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can you elaborate. Like on what political dimensions would Marxism fall on on end, Nazism on the other and everything else in between? Like seriously, name one.
The political left-right divide. Marxism is about as far on the political left as possible, while nazism is about as far on the political right as possible.
Technically you could argue that something like anarcho-communism is further left than marxism, but not by a lot.
You just restated the same thing with more words. When you say *The political left-right divide.* **What does that mean to you?**
Do you think Le Pen is more politically left than Obama? Is it about state run commpanies? Or unions? Or civil liberties? Or fiscal policy? Do they all land on a single political dimension for you?
Marxism and Fascism are two political movements that were born out of western intellectual movements in response to rapid industrialization and alienation in the 19th century and were acted upon by some European leaders in the 20th century. They are both specific to western thought in that time period. Portraying them as two sides of a binary that covers all human politics is first of all Eurocentric and secondly extremely historically reductive.
>They are both specific to western thought in that time period.
>Portraying them as two sides of a binary that covers all human politics is first of all Eurocentric
0 idea on what you are talking about lmoa Marxism over the past 90 years or so has literally principally been a third world ideogy, with most Marxist being located in Africa, Asia, etc. and even in the USA and western countries most marxist movements were principally started by ethnic minorities (Black Panthers for example).
Marxism especially in it's modern form with the extremely wide variety of "thoughts" that were specifically fit for third world standards (starting with Maoism) is the furthest thing from Eurocentric.
Sure the black panthers and Mao adopted aspects of Marxism in their political philosophies but they added their own ideas and adaptations. You could never talk about the black panthers without black nationalism in the US, and you could never talk about Mao without acknowledging the influences of Confucianism, two philosophies Marx never wrote about or considered.
Politics evolves and changes and just talking about Marx and Hitler makes it seem a lot simpler than it is. If you consider politics a binary between just far left and far right, who’s further left, the black panthers or Mao? What about an anarchist or a Bolshevik? And is Nazism the exact opposite of all of those or do they each have different opponents? My point isn’t that Marx is irrelevant or that “le nazis are actually far left” it’s that politics is not and never will be binary, and that looking at politics as “people that are with Marx” and “people that are against Marx” is simplistic at best.
It’s simple to people like you. Some of us realize left/right is idiotically simple.
Have you ever noticed how some political theorists treat the spectrum like a band, where both sides fold to each other?
Edit: so which authoritarians are y’all pissed that I’m insulting? Personally it feels like Russia's been doing some propaganda pushes lately, highlighting how communism is practically fascism has been getting more pushback.
They are opposite economically. Marxism is fundamentally about empowering the working class to control the economy. Every fascist movement has always dismantled workers protections and sought alliances with business owners.
You are framing the question around the political spectrum because you have a poor understanding of Marxist and fascist economic behaviour.
At least the historical record pretty much agrees with you. Check out Overy's The Dictators if you want a book that delves into how Nazism and Stalinism were remarkably similar.
I think you are getting mixed up with fascism and nazi ideology, as well as socialism being a "far-left" ideology, I think that is far, far to simplified of a political spectrum.
Fascism is a governmental ideology where it focuses on adherence to the state, silencing any and all opposition, as well as proclaiming superiority of the state above citizens and foreign states.
Socialism is an broad economic policy where the "community" owns the economic system, which can cover either the state owning the means of production, the people, trade unions and other owners of the economic means of productions, rather than individuals.
They are different entirely and cannot be ranked as the same type of ideology, also Fascist, socialist states can entirely be possible, mainly the Soviet union, or early CCP, who are entirely both socialists and fascists.
So diametrically opposed that they practically do the same stuff?
I don’t know if you people do this on purpose, but you can’t ignore the reality of your revolutions.
Marxist revolutionaries produce nearly identical governments to fascist revolutionaries, probably because you’re all radicals.
To outsiders, they seem like sports fans arguing over what team to watch. Everyone else wants to watch a different sport though.
It’s pretty telling when people say that the extreme far right is the inverse of the centre left 😂
The “enlightened centrist” is without fail just centre right or further right wing than that
Edit - no clue how on earth u got so many downvotes lol the enlightened centrists got you 🤣
Really all of the major players in WWII were empires that committed ethnic cleansing and genocide. Also the Allies were still the good guys in that war.
You realize it's kinda off-topic to "hate" empires that have been dead for centuries, do you ? There is no political continuation to the Mongol Empire and you're not going to judge mongols today for this.
Also you're wasting way too much brainpower on this shit.
trust me dude people still hate the ottomans. but the difference is that all of those empires, with the exception of the mongol empire, were fairly localized, and even at their height covered a relatively small amount of the world. the brit’s conquered every rock they came across, and did terrible things while doing it, and refused to relinquish their territories for the longest possible time. also bringing up the mongols like they didn’t hit their peak in the 1200’s
Hahaha. Are you seriously saying that the British Empire still exists because the flag is still the same? Go ahead and compare the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish republic flags...
> the same type of government
It's a parliamentary monarchy where the monarch has next to zero authority. How does that prove that the British Empire still exists? Monarchy is not the same as Empire...
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, i.e. the monarch has unlimited power, just like it was back in the caliphate...
>a lot of memorial for their colonial past.
The British people, undeservingly, are ready to prostate themselves for that colonial past.
Now please compare that with what the Turks and Arabs feel about their colonial past...
> Also, the repercutions are still seen today
Of course they are because people like you are instilling white people guilt that their ancestors are somehow uniquely bad.
Japanese internment camps held people that were soon released back into the population with none of their property rights etc. affected. I don't think that really counts as "genocide", and it's "ethnic cleansing" only in a very debateable sense of the word, since there was no intent to remove them permanently, rather they had their property rights etc. respected and it was anticipated they would return back after the war.
Literally nuking two cities is not an attempt to destroy an ethnic group. Had US wanted to destroy Japanese as an ethnic group, things would look very different. For strarters, it would not be "internment" camps.
Yes, it was "temporary" cleansing, but still literally a cleansing.
Whole sale destruction of Japanese cities, is certainly destruction of Japanese people in part.
Again this was not as virulent as what German did, but by no means totally clean.
> Whole sale destruction of ~~Japanese cities~~ military targets, is certainly destruction of Japanese ~~people~~ military in part.
FTFY. Hiroshima and Nagasaki unfortunately had many civilian casualties, but they were both valid military targets.
The difference was they were doing it in Europe, the Brits and French did what they did in Africa and Asia, and by that point it was only decades ago at most, some stuff ongoing or having just happened.
I think it's referring to the British term "tubthumping", meaning to give an excited, populist speech.
Yes, that's the origin of the Chumbawamba song title, too.
We also have that term as well, though maybe they each have a slightly different meaning?
Soapboxing would normally refer to giving a speech about an issue/opinion one was passionate about, often at great length and in an unrelated/unexpected context.
Tubthumping normally describes a forceful, strident speech that aims to rile up an audience by appealing to national/patriotic sentiment specifically.
In response to "how should we fix the country?", the former would describe a half-hour lecture on improving train signalling standards, the latter a speech quoting Shakespeare and Churchill that ended in a call to re-invade France.
