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Historically communist countries have been pretty fascist, but communism itself (in theory) is about workers' rights and the elevation of the little people. I d
by _bxg1 7y ago
Historically communist countries have been pretty fascist, but communism itself (in theory) is about workers' rights and the elevation of the little people. I don't know how genuine Mao was about those ideals, but Xi is dropping all pretense by intentionally targeting labor movements. So he shouldn't even get to hide behind a flawed idealism. He has no idealism except power.
- pvg 7y agoYou're just ascribing the negative aspects of communism-as-realized to fascism but this seems trivially ahistorical. The internecine conflicts in communist states were much more pronounced than in the fascist ones, perhaps in part because communism was always a more complex and developed movement ideologically.
- _bxg1 7y agoSure; in my mind, fascist == authoritarian + nationalist. I realize that's extremely simplified - I'm not a historian - but that's what I meant by it.
- tptacek 7y agoCommunism as a political theory is anti-nationalist, and fascism as a political phenomenon arose in part as a reaction to Marxism. One of Payne's Fascist Negations is "anti-Communism". There are multiple species of authoritarian tyrannies; fascism is just one of them. I think people get in trouble trying to generalize and apply fascism to places it doesn't fit. "Communist are fascists" might be one of the text book instances of that problem.
- pvg 7y ago"Communist are fascists" might be one of the text book instances of that problem. Mildly amusing thingie - a Bulgarian dissident's dissidenting involved writing a book about fascism (titled, for clarity, Fascism) which was really an oblique critique of the communist regime. It got past the censors and was published and then fairly quickly recalled. He later became Bulgaria's first post-communist president.