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That's quite a false equivalency. Fascism is an ideology that at its core has oppression of free speech and political opponents, white supremacy, authoritariani

by ot 9y ago

That's quite a false equivalency. Fascism is an ideology that at its core has oppression of free speech and political opponents, white supremacy, authoritarianism, colonialism. Communism as a political theory has none of these things. You're confusing it with authoritarian socialism (Soviet Russia, Mao's China, ...).

geofft 9y ago
A simpler rebuttal is that the Daily Stormer is opposed to ISIS, and I would in fact expect Google to be taking down ISIS websites celebrating specific acts of terrorism (as the Daily Stormer did). Both sides!
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  Are any isis websites hosted on Google? Like, there's a whole anti- terrorism thing at Google dealing with Isis videos posted on YouTube. It's a bit more comples than just " remove them", but it's research backed and in concert with governments. (Or did misread "I'd expect google to" and we agree)
  - geofft 9y ago
    Yes, I meant "My assumption is that Google is doing so," not "I would have expected Google to do this thing and they're not," sorry.
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      No, no, my fault :)
megaman22 9y ago
That's kind of a No True Scotsman argument... I would actually be interested to have an example of a communist regime pointed out that didn't have mass graves in their back yard somewhere; I just can't think of one.
- vidarh 9y ago
  And I can't think of a communist regime. Certainly none of the states you might think of have described themselves as communist.
  - leereeves 9y ago
    > And I can't think of a communist regime. Certainly none of the states you might think of have described themselves as communist. The ruling parties, however, did/do. For example: the Communist Party of China or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
    - vidarh 9y ago
      That's true, but the point is none of them have claimed to have created a communist society. They've claimed to have started building a socialist society, and they've claimed that communism was their ultimate goal. More specifically, every single one of them, as far as I'm aware, claim to base their goals on Leninism or a derivation (e.g. Maoism, Juche etc. are derived from Leninism, not directly from Marxism), which is one specific ideology that even if one accepts it as genuinely having the goal of eventually creating communism is in direct opposition to Marxism when it comes to some of the most central points of Marxist theory. E.g. Marx throughout his life repeatedly warned against trying revolution in an underdeveloped country, as he saw advanced capitalism as essential to the success of socialism, and he specifically called out Russia - a central aspect of Leninism is Lenins contortionism to try to explain away Marx' reasons for that through his idea of the "vanguard party", and his party theory (democratic centralism), which are a large part of what enabled the authoritarianism of the Bolsheviks. It became the dominant re-interpretation of Marxism after the Bolsheviks gained power, but it's still only one of dozens of ideologies that call themselves communist, and the only one that has been used as a basis for justifying any national regimes of parties calling themselves communist. If someone wanted to ban specific interpretations of Leninism (because you'll find people picking and choosing from Lenin too - e.g. a lot of his analysis in Imperialism and in State and the Revolution is benign enough; State and the Revolution to a large extent makes the case against state power for example) that are explicitly agitating for violence or anti-democratic methods, then you'd find quite a few communists and socialists who'd be perfectly happy about that - no governments have murdered more communists than ones following Lenin or Leninist derived theories. Lenin himself grabbed power in a coup (the "October revolution" was not a revolution in any reasonable sense - the Tsarist government had fallen months previously) after months of agitation for violent overthrow of the predominantly socialist/communist provisional government that was actually trying to run a democratic process. The point is people you don't like will use the same words you do - we don't swear off democracy as a bad thing because the "Democratic" Peoples Republic of Korea uses the word to describe itself, or because pretty much every one of the states you refer to run by parties describing themselves as communist also made a big point of describing their states as democratic in their constitutions. We recognize that their use does not represent our use of the word, and we look for better ways of classifying them.
vidarh 9y ago
I think this misses the point. I belong well into the (anti authoritarian) left, and I agree with your last sentences, but the problem here is not that a lot of people see libertarian and anarchist socialist/communist ideologies as equally bad as Stalinism and Maoism - often because they don't know or accept the distinction -, and so sees blocking far right sites but not far left sites as taking a stand against the right, rather than a stand against totalitarian ideologies. We're better served with a society where communications providers are not allowed to deny service based on their customers views for the simple reason that as long as we allow them to censor, chances are someone who is clueless about distinctions like the ones you make get to make those decisions, Case in point: Several countries have legislation against spreading communist ideas or using communist symbols that are ill defined enough that they would just as equally hit someone promoting Stalinism as someone who would be first against the wall if Stalinists were to gain power, because they don't understand that the same name encompasses ideologies ranging from those that wants a totalitarian state to those who wants no state or authority. (In other places such laws have been struck down or revised exactly because of that ambiguity)
- ot 9y ago
  > We're better served with a society where communications providers are not allowed to deny service based on their customers views for the simple reason that as long as we allow them to censor, chances are someone who is clueless about distinctions like the ones you make get to make those decisions Are we? I agree that we get some polarization as collateral damage, but the alternative would be to have hateful and violent ideas be able to roam freely, hurt people, and be normalized. There has to a line.