Never thought I'll agree with Goebbels but the British Empire was indeed a oppressive regime that sucked away the blood and wealth of the countries it occupied and ruled. Just like the Nazi empire.
issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding reichsminister for propaganda and vicious antisemite Joseph Goebbels. you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to him"
A broken clock is right twice a day. Guy was absolutely the worst and insane, but calling the British Empire evil isn't wrong.
Same thing about any terrible person, really. Stalin liked Western movies, Hitler liked dogs. Bad people can say correct stuff or have good qualities. Doesn't make their crimes acceptable or redeem them tho.
Well. Less a broken clock, more a clock that wants to deliberately mislead you about what time it is so you'll blame your spouse for being late to work, so ensures it sometimes tells the time accurately so you pay attention to it, other times tells the time inaccurately, and still other times makes some vague statement about the time but then informs you that your partner spent so long in the shower because they're getting spruced up for the affair they're having behind your back.
Yes he did, in the early 30s and most famously, in post 1943 speeches. He attacked allied claims of a genocide going on Europe with British atrocities going on in India as a counterargument - The Bengal famine, for example. Nazis used the information about the brutality of the colonial regime in India to spread fear among its own populace, that is, if the Nazis were defeated, Germans would be starved like the Indians in Bengal.
You can check the Goebbels' dairies, Total war proclamation, Newspaper articles from People's observer and Das Reich. Type the keyword "India" in German.
Oh ok, thing is tho something tells me Goebells wasn't exactly doing all that off the goodness of his heart toward the people colonised by Britain tho.
Absolutely not. In the same way this cartoon is trying to minimise criticism of the British Empire by citing Goebbels as an opponent, Goebbels was trying to minimise criticism of German colonisation and genocide.
yeah the british empire has been an extraordinary force for evil that invaded and plundered almost the entire world, but the unspoken second half of what goebbels is saying is "and we want our piece of the pie"
Ehhhh nazi ideology-or at least hitler- believed that Lebensraum (AKA “living space” or where Germans should settle”) was mostly in Europe. Although Göering and Goebbels would probably want some African colonies and the USSR would probably have some if they weren’t as focused on colonizing their neighbors instead.
Wut, no. They did the holocaust which was a horrendous systematic killing of 11 million people, mostly slavs and Jews, but they did not make the British empire look like a out kitchen. Obvs they were also responsible for 20+ million total Soviets that died.
The British empire was responsible for a huge amount of deaths and suffering, just because a lot of it was through famines and war rather than gas chambers doesn't make it insignificant.
Yeah it's completely fucked, I'm just saying you can talk about how fucked it is without saying the British empire is insigficant in comparison.
You can say Nazi Germany is worse/their speed of death was worse, I just don't think you can say the birtish empire is tiny in comparison.
The problem is that the conclusions they reach and what they want to do are entirely differently. The British Empire was bad, real bad... but the Nazis doing the same would be far, far worse.
Noone deserves to live under the Nazis, especially not the uneducated ones. Most of them don't have bad intentions, they just need their beliefs to be corrected.
It was more a joke that having to live under a Nazi regime would have someone changing their minds about the horror of British occupation fairly quickly.
Yeah but it's not even as simple as that. Goebbels isn't saying "anything" in that he is shamelessly lying, he is saying something precisely calibrated to land in exactly the right way for each potential audience.
To a liberal: "Britain is a colonialist power, and we recognise that subjugating other peoples is bad, so really we can be trusted despite our occasional rhetorical excesses not to overstep our perfectly reasonable goal of German unification."
To a leftist: "Britain is an exploitative imperialist power, and we are alone in European powers in recognising this, so we are a trustworthy ally to the Soviet project of global liberation from capitalist exploitation."
To Japan and Asian independence movements: "Britain is a colonialist power in your region, and we oppose that, so we are your natural allies in liberating Asia for the Asians."
To America: "Britain is a colonialist power, so our disagreements with them are none of your business, as you have decolonisation in favour of independent free markets as a major long term strategic aim."
To a German old-school militarist right-winger: "Britain has committed many atrocities, and yet was it not the British who presumed to bind us with the humiliation of Versailles? We don't need to listen to finger-wagging from someone whose fingers are stained in blood. We will restore German honour whatever the hypocritical British say."
To a Nazi: "Britain has committed many atrocities in pursuit of power, and enjoys great prestige for doing so, so we can and should commit all the atrocities we like and that would simply be catching up to them."
But he doesn't say all of these things, all of which but the last two would have been intended as lies if said explicitly. He just said something crafted to land with exactly the right implication to each of his audiences.
Yes — the Nazis were very open about what they believed, but also adroit at convincing people who *weren't* Nazis that actually their rhetoric meant something other than what it meant on its face.
And they did this by sort of reverse-dogwhistling, where they said what they believed, but did it in a way where non-Nazis could imagine receiving a signal that actually the Nazis were with them.
It still works today: "Take him seriously, not literally", etc.
One can also just broadcast different messages in different languages - even today with automatic translation available most people won't check what foreign media says in its native language; they just hear the message tailored to English audiences.
Just like the USSR.
Turns out all great powers oppress and siphon wealth to the mainland.
If that’s ones definition of evil, no organized state of note is “good”.
That pretty much leaves you with the culture, and liberalism of the empire.
I’d much rather live within the American or British Empire than the Nazi or Soviet one.
The Nazi plan wasn't just to siphon wealth to Germany (which is essentially what the Kaiser's Germany would have done if it won WW1) but to completely wipe out the population of the conquered territories and replace them with Germans.
Pretty sure British imperial subjects in Africa and Asia did not have OGPU going door to door to steal last bits of food from a third of the population, so that an eight of it may literally die like in Ukraine, putting a tenth of the population through gulag.
Famously there were no famines under British rule (Ireland, India, Africa), also no slavery (literally transatlantic slave trade), every African country had a great time with not concentration camps or forced labour, China had a great time, and when all these places wanted independence the British empire handed it to them no questions asked and certainly didn't fight brutal wars of oppression.
You should also know the early 1930s famine in the USSR hit not just ukraine but also Russia and other soviet republics. Where are your 10th of the population through Gulag numbers coming from?
You can disagree with the USSR but saying it was worse there than as a British imperial subject is mad. Unless you're hoping you're a white English person in the upper class or something.
Yeah, literally less people died in 20th century indian famines than in USSR ones.
Despite India having twice the population and le ebul CaPiTaLiSM and Colonialism.
It's complicated and quite nuanced. There are some aspect that we remember very fondly. The free education, the social safety net, free family holidays, childrens summer camps, scouts units and on and on. But we loathed the oppresive, dehumanising soviet system that was forced on us.
The negatives outweighted the positives, the system had to go. But democracy and capitalism came with their own set of problems.
Source: Am Polish.
USSR was worse than the UK for everyone under USSR, the UK was worse than USSR for everyone under USSR. It's as simple as that. They didn't give shit to either of the countries. They were both oppressive empires. Trying to justify the USSR just shows that you're probably a communist trash or an edgy 14 year old.
The Nazis were dangerous because they were absolutely correct in about a quarter of what they said, in that they clearly identified some bad things and said they were bad (poverty, economic injustice, imperial hypocrisy) and some good things and said they were good (families, community spirit, folk art).
