Principia Discordia

Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.
Benito Mussolini

The European brand of fascism will probably present its most serious postwar threat to us via Latin America.
Henry A. Wallace

Defeat in WWII was a bitter pill for fascists to swallow.  One of the central teachings of the fascist belief system is that every other system is weak and cowardly.  Liberalism and conservatism and especially Bolshevism were the effete, decadent products of a slave caste mired in a Jewish international conspiracy, designed to keep the powerful Aryan race down with its "morality" and "equality" and "freedom".

Yet, it was liberal democracies and the USSR who crushed Nazi Germany, Fascist Spain and the Shōwa Nationalist movement in the Japan, the Romanian Iron Guard, the Ustaše and other fascist groups in Europe.  According to fascist doctrine, this was impossible.  And now, with Fascism considered public, global enemy number one by the Communist bloc and the liberal democracies, they were in a bad way.

Or so it seemed, at first.

However, a new war was brewing.  The massive expansion and military growth of the USSR, and American commitment to the devastated and near bankrupt European powers, put those two countries on a collision course.  While both the US and Soviet armies had gone about sensibly grabbing scientists and weapons plans - should the war ever actually happen - elements within the US intelligence community went a step further:  they recruited Nazis as part of their anti-Communist drive.  Such a grouping would include Gehlen Org, a private intelligence operation ran by Reinhard Gehlen that was aimed against the Soviet Union.  At the end of the war, he hid Nazi files on the USSR and embellished them in order to gain employment with the OSS/CIA.  He also hired other Nazis to work within his organisation, forcing western intelligence operations to turn a blind eye to their many, numerous crimes (such as the murder of 140,000 Jews).  And, as it turned out, Nazis made "terrible spies", so it wasn't even worth it from the perspective of utility.

Of course, the Western powers could only work with the Nazis and Fascists they had actually captured.  Many had fled at the end of the war, using loot and their many varied international contacts.  These rat-lines mostly led to Argentina, Paraguay and Chile, though some went to Egypt and Syria.  Fascist leaders like Peron could use the expertise, military or otherwise, of fleeing war criminals, and scientists who could offer their skills to the enemies of the Reich - countries hostile to Israel, for example.

The most infamous of these rat-lines was ODESSA, made famous by Frederick Forsyth's thriller The Odessa File.  According to former OSS officers and German anti-fascists, the plan had been to disperse committed Nazis overseas and create an international, invisible Fourth Reich.  Though other sources suggest this gives too much credit to ODESSA as an organisation, and that it was a largely chaotic mess, it is known that the Roman Catholic Bishop, Alois Hudal, was a key figure in getting people out of Germany and Austria. 

Here there is something of a split in fascist history, which needs to be understood to grasp the development of the ideology and its reach since WWII.  Those fascists who had taken part in the war and had either fled, or ended up working for one of the various Western European intelligence services, should be considered 1st Generation Fascists, or F1.  Because, as you've no doubt realised, I am ignoring something rather important - the spontaneous fascist movements that sprung up in Western Europe and the USA after the war, which had no connection to the first generation fascists except ideological affinity.  These we should consider the F2 grouping.  The importance will become rather more obvious later, but for now its enough to say that the F1 grouping were something of an elite - war criminals, former generals, spies, soldiers - people with connections and skills and considerable resources.  The F2 grouping, on the other hand, was usually recruited from the outcasts and dregs of society, people who didn't want to fit in and so picked an ideology most likely to shock and anger the society they hated.

Foremost among these was George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party.  A former Naval officer and advertiser, Rockwell came to have a hatred for Communism and its "pimping sister" liberalism, which led him into the McCarthyite paranoid world of conspiracy theories.  While working on the campaign to get General MacArthur elected President, an older women working on the campaign convinced him the smears against MacArthur and McCarthy were part of a Jewish conspiracy to bring the men down.  Rockwell leaped head first into this fantasy world, finding apparent proof for the Jewish conspiracy where ever he looked.  In 1951, he bought a copy of Mein Kampf from a bookstore, and upon reading it, converted himself into a fully fledged fascist.

At first trying to infiltrate respectable right-wing organizations (and failing) Rockwell gathered extremists and racists around him and launched the party in 1959.  As the civil rights movement gained momentum, so did Rockwell, attracting those who feared black equality might be reached.  Rockwell began training storm troopers, who would attack rallies and cooperate with groups like the KKK in acts of terrorism.  Meeting with British Nazi Colin Jordan in 1962, they also established an international organization, the World Union of National Socialists, which coordinated otherwise disparate groups in America, the UK, France, Germany, Australia and parts of South America.

So the groundwork was laid both for a F1 international revival and an F2 international revival, which is interesting when one considers the lack of overlap between the two groups.  Especially of interest is the role that the first generation fascists would come to play in Europe's anti-communist strategy  - something I will discuss in the next installment.

 :mittens:

Im going to withhold comment till the next installment

Oooh.

(http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/Smileys/default/mittens.gif)

I'd like to pose a few points:

1. The actual definition of fascism appears to be debatable among historical, philosophic and political scholars.
2. It seems like every single thing I read re: post WWII fascism has a different perspective on the actual events OF the first and second WWs and their effect on modern fascism.
3. "Fascism" was embraced by the American left throughout much of the 20s and 30s and Mussolini was actually lauded HERE IN AMERICA as a beloved Charismatic hero with the brains, balls and benevolence to cut through the bullshit and create real model of hope and change for Italy, as well as for the rest of the world. Hollywood made movies about him. Poets wrote shining speeches and letters glorifying his policies. Cole Porter wrote a song lyric about him. American movie stars had crushes on him. It wasn't until he started invading countries that his approval rating went down.
4. Hitler and Benito Mussolini were BOTH intent on creating a secular (anti-theistic even), "classless" society where all citizens were equal and equally provided for. Public health, labour regulations, education, wealth redistribution, even women's sufferage were the "religion of the state." Aristocracy, greed and free-market capitalism were deplorable in the fascist vision of a transcendant society.

Neo-nazim in America may have co-opted some of the madman genocide thinking originating from Hitler, but Fascism as a political Ideology is largely a Liberal concept. To call American neo-nazim a fascist institution is like saying PeTA terrorism is an integral part of Democrat doctrine.

All oranges are fruits but not all fruits are oranges.

Well-written though. I still think your posts are brilliant and refreshingly challenging. I await your next thought-provoking installment with enthusiasm.

1.  Not so much as you would think.  The vast majority of historians who specialize in the period agree that Fascism was anti-liberalism, anti-conservatism and anti-Communist, nationalist, revolutionary, racist, sexist and expansionist.  The debate mostly comes from political hacks with partisan agendas to pursue (cf, Jonah Goldberg).  Ironically, many of those who claim fascism as a left wing phenomenon claim left-right distinctions are useless just before claiming this.

2.  OK.

3.  You're missing massive amounts of context here.  After WWI, there was a massive influx of Italian immigration and many of these Italians considered themselves liberal or socialist in origin.  They actually didn't care much for Mussolini and considered him an autocrat who was undermining the Italian democracy and rule of law.  However, immigration laws in the 20s were passed to limit the amount of Italian immigration.  This law suggested that Italian-Americans were an unwanted minority group, and caused many of them to turn to Fascist Italian nationalism as a source of ethnic pride and camaraderie.

Also, within Italy, Fascists deliberately targeted the left on numerous occasions. The talented Marxist philosopher and leader of the Italian Communist party, Antonio Gramsci, was arrested and kept in a small dirty cell, which caused his health to suffer until he died, at the age of 46.  In the north, fascism portrayed itself as the alternative to workers' revolution; in the south, fascist armed gangs broke the back of  the peasants' campaign for land.  In the summer of 1922, fascist gangs seized the city halls in Milan and Livorno and occupied the Genoa docks in order to break the unions. There were waves of repression against trade unionists in 1921, 1923 and 1924. In 1925, all remaining independent trade unions were closed down. Wage rates were decided by the company and workers lost any right of representation. Between 1927 and 1932, according to official statistics, nominal wages were cut by 50 per cent. In 1935, the government placed all workers connected directly or indirectly with war production under military discipline. All other workers were subject to the decisions of the Labour Court. Strikers were punished with imprisonment.

The class which benefited most from fascist rule was the upper class, especially nobles and business owners. They gained from the privatisation of the insurance sector, the telephone service, the match monopoly and the municipal power companies. The capital tax was abolished, as was inheritance tax, the tax on war profits and the taxes on managers and directors.  Mussolini received large sums of money from the Milan business community and also from the great landowners in 1919, when he founded his party. 

There were official attacks on Jews from 1934 and the state adopted Nazi-style race laws in 1938. Between 8,500 and 15,000 Italian Jews died in the Holocaust.  From 1930, the regime had plans to expand its empire in Ethiopia and Tunisia. These plans were justified in explicitly racist language. Blacks and Arabs were considered non-human. The war in Abyssinia from October 1935 was defended using racism – it was claimed that the Ethiopians were incapable of ruling themselves. The war was also conducted in a racist way: because the fascist state considered that the indigenous people were less than human, it butchered them with poison gas like animals.

Doesn't sound like a very left wing or liberal program to me.  Similar happened in Nazi Germany too, though right now I don't have the time to grab the exact dates and figures.  Believe me though, when I say I know this subject inside out.

4.  Wrong.  Hitler tolerated religion insofar as it did not overshadow him.  He didn't like Christianity much despite his support among certain Protestants (not to mention the cowardice of the Catholic Party in standing up to him) but he tolerated Nazi forays into Odinism and occult belief systems.  Mussolini famously allied himself with the Vatican when he signed the Lateran Treaty, giving them full sovereignty and recognition as an independent nation.  Oh and big lump sums of money.  In return, the Vatican kept its mouth shut and didn't get involved in Italian politics, ever.

Claseless society?  Don't make me laugh.  Even ignoring what I said above, the fascist assault on genuine working class movements and support from the upper classes of society because of this, you fail to take into account fascist policies towards Jews, Romany gypsies, homosexuals and Slavs.  All of which were considered subhuman and were butchered because of it.  And women's sufferage?  German fascists thought a woman's place was in the kitchen or making good little Aryan troopers.  Women who actually worked were despised by fascists, who had a highly traditional view of society in that (and many other) respects.  Fascism was only anti aristocracy insofar as aristocrats were traditional conservatives (and allied with them anyway, when it suited their needs) and were anti-capitalist in rhetoric only, with all genuine anti-capitalist fascists either ending up dead or out of positions of influence once fascist parties came to power.