by ot 9y ago

geofft 9y ago

A simpler rebuttal is that the Daily Stormer is opposed to ISIS, and I would in fact expect Google to be taking down ISIS websites celebrating specific acts of terrorism (as the Daily Stormer did). Both sides!

joshuamorton 9y ago
Are any isis websites hosted on Google? Like, there's a whole anti- terrorism thing at Google dealing with Isis videos posted on YouTube. It's a bit more comples than just " remove them", but it's research backed and in concert with governments. (Or did misread "I'd expect google to" and we agree)
- geofft 9y ago
  Yes, I meant "My assumption is that Google is doing so," not "I would have expected Google to do this thing and they're not," sorry.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    No, no, my fault :)

megaman22 9y ago

That's kind of a No True Scotsman argument... I would actually be interested to have an example of a communist regime pointed out that didn't have mass graves in their back yard somewhere; I just can't think of one.

vidarh 9y ago
And I can't think of a communist regime. Certainly none of the states you might think of have described themselves as communist.
- leereeves 9y ago
  > And I can't think of a communist regime. Certainly none of the states you might think of have described themselves as communist. The ruling parties, however, did/do. For example: the Communist Party of China or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    That's true, but the point is none of them have claimed to have created a communist society. They've claimed to have started building a socialist society, and they've claimed that communism was their ultimate goal. More specifically, every single one of them, as far as I'm aware, claim to base their goals on Leninism or a derivation (e.g. Maoism, Juche etc. are derived from Leninism, not directly from Marxism), which is one specific ideology that even if one accepts it as genuinely having the goal of eventually creating communism is in direct opposition to Marxism when it comes to some of the most central points of Marxist theory. E.g. Marx throughout his life repeatedly warned against trying revolution in an underdeveloped country, as he saw advanced capitalism as essential to the success of socialism, and he specifically called out Russia - a central aspect of Leninism is Lenins contortionism to try to explain away Marx' reasons for that through his idea of the "vanguard party", and his party theory (democratic centralism), which are a large part of what enabled the authoritarianism of the Bolsheviks. It became the dominant re-interpretation of Marxism after the Bolsheviks gained power, but it's still only one of dozens of ideologies that call themselves communist, and the only one that has been used as a basis for justifying any national regimes of parties calling themselves communist. If someone wanted to ban specific interpretations of Leninism (because you'll find people picking and choosing from Lenin too - e.g. a lot of his analysis in Imperialism and in State and the Revolution is benign enough; State and the Revolution to a large extent makes the case against state power for example) that are explicitly agitating for violence or anti-democratic methods, then you'd find quite a few communists and socialists who'd be perfectly happy about that - no governments have murdered more communists than ones following Lenin or Leninist derived theories. Lenin himself grabbed power in a coup (the "October revolution" was not a revolution in any reasonable sense - the Tsarist government had fallen months previously) after months of agitation for violent overthrow of the predominantly socialist/communist provisional government that was actually trying to run a democratic process. The point is people you don't like will use the same words you do - we don't swear off democracy as a bad thing because the "Democratic" Peoples Republic of Korea uses the word to describe itself, or because pretty much every one of the states you refer to run by parties describing themselves as communist also made a big point of describing their states as democratic in their constitutions. We recognize that their use does not represent our use of the word, and we look for better ways of classifying them.

vidarh 9y ago

I think this misses the point. I belong well into the (anti authoritarian) left, and I agree with your last sentences, but the problem here is not that a lot of people see libertarian and anarchist socialist/communist ideologies as equally bad as Stalinism and Maoism - often because they don't know or accept the distinction -, and so sees blocking far right sites but not far left sites as taking a stand against the right, rather than a stand against totalitarian ideologies. We're better served with a society where communications providers are not allowed to deny service based on their customers views for the simple reason that as long as we allow them to censor, chances are someone who is clueless about distinctions like the ones you make get to make those decisions, Case in point: Several countries have legislation against spreading communist ideas or using communist symbols that are ill defined enough that they would just as equally hit someone promoting Stalinism as someone who would be first against the wall if Stalinists were to gain power, because they don't understand that the same name encompasses ideologies ranging from those that wants a totalitarian state to those who wants no state or authority. (In other places such laws have been struck down or revised exactly because of that ambiguity)

ot 9y ago
> We're better served with a society where communications providers are not allowed to deny service based on their customers views for the simple reason that as long as we allow them to censor, chances are someone who is clueless about distinctions like the ones you make get to make those decisions Are we? I agree that we get some polarization as collateral damage, but the alternative would be to have hateful and violent ideas be able to roam freely, hurt people, and be normalized. There has to a line.