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Alternative viewpoint: platforms without censorship tend to be right wing because that is what succeeds in a free marketplace of ideas. Left wing ideas require
by phroobster 6y ago
Alternative viewpoint: platforms without censorship tend to be right wing because that is what succeeds in a free marketplace of ideas. Left wing ideas require censorship to thrive.
- dagmx 6y agoHow many left wing dictators have there been?
- effry-much 6y agoPlenty? Have you ever heard about the XX century? Bolsheviks? Fidel Castro?
- dagmx 6y agoI'm not saying there are none. I'm raising the point that there's been quite a lot more right wing dictatorships than left wing through history.
- feralimal 6y agoHitler? He was a national socialist.
- dagmx 6y agoThat's a very obtuse and dishonest take of the the Nazi party and socialism. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/05/right-needs-stop-falsely-claiming-that-nazis-were-socialists/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/05/right-need... Besides, party names have never been a good indicator of political standing. Only policy is. You can look at the Liberals in Australia as an example of a conservative party.
- feralimal 6y agoNo it's not. They built roads, made the people's wagon (volkswagen), etc.
- dagmx 6y agoWho are the great right wing leaders then who did not build roads or create any infrastructure during their tenure?
- sofixa 6y agoThat's got to be the lowest bar for "socialism" i've ever seen. So, is Eisenhower socialist as well? The US Interstate highway is much bigger than the Autobahn, so it surely counts?
- feralimal 6y agoStalin and Mao were communists.
- dagmx 6y agoThis only works if you put cold war blinders on and equate the word communism to being left wing. Their policy and actions were decidedly not left wing.
- feralimal 6y agodagmx - for you, 'socialist' and 'communist' are not left wing positions! Lol!! The reality is that the 'left' were by far the greatest killers of people (their own people) in the previous century. There is no 'live and let live' attitude allowed. They are right, and anyone who doesn't agree must die is pretty much the position. Agreement is the only position that can be tolerated. This is where the US is heading too. Trump was vilified and banned while still a president but ongoing BLM protests were fine. To an outsider, it is also clear that the media and tech companies are incredibly biased to the left - they do not honour free speech - they call it 'hate speech' (who wants that) and de-platform - even the president! I'm neither left nor right btw - all statism is tyranny to me - either position (and both have their merits and demerits) necessitate tyranny over the majority by the minority who got their guy in. How that can ever be just beats me! But the left have a hypocrisy to their moaning - they somehow believe they have the moral high ground!
- dagmx 6y agoIt's a bit rich to claim you're neither right nor left, when you're constantly repeating right wing talking points. Maybe you don't prescribe to a label, but all your arguments thus far all hinge on labels and not policy.
- feralimal 6y agoOk - here's my criticism of the 'right'. They talk about less government, but never do anything about it! Never. They will say whatever it is that sounds good to conservatives, but do the opposite. Left and right are all on board with the same system. And this is increasing a fascist system, run by corporations. But whatever the case - if people purport to have a constitution that allows for free speech - but that a lot of people do not have meaningful ability to exercise it, well its not surprising that places like Gab spring up. And that all those de-platformed views make their way there. People need to be able to have their say. It used to be that it was a left position to say 'I don't like what you say, but I'll fight for your right to say it'. Those days are long gone - de-platform the hate speaker!
- scrose 6y agoThe Nazis were socialist only in name. I highly suggest reading at least the first book in Richard J. Evans’s trilogy on ‘The third Reich’ if you want your eyes opened to unbiased historical facts. Referring to names to determine the leaning of a political party or even community groups is never a good idea. Look at their policies and what their people are saying.
- leereeves 6y agoAbsolutely, look into it. Mixed with their tyrannical racial nationalism, you will also find many socialist ideas; here are some examples from the 25 point plan, their early party platform: > We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood. > We demand... that all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished. > We demand the nationalization of all trusts. > We demand profit-sharing in large industries. > We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions. > We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class; the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople > We demand...the abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land. > We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State. > The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health https://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm https://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points... Edit: I'm not surprised that these inconvenient facts are being downvoted. Why acknowledge facts when you can attempt to suppress them instead? Why read history in the very words of the people of the time, when you can rewrite it instead?