Try reading some actual history books.  You know, the sort written by people who can read German and Italian, and have had access to primary sources from the period as well as later analysis.  The sort of thing historians write, I guess is what I'm saying.

Also, if you think the above described policies are a core part of the Democratic party, then you are seriously deluded.

Quote from: Cain on July 03, 2009, 12:46:37 PM
1.  Not so much as you would think.  The vast majority of historians who specialize in the period agree that Fascism was anti-liberalism, anti-conservatism and anti-Communist, nationalist, revolutionary, racist, sexist and expansionist.  The debate mostly comes from political hacks with partisan agendas to pursue (cf, Jonah Goldberg).  Ironically, many of those who claim fascism as a left wing phenomenon claim left-right distinctions are useless just before claiming this.

2.  OK.

3.  You're missing massive amounts of context here.  After WWI, there was a massive influx of Italian immigration and many of these Italians considered themselves liberal or socialist in origin.  They actually didn't care much for Mussolini and considered him an autocrat who was undermining the Italian democracy and rule of law.  However, immigration laws in the 20s were passed to limit the amount of Italian immigration.  This law suggested that Italian-Americans were an unwanted minority group, and caused many of them to turn to Fascist Italian nationalism as a source of ethnic pride and camaraderie.

Also, within Italy, Fascists deliberately targeted the left on numerous occasions. The talented Marxist philosopher and leader of the Italian Communist party, Antonio Gramsci, was arrested and kept in a small dirty cell, which caused his health to suffer until he died, at the age of 46.  In the north, fascism portrayed itself as the alternative to workers' revolution; in the south, fascist armed gangs broke the back of  the peasants' campaign for land.  In the summer of 1922, fascist gangs seized the city halls in Milan and Livorno and occupied the Genoa docks in order to break the unions. There were waves of repression against trade unionists in 1921, 1923 and 1924. In 1925, all remaining independent trade unions were closed down. Wage rates were decided by the company and workers lost any right of representation. Between 1927 and 1932, according to official statistics, nominal wages were cut by 50 per cent. In 1935, the government placed all workers connected directly or indirectly with war production under military discipline. All other workers were subject to the decisions of the Labour Court. Strikers were punished with imprisonment.

The class which benefited most from fascist rule was the upper class, especially nobles and business owners. They gained from the privatisation of the insurance sector, the telephone service, the match monopoly and the municipal power companies. The capital tax was abolished, as was inheritance tax, the tax on war profits and the taxes on managers and directors.  Mussolini received large sums of money from the Milan business community and also from the great landowners in 1919, when he founded his party. 

There were official attacks on Jews from 1934 and the state adopted Nazi-style race laws in 1938. Between 8,500 and 15,000 Italian Jews died in the Holocaust.  From 1930, the regime had plans to expand its empire in Ethiopia and Tunisia. These plans were justified in explicitly racist language. Blacks and Arabs were considered non-human. The war in Abyssinia from October 1935 was defended using racism – it was claimed that the Ethiopians were incapable of ruling themselves. The war was also conducted in a racist way: because the fascist state considered that the indigenous people were less than human, it butchered them with poison gas like animals.

Doesn't sound like a very left wing or liberal program to me.  Similar happened in Nazi Germany too, though right now I don't have the time to grab the exact dates and figures.  Believe me though, when I say I know this subject inside out.

4.  Wrong.  Hitler tolerated religion insofar as it did not overshadow him.  He didn't like Christianity much despite his support among certain Protestants (not to mention the cowardice of the Catholic Party in standing up to him) but he tolerated Nazi forays into Odinism and occult belief systems.  Mussolini famously allied himself with the Vatican when he signed the Lateran Treaty, giving them full sovereignty and recognition as an independent nation.  Oh and big lump sums of money.  In return, the Vatican kept its mouth shut and didn't get involved in Italian politics, ever.

Claseless society?  Don't make me laugh.  Even ignoring what I said above, the fascist assault on genuine working class movements and support from the upper classes of society because of this, you fail to take into account fascist policies towards Jews, Romany gypsies, homosexuals and Slavs.  All of which were considered subhuman and were butchered because of it.  And women's sufferage?  German fascists thought a woman's place was in the kitchen or making good little Aryan troopers.  Women who actually worked were despised by fascists, who had a highly traditional view of society in that (and many other) respects.  Fascism was only anti aristocracy insofar as aristocrats were traditional conservatives (and allied with them anyway, when it suited their needs) and were anti-capitalist in rhetoric only, with all genuine anti-capitalist fascists either ending up dead or out of positions of influence once fascist parties came to power.

Try reading some actual history books.  You know, the sort written by people who can read German and Italian, and have had access to primary sources from the period as well as later analysis.  The sort of thing historians write, I guess is what I'm saying.

Also, if you think the above described policies are a core part of the Democratic party, then you are seriously deluded.

I'm feeling like we misunderstood each other...but is there any point to my discussing this? or am I going to get yelled at again and told I've read the wrong books, gone to the wrong schools and discussed this with scholars who are not qualified to draw lines of comparison?

If that's the case, I'll close all dissenting argument, go back to my little hole and be happy to let you be the pd.com authority on the subject hereafter.

QuoteDon't make me laugh.

what an awful life you must lead...   :wink:

also :mittens: for the OP.

QuoteI'm feeling like we misunderstood each other...but is there any point to my discussing this? or am I going to get yelled at again and told I've read the wrong books, gone to the wrong schools and discussed this with scholars who are not qualified to draw lines of comparison?

If that's the case, I'll close all dissenting argument, go back to my little hole and be happy to let you be the pd.com authority on the subject hereafter.

Cain (in ma limited experience) seems to "win" historical/political arguments at least 90% of the time.  But that shouldn't stop you arguing, 'cause the rest of us get to learn more awesome shit!

woop!

x

edd

Quote from: TSosBR! on July 03, 2009, 03:22:13 PM

QuoteDon't make me laugh.

what an awful life you must lead...   :wink:

also :mittens: for the OP.

QuoteI'm feeling like we misunderstood each other...but is there any point to my discussing this? or am I going to get yelled at again and told I've read the wrong books, gone to the wrong schools and discussed this with scholars who are not qualified to draw lines of comparison?

If that's the case, I'll close all dissenting argument, go back to my little hole and be happy to let you be the pd.com authority on the subject hereafter.

Cain (in ma limited experience) seems to "win" historical/political arguments at least 90% of the time.  But that shouldn't stop you arguing, 'cause the rest of us get to learn more awesome shit!

woop!

x

edd

I really like your good-natured attitude.

I'm jenn. I'm pd.com's rebellious little sister who uses this place as a flophouse. I frequently show up out of the blue (sometimes drunk), regale everyone with stories and shit about what I've been up to, give hugs and crash on the sofa, promising to look for a job in the morning.

Chances are, at some point, I get into it with one of the hard-working, regularly-contributing family members who live here year-round. I either leave in tears bitching about how "so-and-so's an asshole and NOW I remember why I left!" or else I get bored and stir-crazy and run off again for a few months with some guy I just met--or this new band I just joined who are going on tour in Canada.

Eventually I'll miss you guys and I'll come back with hugs and kisses and stories for everyone. People occasionally get sick of my bullshit but on some level, most people accept that I'm still family and still welcome here. I think deep down, there's a few who are amused with my antics and secretly root for me to "Give aunt Ruth hell! That grouchy old bag needs to get shaken up once in awhile!"


 

Quote from: navkat on July 03, 2009, 03:04:46 PMI'm feeling like we misunderstood each other...but is there any point to my discussing this? or am I going to get yelled at again and told I've read the wrong books, gone to the wrong schools and discussed this with scholars who are not qualified to draw lines of comparison?

If that's the case, I'll close all dissenting argument, go back to my little hole and be happy to let you be the pd.com authority on the subject hereafter.

If you're going to argue based on wingnut talking points with no historical or factual basis, then yes, it probably is better you shut up now.

Cain,
not going to be guilted into feeling sorry for setting you straight.

Quote from: navkat on July 03, 2009, 04:03:30 PMI think deep down, there's a few who are amused with my antics and secretly root for me to "Give aunt Ruth hell! That grouchy old bag needs to get shaken up once in awhile!"

Oh, was that meant to shake me up?

You might wanna try a little harder.  I'm not feeling especially shaken.  Annoyed, in the way a evolutionary scientist might feel annoyed when confronting rehashed Young Creationist argument #1461, but little else.

Quote from: Cain on July 03, 2009, 07:17:13 PM

Quote from: navkat on July 03, 2009, 04:03:30 PMI think deep down, there's a few who are amused with my antics and secretly root for me to "Give aunt Ruth hell! That grouchy old bag needs to get shaken up once in awhile!"

Oh, was that meant to shake me up?

You might wanna try a little harder.  I'm not feeling especially shaken.  Annoyed, in the way a evolutionary scientist might feel annoyed when confronting rehashed Young Creationist argument #1461, but little else.

No it wasn't.

Asshole.

Oh, you wound me so with your words!

Look, sometimes, when you're uninformed on a subject, your opinion doesn't matter.  I don't make judgement calls on atom smashers and people who haven't studied Fascist ideology shouldn't make presumptions based off ideological screeds.

Now, if you had responded "huh, thats interesting" or "wait, but my sources here say..." then we could have a discussion.  But instead, you tried to guilt me for bringing up facts showing you to be incorrect, and as far as I can see, that means you don't want a discussion at all (and want to imply I am the intolerant elitist asshole, a meme that seems to be more and more common on PD.com these days).

Now, you could still prove me wrong.  But we'd actually have to talk, compare evidence and sources.  Do you want to do that?  Or do you just want to assert your beliefs, then back down when I present a different analysis?

I'm still trying to figure out what part of my first post elicited this response.
I don't see it so apparently I FAIL at that too.

Because it was patently wrong.   To the point they are cliches to anyone who knows the subject in any depth.  So I showed you where it was wrong, by providing dates and events and figures which showed what you asserted in your post to be incorrect, facts you could check for yourself if you didn't believe me.

I'm feeling a need for that smashing your head against a brick wall smiley about now...

Quote from: NavkatI'm still trying to figure out what part of my first post elicited this response.
I don't see it so apparently I FAIL at that too.

Basically. I think your post looked... aggressive. As though you were basically just trying to assert that Cain's original work is wrong, it might not have been what you intended, but it is what it looked like to me.