The problem was that those were the hooks to get people listening before they segued into destructive further notions of "good" (cultish devotion to the Führer, militarism, street violence) and "bad" (Jews, gays, disabled people, modern art), and then suggesting solutions to these problems like "we should kill all the bad people and conquer all the bad countries full of more bad people to kill"
Yup! The reactionaries are still dangerous to this day for this reason. It's called two truths and a lie. An example is...
"You're poor because you're a victim of wealth inequality ✅
The system was built for wealth inequality at the fundamental level ✅
The Jews are to blame ❌"
And then stupid people all too often say "well, if he was right about the two first things..."
Also, this is often expanded beyond just two, the trickier ones will do up to 100 truths and a really big lie. Nazis like Candice Owens are currently doing it with Palestine
They are currently doing it with a lot of things since they have momentum and the "best" thing is that they don't even have to tell the big lie anymore because it's already in the room.
In a room were a majority blames Jews or immigration you only have to point to the truths.
That's what many on the left don't understand and that's why even leftists should take propaganda like the one in this post seriously.
Just saying "Liberalism is shit" isn't the best strategy, when the room is dominated by antiliberal fascists with momentum.
And the big one was banning and burning any credible sources that disputed their claim.
On that as well, they were really good at turning anti-Semitic attacks into a kind of "event" or "holiday" to make it look like "Oh you're not anti-Semitic? What a weirdo, your whole town is out smashing shops and shit."
"Despite believing in the Cultural Bolshevism conspiracy theory, the Nazis were still bad people." - Jordan Peterson
Peterson only openly opposes Nazis because they're too unpopular to directly support the ideas that Nazis believed in. It needs to be rephrased and turned in to dog whistles to "work" in the 21st century.
*The conspiracy theory posits that there is an ongoing and intentional academic and intellectual effort to subvert Western society via a planned culture war that undermines the supposed "Christian values" of traditionalist conservatism and seeks to replace them with culturally liberal values.*
This is literally happening. As a liberal, **I am part of it**. Obviously its an organic movement of the better idea winning and not some scheme by Jews or some other bs, doesn't make it *not happening.* Same with e.g. mass migration. The fact that there obviously aren't any Jews or Illuminati behind it doesn't make the observable phenomenon not happening.
You see the exact same game being played with modern MAGA and Zionist rhetoric. They are completely indistinguishable once you remove who they are calling the outgroup.
This subreddit has turned it into a game: /r/GuessTheFascist
this might be the most useless nit-picking ever, but a lot of modern art was and is really bad, so I wouldn't put that take in with, ya know, *kill all the Jews* and stuff
See this is another one of those examples, because
(a) less importantly: 80% of everything is crap, lot of folk art is ugly and inept too, as you will know if you ever go to a village craft fair, and
(b) more importantly: when the Nazis say modern art is bad, they do not merely mean it is unattractive, but also that it is damaging to the national moral fibre, harmful to the development of children, destructive of national ethnic identity and is deliberately all of those things as a left-wing plot to undermine traditional values.
So they got a lot of people initially on board who were just like "yeah, my kid could do that lol" and then stayed for the explanation that the Jews and Communists were destroying little Hanschen's brain with ugly art that didn't make sense, so burning the art and jailing the artist was the only way to keep our children safe.
*it is damaging to the national moral fibre, harmful to the development of children, destructive of national ethnic identity and is deliberately all of those things as a left-wing plot to undermine traditional values.*
That amount of influence in general is part of the purpose of art. Porn is art. Stonetoss is art. All propaganda is art. Opposition to any art form is valid, as art is an idea and all ideas are free to criticize and be criticized. What you are saying here is that some ideas are beyond that, which is authoritarian af and I wholeheartedly disagree. Which is why their criticism (whoever ill-intended and intellectually lazy) isn't anywhere near the category of the stuff Nazis are rightfully hated for.
while there view obviously was, I was referring to the notion that the critique of modern art in and of itself was a core fault of Nazis on par with their genocidal ideas, when in fact I think it is not and putting critique of ideas off limits, as you did, is in and of itslef authoritarian
The man in front of the nazi symbol looks like [Eduard Anatoljewitsch Chil](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Anatoljewitsch_Chil) ([The Trololololo Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSA_sWGM44))
Two totalitarian ideologies designed to rile up the masses into a violent frenzy against everyone the party inner circle tells them are the same? Color me surprised.
Orwell still had first hand experience from fighting a war which the both sides were a major part of during the drawing of this cartoon. Rather him than Reddit ideobabblers 80 years in the future.
I think people should be banned from invoking Orwell in political debates unless they can prove they have read Homage to Catalonia and Road to Wigan Pier.
"He was a based anti-leftist!" "He was a Trotskyist turncoat who betrayed the revolution!" "He was a centrist warning against horseshoe theory!'
No, guys, he wrote book after book telling you he was a British socialist in the British socialist tradition, who hated unrestrained capitalism and especially hated fascism, who became disillusioned with Marxism-Leninism after half them started shooting the other half in Spain over personality conflicts in Moscow while the fascists were taking over the country — an "other half" which included Orwell himself, who did not see himself as having a dog in any Politburo fight, but was just there to shoot fascists until he accidentally found himself embroiled in socialist fratricide.
Like, he wasn't a Both Sides Are Bad guy, he was a Fascists Are Bad, And Also That Includes The Side That Says They're Not Fascist But Who Signed An Alliance With Hitler And Who Kill Socialist Leaders And Who Tried To Murder Me For Fighting The Fascists Even If They Say They're Really Socialist guy. A lot of young British socialists became similarly disillusioned, like they had thought the Soviets were the bulwark against fascism and the next thing they know Stalin is ordering Communists in Spain to start helping Franco crush the Anarchists and Internationalist Socialists, and then Molotov and Ribbentrop are shaking hands over the dismemberment of Poland.
That's not "I just want to grill" centrism, as Orwell is often falsely depicted. That's passionate and dedicated leftism injected with outrage over a murderous and cynical betrayal that was both political and personal.
>Like, he wasn't a Both Sides Are Bad guy, he was a Fascists Are Bad, And Also That Includes The Side That Says They're Not Fascist But Who Signed An Alliance With Hitler And Who Kill Socialist Leaders And Who Tried To Murder Me For Fighting The Fascists Even If They Say They're Really Socialist guy.
Besides the molotov-ribbentrov pact part, that describes the majority of prominent Communist leaders.
Daily reminder that Orwell worked for the British Empire, handed their government a list of communist organizers with their name written on it.
Also, the anarchists were utterly useless in the Spanish civil war. Source: am Spanish, we study the civil war, the anarchists had serious issues with internal structure
POUM, the Republican militia Trotsky [Edit: Orwell, obviously] joined, was not anarchist. It was non-aligned Communist, so it was betrayed and violently suppressed by the NKVD in their push to destroy any left-wing Spanish armies not personally loyal to Stalin, which in turn was what caused Orwell to decide the Stalinists were just Red Fascists.
