Yep, and Socialism is necessary to prevent it from cropping up again.
Took the words right out of my mouth
Violence?! 😑
Yes!
There are better ways.. since you're here on this platform you're already doing one of them
That is incredibly naive. Just look at history. Fascists were always defeated by violent resistance. And nothing else.
Those who claimed to fight them peacefully all shut up right when they got into power and only quietly showed their discontent behind closed doors, while they kept on living under the fascists. Many even came to support the fascists after it wasn’t so uncouth to do so…
The people who were afraid of doing anything real at first, but certainly opposed fascism with their core, rose up and took arms against them when it became too much. Those were the partisans and their civilian allies in the cities and villages. And thousands and thousands died fighting the fascists alongside the Soviet communists. And that is the only thing that worked.
Commenting on a website will never defeat fascism. If the “holy institutions” of democracy and liberalism failed, how could a silly tiny insignificant postboard succeed?
So you want to challenge their ways by their rules!!
I think what's naive is knowing history, and still repeating the past's mistakes, a revolution may have all the flashy and beautiful themes like liberty and union but if it's not built on a solid ethical foundation then it's doomed to repeat the pasts mistakes ( war, genocides... Etc ) even if the near future outcome is what you're hoping for, It will all collapse... again
I'm not referring to the act of commenting on a website as the sole method of change, this is just one tiny step, how do you think a small group of people ( some call them capitalists, billionaires, elites, whatever you wanna call them.. ) are able to control the majority.. It's because they put their ideological differences aside, and They're organizated and they plan for the future..
What I meant by that comment is that if you aren't on their networks of surveillance they have less control over you, think about it from a bigger perspective now, their food system, their banking institutions, their schooling systems... etc etc..
And make no mistake, They're not threatened by your philosophy, especially if it's a philosophy like theirs ( uses violence as a solution ), They're threatened by your action, try to exit their banking system and see how hard it is, try to evade Surveillance and see how hard it is... Try to be independent in terms of food and see how hard it is... you can't do it alone, but with a group of like minded people, you have a chance
Is it rare? I doubt that.
Definitely not rare, more like malignant, aggressive, terminal..
But the cancer analogy does work, because you can't cure it with band aids (like elections), you have to cut the fucker out at its core, radiate the remaining tissue to make sure none is left behind (via education and a complete overhaul of how society functions, with zero tolerance for bigotry), and continue to get regular check ups to make sure it hasn't returned, and if it does, radiate the fucker again before it metastasises.
We did it to Germany, but it probably needs another dose of chemo at this point, like a disturbing amount of places around the world.
The truth is WWII wasn't fought over bigotry and hate and the fact that people were being exterminated on an industrial scale, it was fought so those in power could stay in power and maintain the status quo, and also make a handsome profit. War always is.
Rare in that it doesn't happen that often here.
It's metastasized rather quickly, however.
It could be terminal if we don't get the right people to excise it quickly enough.
“Right people” might be how we got it. /rimshot
I think capitalism is the cancer. Fascism is just the symptom of late stage capitalism.
100%. Fascism is a defense mechanism for dying Capitalism. Dr. Michael Parenti helps explain fascism's causes, interests, and characteristics in the first chapter of Blackshirts and Reds.
Agreed
It's not that rare unfortunately. It's spread across more than half the globe.
The last time this happened we needed a world war to root it out. It's looking increasingly likely that we're gonna need another one.
The Nazis were copying the US practices towards blacks; was it really rooted out, or just some secondary tumours?
Germany lost, fascism won
""rare""
you mean common symptom of capitalism :p
The cure is Socialism. Fascism is Capitalism in decay, ergo to prevent fascism we need to prevent Capitalist decay, and the only way to do that is to move beyond Capitalism and into Socialism.
For any new Leftists, I created a Read Theory, Darn it! introduction to Marxism reading guide, complete with a section on how to conduct yourself as a Leftist. It also includes a section on fascism, what causes it, and how we can banish it forever, right in the beginning with Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds.
Thank you for putting in this effort!
No problem, feel free to offer any input!
This isn’t meant to be some kind of “hurr durr Stalin” kind of rebuttal or anything like that, and I hope it doesn’t come across that way. I’m as dissatisfied with everything as you are. But I’m not well versed in socio-politico-economics, so I’m genuinely curious: what is the plan for avoiding what happened in the USSR with a socialist nation? What pitfalls did they fall into that spoiled the word “socialism” for everyone else?