I found the OP pretty damn impressive. I don't pretend to have read anywhere near as widely on Fascism as Cain has- it's not my field. But, I did touch on Fascism briefly- mostly from a theoretical perspective with little in the way of historical backing to it. I can just echo his point that your first statement- that the definition of Fascism varies from scholar to scholar- is pretty misguided. Fascism as studied politically is characterized by certain elements which make it as distinct as other political ideologies, and they definitely aren't what most would consider liberal values. Racism and sexism are common elements to Fascist thought.

And you haven't actually apologized. I mean. Cain actually took the time to refute your original points with evidence and explanation. You then started going off at him. He's laid his cards on the table, and you've just gotten angry at him for having a wide spread of resources from which to draw evidence for his arguments, when those arguments don't align with yours.

That's how this thread reads to me, anyway.

Cain: 3
navkat: 0

Anyway, I'd rather read about Fascists than dumb slapfights, there are plenty of other threads for you to shit up with your wrongheaded ignorance, navkat.

Thanks peeps.  I'm going to start writing part three in a moment, once I get a particular book, though it may not be up until Sunday, due to joyful family commitments. 

Okay. I'm sorry if that came off as aggressive, Cain. It WAS a really interesting post. I wasn't trying to argue with you, just take initiative and jump in the convo with the product of my own readings on the topic.

Quote from: BADGE OF HONOR on July 04, 2009, 12:13:04 AM
Cain: 3
navkat: 0

Anyway, I'd rather read about Fascists than dumb slapfights, there are plenty of other threads for you to shit up with your wrongheaded ignorance, navkat.

WTF?

I didn't see this before. I don't understand why the hell this has to turn into a huge argument all the time or why you felt the need to get involved in telling me to go fuck myself.

Quotewrongheaded ignorance

Oh please enlighten me. What is rightheaded around here? I didn't realize there was a rightthink or a MA in PolySci prerequisite to being allowed to call yourself discordian and participate here.

It occurs to me that some of you are just unhappy, meanspirited people. I tried to exit the argument gracefully but you couldn't let me do that, right? You felt the need to grab my fucking ankle, beat the ever-living shit out of me and then piss on my face to show domination, right?

I have never been the type of person who has a problem being corrected or admitting when I'm wrong. The response to my posts was recreational overkill.

This whole board has become an unabashed Schadenfreude masturbation-fest.

There are some really awesome people on here whose insight I sorely miss when I've been away too long: Ratatosk, Hunter, ECH, TGRR LMNO, Cramulus (and I know I'm missing a few)--these are guys who have no problem having a sporting, firey debate without feeling compelled to shit in the mouth of anyone who "missed a spot."

There's a difference between dominating an argument on merit or dominating a person in a debate. One makes you awesome and the other makes you an asshole.

Navkat, Cain didn't call  you any names. He presented an educated refutation of your post, with citations, and you called him an asshole. Think about it.

Quote from: Cain on July 03, 2009, 11:09:13 PM
(and want to imply I am the intolerant elitist asshole, a meme that seems to be more and more common on PD.com these days).

I've been thinking about this, and it seems like this usually happens when someone's uninformed opinions are countered with educated refutation. I think that, essentially, everyone wants to share their opinion, even if it's an uneducated, unresearched opinion, and for many of them, being thoroughly proven wrong rather than accepted as "an alternate point of view" feels insulting. I think it's the result of the "everybody's right in their own special way, everybody wins" mentality that was (and probably still is) so popular in schools through the 80's and 90's.

So many people just never learned to separate their ego from their argument, so when you attack the argument or the facts or the source of their information, they feel personally attacked. Then they call you an overeducated elitist; resorting to personal attack because they know they don't have the information to support their opinion. These are people who also have never really learned to think critically; to question what they hear rather than merely believing it. It's a long struggle to break out of that mode of thinking; to doublecheck the things we believe, and cross-reference them rather than forming incomplete opinions based on partial and inaccurate information from removed sources.

Quote from: Nigel on July 05, 2009, 12:41:13 AM

Quote from: Cain on July 03, 2009, 11:09:13 PM
(and want to imply I am the intolerant elitist asshole, a meme that seems to be more and more common on PD.com these days).

I've been thinking about this, and it seems like this usually happens when someone's uninformed opinions are countered with educated refutation. I think that, essentially, everyone wants to share their opinion, even if it's an uneducated, unresearched opinion, and for many of them, being thoroughly proven wrong rather than accepted as "an alternate point of view" feels insulting. I think it's the result of the "everybody's right in their own special way, everybody wins" mentality that was (and probably still is) so popular in schools through the 80's and 90's.

So many people just never learned to separate their ego from their argument, so when you attack the argument or the facts or the source of their information, they feel personally attacked. Then they call you an overeducated elitist; resorting to personal attack because they know they don't have the information to support their opinion. These are people who also have never really learned to think critically; to question what they hear rather than merely believing it. It's a long struggle to break out of that mode of thinking; to doublecheck the things we believe, and cross-reference them rather than forming incomplete opinions based on partial and inaccurate information from removed sources.

:mittens: for general correct motorcycleness

Quote from: Nigel on July 05, 2009, 12:12:00 AM
Navkat, Cain didn't call  you any names. He presented an educated refutation of your post, with citations, and you called him an asshole. Think about it.

That's not why I called him an asshole...or even when.

And I never called anyone an elitist. I  didn't have a problem with being corrected or Cain sharing his knowledge with me, I had a problem with the unwarranted nastiness.

Demo Squid mentioned that my input came off as aggressive which wasn't my intent, but okay. I offered my apologies for that and tried to play nice. I don't see how being called "Seriously deluded" and language like "don't make me laugh" is factual, non-aggressive refutation. I mean, can you put yourself in my shoes and see how that might be taken as an attack?

And then, I responded to the Roaring Biscuit with some silly, good-natured banter and THAT got attacked too. There wasn't any "hidden meanings" in what I was saying. I wasn't aimed AT Cain.  I wasn't trying to be passive aggressive, I was trying to lighten the mood and redirect and cool things down a peg. That's how I am. It's what I do.

And finally: BOH and that whole scoreboard nonsense. WTF is with that, anyway? Did someone else really need to jump in to say "ha ha, you suck navkat."

IDK. It's just lame. I just want to be able to post here and share laughs with people and giggle and act silly and maybe get turned on to some new things/learn some stuff but it's always so competitive. I don't want to be competitive with people on the internet anymore..I guess I've sort of outgrown all that.

I don't know; maybe y'all are so used to people getting all aggro over everything that you expect me to do the same thing and sort of auto-correct for that. *scratches head* It just seems like someone's always the winner and someone's always got to be the bitch in these exchanges. Okay. Can't we get past all that to the part where we start liking each other because "It's better than trying to talk to the mundanes out there who don't get it?"

Quote from: navkat on July 05, 2009, 01:54:11 AM
And then, I responded to the Roaring Biscuit with some silly, good-natured banter and THAT got attacked too. There wasn't any "hidden meanings" in what I was saying. I wasn't aimed AT Cain.  I wasn't trying to be passive aggressive, I was trying to lighten the mood and redirect and cool things down a peg. That's how I am. It's what I do.

Let's look at that, actually.

Quote from: Cain on July 03, 2009, 12:46:37 PM
Claseless society?  Don't make me laugh.  Even ignoring what I said above, the fascist assault on genuine working class movements and support from the upper classes of society because of this, you fail to take into account fascist policies towards Jews, Romany gypsies, homosexuals and Slavs.  All of which were considered subhuman and were butchered because of it.  And women's sufferage?  German fascists thought a woman's place was in the kitchen or making good little Aryan troopers.  Women who actually worked were despised by fascists, who had a highly traditional view of society in that (and many other) respects.  Fascism was only anti aristocracy insofar as aristocrats were traditional conservatives (and allied with them anyway, when it suited their needs) and were anti-capitalist in rhetoric only, with all genuine anti-capitalist fascists either ending up dead or out of positions of influence once fascist parties came to power.

Try reading some actual history books.  You know, the sort written by people who can read German and Italian, and have had access to primary sources from the period as well as later analysis.  The sort of thing historians write, I guess is what I'm saying.

Also, if you think the above described policies are a core part of the Democratic party, then you are seriously deluded.

"Don't make me laugh" points to the idea you presented as true.  Fascists may have sold the "classless society" in their platform, but the joke's on anyone who supported them for it.  "Forward the classless society!  Out of the way, dog!"  Really, if one weren't to laugh, they'd cry.

The "seriously deluded" bit is safely nestled in a conditional statement.  Don't read it as an assumption that you believe the aforesaid.  Don't read it as "you are deluded."

---

Quote from: navkat on July 05, 2009, 01:54:11 AM
IDK. It's just lame. I just want to be able to post here and share laughs with people and giggle and act silly and maybe get turned on to some new things/learn some stuff but it's always so competitive. I don't want to be competitive with people on the internet anymore..I guess I've sort of outgrown all that.

I don't know; maybe y'all are so used to people getting all aggro over everything that you expect me to do the same thing and sort of auto-correct for that. *scratches head* It just seems like someone's always the winner and someone's always got to be the bitch in these exchanges. Okay. Can't we get past all that to the part where we start liking each other because "It's better than trying to talk to the mundanes out there who don't get it?"

"People will act like you expect them to."  Partly, the quote relates to how one perceives things--other players' intentions and exact actions may not matter.  Partly, people play the roles they're given.

Expect less competition.  Trying to have fun, you might try to compete unwittingly.

Quote from: navkat on July 05, 2009, 01:54:11 AM
And finally: BOH and that whole scoreboard nonsense. WTF is with that, anyway? Did someone else really need to jump in to say "ha ha, you suck navkat."

In light of the above quote, you kind of let your preconceptions and random responses set the stage for yourself.  Don't trap yourself.

---

:horrormirth:

There are non-serious threads... you could stick to those, if the heavy ones aren't your cup of tea. I personally like the serious ones, I like good a good online argument, and I hate misinformation, so I applaud when anyone steps up and corrects it. Your posts often come off as aggressive, and your posts in this thread have been unbelievably passive-aggressive ("I don't want to be competitive with people on the internet anymore..I guess I've sort of outgrown all that.") and then when people respond in kind, you turn around and play the victim.

I like a lot of the people on this board quite a bit, but you know what? My world is also filled with people I can touch in the flesh who "get it", and most of them aren't Discordians. It's not like being on a Discordian internet forum is some magic pill that makes everyone have the same ideas and get along...

