I read an old thread documenting the opinions of Lemmy maintainers an the .ml instance. The issue of funding a project with people openly expressing opinions many find distasteful and it being the biggest reddit alternative on the fediverse came up, so here’s a topic to discuss it.
What should we do? What are the options?
Answer: No fork necessary, there are Piefed and Mbin.
No, fascism and communism aren’t “opposites”…that’s the fascist framing…and that’s my point. It’s extreme centrism and “both sidesing” to claim they are. They’re only opposites if you preface your argument with good v evil…and you didn’t. Fascism is a dangerous system that’s arguably ever-present and destroys humanity….while communism is a highly ideological philosophy that’s never existed. Don’t be confused when highly socialist and authoritarian countries are labelled as communist…they’re no more communist than the DRC was a democracy or a republic.
Tankie is the word you’re looking for: authoritarian communism…and it’s important you use the proper word, because authoritarianism is antithetical to communism. If you didn’t know what the word meant…why did you even comment?
The topic was a conversation about whether or not certain Tankies have an outsized influence on Lemmy, and if that’s bad. The consensus seems to be that they can’t.
I don’t believe politics is simple enough to allow opposites, but if there were such a thing, those two ideologies would be pretty close. Fascists are ideologically anti-communist and communists are always among the first they mass murder. Communists (along with anarchists) are consistently the foundation of anti-fascist action.
“Yes, and,”
This is where terminology plays tricks:
The “transitional phase” definitely isn’t communism, and I would argue the term was co-opted by people as a pretext to execute different ideologies…especially in the examples you’re using. The word communism is used as a weapon by too many. You can’t just say “The USSR was bad because of communism, end of story”, for example. It was never communist, and I would argue it eas never trying to get there.
It’s absolutely wrong to call those countries communist. Each example is different. When authoritarian states use labels…they’re generally meaningless. Is North Korea a republic? Was The Soviet Union?
You’re using all these fraught terms like “socialism” and “liberalism” incorrectly. You’d be far better off by defining your terms, rather than just throwing them around. I mean…you don’t really sound like you know what you’re talking about. The Nazis rose out of National Bolshevism, after all.
On one hand, I know you’re right that socialist rhetoric is abused. It’s vitally important to be alert to it, and fascists have a proven history of trying to exploit socialist sentiment, given their rise in response to a string of 1920s socialist uprisings in Europe.
On the other, I can’t look at the decades-worth of writings and actions of the RSDLP and Bolsheviks and conclude they weren’t honestly trying to build a vanguard party with the aim of building a communist society. I’m open to critique of whether or not Leninist theory has been shown to be right or wrong, but I struggle to see how Lenin could have been pretending to be a communist full-time for 20 years at extended self-sacrifice. An opportunist wouldn’t have chosen a path with such little opportunity. The Bolsheviks were evidently a vanguardist party trying to eventually achieve communism - a ‘communist party’.
I’m using them in a way consistent with political dictionaries.
Fascism is, openly, anti-liberal. This is not a contested fact, they say it openly. It’s one of the few consistent parts of fascism, along with being anti-socialist (‘socialist’, in this context, meaning in support of social ownership of the means of production - a very standard and common definition in English dictionaries and encyclopedias alike).
Summary of nine dictionaries all with similar primary definitions of 'socialism'
You accuse me of using those terms incorrectly, so what would you consider a correct usage?
No, they didn’t.
A cursory look at the Nazi Party’s history clearly shows their utter disdain and scapegoating of Bolshevism as a grave evil. The Nazi Party founder (Anton Drexler) was an anti-Marxist. Drexler emphasised the only thing ‘socialist’ about the party was social welfare for those deemed Aryan. The Nazi Party considered nazbols to be a strand of Bolshevism and therefore part of a Jewish conspiracy.