That's an incredibly complex question, and if you aren't well-versed in economics, politics, sociology, etc then I promise you, you aren't going to be able to walk away satisfied from a Lemmy conversation. The best answer is that the USSR came with a ton of good, and a lot of difficulty in being the first Socialist state, including a great deal of bad, unfortunately. Additionally, there aren't really any states currently in the same conditions and predicaments with the same limited access to modern technology as 1917 Russia, so we can't make a 1 to 1 comparison even if we tried. The USSR was planned almost entirely by hand using good old pen and paper for its entire existence, and never fully embraced computers, which contributed to struggles as the economy got more complex, as an example.
I recommend you check out my reading list, and read the two books in section 1. Well, the essay and the book in section 1. Principles of Communism is very short and can help with terminology, and Blackshirts and Reds is a historical analysis of both fascism and Communism as they have existed, and their adversarial relationship.
Alternatively, I recommend the "Yellow Parenti" lecture in section 1 from the same author as Blackshirts, though I won't stop you from reading and listening to all 3. I invite you to read them with a critical eye and question whatever seems off.
I apologize if this is unsatisfactory for you, but analyzing AES properly takes a great deal of myth dispelling and contextualization in a world dominated by the US, which has material interests in slandering AES states at every single opportunity. That does not mean AES states are perfect, but that they are real, and come with real problems and real victories.
Hope that answers your question in a semi-satisfactory way, at least! You can also ask questions in the linked thread, which would selfishly be beneficial because common questions can be answered in one space that I plan on linking whenever it's relevant, and having readers capable of seeing questions answered in the comments I think would be a good thing for my list 😉
I really did put a lot of thought and effort into picking works that answer questions just like yours right off the bat, this is like iteration 5 or 6 of the same initial list, finally ready for release after a lot of feedback from comrades around the world, designed to be accessible as possible with the inclusion of audiobooks for every work (except 1 for now) and a focus on intersectionality, decolonialism, LGBTQ+ rights, history, and more.
You'll find that some of your questions are likely already answered there (among the jokes and jests from fellow comrades).
WWI complicated things, eg Ukraine was given up as part of the deal to get the Leninists out of the war. WWII probably didn't help, at least in some ways. It did help with unity but a lot of Soviets died, either directly in combat or as part of the Nazi purge (Slavs/Russians weren't seen as much better than Jews by the Nazis).
There were several factions in a civil war (Leninists, other communists, anarchists, capitalists) and all the alliances and betrayals that goes along with that. Plus outside capitalists didn't want to see socialism or communism succeed and played interference, though I don't think that ramped up that much until after WWII, where wars were fought to stop the spread.
Stalin had a bias for "communist-like" scientific theories, and there was one about how to grow food that came up just as a lot of farm land was being reallocated from long time landowners to people who didn't have much experience farming. These theories weren't very successful but those involved had a personal vestment in making others think it was working rather than failing (because gulag vs living nicely). So reports said there was tons of food being produced while there wasn't, leading to famine, which makes it harder to bring up a brand new economy.
China also fell for those false reports and adopted the fake science themselves, which contributed to their own famine.
I don't recall a lot of the details of that fake science, but a couple of the ideas I do remember: fit as many seeds/plants as possible into any given area because the plants will work together to strengthen their comrades. If you store seeds in the cold, it will make them more cold resistant, allowing crops that wouldn't normally grow in some areas to thrive there.
Just those two things plus the land redistribution resulted in people who didn't know how to farm trying to grow more crops than the land would support, sometimes picking a crop that wouldn't even grow in that area over less desirable ones that would.
And of course it didn't help that the Kremlin still feasted while (false) reports said there were tons of crops being produced, which were also taxed as if the production numbers were valid, so those farmers were also starving, which killed the public support momentum and they had to deal with Stalin's brutality on top of that.
Trotsky's Permanent Revolution actually describes what has happened in the United States.
The few mega-rich will bend the national discourse with money to capitalist decay and avoid the dictatorship of the proletariat. The likes of Bezos and Musk fit that bill to a T.