Quote from: Nigel on July 05, 2009, 02:48:12 AM

and your posts in this thread have been unbelievably passive-aggressive ("I don't want to be competitive with people on the internet anymore..I guess I've sort of outgrown all that.") and then when people respond in kind, you turn around and play the victim.

See? I just covered this base. I mean, there's just nothing I can do if you're going to insist that I'm being passive-aggressive when I'm not.

It just seems to me (and I don't mean THIS in a passive aggressive way either) that people spend a lot of time around here one-upping one another and calling names. That's fine for you, but I'd kindly not like to be part of that particular aspect of this community. I've been there, I'm too tired/bored to spit out snazzy comebacks anymore and I'm over it. I'm not saying "I'm better than you," I'm just jaded or whatever you want to call it and I'd like to be allowed to just be myself without getting into it with people over stupid shit.

And I have no problem with the serious posts either (although, I personally think NOTHING on the webbernet should be too serious for silliness), but if I say something that needs to be corrected just do so and get on with life. I don't understand why we have to dedicate pages and pages of dialogue to putting people in their place. You can correct someone without kicking their teeth in and pissing on the body.

And finally (again: I'm just being honest), it seems like there's ALWAYS a few people on the shitlist around here. I don't understand that. I can understand that sometimes, someone is just so retarded or so irritating or so goddamned arrogant on a regular basis that they really need to be ripped to shreds but here, it just seems like y'all NEVER have a week where someone doesn't need to be bitch-slapped back in line. It's like a big poopie-party around here.

Quote from: yhnmzw on July 05, 2009, 02:45:05 AM

[bunch of stuff]

I appreciate your points, sir. I still think some of that was intentionally meant to be aggressive to put me in my place but you're right: I shouldn't assume it and since everyone else seems to be reading it differently, I guess my radar must be the one that's off. I'll just leave it at that and let it drop in the name of peace.

I think maybe you need to go look up the definition of "Passive-aggressive" if you don't recognize it in your own posts. The passive put-downs you employ are textbook.

Other than that, the only advice I can give you is that if being here makes you unhappy, don't do it.

Quote from: Nigel on July 05, 2009, 08:08:03 AM
I think maybe you need to go look up the definition of "Passive-aggressive" if you don't recognize it in your own posts. The passive put-downs you employ are textbook.

Other than that, the only advice I can give you is that if being here makes you unhappy, don't do it.

No, I know what it means. You're calling them put-downs and I'm saying they're not. If you're going to insist that you know what I intended better than I, then I can't help you. As a matter of fact: I was deliberately careful to be very even-headed and calm when I wrote the post in question.

This shouldn't be a matter of debate at all. You don't get to school me on what was going on inside my own head too...regardless of what you think is "textbook."

The fact that you don't know you're being passive-aggressive doesn't make it less so. Barbed statements like the ones you make ARE passive-aggressive, whether you're doing it consciously or not.

"I don't want to be competitive with people on the internet anymore..I guess I've sort of outgrown all that." IS a passive-aggressive comment. Telling us it's not doesn't make it stop being one. I could go through and harvest some more passive-aggressive comments from your posts in this thread, if you'd like.

What you've been pulling here is the classic "I don't like this place, and it's not me, it's all of you" shtick. The thing is, though, that if you decide that everyone in a place sucks or that you've outgrown it, you can either move on and find something else to do with your time, or you can stay and continue to find it miserable. If you do the latter, odds are good that the problem doesn't lie with everyone else, but with you, because staying somewhere that makes you unhappy is unhealthy behavior.

You talk a lot about feeling alienated from people IRL, not fitting in, not being able to find like-minded people. I'd like to propose the possibility, for your consideration, that it is not everyone else in your world who is the issue, but that you may have some communication issues that make it difficult for you to relate to people. I'm certainly seeing it here, and with the amount that you complain about having problems relating to people IRL I would not be surprised if that was an issue for you in face-to-face communication as well; especially the tendency to take no responsibility for communication gone awry, and to blame everyone else for your estrangement.

Maybe just something to look into.

Quote from: Nigel on July 05, 2009, 04:43:26 PM
The fact that you don't know you're being passive-aggressive doesn't make it less so. Barbed statements like the ones you make ARE passive-aggressive, whether you're doing it consciously or not.

"I don't want to be competitive with people on the internet anymore..I guess I've sort of outgrown all that." IS a passive-aggressive comment. Telling us it's not doesn't make it stop being one. I could go through and harvest some more passive-aggressive comments from your posts in this thread, if you'd like.

No. You don't get to tell me what I was thinking in my head. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but that's is all. You are also free to psychoanalyze me all you want but you don't get the final say on my intent. Period.

Quote
You talk a lot about feeling alienated from people IRL, not fitting in, not being able to find like-minded people. I'd like to propose the possibility, for your consideration, that it is not everyone else in your world who is the issue, but that you may have some communication issues that make it difficult for you to relate to people. I'm certainly seeing it here, and with the amount that you complain about having problems relating to people IRL I would not be surprised if that was an issue for you in face-to-face communication as well; especially the tendency to take no responsibility for communication gone awry, and to blame everyone else for your estrangement.

Let's put this into context, shall we? I live in Mobile, Alabama.
I am non-religious, work from home and all of my friends live in either New York or New Orleans.

The statements I made (in other threads, btw) pertain to my travels online and have mainly to do with the issues about which I am concerned. I find a definite disconnect between where I stand politically, where I stand socially and how I'm oriented as a person and a "discordian," (a term, btw, that no one in my life seems to have even heard of).

I get lonely. I get hungry for meatier conversation with people who understand wtf I'm talking about. I used to find relief here.

Did you really not comprehend what I meant by that? I'm asking because I think it's pretty silly that I should have to explain it in such detailed terms. I shouldn't have to. There should be a basic level of understanding and assumption of good will and good intent that people offer each other at the most basic level. When you say something: I assume it's coming from an honest place unless I have reason to believe otherwise. We don't go around making people prove credibility for their own thought-processes.

I'm asking kindly for people to back up off me. I'm not in on the game, okay? That's it. I want to come here; discuss things I want to discuss, be nice to people, joke around a little bit and that's it. If y'all want to do the one-upmanship thing with each other, that's fine. I'm NOT judging you. I'm NOT by mentioning my having "outgrown it" implying that I think I'm superior to you in any way, okay? You're entitled to your fun in any colour you choose. I believe that, I stand by it and encourage that. I'm just politely asking for an "opt-out" function so I can come here and speak freely without unintentionally finding myself balls-deep in a pd.com infraction of the rules. Talk to me like a cabbage. Assume that I haven't read the same books as you--because I probably haven't. Dismiss me as an idiot if you want--plenty of people do that and I'm fine with that.

And you're absolutely right about one thing: If I can't come here and say what I want uncensored, without ending up with someone's dick in my ear and someone else holding up a scorecard it's probably unhealthy for me to keep attempting this.

I showed up this time in earnest: really trying to engage in conversation with the best of intentions. I was careful not to say anything y'all might find immediately irritating--like playing the "navkat the r4v0r z0mg lol" troll character (another thing I've "outgrown") or making jokes about my tits or basically ANYTHING that would make anyone uncomfortable. I offered the same respect and concern for people's feelings that I wanted in return: I believe you get out only what you put in.

I don't know what else to say. I think I've effectively cleared this up. I'm sure there's like: a million additional things you could harvest as "proof" of what was going on inside my unconscious mind. But I don't think that's valid or fair. We don't go around judging people by what we think feel deep-down where they can't see it--only by the work they do to take the right actions in treating us with respect.

I've done that. You raised questions about what I meant by things I said and I answered them. That should be the end of it.

I didn't tell you what was going on in your head. I told you that what you said was passive-aggressive, whether you intended it to be or not. Ask your therapist. Ask anyone with a grasp of language.

Navkat, people react badly to you because you come off as aggressive, passive-aggressive, abrasively opinionated, and underinformed. If you really think you should be able to state your underinformed opinion as categorical fact in an aggressive maner without being challenged, you are not only in the wrong place here, but most likely in the wrong place anywhere you go, because unless you are able to find some sycophants who will eat up your ignorance with gratitude, most people won't put up with it.

I know some wonderful people from Mobile, BTW. I doubt you'd get along with them, though.

I think I just vomited. But it was vomit going into me and through my eyes.
Heres to a great first post. would be great to see some more discussion of it.

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 02:27:51 AM
I didn't tell you what was going on in your head. I told you that what you said was passive-aggressive, whether you intended it to be or not. Ask your therapist. Ask anyone with a grasp of language.

Um, what?

Quote
I know some wonderful people from Mobile, BTW. I doubt you'd get along with them, though.

IRONY.

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 02:51:08 AM

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 02:27:51 AM
I didn't tell you what was going on in your head. I told you that what you said was passive-aggressive, whether you intended it to be or not. Ask your therapist. Ask anyone with a grasp of language.

Um, what?

It's a shame if you're really too stupid to parse that statement... however, that is increasingly seeming to be the case.

Quote

Quote
I know some wonderful people from Mobile, BTW. I doubt you'd get along with them, though.

IRONY.

Nope. Not at all. You're just apparently too dense to understand, so I will spell it out for you; the reason you cannot find people to befriend and relate to is not the fault of your location, it is the fault of your personality. There are awesome people EVERYWHERE. My impression is that they most likely would not like you, because you, young lady, are an abrasive twit.

If you're going to be abrasive, it works in your favor to not be a twit.

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 03:34:55 AM

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 02:51:08 AM

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 02:27:51 AM
I didn't tell you what was going on in your head. I told you that what you said was passive-aggressive, whether you intended it to be or not. Ask your therapist. Ask anyone with a grasp of language.

Um, what?

It's a shame if you're really too stupid to parse that statement... however, that is increasingly seeming to be the case.

Quote

Quote
I know some wonderful people from Mobile, BTW. I doubt you'd get along with them, though.

IRONY.

Nope. Not at all. You're just apparently too dense to understand, so I will spell it out for you; the reason you cannot find people to befriend and relate to is not the fault of your location, it is the fault of your personality. There are awesome people EVERYWHERE. My impression is that they most likely would not like you, because you, young lady, are an abrasive twit.

If you're going to be abrasive, it works in your favor to not be a twit.

Just helping me out, right? A little friendly advice?

No offense taken.

No, not really friendly. More like, frustrated and fed up.

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 03:48:05 AM
No, not really friendly. More like, frustrated and fed up.

Okay, so we can be done analyzing me now, right?