- fenderbluesjr 6y agoIt's hard to argue against this, that really is the 25 point program of the Nazis. However, I think it is generally understood that Hitler's entrance into the National Socialists marked a deviation from Socialist ideas. My understanding was that there were literally two factions, one which took the socialist aspects seriously and one which had no interest in socialist principles. The socialist faction had people like Gregor Strasser as figureheads and they got routed out as part of the night of the long knives. Much of the Big Business that invested in the Nazi party were tentative at first because of socialist name and were convinced by Hitler et al that it was in name only..
- zokula 6y agoI bet you think North Korea is a Democratic Republic as well?
- nix23 6y agoYou really should learn more about the NS, it was socialistic, but just for the nation, if your interested, that book is a great analysis of hitler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_Hitler_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_Hitler_(book)
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoAlex Kershaw's Bio of Hitler especially the first vol covers this.
- brigandish 6y agoNormally, people use "socialism" synonymously (intentionally or unknowningly) with _international_ socialism. There are plenty of other kinds, and _national_ socialism is one of them. Obviously, if you're going to name your faction with a preceding adjective like national/international then: a) it's important to you b) you're probably not going to get along with the other faction that is named in direct opposition to yours Which pretty much explains how these two groups of socialists hate each other and why the Nazi's 25 point plan [0] reads 50% nationalist and 50% socialist. It's not a misnomer, unlike the DPRK. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program#The_25-point_Program_of_the_NSDAP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program#The... Edit: formatting
- feralimal 6y agoDemocrats are democratic in the US, of course. Oh, I see. Names don't matter if they are inconvenient.... Nazis (a literal shortening of Nationalsozialismus) - no they weren't the left.. 'cos Hitler, and Hitler bad. Freedom is speech, but not 'hate speech'. (Who defines 'hate speech'?) What is hate speech except for a reason to stop people speaking. These are ideological positions couched as morality. And everyone needs moral busybodies who know it all, to tell them what to do, right? “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” - CS Lewis
- nix23 6y agoAbsolutely correct!
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoNot really if you read Kershaw's two vol bio early on the NAZI party did have some "socialist policies" but Hitler changed the policy and threw those out in the late 20's. Its also one of the reasons that the SA was purged.
- throwaway3699 6y agoHundreds. Stalin. Hitler. Mao. The list of genocides is longer than my arm.
- dagmx 6y agoThis is a very interesting world view you have where Hitler is left wing. I think that alone scuppers any substance to your argument. Stalin and Mao would only be left wing if you prescribe to the thought that communism by nature must only be left wing. I assume your train of thought on Hitler is similar because you're likely equating the socialist word in the Nazi party to left wing socialism. At best this is dishonest and ignoring actual policy.
- soundnote 6y agoIsn't the flipside of that coin that leftism is more or less just plain good and ceases to be leftism the moment it deviates from what we think of as good, ie. basically a No True Scotsman? One reason the Marxist kind of thought pattern is dangerous is because of something like that. The ideas in and of themselves can sound good and appealing - who wants poor people to live in squalor and so on? But if we look at what natural and sexual selection ingrains in biological life - it is by necessity kin-preferring, competitive and in non-eusocial social creatures, status seeking, for example. Things that prefer non-kin and don't compete just die out. In that light, a sound philosophy would understand that those things can't be eradicated by human will, take the impulses and hone something constructive out of them. But Marxist thought is rationalist in the sense that it thinks doctrine and reason can mold human nature to whatever shape, and then achieve their utopistic ends. That, of course, cannot happen because we're built from competitive, kin-preferring, status-seeking genes, not utopistic ones. Marxism is incompatible with biological life, and to get biological life to comply for any length of time, it must be forced constantly, or the utopian society degrade into tyranny, which has thus far happened every single time these things have been tried. But it's never done properly, so we should try again.