That's a myth, it's actually quite common.
Rare?
Best not vote! That'll fix it.
Yes, exactly. It's best to just not have your voice heard. Don't vote now, and don't protest later.
If you think the leadership in the Democratic party currently isn't like 80-90% of the way there already, please wake up.
Thank you for being the prime example.
Voting is not even the bare minimum required to prevent fascism. Fascism is Capitalism in decay, you can't just vote Capitalism forever and somehow not end up at fascism.
Organize outside the electoral system.
This assumes that voting for managed fascism conducting genocide is going to solve the problem as opposed to chaotic fascism that will continue what the blue fascists started.
Few people here think it would've solved any problems, however it might have prevented some trans people being dead over the next few years.
If that's your take, I respect that.
Seriously, it's time to quarantine the US and seriously purge Europe before it gets any worse
Cancers aren't contagious, which means this is a pox.
Unless you think of earth/humanity as one organism.
For that diagnosis, that will be $28,865.89 and an additional $56.76 per day of none payment.
Are you sure It's not low information voters who spend most of their time politically deactivated, feel disenfranchised from the economic controls that rule their lives, and have poor media literacy?
Those are symptoms of capitalism... So is fascism
you think socialists can't be dumb? the russian propaganda sure is working on you
I've been mulling over getting some "I DID THAT!" stickers of an assoh.. I mean Trump pointing with that text above his head for when he inevitably raises prices of everything.
I cannot emphasize this enough. Do NOT make it trump. His health will likely take him out before that.
Bring it on to point directly at 2 people: Musk and Vance.
We actually will see those two in 2028. Stop focusing on the distraction. All Trump is right now is a distraction.
Passing doesn't mean he didn't contribute to it. I see your point nonetheless.
Laws do not apply to the terminally ill.
zing! You said the fascism word, and you made it “clever”!
Yea we do!
Pretty neat huh.
People think it's a jokes but that what non fascism American will have to do if they ever want another election in their lifetime
Listening to the hosts of a lot of my podcasts talk about how “the next four years are going to be tough.”
…
Bro, you have children and LGBT friends, are you being serious?
The next rest of your life is going to be rough.
That was clever and dark as most of his works.
It's not the original line.
E: it's the suggested cure for insomnia
saw damn really?
Sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
lol, all good, thanks tho
Yep, and Socialism is necessary to prevent it from cropping up again.
Took the words right out of my mouth
Violence?! 😑
Yes!
There are better ways.. since you're here on this platform you're already doing one of them
That is incredibly naive. Just look at history. Fascists were always defeated by violent resistance. And nothing else.
Those who claimed to fight them peacefully all shut up right when they got into power and only quietly showed their discontent behind closed doors, while they kept on living under the fascists. Many even came to support the fascists after it wasn’t so uncouth to do so…
The people who were afraid of doing anything real at first, but certainly opposed fascism with their core, rose up and took arms against them when it became too much. Those were the partisans and their civilian allies in the cities and villages. And thousands and thousands died fighting the fascists alongside the Soviet communists. And that is the only thing that worked.
Commenting on a website will never defeat fascism. If the “holy institutions” of democracy and liberalism failed, how could a silly tiny insignificant postboard succeed?
So you want to challenge their ways by their rules!!
I think what's naive is knowing history, and still repeating the past's mistakes, a revolution may have all the flashy and beautiful themes like liberty and union but if it's not built on a solid ethical foundation then it's doomed to repeat the pasts mistakes ( war, genocides... Etc ) even if the near future outcome is what you're hoping for, It will all collapse... again
I'm not referring to the act of commenting on a website as the sole method of change, this is just one tiny step, how do you think a small group of people ( some call them capitalists, billionaires, elites, whatever you wanna call them.. ) are able to control the majority.. It's because they put their ideological differences aside, and They're organizated and they plan for the future..
What I meant by that comment is that if you aren't on their networks of surveillance they have less control over you, think about it from a bigger perspective now, their food system, their banking institutions, their schooling systems... etc etc..
And make no mistake, They're not threatened by your philosophy, especially if it's a philosophy like theirs ( uses violence as a solution ), They're threatened by your action, try to exit their banking system and see how hard it is, try to evade Surveillance and see how hard it is... Try to be independent in terms of food and see how hard it is... you can't do it alone, but with a group of like minded people, you have a chance
Is it rare? I doubt that.