It's not an analysis of you. Nigel is making observations about your posting behavior. Analysis would probably involve trying to understand the underlying motive(s) for your behavior. Nobody cares about those.

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 02:51:08 AM

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 02:27:51 AM
I didn't tell you what was going on in your head. I told you that what you said was passive-aggressive, whether you intended it to be or not. Ask your therapist. Ask anyone with a grasp of language.

Um, what?

hurr

Quote from: Cainad on July 06, 2009, 05:19:45 AM
It's not an analysis of you. Nigel is making observations about your posting behavior. Analysis would probably involve trying to understand the underlying motive(s) for your behavior. Nobody cares about those.

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 02:51:08 AM

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 02:27:51 AM
I didn't tell you what was going on in your head. I told you that what you said was passive-aggressive, whether you intended it to be or not. Ask your therapist. Ask anyone with a grasp of language.

Um, what?

hurr

Doesn't passive agressiveness require aggression and therefore: intent?  If I say "I've outgrown a, b and c" and I mean exactly that, if someone else decides to take that as a thinly-veiled attack anyway, that's not my problem.

I'm telling you I did not intend that as a back-handed insult and she's telling me I did whether I realize it or not. I beg pardon, but I don't think that's her place to say.

Also: "coming off as abrasive" and veiled aggression are two separate things entirely. It's absolutely true that I unintentionally come off as abrasive sometimes. I catch it when I can and apologize when I'm wrong. Sometimes I just have to eat my foot and deal with the consequences. As do we all.

Now, we can go on for another two pages nitpicking my words and looking for flaws to prove what she thinks I meant, or we can accept my explanation, believe me when I say I meant it in earnest, and move on.

I choose b please.

Thank you.

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 05:47:51 AM

Quote from: Cainad on July 06, 2009, 05:19:45 AM
It's not an analysis of you. Nigel is making observations about your posting behavior. Analysis would probably involve trying to understand the underlying motive(s) for your behavior. Nobody cares about those.

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 02:51:08 AM

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 02:27:51 AM
I didn't tell you what was going on in your head. I told you that what you said was passive-aggressive, whether you intended it to be or not. Ask your therapist. Ask anyone with a grasp of language.

Um, what?

hurr

Doesn't passive agressiveness require aggression and therefore: intent?  If I say "I've outgrown a, b and c" and I mean exactly that, if someone else decides to take that as a thinly-veiled attack anyway, that's not my problem.

I'm telling you I did not intend that as a back-handed insult and she's telling me I did whether I realize it or not. I beg pardon, but I don't think that's her place to say.

Also: "coming off as abrasive" and veiled aggression are two separate things entirely. It's absolutely true that I unintentionally come off as abrasive sometimes. I catch it when I can and apologize when I'm wrong. Sometimes I just have to eat my foot and deal with the consequences. As do we all.

Now, we can go on for another two pages nitpicking my words and looking for flaws to prove what she thinks I meant, or we can accept my explanation, believe me when I say I meant it in earnest, and move on.

I choose b please.

Thank you.

No.

The passive-aggressiveness is part of the reason why you come off as abrasive.

Wow. Just wow.

Let me get this straight: If Cain says "If you think __ you are seriously deluded" Or
(something to the effect of) "Why don't you read some REAL history books instead of reciting right-wing talking points"
and I feel a little insulted by that, that's me taking it the wrong way when he's trying to educate me.

When Nigel superfluously throws out the uncalled for statement: "I have some friends in Mobile, but I doubt they'd like you." That's just her making observations.

But when I say "I've outgrown the desire to play the internet one-upmanship game," and someone gets all butthurt over it and I'm kind enough to explain profusely that "no, I really did mean that in earnest. I don't think it makes me superior, I'm just personally bored with it," and she refuses to believe that I meant it at face-value, that's aggression.

Okay, got it.

 :lulz:   you are on passive aggressive boulevard it's a one way street..
(http://www.tjtaylor.net/Images/Publicity/sign-one-way-street.jpg)

Quote from: fomenter on July 06, 2009, 06:18:40 AM
:lulz:   you are on passive aggressive boulevard it's a one way street..
(http://www.tjtaylor.net/Images/Publicity/sign-one-way-street.jpg)

:whack: ;)

Quotebut is there any point to my discussing this? or am I going to get yelled at again and told I've read the wrong books, gone to the wrong schools and discussed this with scholars who are not qualified to draw lines of comparison?

If that's the case, I'll close all dissenting argument, go back to my little hole and be happy to let you be the pd.com authority on the subject hereafter.

Navkat, you've been digging yourself into a deeper hole since you're second post, which I have been kind enough to put in a little quote box. YOU turned it from a discussion into an argument in this one post. You have proceeded to either insult or argue with anyone who has stated something that you didn't believe. This causes a downward spiral where people start to piss on you right back, and then your sliding down a slippery one-way street to oblivion.

In other words, you started it.

Quote from: rubickspoop on July 06, 2009, 10:36:05 AM

you started it.

Now there's the first goddamned thing that makes sense in this thread since Cain's original post.

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 06:12:04 AM
Wow. Just wow.

Let me get this straight: If Cain says "If you think __ you are seriously deluded" Or
(something to the effect of) "Why don't you read some REAL history books instead of reciting right-wing talking points"
and I feel a little insulted by that, that's me taking it the wrong way when he's trying to educate me.

Yes, actually, in this context.

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 06:12:04 AM
But when I say "I've outgrown the desire to play the internet one-upmanship game," and someone gets all butthurt over it and I'm kind enough to explain profusely that "no, I really did mean that in earnest. I don't think it makes me superior, I'm just personally bored with it," and she refuses to believe that I meant it at face-value, that's aggression.

Well, yes, she is being aggressive. Or do you want to re-phrase that sentence?

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 06:12:04 AM

When Nigel superfluously throws out the uncalled for statement: "I have some friends in Mobile, but I doubt they'd like you." That's just her making observations.

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 02:27:51 AM
I know some wonderful people from Mobile, BTW. I doubt you'd get along with them, though.

Reading comprehension issues, maybe? Perhaps everything is turning into something else inside your head, and that's why you respond the way you do? You did it with what Cain said, too:

Quote from: Cain on July 03, 2009, 12:46:37 PM
Try reading some actual history books.  You know, the sort written by people who can read German and Italian, and have had access to primary sources from the period as well as later analysis.  The sort of thing historians write, I guess is what I'm saying.

Also, if you think the above described policies are a core part of the Democratic party, then you are seriously deluded.

That was pretty strongly worded, but it was still an attack of the ideas you were presenting, and not of your personhood.

Quote
But when I say "I've outgrown the desire to play the internet one-upmanship game," and someone gets all butthurt over it and I'm kind enough to explain profusely that "no, I really did mean that in earnest. I don't think it makes me superior, I'm just personally bored with it," and she refuses to believe that I meant it at face-value, that's aggression.

Okay, got it.

Sigh. Full breakdown: When you say

Quote from: navkat on July 05, 2009, 01:54:11 AM
I just want to be able to post here and share laughs with people and giggle and act silly and maybe get turned on to some new things/learn some stuff but it's always so competitive. I don't want to be competitive with people on the internet anymore..I guess I've sort of outgrown all that.

I don't know; maybe y'all are so used to people getting all aggro over everything that you expect me to do the same thing and sort of auto-correct for that.

That is PASSIVE wording that conveys a NEGATIVE about the people here who aren't you. "I guess I've sort of ouutgrown all that" directly imlies that it is juvenile behavior, and that those of us who have (implied in your statement) not yet "outgrown" it are  not as mature as you are. Classic passive-aggressive statement, as is "maybe y'all are so used to people getting all aggro over everything". It's chock-full of passive implication, whether you consciously realize that or not. The fact that you DON'T consciously realize it acyually makes you harder to communicate with.

Way to put in effort, Nigel. All I have the energy for is making fun of a dangling modifier.

I wonder if you can spot what makes these notes passive-aggressive: http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 04:14:08 PM
I wonder if you can spot what makes these notes passive-aggressive: http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/

Holy crap I am reading the FUCK out of this blog. These are hilarious!

Quote from: Cainad on July 06, 2009, 04:06:13 PM
Way to put in effort, Nigel. All I have the energy for is making fun of a dangling modifier.

Yeah, I think I'm about to give up, though.  :sad:

Quote from: Cainad on July 06, 2009, 04:36:08 PM

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 04:14:08 PM
I wonder if you can spot what makes these notes passive-aggressive: http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/

Holy crap I am reading the FUCK out of this blog. These are hilarious!

I know! They make me lol.

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 04:51:01 PM

Quote from: Cainad on July 06, 2009, 04:06:13 PM
Way to put in effort, Nigel. All I have the energy for is making fun of a dangling modifier.

Yeah, I think I'm about to give up, though.  :sad:

Nitpick grammar and formatting instead. It's easy and fun.

Here, like this:

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 05:47:51 AM
Doesn't passive agressiveness require aggression and therefore: intent?  If I say "I've outgrown a, b and c" and I mean exactly that, if someone else decides to take that as a thinly-veiled attack anyway, that's not my problem.

I'm telling you I did not intend that as a back-handed insult and she's telling me I did whether I realize it or not. I beg pardon, but I don't think that's her place to say.

Also: "coming off as abrasive" and veiled aggression are two separate things entirely. It's absolutely true that I unintentionally come off as abrasive sometimes. I catch it when I can and apologize when I'm wrong. Sometimes I just have to eat my foot and deal with the consequences. As do we all.

Now, we can go on for another two pages nitpicking my words and looking for flaws to prove what she thinks I meant, or we can accept my explanation, believe me when I say I meant it in earnest, and move on.

I choose b please.

Thank you.

*clears throat* You use too many italics. Some of them don't make much sense.





See? Easiest thing in the world, and the feeling of smugness can last for up to five minutes on a good day.

I almost posted that link but I didn't think it would make a difference.
But yeah: read those and THEN tell me how my saying I've outgrown something equates to "This is why my country runs the world and yours does not."

I did not say "This is why I'm [something superior] and you are not." I even explained that I don't think competing in battles of the wits makes y'all inferior somehow...just that I'm over it. I'm jaded. whatever you want to call it. I've outgrown all that.

In order for it to be passive aggressive it needs to imply some sort of superiority or some way that I'm positioning myself over you. I'm not doing that. I've outgrown the competition. I'm saying I've outgrown it because it used to be fun before but now it is not. I've outgrown enjoyment for it like I've outgrown interest in my satellite radio. I've outgrown laughing at HomestarRunner. I've outgrown it. It doesn't suit me anymore.

