrum, right of center would be the moderate conservatives... some people call them RINOs and to the right of them are the racists and fascists. I'm not sure what you mean by reactionaries, it seems to me agitated people on all sides react and as for militias, there are none. There are people who imagine themselves as militias but they're more like wannabes and I certainly wouldn't want to rely on them in this day and age, they will be the first ones eliminated.
pafret wrote:
Neocons are a horse of a totally different color, they are warmongers, haters of humanity, secret skulkers engaged in subversive overthrow of the government, probably through military coup d'etat.
Neocons are globalists and they don't need to overthrow the government, they already own the government. We will know when that changes when our military withdraws from the Middle East and Central Asia.
pafret wrote:
Why should any form of speech be considered hateful? If someone's speech offends you, don't listen or read it.
That's always been my position too. I have always held that it's my choice to be offended or not. But I don't have to be offended to recognize hate. I often respond the posts here that claim all Muslims are horrible bloodthirsty people. I'm not a Muslim and I certainly don't feel offended by such statements but I can still see how hateful it is. I'm glad you brought this up though because your statement ties into what I've said about the left-right perspective... I've noticed among conservatives, especially those who lean heavy to the right, a certain gravitation to self-interest. By suggesting all I have to do is ignore the hate speech to make it go away, you are suggesting that I am the only person I need to be concerned with. I see this assumption at the root of so many arguments from the right that I can't help but think it's part of the exclusion culture. I think it's such an ingrained part of right-wing culture that people don't even realize how self-centered they're being. I'm not like that. When I read a statement that denigrates Muslims or anyone else for that matter, I engage because I don't see the world revolving around me. I see the world as something I share with others and that is a very leftist attitude that I really don't see on the right... at all.
pafret wrote:
There is no line to be drawn; once certain words or speech are forbidden the list of forbidden speech rises asymptotically until one can say nothing without giving grievous offense to some easily scandalized twit.
Yes, I know what you mean... Look at my signature... (the quote at the bottom of all my posts) It's in direct relation to the whole concept of censoring language. I'm an advocate of free language, I think ALL words should be permitted even the ones we have to misspell to avoid being banned from the site, like f*ck and sh!t. I've been confronting the language police for decades and ya know, they are ALL conservatives. So how does the left fit into this?
Well, here's the basic difference.. Liberals tend to focus on intent, rather than actual words. You can use any words imaginable and as long as you aren't offending anyone liberals aren't going to care. Conservatives tend to get more hung up on etiquette, where the use of certain words are thought to be repulsive. I'm sure you can find exceptions, but that the general pattern that I've seen over the years.
pafret wrote:
The left's approach to others is always, to demand the Poll Parrot echo, of whatever is politically correct at the moment. You are a pack of Penguins moving in lock step.
That's all perception there my friend. Trust me, hardly a day goes by where I'm not seeing packs of right-wing penguins all screaming in unison about what those liberals are doing now. All it takes is Fox News to chirp and instantly the entire right-wing population is squawking with them. We're a media connected society pafret, this is normal behavior and there's no way you can make this just about the left anymore than I can make just about the right. I think we both this.
pafret wrote:
Hitler hated Jews because they were a convenient scapegoat. He used their success and affluence as an indicator that they were ripping off the German people and thus depriving them of their fair share of wealth. Sound familiar?
He was leveraging the existing stereotypes to give the persecution momentum. The point I made about how the communists were crossing the national front, was actually stated in his book, Mein Kampf.
pafret wrote:
Communism is the credo that all workers share equally in the wealth produced from the means of production, which are owned by the State. Jews were castigated because they accumulated all of the wealth, so were they communists or plutocrats?
What makes you think all Jews have to be the same? Yes, some of the most powerful financiers of capitalism were Jews, and they have a reputation with money, but it's also a very well-known fact that Jews also played a huge role in the Communist Revolution. Trotsky was Jewish, Lenin was Jewish, Stalin was half Jewish and the only true communist systems in the world today are in Israel.
pafret wrote:
They were an easy target; the blood libel had been used in Europe since the time of Christ to confiscate their wealth and or drive them from their homes and properties. Anti-semitism has existed through the ages, first with Christians then with Moslems and finally as a convenient rally point for totalitarian dictators such as Der Fuhrer. It was the conflict of politics fueled by religious hatred
For many people it was, but not so much for Hitler, who wasn't really a religion man. For him Jews offended his sense nationalism.
pafret wrote:
Fascism is the control of all of the means of production while allowing private ownership but again benefiting all of the people equally.
LOL - where do get this stuff? Alex Jones? Fascism isn't economic system, pafret. It's not even a theory. Fascism is a retrospective description of any system that emulates what Mussolini was doing in Italy.
pafret wrote:
This is an obvious impossibility. Nazism is Socialism, which means government control of all production and everyone on the dole.
OK... let's talk about impossibility here... How can production happen if everyone is on the dole? This is the first element of stupidity in the right-wing view of socialism. Secondly, as I have already stated, socialism in Nazi Germany was more promise than reality. The reality of Nazism was far more capitalist, but aside from creating a war market, the Nazis didn't have much to do with that. The focus of Nazism was far more centered on political ideology characterized by strong nationalism, an extreme level of authoritarianism, corporatism, militarization and hostility towards both liberalism and Marxism. These are characteristics common to developments in Italy under the Fascist Party and a few years later in Germany under the Nazi Party, which is why Nazis were considered fascists.
pafret wrote:
We in the United States are headed this way and it is the Conservatives, who in the words of Bill Buckley, stand athwart history and yell, "Stop".
LOL - I got some news for ya... the United States has had the largest socialists systems in the world since WW2. It's hard for me to fathom how a grown adult can look at our system and say... we're "heading" toward socialism.
I hope that one day you might decide to step away from the squawking parrots and do some independent study on this stuff. I don't want to offend you but the arguments you are making are the same arguments I've heard from kids in elementary school. They are the same basic arguments I've been hearing for 30 years. The problem is the world is changing and the cold war propaganda that served up pretty much all your arguments is becoming a detriment to the American people because it distracts us with all these decoys... socialism, Muslims, LGBT, immigrants, communism, terrorists... None of these things present any real threat to America compared to the one thing that is well on its way to enslaving our children. The plutocracy.
pafret wrote:
You want to make an argument out of name-calling, feel free. But, learn what the differences and similarities between these isms are before you ascribe your traits to conservatives.
LOL - Suggesting that someone learn calculus isn't going to make the conversation any easier if you think calculus is a pop-tart.