Definitely not rare, more like malignant, aggressive, terminal..
But the cancer analogy does work, because you can't cure it with band aids (like elections), you have to cut the fucker out at its core, radiate the remaining tissue to make sure none is left behind (via education and a complete overhaul of how society functions, with zero tolerance for bigotry), and continue to get regular check ups to make sure it hasn't returned, and if it does, radiate the fucker again before it metastasises.
We did it to Germany, but it probably needs another dose of chemo at this point, like a disturbing amount of places around the world.
No one really did it to Germany at all, nor anywhere else, including the country Hitler got his inspiration from.
The truth is WWII wasn't fought over bigotry and hate and the fact that people were being exterminated on an industrial scale, it was fought so those in power could stay in power and maintain the status quo, and also make a handsome profit. War always is.
Fascism is capitalism in decay, we will never be rid of one, without abolishing the other.
Rare in that it doesn't happen that often here.
It's metastasized rather quickly, however.
It could be terminal if we don't get the right people to excise it quickly enough.
“Right people” might be how we got it. /rimshot
I think capitalism is the cancer. Fascism is just the symptom of late stage capitalism.
100%. Fascism is a defense mechanism for dying Capitalism. Dr. Michael Parenti helps explain fascism's causes, interests, and characteristics in the first chapter of Blackshirts and Reds.
Agreed
It's not that rare unfortunately. It's spread across more than half the globe.
The last time this happened we needed a world war to root it out. It's looking increasingly likely that we're gonna need another one.
The Nazis were copying the US practices towards blacks; was it really rooted out, or just some secondary tumours?
Germany lost, fascism won
""rare""
you mean common symptom of capitalism :p
The cure is Socialism. Fascism is Capitalism in decay, ergo to prevent fascism we need to prevent Capitalist decay, and the only way to do that is to move beyond Capitalism and into Socialism.
For any new Leftists, I created a Read Theory, Darn it! introduction to Marxism reading guide, complete with a section on how to conduct yourself as a Leftist. It also includes a section on fascism, what causes it, and how we can banish it forever, right in the beginning with Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds.
Thank you for putting in this effort!
No problem, feel free to offer any input!
This isn’t meant to be some kind of “hurr durr Stalin” kind of rebuttal or anything like that, and I hope it doesn’t come across that way. I’m as dissatisfied with everything as you are. But I’m not well versed in socio-politico-economics, so I’m genuinely curious: what is the plan for avoiding what happened in the USSR with a socialist nation? What pitfalls did they fall into that spoiled the word “socialism” for everyone else?
That's an incredibly complex question, and if you aren't well-versed in economics, politics, sociology, etc then I promise you, you aren't going to be able to walk away satisfied from a Lemmy conversation. The best answer is that the USSR came with a ton of good, and a lot of difficulty in being the first Socialist state, including a great deal of bad, unfortunately. Additionally, there aren't really any states currently in the same conditions and predicaments with the same limited access to modern technology as 1917 Russia, so we can't make a 1 to 1 comparison even if we tried. The USSR was planned almost entirely by hand using good old pen and paper for its entire existence, and never fully embraced computers, which contributed to struggles as the economy got more complex, as an example.
I recommend you check out my reading list, and read the two books in section 1. Well, the essay and the book in section 1. Principles of Communism is very short and can help with terminology, and Blackshirts and Reds is a historical analysis of both fascism and Communism as they have existed, and their adversarial relationship.
Alternatively, I recommend the "Yellow Parenti" lecture in section 1 from the same author as Blackshirts, though I won't stop you from reading and listening to all 3. I invite you to read them with a critical eye and question whatever seems off.
I apologize if this is unsatisfactory for you, but analyzing AES properly takes a great deal of myth dispelling and contextualization in a world dominated by the US, which has material interests in slandering AES states at every single opportunity. That does not mean AES states are perfect, but that they are real, and come with real problems and real victories.