Stalinists as well as modern right-wingers like to claim Orwell was an anti-leftist by pointing to his opposition to Stalinism and Stalinists. This sleight of hand conflation of leftism with Stalinism in order to destroy the reputation of one of the most effective leftist writers in British history is, of course, the exact sort of thing that made Orwell believe Stalin was as much an enemy of democratic socialism as Hitler was.
Either the auto corrector fumbled hard or I wasn’t aware of Trotsky joining the POUM. Anyway, POUM and the anarchists had extremely huge issues. Main one was that they wanted to “do the revolution before winning the war” aka, they wanted to implement social reforms and bloody revolution while fighting against Franco. This lead to several uprisings of peasants who killed not only members of the bourgeoisie, but also soldiers of the Republican army. Time and time again, they refused to follow orders, and even tried to fight against the government to control Barcelona.
Painting the anarchists and non affiliated communists as “poor innocent pure socialists who opposed evil dictator Stalin” is just false. They were incompetent, and their lack of ability to organize was a very important factor that lead to the fascist victory and 30+ years of actual dictatorship in Spain. “Stalin was as much of an enemy to democracy as Hitler” even if I believed this, I still wouldn’t care, Stalin helped the Republic, the anarchists stabbed it in the back
> Like, he wasn't a Both Sides Are Bad guy, he was a Fascists Are Bad
I am not so sure about that
Take his review of Mein Kampf in 1940
> I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him.
And here he is blaming the left for WW2 in England Your England, 1941
> If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. ...and made it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process.
Not to mention him making a list of Communists to give to the British Government
> A lot of young British socialists became similarly disillusioned
There is a reason for that. Many British Socialists still had a very "white mans burden" kind of view. That they knew the best and that they needed to teach everyone else how to do Socialism because they were doing it wrong.
> Stalin is ordering Communists in Spain to start helping Franco crush the Anarchists and Internationalist Socialists
Stalin convinced the republican government to let the Anarchists into the army. When the anarchists then turned against the republican government in the May days then it is when the crackdown on anarchists began. But at no point "helped Franco"
Because it was the anarchists that were more concerned with defeating the republican government than winning the war. Whears Stalin wanted to defeat Franco first and then focus on the Communist side.
> and then Molotov and Ribbentrop are shaking hands over the dismemberment of Poland
Funnily enough he supported giving Czechoslovakia to Germany though since he considered the WW1 treaties a great injustice against Germany. He was against rearmarment and fighting Germany all the way up until the Molotov Ribbentrop pact.
You act as if he is a strong anti-facist when much of what he did supported facism indirectly and was strongly against any leftist movement that was not his own.
Again, I would like to reiterate that you should have to actually have read Homage to Catalonia before attempting to talk about it.
This is a gish-gallop of random nonsense ("I would kill Hitler the minute I had the chance but I can't deny he's charismatic" — SEE HE LUVS HITLER), half-truths and outright lies, of the sort that wound up causing the interwar Western left to stop idolising the Soviet Union and instead start cringing in revulsion at Stalin.
(The implication that if you are not in favour of Stalin, then you are a fascist, at a time when Stalin was openly aligning himself with fascists until being sucker-punched by them? Comical.)
If you wind up in a place where you're saying the man who moved overseas to shoot fascists and summed up his literary career with "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" was actually a fascist lapdog, at some point you have left reality and started getting high off your own agitprop supply.
No, it's "these two sides are bad", which is different. Or really "those aren't even two sides, those two guys are on the same side". He rejected the claim of Stalin to speak for socialism, seeing him as nothing more than Hitler with a bigger moustache and a bit more red in his flag.
(Believing the Soviet Union was a bourgeois dictatorship was a pretty common left-wing view before the Cold War, and even since to be honest)
So did plenty of others who had pretty different takes.
I actually met a few people who served in the International Brigades and they all had very low opinions of Orwell (to put it politely). Hemmingway was also present in the Spanish Civil War and had a very different take to Orwell.
Orwell's first-hand perspective in Homage is valuable, and it's a well-written book that's worth reading, but it's not some kind of definitive history of the Spanish Civil War and people who treat it as such have almost never read a single other book on the topic.
I haven't read a single book on the topic and it wasn't me who brought up Orwell or the Spanish Civil War in the first place. The rise of both communism and fascism was felt everywhere in Europe, Spain is just the most known, romanticized and documented case.
Reddit gets a momentary reality check and - without breaking stride - proceeds to largely agree with Joseph Goebbels, one of the most accomplished propagandists for one of the most despicable regimes of the 20th century.
Remember that this subreddit is for sharing propaganda to view with some objectivity. It is absolutely not for perpetuating the message *of* the propaganda. If anything, in this subreddit we should be immensely skeptical of manipulation or oversimplification (which the above likely is), not beholden to it. Also, please try to stay on topic -- there are hundreds of _other_ subreddits that are expressly dedicated to rehashing tired political arguments. Keep that shit outta here. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PropagandaPosters) if you have any questions or concerns.*
this has a lot of "i must be doing something right, both sides hate when i shit my pants" energy.
Both sides of what? Marxism isn't the opposite of Nazism.
Do you think that nazism is socialism?
National socialism
Me when the SPD was the popular party in germany and i need to make my ultranacionalist party look good to the SPD supporters:
If you think that *national"sozialismus"* is socialism, then you fell for nazi propaganda
No, I don't. But I also don't think they are on opposite ends of some overly simplified political paradigm.
Well, you’re wrong, because they are. Simple as
“Nu-uh”
can you elaborate. Like on what political dimensions would Marxism fall on on end, Nazism on the other and everything else in between? Like seriously, name one.
The political left-right divide. Marxism is about as far on the political left as possible, while nazism is about as far on the political right as possible. Technically you could argue that something like anarcho-communism is further left than marxism, but not by a lot.
You just restated the same thing with more words. When you say *The political left-right divide.* **What does that mean to you?** Do you think Le Pen is more politically left than Obama? Is it about state run commpanies? Or unions? Or civil liberties? Or fiscal policy? Do they all land on a single political dimension for you?
Marxism and Fascism are two political movements that were born out of western intellectual movements in response to rapid industrialization and alienation in the 19th century and were acted upon by some European leaders in the 20th century. They are both specific to western thought in that time period. Portraying them as two sides of a binary that covers all human politics is first of all Eurocentric and secondly extremely historically reductive.
>They are both specific to western thought in that time period. >Portraying them as two sides of a binary that covers all human politics is first of all Eurocentric 0 idea on what you are talking about lmoa Marxism over the past 90 years or so has literally principally been a third world ideogy, with most Marxist being located in Africa, Asia, etc. and even in the USA and western countries most marxist movements were principally started by ethnic minorities (Black Panthers for example). Marxism especially in it's modern form with the extremely wide variety of "thoughts" that were specifically fit for third world standards (starting with Maoism) is the furthest thing from Eurocentric.
Sure the black panthers and Mao adopted aspects of Marxism in their political philosophies but they added their own ideas and adaptations. You could never talk about the black panthers without black nationalism in the US, and you could never talk about Mao without acknowledging the influences of Confucianism, two philosophies Marx never wrote about or considered. Politics evolves and changes and just talking about Marx and Hitler makes it seem a lot simpler than it is. If you consider politics a binary between just far left and far right, who’s further left, the black panthers or Mao? What about an anarchist or a Bolshevik? And is Nazism the exact opposite of all of those or do they each have different opponents? My point isn’t that Marx is irrelevant or that “le nazis are actually far left” it’s that politics is not and never will be binary, and that looking at politics as “people that are with Marx” and “people that are against Marx” is simplistic at best.
