• axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    us-foreign-policy

    Westerners deciding who's doing real socialism or not. Westerners expressing their most vile sentiment for foreign countries rather than their own imperialism. Westerners praising the words of their own imperialist intelligence agencies. Westerners unironically praising their own nations for civil liberties like the freedom of fascists to assemble, freedom of racists to express themselves, freedom of parents to own their children, and freedom of school districts to continue racial segregation. Westerners praising imperialist nations like Norway as socialist while using bold language like fascism to describe places under that same exact threat of imperialism, like Cuba and Vietnam.

    Westerners claiming foreign governments are merely pretending to be socialist, while claiming unorganized misinformed chauvinistic westerners are the true heirs to socialism, despite all they do is post online and complain about foreign nations.

    Westerners praising anarchist movements from 100 years ago despite having no common cause with those movements, no connection to the circumstances within them, and probably no actual admiration of them. Westerners praising a bastardized, sectarian, perverse form of anarchism rather than attempting unity with organizations in their areas. Westerners refusing to speak with actual anarchists in their area, who by and large don't give a shit and just want to hand out food or help at shelters. If Buenaventura Durruti were alive today he'd be regarded with scorn by western chauvinists.

    Westerners continuing to bring up Trotsky of all people, who wasn't relevant to world affairs for the last 15 years of his life and certainly not the past 80 years. Westerners not reading a single word of Trotsky's work, westerners focusing entirely on Trotsky's feud with Stalin, westerners not knowing that Trotsky was a literal military commander. Westerners calling themselves Trotskyists in 2023 for some reason. Westerners deciding they have a feud with Joseph Stalin, a man who died in 1953.

    Westerners attempting to praise their own socialist leadership, who happen to be a scattered group of imperialist-aligned social democrats, Twitch streamers, and actual antisemitic grifters such as in the case of Caleb Maupin.

      • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        You gish galloped, you ad homin-ed, you no true scotsman-ed, you one true scotsman-ed, and then you mot and bailey-ed.

        Checkmate sir smuglord

        • PatFusty@lemm.ee
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I dont want to be a victim of hexbear road rage thanks. You guys just vomit out material in hopes that you can string it together to form a cogent argument. Then you come back smug as ever asking why i didnt respond to the 10k talking points as if I was a human encyclopedia.

          • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            How would I distinguish you, based only on your reply, from someone who took one look at two whole paragraphs and decided you weren't going to read that but had to keep arguing no matter what and spewed out some sour grape nonsense?

              • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Why did you bother learning the phrase "gish gallop" but not how to respond to it. Isn't that the whole point of studying this shit?

              • raven [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                How should we frame our arguments in response to a meme that paints every single prominent socialist and socialist country as fascist without addressing each one?
                Really the burden of proof should be on the one making the claim, shouldn't it?

                • Apollo@sh.itjust.works
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  People confuse facism and authoritarianism all the time, and people respond to this as if they've never figured this out.

                  So instead of anything productive these threads churn out:

                  Omg communist countries are fascist!

                  actually no socialist!

                  lol oppression

                  Vs

                  hey why do so many socialist states end up being super authoritarian?

                  hey yeah thats a huge problem, but lets ignore it because west bad

                  • raven [he/him]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    What is authoritarian exactly? Is that when you steppy snek just for fun?

                    🐍gayroller-2000
                    Because I'm all about that shit.

                  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    We don't ignore it when a socialist country takes security measures, we say they're an unfortunate reality of steps a country has to take in order to defend itself against external and internal aggression. Having your country go socialist earns you a lot of enemies and having a lot of enemies means you have to build up things like intelligence agencies, military apparatuses, and centralized agencies for combating sabotage and spying. These are things every country does, but western nations like to paint the security measures that socialist nations take as purely authoritarian, or needlessly tyrannical, or whatever other word gets thrown around. The nations yelling at socialist countries to change their domestic policies are usually the most imperialist and have the most to gain from socialist states being dismantled.

                    When your enemies are the global capitalists who operate global finance and industry, you should probably build up something to defend against it. Nukes tend to work as a deterrent, but they only go so far when you've also got an internal population that can present a security problem.

                    China's taken the smartest strategy of all honestly. They've intertwined their economy with the imperial powers to the point it's impossible to disentangle. The west can't take violent action against China, since that's where the industry is.

                    Also, so called authoritarian measures against our enemies are a good thing. It's good when fascists, racists, and imperialists lose civil liberties like the freedom to express themselves, organize, fund politicians, or operate businesses.

                    • Apollo@sh.itjust.works
                      ·
                      1 year ago

                      Do you think that we will see true communism ever arise from authoritarianism? I don't think that is possible.

                      I think that authoritarianism is a lot more palatable to the imperialists than actual communism would be, I worry that, quite apart from it being wrong to curtail civil rights, by being authoritarian a socialist state is simply dancing to the tune of the imperialists.

                      I don't think I'm comfortable with a central power having the authority to decide that certain groups don't have rights, that power is too often abused widely.

                      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
                        ·
                        edit-2
                        1 year ago

                        Personally I don't believe the term authoritarianism is a useful description of anything. It's too vague. I've seen one definition that's like "a system that rejects the involvement of certain groups or interests from the political process." Well that would be all socialist nations by default, since socialist countries by definition have denied political representation for the capitalist class in some way.

                        A better question is: How is a socialist country supposed to defend itself? It may not be possible for a country to achieve what Marx called upper-phase communism. It may not be possible for money, states, and all property to be abolished. That's a question for the future. But when a country tries to curtail the power of capitalists, even attempts to create what's known as true communism, they find themselves on the receiving end of an entire world against them. Sanctions, invasions, sabotage, spying. The shape that a socialist country will take is the result of its conditions. We're living in a world dominated by capital and socialist countries represent a resistance against capital. If socialist movements are threatened, they either defend themselves or collapse.