Hope that answers your question in a semi-satisfactory way, at least! You can also ask questions in the linked thread, which would selfishly be beneficial because common questions can be answered in one space that I plan on linking whenever it's relevant, and having readers capable of seeing questions answered in the comments I think would be a good thing for my list 😉
I really did put a lot of thought and effort into picking works that answer questions just like yours right off the bat, this is like iteration 5 or 6 of the same initial list, finally ready for release after a lot of feedback from comrades around the world, designed to be accessible as possible with the inclusion of audiobooks for every work (except 1 for now) and a focus on intersectionality, decolonialism, LGBTQ+ rights, history, and more.
You'll find that some of your questions are likely already answered there (among the jokes and jests from fellow comrades).
WWI complicated things, eg Ukraine was given up as part of the deal to get the Leninists out of the war. WWII probably didn't help, at least in some ways. It did help with unity but a lot of Soviets died, either directly in combat or as part of the Nazi purge (Slavs/Russians weren't seen as much better than Jews by the Nazis).
There were several factions in a civil war (Leninists, other communists, anarchists, capitalists) and all the alliances and betrayals that goes along with that. Plus outside capitalists didn't want to see socialism or communism succeed and played interference, though I don't think that ramped up that much until after WWII, where wars were fought to stop the spread.
Stalin had a bias for "communist-like" scientific theories, and there was one about how to grow food that came up just as a lot of farm land was being reallocated from long time landowners to people who didn't have much experience farming. These theories weren't very successful but those involved had a personal vestment in making others think it was working rather than failing (because gulag vs living nicely). So reports said there was tons of food being produced while there wasn't, leading to famine, which makes it harder to bring up a brand new economy.
China also fell for those false reports and adopted the fake science themselves, which contributed to their own famine.
I don't recall a lot of the details of that fake science, but a couple of the ideas I do remember: fit as many seeds/plants as possible into any given area because the plants will work together to strengthen their comrades. If you store seeds in the cold, it will make them more cold resistant, allowing crops that wouldn't normally grow in some areas to thrive there.
Just those two things plus the land redistribution resulted in people who didn't know how to farm trying to grow more crops than the land would support, sometimes picking a crop that wouldn't even grow in that area over less desirable ones that would.
And of course it didn't help that the Kremlin still feasted while (false) reports said there were tons of crops being produced, which were also taxed as if the production numbers were valid, so those farmers were also starving, which killed the public support momentum and they had to deal with Stalin's brutality on top of that.
Trotsky's Permanent Revolution actually describes what has happened in the United States.
The few mega-rich will bend the national discourse with money to capitalist decay and avoid the dictatorship of the proletariat. The likes of Bezos and Musk fit that bill to a T.
That's a myth, it's actually quite common.
Rare?
Best not vote! That'll fix it.
Yes, exactly. It's best to just not have your voice heard. Don't vote now, and don't protest later.
If you think the leadership in the Democratic party currently isn't like 80-90% of the way there already, please wake up.
Thank you for being the prime example.
Voting is not even the bare minimum required to prevent fascism. Fascism is Capitalism in decay, you can't just vote Capitalism forever and somehow not end up at fascism.
Organize outside the electoral system.
This assumes that voting for managed fascism conducting genocide is going to solve the problem as opposed to chaotic fascism that will continue what the blue fascists started.
Few people here think it would've solved any problems, however it might have prevented some trans people being dead over the next few years.
If that's your take, I respect that.
Seriously, it's time to quarantine the US and seriously purge Europe before it gets any worse
Cancers aren't contagious, which means this is a pox.
Unless you think of earth/humanity as one organism.
For that diagnosis, that will be $28,865.89 and an additional $56.76 per day of none payment.
Are you sure It's not low information voters who spend most of their time politically deactivated, feel disenfranchised from the economic controls that rule their lives, and have poor media literacy?
Those are symptoms of capitalism... So is fascism
you think socialists can't be dumb? the russian propaganda sure is working on you
I've been mulling over getting some "I DID THAT!" stickers of an ass oh.. I mean Trump pointing with that text above his head for when he inevitably raises prices of everything.
I cannot emphasize this enough. Do NOT make it trump. His health will likely take him out before that.
Bring it on to point directly at 2 people: Musk and Vance.
We actually will see those two in 2028. Stop focusing on the distraction. All Trump is right now is a distraction.
Passing doesn't mean he didn't contribute to it. I see your point nonetheless.
Laws do not apply to the terminally ill.
zing! You said the fascism word, and you made it “clever”!