If you choose to be insulted by that, I can't do anything about it. It's still the truth. I spoke my mind and I meant it.

Quote from: Nigel on July 06, 2009, 04:02:49 PM

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 06:12:04 AM


I don't know; maybe y'all are so used to people getting all aggro over everything that you expect me to do the same thing and sort of auto-correct for that.

That is PASSIVE wording that conveys a NEGATIVE about the people here who aren't you. "I guess I've sort of ouutgrown all that" directly imlies that it is juvenile behavior, and that those of us who have (implied in your statement) not yet "outgrown" it are  not as mature as you are. Classic passive-aggressive statement, as is "maybe y'all are so used to people getting all aggro over everything". It's chock-full of passive implication, whether you consciously realize that or not. The fact that you DON'T consciously realize it acyually makes you harder to communicate with.

Okay, I understand where the confusion is. Let me explain:
When I say you guys are used to people getting aggro over shit, I mean dumbshits who come in here, try to compete and then when they lose the game, they start getting downright nasty. Like wade. Or who was that other guy? The one who made threats of physical violence against Roger? Like that.

I figured since I don't stick around for very long periods, you guys might be expecting me to behave in that category. I'm telling you that's not me. I'm telling you I'd rather be nice and if I disagree with you, I'll stick to my guns, but I will not resort to personal attacks.

I realize fully that I haven't exactly given you guys a good chance to get to know me. I pop on here, enjoy it for awhile and then get busy or get annoyed by something and pop off for awhile.  All I'm asking is if you think I'm being mean, I probably truly don't mean it that way. I'm asking you to not nail me to the wall for it, just ask me.

I think we're saying the same thing here: that I tend to come off as abrasive when I'm not trying to convey that to but I think where the confusion is is intent. You think I have this ill-will when I'm saying the things I'm saying and I really don't. To put it simply: I really am that clueless.

Or you could try to learn from it when people misunderstand you and explain why, and try to adapt your behavior to make it less adversarial.

In any exchange, you share responsibility for communication. If you don't want to try to improve your ability to communicate, I see no point in trying to talk to you at all. That goes for anyone.

Would you fucking fuckers stop fucking around with your fucking feelings getting fucking hurt, and get back to the fucking point?

Now, where were we?

Quote from: Cain on July 03, 2009, 12:46:37 PM
1.  Not so much as you would think.  The vast majority of historians who specialize in the period agree that Fascism was anti-liberalism, anti-conservatism and anti-Communist, nationalist, revolutionary, racist, sexist and expansionist.  The debate mostly comes from political hacks with partisan agendas to pursue (cf, Jonah Goldberg).  Ironically, many of those who claim fascism as a left wing phenomenon claim left-right distinctions are useless just before claiming this



3.  You're missing massive amounts of context here.  After WWI, there was a massive influx of Italian immigration and many of these Italians considered themselves liberal or socialist in origin.  They actually didn't care much for Mussolini and considered him an autocrat who was undermining the Italian democracy and rule of law.  However, immigration laws in the 20s were passed to limit the amount of Italian immigration.  This law suggested that Italian-Americans were an unwanted minority group, and caused many of them to turn to Fascist Italian nationalism as a source of ethnic pride and camaraderie.

Also, within Italy, Fascists deliberately targeted the left on numerous occasions. The talented Marxist philosopher and leader of the Italian Communist party, Antonio Gramsci, was arrested and kept in a small dirty cell, which caused his health to suffer until he died, at the age of 46.  In the north, fascism portrayed itself as the alternative to workers' revolution; in the south, fascist armed gangs broke the back of  the peasants' campaign for land.  In the summer of 1922, fascist gangs seized the city halls in Milan and Livorno and occupied the Genoa docks in order to break the unions. There were waves of repression against trade unionists in 1921, 1923 and 1924. In 1925, all remaining independent trade unions were closed down. Wage rates were decided by the company and workers lost any right of representation. Between 1927 and 1932, according to official statistics, nominal wages were cut by 50 per cent. In 1935, the government placed all workers connected directly or indirectly with war production under military discipline. All other workers were subject to the decisions of the Labour Court. Strikers were punished with imprisonment.

The class which benefited most from fascist rule was the upper class, especially nobles and business owners. They gained from the privatisation of the insurance sector, the telephone service, the match monopoly and the municipal power companies. The capital tax was abolished, as was inheritance tax, the tax on war profits and the taxes on managers and directors.  Mussolini received large sums of money from the Milan business community and also from the great landowners in 1919, when he founded his party. 

There were official attacks on Jews from 1934 and the state adopted Nazi-style race laws in 1938. Between 8,500 and 15,000 Italian Jews died in the Holocaust.  From 1930, the regime had plans to expand its empire in Ethiopia and Tunisia. These plans were justified in explicitly racist language. Blacks and Arabs were considered non-human. The war in Abyssinia from October 1935 was defended using racism – it was claimed that the Ethiopians were incapable of ruling themselves. The war was also conducted in a racist way: because the fascist state considered that the indigenous people were less than human, it butchered them with poison gas like animals.

Doesn't sound like a very left wing or liberal program to me.  Similar happened in Nazi Germany too, though right now I don't have the time to grab the exact dates and figures.  Believe me though, when I say I know this subject inside out.

4.  Wrong.  Hitler tolerated religion insofar as it did not overshadow him.  He didn't like Christianity much despite his support among certain Protestants (not to mention the cowardice of the Catholic Party in standing up to him) but he tolerated Nazi forays into Odinism and occult belief systems.  Mussolini famously allied himself with the Vatican when he signed the Lateran Treaty, giving them full sovereignty and recognition as an independent nation.  Oh and big lump sums of money.  In return, the Vatican kept its mouth shut and didn't get involved in Italian politics, ever.

Claseless society?  Don't make me laugh.  Even ignoring what I said above, the fascist assault on genuine working class movements and support from the upper classes of society because of this, you fail to take into account fascist policies towards Jews, Romany gypsies, homosexuals and Slavs.  All of which were considered subhuman and were butchered because of it.  And women's sufferage?  German fascists thought a woman's place was in the kitchen or making good little Aryan troopers.  Women who actually worked were despised by fascists, who had a highly traditional view of society in that (and many other) respects.  Fascism was only anti aristocracy insofar as aristocrats were traditional conservatives (and allied with them anyway, when it suited their needs) and were anti-capitalist in rhetoric only, with all genuine anti-capitalist fascists either ending up dead or out of positions of influence once fascist parties came to power.

Ok.  Does anyone have anything to say about this post?

Man's got a point.

I'd like to say that I'd like Cain to recommend some more books that I can buy or to which the DL links are not broken.

EDIT: I mean I'd like cain to recommend books that specifically address/counter the "Fascism is derived from liberal ideals" point so I can read the opposing side.

Wilhelm Reich's "The Mass Psychology of Facism" makes a very good case that Facism did not arise because of Marxism, but it arose when the Marxist revolution failed in the 1930s.

Quote from: LMNO on July 06, 2009, 06:21:11 PM
Wilhelm Reich's "The Mass Psychology of Facism" makes a very good case that Facism did not arise because of Marxism, but it arose when the Marxist revolution failed in the 1930s.

It's going on the list. I will not try to argue this with you until I've read that book.

Dave Renton's Fascism: Theory and Practice
Nigel Copsey's Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy
Peter Davis and Derek Lynch's Routledge Companion to Fascism and the Far Right
Alexander J. De Grand's Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: The 'fascist' style of rule (2nd edition)
Lorna Waddington's Hitler's Crusade: Bolshevism and The Myth of the International Jewish Conspiracy
Cyprian P. Blamires et al's World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia
Philip Morgan's Fascism in Europe 1919-1945
David Neiwert's blog, Orcinus http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/

Some of the above texts might be available on http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks but its very possible the links will have expired.

Quote from: LMNO on July 06, 2009, 06:21:11 PM
Wilhelm Reich's "The Mass Psychology of Facism" makes a very good case that Facism did not arise because of Marxism, but it arose when the Marxist revolution failed in the 1930s.

Slavoj Zizek also made this case several times, going as far as to say that every successful Fascist revolution was a sign of a failed Communist revolution.

Which ties back into my whole point that fascism is a club that comes out to beat down on the revolutionary left when everything else fails (see the introductionary piece and next one for more on that).

I also thought it was interesting that Reich correctly identified that the Soviet Union was no longer a communist state back in 1935.

Well, that varies on your definition.  I mean, if you want to focus on the Young Marx, then you can dismiss pretty much every Communist Party in the world, which is normally Marxist-Leninist, Stalinist or Maoist.  It very much turns into a heresy/true believer thing after a while, which is not helped by Marx's own prodigious output.  The work which has built from Marx over a century and a half makes that even worse.

Noticing things was seriously wrong, from the outside, is pretty impressive though.

I'm going to read the Reich book and if you could pick the best two or three off your list for me to start with, the ones where if you HAD to make your case...burning building, all that stuff?

Renton's, World Fascism and Orcinus.

Also: history aside, how do you define a nation whose Progressive ideals carries them into a state where (successful and efficient or not) many aspects of people's lives are governed by a system of punitive taxation or outright legislation that makes "unhealthy" choices either prohibitively expensive or prohibited altogether?

I'm not arguing, I'd just like to know what your side is. Is that not Totalitarianism? Is not Totalitarianism a sort of Fascist state?

I'd call that a "stupid electorate", but that's just me.

Fascism is a form of totalitarianism, but totalitarianism is not always fascism.

Small diagram

                              Totalitarianism
                              /         |         \
                   Communism   Nazism     Phalangism

All of them are (arguably) totalitarian, but not a single one has a monopoly on the term.  I also say arguably because within both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, interest group-based social models work better, and I have read a good case for decentralized authoritarianism in China.

Given progressive is usually a name for Third Way politics (a mix between social democracy and neoliberalism) it would be very hard to envision a Progressive Totalitarian state.  It would have to collapse into something like Communism or like Fascism to make that transition, since becoming totalitarian (in terms of state terror, a controlled mass media, single party etc) would involve massive violation of their stated beliefs.

Quote from: LMNO on July 06, 2009, 06:41:06 PM
I also thought it was interesting that Reich correctly identified that the Soviet Union was no longer a communist state back in 1935.