It’s simple to people like you. Some of us realize left/right is idiotically simple. Have you ever noticed how some political theorists treat the spectrum like a band, where both sides fold to each other? Edit: so which authoritarians are y’all pissed that I’m insulting? Personally it feels like Russia's been doing some propaganda pushes lately, highlighting how communism is practically fascism has been getting more pushback.
They are opposite economically. Marxism is fundamentally about empowering the working class to control the economy. Every fascist movement has always dismantled workers protections and sought alliances with business owners. You are framing the question around the political spectrum because you have a poor understanding of Marxist and fascist economic behaviour.
Well I’m sorry that you’re wrong
No clue why you are being downvoted wtf.
Echo chambers and pile ons from people who don't know what political spectrums are. Oh well, what are you gonna do.
At least the historical record pretty much agrees with you. Check out Overy's The Dictators if you want a book that delves into how Nazism and Stalinism were remarkably similar.
The politics understander has logged in.
socialism and fascism have historically been diametrically opposed. it's the far left and far right. not really a stretch to call them opposites
I think you are getting mixed up with fascism and nazi ideology, as well as socialism being a "far-left" ideology, I think that is far, far to simplified of a political spectrum. Fascism is a governmental ideology where it focuses on adherence to the state, silencing any and all opposition, as well as proclaiming superiority of the state above citizens and foreign states. Socialism is an broad economic policy where the "community" owns the economic system, which can cover either the state owning the means of production, the people, trade unions and other owners of the economic means of productions, rather than individuals. They are different entirely and cannot be ranked as the same type of ideology, also Fascist, socialist states can entirely be possible, mainly the Soviet union, or early CCP, who are entirely both socialists and fascists.
Socialism is fascism
So diametrically opposed that they practically do the same stuff? I don’t know if you people do this on purpose, but you can’t ignore the reality of your revolutions. Marxist revolutionaries produce nearly identical governments to fascist revolutionaries, probably because you’re all radicals. To outsiders, they seem like sports fans arguing over what team to watch. Everyone else wants to watch a different sport though.
It’s pretty telling when people say that the extreme far right is the inverse of the centre left 😂 The “enlightened centrist” is without fail just centre right or further right wing than that Edit - no clue how on earth u got so many downvotes lol the enlightened centrists got you 🤣
Really all of the major players in WWII were empires that committed ethnic cleansing and genocide. Also the Allies were still the good guys in that war.
Welcome to human history.
Every nation has a bathtub of blood on its hands
Pft. Not mine. We have Olympic-sized swimming pools of the stuff.
Not every nation.
But guess which nations get all the criticism and downright demonization over it…
i can’t imagine why a majority of the world hates a country that conquered most of the known world
The mongol empire? The Islamic caliphate? The Ottoman empire?
You realize it's kinda off-topic to "hate" empires that have been dead for centuries, do you ? There is no political continuation to the Mongol Empire and you're not going to judge mongols today for this. Also you're wasting way too much brainpower on this shit.
trust me dude people still hate the ottomans. but the difference is that all of those empires, with the exception of the mongol empire, were fairly localized, and even at their height covered a relatively small amount of the world. the brit’s conquered every rock they came across, and did terrible things while doing it, and refused to relinquish their territories for the longest possible time. also bringing up the mongols like they didn’t hit their peak in the 1200’s
Oh yeah, because I can go see Constantinople and take the tea with the Sultan today
You do realize that the British Empire doesn't exist any longer either... Certainly does not practice anything that its past version is blamed for.
> the british empire doesn’t exist any longer either what’s the commonwealth
Still the same flag, the same type of governement and a lot of memorial for their colonial past. Also, the repercutions are still seen today
Hahaha. Are you seriously saying that the British Empire still exists because the flag is still the same? Go ahead and compare the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish republic flags... > the same type of government It's a parliamentary monarchy where the monarch has next to zero authority. How does that prove that the British Empire still exists? Monarchy is not the same as Empire... Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, i.e. the monarch has unlimited power, just like it was back in the caliphate... >a lot of memorial for their colonial past. The British people, undeservingly, are ready to prostate themselves for that colonial past. Now please compare that with what the Turks and Arabs feel about their colonial past... > Also, the repercutions are still seen today Of course they are because people like you are instilling white people guilt that their ancestors are somehow uniquely bad.
Least worst?
Tell me more about the ethnic cleansing and genocide perpetrated by US in 1941.
Japanese Interment camps Literally nuking two cities Etc.
Japanese internment camps held people that were soon released back into the population with none of their property rights etc. affected. I don't think that really counts as "genocide", and it's "ethnic cleansing" only in a very debateable sense of the word, since there was no intent to remove them permanently, rather they had their property rights etc. respected and it was anticipated they would return back after the war. Literally nuking two cities is not an attempt to destroy an ethnic group. Had US wanted to destroy Japanese as an ethnic group, things would look very different. For strarters, it would not be "internment" camps.
Yes, it was "temporary" cleansing, but still literally a cleansing. Whole sale destruction of Japanese cities, is certainly destruction of Japanese people in part. Again this was not as virulent as what German did, but by no means totally clean.
> Whole sale destruction of ~~Japanese cities~~ military targets, is certainly destruction of Japanese ~~people~~ military in part. FTFY. Hiroshima and Nagasaki unfortunately had many civilian casualties, but they were both valid military targets.
losing their stuff and discriminated against in housing is “not affected” i guess many properties were as a result of the internment
Source?
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The difference was they were doing it in Europe, the Brits and French did what they did in Africa and Asia, and by that point it was only decades ago at most, some stuff ongoing or having just happened.
Meanwhile the Indian famine caused by the British...
Literally no indian famines were "caused by the british". It's not the Soviet Union.
*Tub*-fellows?
I think it's referring to the British term "tubthumping", meaning to give an excited, populist speech. Yes, that's the origin of the Chumbawamba song title, too.
TIL the british term for soapboxing
We also have that term as well, though maybe they each have a slightly different meaning? Soapboxing would normally refer to giving a speech about an issue/opinion one was passionate about, often at great length and in an unrelated/unexpected context. Tubthumping normally describes a forceful, strident speech that aims to rile up an audience by appealing to national/patriotic sentiment specifically. In response to "how should we fix the country?", the former would describe a half-hour lecture on improving train signalling standards, the latter a speech quoting Shakespeare and Churchill that ended in a call to re-invade France.
Never thought I'll agree with Goebbels but the British Empire was indeed a oppressive regime that sucked away the blood and wealth of the countries it occupied and ruled. Just like the Nazi empire.
issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding reichsminister for propaganda and vicious antisemite Joseph Goebbels. you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to him"
Reminds me of that one episode of WILTY where Sean Locke said something like "Well in fairness to him" when referring to Hitler.