                        You're right that countries are dancing to the imperialists, because the imperialists hold the most power right now. That's why an anti-imperialist movement is important, why a multi-polar world is important. Once the threat of imperialism subsides or is defeated, then I'm going to guess socialist countries will begin to express their policies differently.

                        I don't think I'm comfortable with a central power having the authority to decide that certain groups don't have rights, that power is too often abused widely.

                        Is there any society that isn't this? A central authority deciding how to distribute rights is a governing body.

                        Socialism is a movement about denying the right of property to capitalists. That's the entire purpose of the movement, to elevate working class people to the point of dominating society and to restrain or abolish the capitalist class. Landlords and capitalists shouldn't be able to exercise the same rights they have in a liberal capitalist nation. Fascists, racists, transphobes, imperialists, etc shouldn't have any civil liberties and should be subject to arrest, reeducation, or worse.

                    • PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocksB
                      ·
                      1 year ago

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                    • Apollo@sh.itjust.works
                      ·
                      1 year ago

                      Thanks for sharing, believe it or not I am a communist myself and I agree with most of what the video said. I just don't see how communism can ever emerge from authoritarianism, because if the defence against imperialism is authoritarianism are we not still dancing to the imperialist tune?

                      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
                        ·
                        edit-2
                        1 year ago

                        Comunism can only emerge from authoritarianism, by definition, because every single class society is authoritarian, and thus every state is. And as Engels noticed, revolution is the most authoritarian thing that is.

                        Imperialism is not the same as authoritarianism. To know what we mean by "imperialism" read Lenin's "Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism".

                        And you might noticed how authoritarianism in my first sentence is used incredibly wide, it's not a mistake, it's one of those terms that have no useful meaning, it wasn't even useful to start with, and especially not when it went through the liberal media and social media mill which had tendency to either purposefully or acidentally (or both) twist definitions to the point they are unrecognizable. Therefore to broadly talk about "authoritarianism" is meaningless, that word is unhelpful as definition and can be used at most as the cliche to deflect discussion (and note it's been used in this thread in this characer extensively by liberals who sure as hell aren't opposing it because they support authoritarian societies as well).

                • PatFusty@lemm.ee
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  You dont need to address each one. Pick one. I dont need proof to see that its too much information

                  • raven [he/him]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    No one is forcing you to respond to anything, let alone everything. Why don't you pick one?

                      • raven [he/him]
                        ·
                        1 year ago

                        OP didn't need to compare every socialist movement to fascists but they did, we didn't need to reply to most of them, but we did. But we're supposed to tailor our arguments to you, someone admits to not actually caring about any of it? No thank you

              • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                How do you feel about essays and books in general?

                Their comment was 337 words long. According to google the average reader can do 238 words in a minute. 90 seconds.

      • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        If their post is short, accuse them of not engaging properly.

        If their post is long, accuse them of gish gallop.

        • BigNote@lemm.ee
          ·
          1 year ago

          Said no one. Except you. You either know what a Gish gallop is, or you don't. A long comment is not necessarily a Gish gallop. In this case the charge is entirely accurate.

          • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Oh spare me, we both know full well that there was no long comment they could have posted that wouldn't have been called gish gallop.

            • BigNote@lemm.ee
              ·
              1 year ago

              As if it's somehow impossible to make a long comment in support of a single argument? As if Gish galloping comments don't actually exist? Do I follow your logic properly? What part about this do I not understand?

              • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
                ·
                1 year ago

                Accusations of gish gallop are almost always just a bad faith way of dismissing an argument without bothering to address it.

                • BigNote@lemm.ee
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  What argument? 20+ arguments were made. Which one am I meant to address?

                  If I focus on one you'll jump on me for not addressing the 19 others, which is why it's a bullshit tactic.

                  • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Their argument was that so called Western socialists are mostly just Western chauvinists who make their determination on what movements are "real socialists" based on how closely they align, racially and culturally, to the West.

                    There, that's their argument.

      • raven [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        We're talking about 6 countries and at least 5 people in the first place, and that's only the ones named. Sorry, reality is complicated like that.

      • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Nobody's interested in becoming an anti-communist. It's you who must change your opinions because they are wrong

      • BigNote@lemm.ee
        ·
        1 year ago

        That's precisely the point. These guys have a toolbox of fallacious arguments and techniques that they regularly trot out. The Gish gallop is one of them. Another, that you see being put to wide use in this thread, is redefining words and terms to fit their narrative.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        The people who hate America the most are probably Iraqis with dead children, or American indigenous people kept in poverty.

        I know there are westerners who have a better conception of socialism and are more amenable to international working class efforts. I know a lot of them. I'm from Texas lol. I don't like it when westerners, like fellow Americans, look down their nose at other countries. Calling a nation fascist because it doesn't meet your western ideas of what socialist utopia is supposed to be? It's bizarre to me. It always seems racist.

        Westerners have a strong tendency towards national chauvinism and it's rare to meet someone more internationally minded unless you go looking for them. You can probably agree with that.

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I dont think you could find someone who hates America more than an American

        If your hypothetical American had a button that would sink the entire country to the bottom of the ocean, would they press it without a moment's hesitation?

        If not, then they do not hate America more than me.

      • somename [she/her]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I bet the people who had their families killed by American death squads probably hate the country more.

      • Annakah69 [she/her]
        ·
        1 year ago

        That is a wild take. People have seen there kids burned to death in an American drone strike. Or had their family executed in front of them by special forces death squads.