I also found this interesting, in an interview I was reading of Zizek's:

QuoteIt was typical in philosophy after World War II to evoke Nazism and the Holocaust as the most radical evil. You cannot comprehend it with any rational strategy. The idea is also that the experience of the Holocaust is something which undermines the entire traditional philosophy, which was basically the divine regulation, the idea that even if things appear thwarted, failed, and so on, ultimately, in some kind of rational totality, all of these tragedies are relativized as part of a harmonious project. It can be a divine plan; it can also be the development of humanity or whatever. The idea is that the Holocaust cannot be rationalized philosophically here.

Of course, I think that the Holocaust was horrific (my god, it is gross to even have to say that), but for me, Stalinism was even a greater philosophical problem than Nazism. For example, there is a basic difference between Stalinist and Nazi victim status, from a simple phenomenological approach. Under Nazism, if you were a Jew, you were simply killed, no questions asked, you had nothing to prove. You are guilty for who you are, you are a Jew, you are killed, that's it. Under Stalinism, of course, most [victims] were on trial for false accusations; most of them were not traitors. Nonetheless, there is one interesting feature: that they were tortured or through some kind of blackmail forced to confess to being traitors.

BLVR: So your line of questioning is of the functioning of the system?

SŽ: Yes. Why this strange need to make them confess? And why the total absence of this in Fascism? In Fascism, if you were a Jew, you were simply killed. Nobody had the idea of arresting Jews and torturing them to confess the Jewish plot. Because in Fascism, you are guilty for your whole being. The very fact that you had to confess makes Stalinism paradoxical and perverse. The idea is that, in a strange way, it admits that you are still a free human being, you had a choice. You are guilty, you have to confess. This does not make Stalinism cause any less suffering; nonetheless, this pure quarrel of radical objectivization, "You are a Jew, you are guilty for who you are," was absent in Stalinism. In a totally perverted, thwarted, and twisted way, some margin of human freedom was acknowledged under Stalin. So the result is that in Stalinism, everybody was potentially a victim in a totally contingent way.

BLVR: So your interest is not to forget Nazism, but to reexamine Stalinism.

SŽ: To put it in simplistic terms, Fascism is relatively easy to explain. It is a reactionary phenomenon. Nazism was some bad guys having some bad ideas and unfortunately succeeding in realizing them. In Stalinism the tragedy is that its origin is some kind of radical emancipatory project. In the origins you had a kind of workers' uprising; the true enigma is how this project of emancipation went so wrong. This is a much greater enigma. The most representative orientation of Marxism in the twentieth century—critical theory of the Frankfurt school—obsessed over Fascism, anti-Semitism, and so on, and simply ignored the topic of Stalinism. Sure, there are a couple of small books, but there is no systematic theory of what Stalinism is. So for me, the key phenomenon to be accounted for in the twentieth century is Stalinism. Because again, Fascism is simple, conservative reaction going wrong. The true enigma is why Stalinism or communism went wrong.

BLVR: Any conclusions?

SŽ: It is very difficult; I am still working on it. My conclusions are not some kind of conservative or liberal vision according to which Stalinism should be pointed out as kind of a logical demonstration of any project of our so-called post-political era: the idea that the time for projects is over, all we can do is accept capitalist world-market economy, globalism, and so on. Today, whenever somebody tries to risk something politically, you immediately get, "Oh, didn't you learn the lesson from history, this will end up in Holocaust." This is the eternal topic of modern liberal-conservative skeptics, that the lesson of the twentieth century is that every radical attempt at social change ends up in mass murder. Their idea is a return to pragmatism, "Let's strictly distinguish politics from ethics, politics should be limited, pragmatic, only ethics can be absolute." What I aim at in my rethinking of all of these problems is precisely not to draw this conclusion.

I'd also like to state, for the record, that I got about 4 hours sleep last night, got up at 8am and its now 7pm in the evening.  If I am making mistakes, then that is why.

I will correct tomorrow.

Quote from: LMNO on July 06, 2009, 06:56:23 PM
I'd call that a "stupid electorate", but that's just me.

Well okay, since I did meant that as a consideration of fears of that happening here, let me explain:
The basis for the fear is a growing feeling of powerlessness and "Us vs Them" in our present government structure.

It seems (to me) that there is a growing trend of The People being "sold" on Legislative solutions to problems with
A. little regard to the big picture
B. too much "bloatware" contained in the actual legislation put in place to appease the representatives/members of government voting on it to be effective at all
C. such legislation only serves (intentional or not) to restrict the private sector and create more of a "market" for government bureaucracy to handle the new rules.

These pieces of legislation-once sold and passed-are usually damned-near impossible to repeal--even once the sales pitch wears off and buyer's remourse sets in, it's basically an uphill battle to wind back the clock because so many new departments, so many paycheques rely on them staying precisely where they are (Patriot act and Drug war, I'm looking at you).

This had led to more than a few of us having nothing but suspicion for any charismatic "Warshington-type" who shows up with a smile on his face and huge stack of "solutions" to our problems. This includes Ron Paul. This includes Obama and McCain and Bob Barr and basically anyone else who's doesn't have the balls to stand up and say "we're all full of shit but I got the majority of people in the House to sign this piece of paper swearing to outright abolish x, y, and z that isn't working and we don't give a good goddamn WHO we have to lay off."

Can you see why the tinfoil habberdashery somewhat?

I'm making mistakes too. I'm on chronic pain Rx, bear with me.

I think it should be noted, however, that the so-called "free market" solutions have increased wage disparity and made the social/economic structure extremely fragile and vulnerable. 

QuoteUnder Nazism, if you were a Jew, you were simply killed, no questions asked, you had nothing to prove. You are guilty for who you are, you are a Jew, you are killed, that's it. Under Stalinism, of course, most [victims] were on trial for false accusations; most of them were not traitors. Nonetheless, there is one interesting feature: that they were tortured or through some kind of blackmail forced to confess to being traitors.

Well, thats true for the Jews, but not for all of the groups that Hitler's Germany persecuted. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, were offered chances again, and again, to renounce their faith and gain their freedom. Same for soviets they 'found'. I think Stalin was more obvious in his breadth than Hitler, simply because the anti-Semite aspects of the holocaust were so extreme (6,000,000 Jews vs 20,000 JW's is a huge gap). 'Dissidents' of the Nazi state were treated just as dissidents in the USSR, false accusations and all.

That is, it seems to me that Nazi Germany was very much like Stalin's USSR... except they had the additional horror of the indiscriminate murder of millions of additional people based solely on race.

Zizek seems to focus on the Jewish situation to the exclusion of the other groups the Nazis went after. At least in the context of that excerpt...

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 07:15:32 PM

Quote from: LMNO on July 06, 2009, 06:56:23 PM
I'd call that a "stupid electorate", but that's just me.

Well okay, since I did meant that as a consideration of fears of that happening here, let me explain:
The basis for the fear is a growing feeling of powerlessness and "Us vs Them" in our present government structure.

It seems (to me) that there is a growing trend of The People being "sold" on Legislative solutions to problems with
A. little regard to the big picture
B. too much "bloatware" contained in the actual legislation put in place to appease the representatives/members of government voting on it to be effective at all
C. such legislation only serves (intentional or not) to restrict the private sector and create more of a "market" for government bureaucracy to handle the new rules.

These pieces of legislation-once sold and passed-are usually damned-near impossible to repeal--even once the sales pitch wears off and buyer's remourse sets in, it's basically an uphill battle to wind back the clock because so many new departments, so many paycheques rely on them staying precisely where they are (Patriot act and Drug war, I'm looking at you).

This had led to more than a few of us having nothing but suspicion for any charismatic "Warshington-type" who shows up with a smile on his face and huge stack of "solutions" to our problems. This includes Ron Paul. This includes Obama and McCain and Bob Barr and basically anyone else who's doesn't have the balls to stand up and say "we're all full of shit but I got the majority of people in the House to sign this piece of paper swearing to outright abolish x, y, and z that isn't working and we don't give a good goddamn WHO we have to lay off."

Can you see why the tinfoil habberdashery somewhat?

The problem I see here is that we're not dealing strictly with a Progressive or Conservative system. We're dealing with a nation that changes its direction every four to eight years... and a group of citizens that do not agree on the definitions of progressive and conservative, let alone any implementation of one or the other.

Quote from: LMNO on July 06, 2009, 07:22:57 PM
I think it should be noted, however, that the so-called "free market" solutions have increased wage disparity and made the social/economic structure extremely fragile and vulnerable. 

Of course, half-implemented anything is gonna suck. We can examine the state of welfare in thge 80's to see Progressive ideals fucking up as badly as Conservative ones ;-)

Quote from: LMNO on July 06, 2009, 07:22:57 PM
I think it should be noted, however, that the so-called "free market" solutions have increased wage disparity and made the social/economic structure extremely fragile and vulnerable. 

This is true. I stand somewhere off to the left on some of these issues.

The far-right line of thinking is "let it all free and it'll even out. Increasing wages will only make things more expensive when overhead is passed onto the consumer because companies still owe x, y and z to their shareholders so raising wages/taking more responsibility for the workers will accomplish nothing."

My stance is "Hold up a minute, Mister. How is it the workers' responsibility to bear the weight of the promises you made to your shareholders for an exorbitant profit margin?!?"

The problem is: how do you create a market-model that solves this problem without putting a cap on profitability? Without getting into the dangerous practice of wealth redistribution?

You don't.


You float between pure greed fucking everything up, and pure regulation fucking everything up.

There isn't one solution to make everyone happy.  There are just an infinite number of fingers, poking.

LMNO is riding the correct motorcycle. Neither side has a good argument on the issue of wealth and corporations and employees etc.

As far as I can tell, only in a situation where the employee and employer are considered to have equal standing, can a business produce goods, services and a profit, without fucking their own employees. That doesn't mean that a company has to be "Employee Owned", only that management/ownership must see themselves as an equal to the production/service/distribution arms of the company. Once that existed, communication among equals might provide a useful way for employees to be honest about their work/pay/etc and owner/managers could also be honest about customer/costs/etc.

As long as the workplace in strictly hierarchical, the divide between owner and employee will continue to fuckup either a free or regulated market.

Quote from: LMNO on July 06, 2009, 07:39:19 PM
You don't.


You float between pure greed fucking everything up, and pure regulation fucking everything up.

There isn't one solution to make everyone happy.  There are just an infinite number of fingers, poking.

That's sig-worthy.

Quote from: navkat on July 06, 2009, 07:36:46 PM

Quote from: LMNO on July 06, 2009, 07:22:57 PM
I think it should be noted, however, that the so-called "free market" solutions have increased wage disparity and made the social/economic structure extremely fragile and vulnerable. 