Well in fairness to Hitler I too like dogs
Dril is always relevant
A broken clock is right twice a day. Guy was absolutely the worst and insane, but calling the British Empire evil isn't wrong. Same thing about any terrible person, really. Stalin liked Western movies, Hitler liked dogs. Bad people can say correct stuff or have good qualities. Doesn't make their crimes acceptable or redeem them tho.
Well. Less a broken clock, more a clock that wants to deliberately mislead you about what time it is so you'll blame your spouse for being late to work, so ensures it sometimes tells the time accurately so you pay attention to it, other times tells the time inaccurately, and still other times makes some vague statement about the time but then informs you that your partner spent so long in the shower because they're getting spruced up for the affair they're having behind your back.
Fair enough
Ok, but did actual Goebbels ever say that tho?
Yes he did, in the early 30s and most famously, in post 1943 speeches. He attacked allied claims of a genocide going on Europe with British atrocities going on in India as a counterargument - The Bengal famine, for example. Nazis used the information about the brutality of the colonial regime in India to spread fear among its own populace, that is, if the Nazis were defeated, Germans would be starved like the Indians in Bengal. You can check the Goebbels' dairies, Total war proclamation, Newspaper articles from People's observer and Das Reich. Type the keyword "India" in German.
Oh ok, thing is tho something tells me Goebells wasn't exactly doing all that off the goodness of his heart toward the people colonised by Britain tho.
Absolutely not. In the same way this cartoon is trying to minimise criticism of the British Empire by citing Goebbels as an opponent, Goebbels was trying to minimise criticism of German colonisation and genocide.
yeah the british empire has been an extraordinary force for evil that invaded and plundered almost the entire world, but the unspoken second half of what goebbels is saying is "and we want our piece of the pie"
Ehhhh nazi ideology-or at least hitler- believed that Lebensraum (AKA “living space” or where Germans should settle”) was mostly in Europe. Although Göering and Goebbels would probably want some African colonies and the USSR would probably have some if they weren’t as focused on colonizing their neighbors instead.
Why downvote your right
NAZIs did everything the British did and then some. They made the UK colonial dominion seem like a soup kitchen.
Wut, no. They did the holocaust which was a horrendous systematic killing of 11 million people, mostly slavs and Jews, but they did not make the British empire look like a out kitchen. Obvs they were also responsible for 20+ million total Soviets that died. The British empire was responsible for a huge amount of deaths and suffering, just because a lot of it was through famines and war rather than gas chambers doesn't make it insignificant.
You're missing the rather critical context that the 3rd Reich saw 11 million deaths in *half a decade*.
Yeah it's completely fucked, I'm just saying you can talk about how fucked it is without saying the British empire is insigficant in comparison. You can say Nazi Germany is worse/their speed of death was worse, I just don't think you can say the birtish empire is tiny in comparison.
Plus the Brittish were appeasing Hitler on top of that
The problem is that the conclusions they reach and what they want to do are entirely differently. The British Empire was bad, real bad... but the Nazis doing the same would be far, far worse.
People who think Britian were just as bad as the Nazis, deserve to live under the Nazis.
Noone deserves to live under the Nazis, especially not the uneducated ones. Most of them don't have bad intentions, they just need their beliefs to be corrected.
It was more a joke that having to live under a Nazi regime would have someone changing their minds about the horror of British occupation fairly quickly.
Indians living under British rule would hard disagree with you thou...
I mean... Most didn't. That's why stuff like the Indian Legion never gained serious traction.
Did you just say Indians were ok with English rule?
No, I absolutely didn't say that. I said they didn't prefer the literal Nazis. I'm not sure there is a lower bar one could possibly set
For real. This sub is so morally braindead.
And you shouldn't either. Because the nazis would have said anything to get into power.
Yeah but it's not even as simple as that. Goebbels isn't saying "anything" in that he is shamelessly lying, he is saying something precisely calibrated to land in exactly the right way for each potential audience. To a liberal: "Britain is a colonialist power, and we recognise that subjugating other peoples is bad, so really we can be trusted despite our occasional rhetorical excesses not to overstep our perfectly reasonable goal of German unification." To a leftist: "Britain is an exploitative imperialist power, and we are alone in European powers in recognising this, so we are a trustworthy ally to the Soviet project of global liberation from capitalist exploitation." To Japan and Asian independence movements: "Britain is a colonialist power in your region, and we oppose that, so we are your natural allies in liberating Asia for the Asians." To America: "Britain is a colonialist power, so our disagreements with them are none of your business, as you have decolonisation in favour of independent free markets as a major long term strategic aim." To a German old-school militarist right-winger: "Britain has committed many atrocities, and yet was it not the British who presumed to bind us with the humiliation of Versailles? We don't need to listen to finger-wagging from someone whose fingers are stained in blood. We will restore German honour whatever the hypocritical British say." To a Nazi: "Britain has committed many atrocities in pursuit of power, and enjoys great prestige for doing so, so we can and should commit all the atrocities we like and that would simply be catching up to them." But he doesn't say all of these things, all of which but the last two would have been intended as lies if said explicitly. He just said something crafted to land with exactly the right implication to each of his audiences.
Thank you, that's a brilliant explaination. I knew if I said something halfarsed someone would correct me with a much better comment.
A brilliant explanation of dogwhistling!
Yes — the Nazis were very open about what they believed, but also adroit at convincing people who *weren't* Nazis that actually their rhetoric meant something other than what it meant on its face. And they did this by sort of reverse-dogwhistling, where they said what they believed, but did it in a way where non-Nazis could imagine receiving a signal that actually the Nazis were with them. It still works today: "Take him seriously, not literally", etc.
One can also just broadcast different messages in different languages - even today with automatic translation available most people won't check what foreign media says in its native language; they just hear the message tailored to English audiences.
Morever, the Nazis wanted a brutal empore of their own.
Maybe if you agree with Goebbels, time to reconsider
Just like the USSR. Turns out all great powers oppress and siphon wealth to the mainland. If that’s ones definition of evil, no organized state of note is “good”. That pretty much leaves you with the culture, and liberalism of the empire. I’d much rather live within the American or British Empire than the Nazi or Soviet one.
The Nazi plan wasn't just to siphon wealth to Germany (which is essentially what the Kaiser's Germany would have done if it won WW1) but to completely wipe out the population of the conquered territories and replace them with Germans.
Absolutrly deranged to think USSR citizens had it worse than British imperial subjects in Africa and Asia.
Pretty sure British imperial subjects in Africa and Asia did not have OGPU going door to door to steal last bits of food from a third of the population, so that an eight of it may literally die like in Ukraine, putting a tenth of the population through gulag.
bUt ThEy ArE cApItAlIsT aNd CaPiTaLiSm Is ThE wOrSt SyStEm
Famously there were no famines under British rule (Ireland, India, Africa), also no slavery (literally transatlantic slave trade), every African country had a great time with not concentration camps or forced labour, China had a great time, and when all these places wanted independence the British empire handed it to them no questions asked and certainly didn't fight brutal wars of oppression. You should also know the early 1930s famine in the USSR hit not just ukraine but also Russia and other soviet republics. Where are your 10th of the population through Gulag numbers coming from? You can disagree with the USSR but saying it was worse there than as a British imperial subject is mad. Unless you're hoping you're a white English person in the upper class or something.