- dagmx 6y agoI'm hardly invoking any sort of no true Scotsman fallacy. I'm asking for people to delve into the so called left wing policy of the people they're claiming are left wing dictators. So far people have only been listing people by their party names. Which would mean that North Korea is a bastion of democracy. I'm asking for substance to back up their assertions.
- golergka 6y agoVast majority of them, especially if you compare by the body count.
- dagmx 6y agoCan you list them and their body counts + Policies that caused those deaths?
- leereeves 6y agoFortunately someone has already done so. It's far from a complete list, but it's enough to prove the point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_...
- dagmx 6y agoWhere exactly is the list by numbers across the board? Unless you believe only community regimes kill.
- _-david-_ 6y agoStalin and Pol Pot are good examples.
- dagmx 6y agoAgain, this only applies if we blindly use the cold war association that communism is a left wing ideal, without actually looking at the policy of the people. The reality is that communism as a movement spans a wide political range, and both Stalin and Pol Pot had diverged significantly from any form of leftist Marxism in their hunt for power. Even stalinist supporters decry Pol Pot https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/khmerrouge.html https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/khmerrouge.html Looking at simple party names is a red herring at best. It's best to look at the policy choices of the dictators in question.
- lwansbrough 6y agoConservativism largely fails over time in the free marketplace of ideas as evidence by human progress and societal change. Conservativism is fundamentally about suppressing change in favour of familiarity and established norms, which could certainly be seen as censorship. An obvious example of this is the conservative/Puritan influence in American culture, which has lead to excessive censorship of sexual content and cursing in American media. Censorship is a product of political extremism though, it has no basis in one political ideology, only in how aggressively it is applied to society.
- exporectomy 6y agoCounterexample - Islamic culture is conservative and thriving in the world (20% of all humans are Muslim), with roughly the same beliefs and culture as it's had for the past 1000 years.
- andybak 6y ago> with roughly the same beliefs and culture as it's had for the past 1000 years. I'm not sure this demonstrates a deep understanding of the shifting patterns within Islamic culture.
- PicassoCTs 6y agoWho cares? Gradual changes in a philosophy of a culture that has become the great game-board of all adjunct powers, over and over again, is not relevant. At some point all that remains, is the fact, that getting pushed around on the school-yard of the world, is a bad idea. Nobody cares for the history of getting pushed around. Just for the now full of mud, blood and laughter.
- sofixa 6y agoI'm not sure thriving is the correct term. When it comes to HDI, human rights record, freedom of press/expression/etc. i can't think of a single Muslim-majority country ( which isn't the same as Islamic, and i chose the former because they fare better by definition on various freedoms) On the HDI, the first majority Muslim country is the UAE, at 31, and that's probably highly skewed by its limited population, extreme natural wealth, and slavery. And considering it's involved in a human rights catastrophe in Yemen, it fails any human rights record-based index directly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index On the contrary, I'd say that Islam is stuck in the past, which doesn't help Muslim nations thrive and develop, and those that do, do it based on "luck" ( natural resources).
- bawolff 6y agoWow. This comment section is a mess. Did y'all miss the other countries in the world that seem to be left wing without censorship. Or just history in general. Typically it tends to be a bit cyclic cycling between "left" ideas being popular at certain times and places, and right wing ideas being popular at certain times and places.
- zpeti 6y agoMainstream ideas require censorship to survive. In the 60-70s it was the left that was obsessed with free speech because their views were less mainstream, something many people on the side of censorship seem to ignore. As glen greenwald says, censorship eventually is always about those in power staying in power. Unless you are in power it’s sad to see so much pro censorship these days. Read up on Ira Glasser at the ACLU or watch the documentary. Why did he as a Jew defend neo nazis?
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoCounterpoint: Parler and Gab have plenty of censorship, so those don't fit your 'platforms without censorship' description.