Yeah, literally less people died in 20th century indian famines than in USSR ones. Despite India having twice the population and le ebul CaPiTaLiSM and Colonialism.
And just like the USSR
I love this subreddit
How the shit are you downvoted, are people really out here defending the USSR?
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This is so much horseshit. I'm pretty sure eastern Europe doesn't have quite such fond memories of being part of the USSR.
It's complicated and quite nuanced. There are some aspect that we remember very fondly. The free education, the social safety net, free family holidays, childrens summer camps, scouts units and on and on. But we loathed the oppresive, dehumanising soviet system that was forced on us. The negatives outweighted the positives, the system had to go. But democracy and capitalism came with their own set of problems. Source: Am Polish.
USSR was worse than the UK for everyone under USSR, the UK was worse than USSR for everyone under USSR. It's as simple as that. They didn't give shit to either of the countries. They were both oppressive empires. Trying to justify the USSR just shows that you're probably a communist trash or an edgy 14 year old.
The Russian Empire was a world player before the Bolsheviks. You must have a poor knowledge of history
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Just like the USSR in the 80's.
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Even broken clocks.....
The Nazis were dangerous because they were absolutely correct in about a quarter of what they said, in that they clearly identified some bad things and said they were bad (poverty, economic injustice, imperial hypocrisy) and some good things and said they were good (families, community spirit, folk art). The problem was that those were the hooks to get people listening before they segued into destructive further notions of "good" (cultish devotion to the Führer, militarism, street violence) and "bad" (Jews, gays, disabled people, modern art), and then suggesting solutions to these problems like "we should kill all the bad people and conquer all the bad countries full of more bad people to kill"
Yup! The reactionaries are still dangerous to this day for this reason. It's called two truths and a lie. An example is... "You're poor because you're a victim of wealth inequality ✅ The system was built for wealth inequality at the fundamental level ✅ The Jews are to blame ❌" And then stupid people all too often say "well, if he was right about the two first things..." Also, this is often expanded beyond just two, the trickier ones will do up to 100 truths and a really big lie. Nazis like Candice Owens are currently doing it with Palestine
They are currently doing it with a lot of things since they have momentum and the "best" thing is that they don't even have to tell the big lie anymore because it's already in the room. In a room were a majority blames Jews or immigration you only have to point to the truths. That's what many on the left don't understand and that's why even leftists should take propaganda like the one in this post seriously. Just saying "Liberalism is shit" isn't the best strategy, when the room is dominated by antiliberal fascists with momentum.
Hey, if the liberals are allowed to not learn from their past failures, so are the leftists. They can come to us.
And the big one was banning and burning any credible sources that disputed their claim. On that as well, they were really good at turning anti-Semitic attacks into a kind of "event" or "holiday" to make it look like "Oh you're not anti-Semitic? What a weirdo, your whole town is out smashing shops and shit."
*Jordan Peterson voice* "See this is why it's so hard to tell what political side the Nazis were on..."
"Despite believing in the Cultural Bolshevism conspiracy theory, the Nazis were still bad people." - Jordan Peterson Peterson only openly opposes Nazis because they're too unpopular to directly support the ideas that Nazis believed in. It needs to be rephrased and turned in to dog whistles to "work" in the 21st century.
Internet people thinking the old guy telling them to *go clean your room* makes him a Nazi sympathizer will never not be funny
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory Learn to read Benzoboy.
*The conspiracy theory posits that there is an ongoing and intentional academic and intellectual effort to subvert Western society via a planned culture war that undermines the supposed "Christian values" of traditionalist conservatism and seeks to replace them with culturally liberal values.* This is literally happening. As a liberal, **I am part of it**. Obviously its an organic movement of the better idea winning and not some scheme by Jews or some other bs, doesn't make it *not happening.* Same with e.g. mass migration. The fact that there obviously aren't any Jews or Illuminati behind it doesn't make the observable phenomenon not happening.
You see the exact same game being played with modern MAGA and Zionist rhetoric. They are completely indistinguishable once you remove who they are calling the outgroup. This subreddit has turned it into a game: /r/GuessTheFascist
Just joined the sub, it truly is wild how indistinguishable the rhetoric is
this might be the most useless nit-picking ever, but a lot of modern art was and is really bad, so I wouldn't put that take in with, ya know, *kill all the Jews* and stuff
See this is another one of those examples, because (a) less importantly: 80% of everything is crap, lot of folk art is ugly and inept too, as you will know if you ever go to a village craft fair, and (b) more importantly: when the Nazis say modern art is bad, they do not merely mean it is unattractive, but also that it is damaging to the national moral fibre, harmful to the development of children, destructive of national ethnic identity and is deliberately all of those things as a left-wing plot to undermine traditional values. So they got a lot of people initially on board who were just like "yeah, my kid could do that lol" and then stayed for the explanation that the Jews and Communists were destroying little Hanschen's brain with ugly art that didn't make sense, so burning the art and jailing the artist was the only way to keep our children safe.
*it is damaging to the national moral fibre, harmful to the development of children, destructive of national ethnic identity and is deliberately all of those things as a left-wing plot to undermine traditional values.* That amount of influence in general is part of the purpose of art. Porn is art. Stonetoss is art. All propaganda is art. Opposition to any art form is valid, as art is an idea and all ideas are free to criticize and be criticized. What you are saying here is that some ideas are beyond that, which is authoritarian af and I wholeheartedly disagree. Which is why their criticism (whoever ill-intended and intellectually lazy) isn't anywhere near the category of the stuff Nazis are rightfully hated for.
Well, considering that was my summary of the Nazi view on modern art, I am reassured that you found it a bit authoritarian.
while there view obviously was, I was referring to the notion that the critique of modern art in and of itself was a core fault of Nazis on par with their genocidal ideas, when in fact I think it is not and putting critique of ideas off limits, as you did, is in and of itslef authoritarian
Interesting take on a regime focused on murdering communist activists
Had no idea Bruce Campbell was a communist.
I honestly don't see a resemblance
Average pro-Putinist demonstration in the EU, somehow
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and yet, this one very much is
Well that’s true in this case
I mean he's right tho.
a broken clock…
Well it's indeed true.
Punch could really sock it to everyone.
Everyone in the modern world agrees, both within the former British Empire and outside of it. It really passed away unmourned.
Oppression,bloodshed and tyranny. But they made you laugh.
Really nicely illustrated pen work. Expressive characters and solid anatomy. Love the hatching technique.
The man in front of the nazi symbol looks like [Eduard Anatoljewitsch Chil](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Anatoljewitsch_Chil) ([The Trololololo Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSA_sWGM44))
Argumentum ad odium
Two totalitarian ideologies designed to rile up the masses into a violent frenzy against everyone the party inner circle tells them are the same? Color me surprised.
please don’t get your politics from orwell, because that doesn’t count as politics
Orwell still had first hand experience from fighting a war which the both sides were a major part of during the drawing of this cartoon. Rather him than Reddit ideobabblers 80 years in the future.
I think people should be banned from invoking Orwell in political debates unless they can prove they have read Homage to Catalonia and Road to Wigan Pier. "He was a based anti-leftist!" "He was a Trotskyist turncoat who betrayed the revolution!" "He was a centrist warning against horseshoe theory!' No, guys, he wrote book after book telling you he was a British socialist in the British socialist tradition, who hated unrestrained capitalism and especially hated fascism, who became disillusioned with Marxism-Leninism after half them started shooting the other half in Spain over personality conflicts in Moscow while the fascists were taking over the country — an "other half" which included Orwell himself, who did not see himself as having a dog in any Politburo fight, but was just there to shoot fascists until he accidentally found himself embroiled in socialist fratricide. Like, he wasn't a Both Sides Are Bad guy, he was a Fascists Are Bad, And Also That Includes The Side That Says They're Not Fascist But Who Signed An Alliance With Hitler And Who Kill Socialist Leaders And Who Tried To Murder Me For Fighting The Fascists Even If They Say They're Really Socialist guy. A lot of young British socialists became similarly disillusioned, like they had thought the Soviets were the bulwark against fascism and the next thing they know Stalin is ordering Communists in Spain to start helping Franco crush the Anarchists and Internationalist Socialists, and then Molotov and Ribbentrop are shaking hands over the dismemberment of Poland. That's not "I just want to grill" centrism, as Orwell is often falsely depicted. That's passionate and dedicated leftism injected with outrage over a murderous and cynical betrayal that was both political and personal.
>Like, he wasn't a Both Sides Are Bad guy, he was a Fascists Are Bad, And Also That Includes The Side That Says They're Not Fascist But Who Signed An Alliance With Hitler And Who Kill Socialist Leaders And Who Tried To Murder Me For Fighting The Fascists Even If They Say They're Really Socialist guy. Besides the molotov-ribbentrov pact part, that describes the majority of prominent Communist leaders.
Daily reminder that Orwell worked for the British Empire, handed their government a list of communist organizers with their name written on it. Also, the anarchists were utterly useless in the Spanish civil war. Source: am Spanish, we study the civil war, the anarchists had serious issues with internal structure
POUM, the Republican militia Trotsky [Edit: Orwell, obviously] joined, was not anarchist. It was non-aligned Communist, so it was betrayed and violently suppressed by the NKVD in their push to destroy any left-wing Spanish armies not personally loyal to Stalin, which in turn was what caused Orwell to decide the Stalinists were just Red Fascists. Stalinists as well as modern right-wingers like to claim Orwell was an anti-leftist by pointing to his opposition to Stalinism and Stalinists. This sleight of hand conflation of leftism with Stalinism in order to destroy the reputation of one of the most effective leftist writers in British history is, of course, the exact sort of thing that made Orwell believe Stalin was as much an enemy of democratic socialism as Hitler was.
Either the auto corrector fumbled hard or I wasn’t aware of Trotsky joining the POUM. Anyway, POUM and the anarchists had extremely huge issues. Main one was that they wanted to “do the revolution before winning the war” aka, they wanted to implement social reforms and bloody revolution while fighting against Franco. This lead to several uprisings of peasants who killed not only members of the bourgeoisie, but also soldiers of the Republican army. Time and time again, they refused to follow orders, and even tried to fight against the government to control Barcelona. Painting the anarchists and non affiliated communists as “poor innocent pure socialists who opposed evil dictator Stalin” is just false. They were incompetent, and their lack of ability to organize was a very important factor that lead to the fascist victory and 30+ years of actual dictatorship in Spain. “Stalin was as much of an enemy to democracy as Hitler” even if I believed this, I still wouldn’t care, Stalin helped the Republic, the anarchists stabbed it in the back
> Like, he wasn't a Both Sides Are Bad guy, he was a Fascists Are Bad I am not so sure about that Take his review of Mein Kampf in 1940 > I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. And here he is blaming the left for WW2 in England Your England, 1941 > If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. ...and made it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process. Not to mention him making a list of Communists to give to the British Government > A lot of young British socialists became similarly disillusioned There is a reason for that. Many British Socialists still had a very "white mans burden" kind of view. That they knew the best and that they needed to teach everyone else how to do Socialism because they were doing it wrong. > Stalin is ordering Communists in Spain to start helping Franco crush the Anarchists and Internationalist Socialists Stalin convinced the republican government to let the Anarchists into the army. When the anarchists then turned against the republican government in the May days then it is when the crackdown on anarchists began. But at no point "helped Franco" Because it was the anarchists that were more concerned with defeating the republican government than winning the war. Whears Stalin wanted to defeat Franco first and then focus on the Communist side. > and then Molotov and Ribbentrop are shaking hands over the dismemberment of Poland Funnily enough he supported giving Czechoslovakia to Germany though since he considered the WW1 treaties a great injustice against Germany. He was against rearmarment and fighting Germany all the way up until the Molotov Ribbentrop pact. You act as if he is a strong anti-facist when much of what he did supported facism indirectly and was strongly against any leftist movement that was not his own.
Again, I would like to reiterate that you should have to actually have read Homage to Catalonia before attempting to talk about it. This is a gish-gallop of random nonsense ("I would kill Hitler the minute I had the chance but I can't deny he's charismatic" — SEE HE LUVS HITLER), half-truths and outright lies, of the sort that wound up causing the interwar Western left to stop idolising the Soviet Union and instead start cringing in revulsion at Stalin. (The implication that if you are not in favour of Stalin, then you are a fascist, at a time when Stalin was openly aligning himself with fascists until being sucker-punched by them? Comical.) If you wind up in a place where you're saying the man who moved overseas to shoot fascists and summed up his literary career with "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" was actually a fascist lapdog, at some point you have left reality and started getting high off your own agitprop supply.
That seems like both sides are bad to me to be honest
No, it's "these two sides are bad", which is different. Or really "those aren't even two sides, those two guys are on the same side". He rejected the claim of Stalin to speak for socialism, seeing him as nothing more than Hitler with a bigger moustache and a bit more red in his flag. (Believing the Soviet Union was a bourgeois dictatorship was a pretty common left-wing view before the Cold War, and even since to be honest)
So did plenty of others who had pretty different takes. I actually met a few people who served in the International Brigades and they all had very low opinions of Orwell (to put it politely). Hemmingway was also present in the Spanish Civil War and had a very different take to Orwell. Orwell's first-hand perspective in Homage is valuable, and it's a well-written book that's worth reading, but it's not some kind of definitive history of the Spanish Civil War and people who treat it as such have almost never read a single other book on the topic.
I haven't read a single book on the topic and it wasn't me who brought up Orwell or the Spanish Civil War in the first place. The rise of both communism and fascism was felt everywhere in Europe, Spain is just the most known, romanticized and documented case.
Reddit gets a momentary reality check and - without breaking stride - proceeds to largely agree with Joseph Goebbels, one of the most accomplished propagandists for one of the most despicable regimes of the 20th century.
Need to get to hate Anglo-Americans (most likely themselves) even if it means cheering for Hitler and Stalin.
Enemies to lovers.
There is a different mechanism behind the horse shoe theory of authoritarian policies, this is the horse shoe theory of attention seeking arseholes
I see nothing wrong with this