This is true. I stand somewhere off to the left on some of these issues.

The far-right line of thinking is "let it all free and it'll even out. Increasing wages will only make things more expensive when overhead is passed onto the consumer because companies still owe x, y and z to their shareholders so raising wages/taking more responsibility for the workers will accomplish nothing."

My stance is "Hold up a minute, Mister. How is it the workers' responsibility to bear the weight of the promises you made to your shareholders for an exorbitant profit margin?!?"

The problem is: how do you create a market-model that solves this problem without putting a cap on profitability? Without getting into the dangerous practice of wealth redistribution?

How about you just do get into the dangerous practice of wealth redistribution?  Capitalism works by redistributing the wealth upward, without a mechanism to redistribute it back downwards it all ends up concentrated at the top.

Hey fuckers, you already have a thread to discuss your ill-defined, pie in the sky "libertarianism" in.

I suggest you use it and stop hijacking this thread.

Quote from: Cain on July 06, 2009, 08:40:52 PM
Hey fuckers, you already have a thread to discuss your ill-defined, pie in the sky "libertarianism" in.

I suggest you use it and stop hijacking this thread.

I figured it was a better hijack than the "navkat is a daft cunt" hijack that was going on before.

Last relevant post...

Quote from: Ratatosk on July 06, 2009, 07:31:07 PM

QuoteUnder Nazism, if you were a Jew, you were simply killed, no questions asked, you had nothing to prove. You are guilty for who you are, you are a Jew, you are killed, that's it. Under Stalinism, of course, most [victims] were on trial for false accusations; most of them were not traitors. Nonetheless, there is one interesting feature: that they were tortured or through some kind of blackmail forced to confess to being traitors.

Well, thats true for the Jews, but not for all of the groups that Hitler's Germany persecuted. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, were offered chances again, and again, to renounce their faith and gain their freedom. Same for soviets they 'found'. I think Stalin was more obvious in his breadth than Hitler, simply because the anti-Semite aspects of the holocaust were so extreme (6,000,000 Jews vs 20,000 JW's is a huge gap). 'Dissidents' of the Nazi state were treated just as dissidents in the USSR, false accusations and all.

That is, it seems to me that Nazi Germany was very much like Stalin's USSR... except they had the additional horror of the indiscriminate murder of millions of additional people based solely on race.

Zizek seems to focus on the Jewish situation to the exclusion of the other groups the Nazis went after. At least in the context of that excerpt...

I wasn't especially pleased with that, but at least there weren't two other active or recent threads addressing the exact same topic.

Quote from: Ratatosk on July 06, 2009, 07:31:07 PM

QuoteUnder Nazism, if you were a Jew, you were simply killed, no questions asked, you had nothing to prove. You are guilty for who you are, you are a Jew, you are killed, that's it. Under Stalinism, of course, most [victims] were on trial for false accusations; most of them were not traitors. Nonetheless, there is one interesting feature: that they were tortured or through some kind of blackmail forced to confess to being traitors.

Well, thats true for the Jews, but not for all of the groups that Hitler's Germany persecuted. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, were offered chances again, and again, to renounce their faith and gain their freedom. Same for soviets they 'found'. I think Stalin was more obvious in his breadth than Hitler, simply because the anti-Semite aspects of the holocaust were so extreme (6,000,000 Jews vs 20,000 JW's is a huge gap). 'Dissidents' of the Nazi state were treated just as dissidents in the USSR, false accusations and all.

That is, it seems to me that Nazi Germany was very much like Stalin's USSR... except they had the additional horror of the indiscriminate murder of millions of additional people based solely on race.

Zizek seems to focus on the Jewish situation to the exclusion of the other groups the Nazis went after. At least in the context of that excerpt...

He does, but he qualifies it futher down the page, in terms of ideology.

QuoteFor me, ideology is defined only by how the coordinates of your meaningful experience of the world, and your place within society, relate to the basic tensions and antagonisms of social orders. Which is why for me no attitude is a priori ideological. You can be an extreme materialist, thinking that economic development ultimately determines everything; then you are truly ideological. You can be a fanatical millennialist religious mystic, and you are, in a certain way, not outside of ideology. Your position can be that of perfectly describing the data and nonetheless your point is ideological.

For example, I would like to use the wonderful model of Lacan. Let's say that you are married and you are pathologically jealous, thinking that your wife is sleeping around with other men. And let's say that you are totally right, she is cheating. Lacan says that your jealousy is still pathological. Even if everything is true it is pathological, because what makes it pathological is not the fact that is it true or not true, but why you invest so much in it—what needs does it fulfill? It's the same with the Jews and the Nazis. It is not a question that they attributed false properties to the Jews; the point is why did the Nazis need the figure of the Jew as part of their ideological project?

Jews served a role in Nazi ideology that very few others approached.  Maybe Communists, but I don't recall many other groups getting a look in, except as a passing insult.  Its true that the Nazis did go after other people (homosexuals, gypsies, the mentally ill), just as it was true that Stalin was capable of inflicting terrible crimes on particular ethnic groups alone (look what he did to the Chechens).  But in terms of ideology, pathology, Jews are far more important to the worldview of Nazis, and traitors played a massive part in the worldview of Stalinism.  The emphasis on them is part of the defining features of the regime.

As an aside, an autopsy of Stalin shows he in fact had an illness which made him highly paranoid, which is very interesting.

So, the first and immediately preceding posts (skipping the bickering between) brings up an interesting question: In keeping with the "Fascist Virus" theme, how does this mindstate breed?

I can see "the masses" flocking to a "strong leader" who can "guide them through the squalls of morality" (I don't know why I'm using all these quotations, by the way), but what drives the leaders themselves towards the idea that Fascism is a good solution?

There seems to be an implication that some people reject both the liberal and conservative political platforms, that both socialism and capitalism are bogus.  But is there a rational drive towards dictatorship?  Can Fascism be stated or explained in a way that doesn't sound batshit crazy?  Once it gets started, it's easy to explain away, or use propoganda or semantics to convince people that A is B.  But where and how does it start?

There are plenty of pro-democracy racists, and both the Democrats and the Republicans have power-mad political manipulators.  So there must be an additional factor that causes them to embrace what has been shown to be a difficult, fragile, and short-term political solution.

could it be equal parts complacency and sloth?

I don't think complacency and sloth could provide a strong enough drive to attempt becoming a dictator.

Quote from: LMNO on July 07, 2009, 02:32:26 PM
So, the first and immediately preceding posts (skipping the bickering between) brings up an interesting question: In keeping with the "Fascist Virus" theme, how does this mindstate breed?

I can see "the masses" flocking to a "strong leader" who can "guide them through the squalls of morality" (I don't know why I'm using all these quotations, by the way), but what drives the leaders themselves towards the idea that Fascism is a good solution?

There seems to be an implication that some people reject both the liberal and conservative political platforms, that both socialism and capitalism are bogus.  But is there a rational drive towards dictatorship?  Can Fascism be stated or explained in a way that doesn't sound batshit crazy?  Once it gets started, it's easy to explain away, or use propoganda or semantics to convince people that A is B.  But where and how does it start?

There are plenty of pro-democracy racists, and both the Democrats and the Republicans have power-mad political manipulators.  So there must be an additional factor that causes them to embrace what has been shown to be a difficult, fragile, and short-term political solution.

I don't have Transmetropolitan close at hand, and it can't be considered a direct source of truth anyways, but the words coming out of those two presidents' mouths form a good answer.

On the people side:  http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf .  Some people just follow.  Sticky things tend to coagulate.  You end up with a Bible Belt, and whole voting blocs/political parties.

On the leadership side:  POWER.  The problem that dictators intend to solve is "I don't have enough power."

Well, its a number of things, but usually the failure of mainstream parties plus political instability causes voters to flock to fascists.  In Italy, it was their pathetic gains in WWI and the belief that the Allies were blocking their ascension to great power status, along with a militant group who took over the city of Fiume when it was taken from, as well as fears of countryside and urban disturbances from peasants and socialists respectively.  The seeds were also present in Germany, which after the war was wracked with internal problems, including the brief creation of a Communist state in Bavaria.

Usually the failure of the mainstream political parties causes political instability which they cannot resolve, and that instability causes a reaction, and the most fervent supporters of fascism are drawn from the reactions ranks.  Like the Freikorps, in Germany.  To contrast, in the UK the mainstream political parties are pretty heavily discredited, but their actions haven't caused political instability beyond that, yet.  Therefore, there can be no counter-reaction and no fascist movement with any real momentum.

Now, if you're talking about why someone would be drawn to fascism as a philosophy, it depends how you want to present it.  Some people, especially Occultists who get into Fascism, are drawn to what they believe is an absolutely antinomian and anti-Christian worldview where the clever, amoral and strong do as they want and the weak and diseased must suffer it.  Others place emphasis on the volk, or the racially restricted and highly nationalist view of the political community, which must be defended at all costs from outsiders, who simply by virtue of their difference are dangerous and subversive.  For many, the militarism was a huge appeal, as militarism has been for centuries, and especially after a humiliating defeat only 10-20 year earlier (the stab in the back myth adding the racial and political components to this failure).  Some are losers, who can only take pride in the one thing they share with successful people - namely national identity.  Some hated democracy and its weakness, its deliberation and pandering to the socialists and mobs and hated conservatism because they would never be part of the aristocratic or business elite.  And some were simply murderous psychopaths, which may account in part for fascism's ever expansive and imperialistic nature, since the best place to keep people who don't care about killing others and are hard to control is facing the enemy.

Hmmm.  I'm hearing that, other than major mental instability, we've got:

Solipsistic (A)Moralism, and Extreme Territorialism.


I'm sure we can all draw parallels in recent history.

Paris Hilton?

I was thinking Gordon Ramsey, but yeah.

True.

But yeah.  I'm kind of loathe to draw it too far down the mental disease road though, for obvious reasons.  While some certainly were, many more were not, and they still went along with it. 

i was thinking more the 'well organized militias' throughout the states.  I can't imagine fascism is too far off if they ever get their way.

They're pretty far on the right, yes, with some crazy ideas which are also popular among fascists.  Some of them are explicitly fascist, and others are what David Neiwert calls proto-fascist or Phalangist in outlook.

Given there is a good case for the KKK being the first fascist organization, and the KKK being a big influence on the modern militias, this is not too surprising.

I haven't completely disappeared.

Alex started school three weeks ago plus, I've been working on knocking out some of the reading material Cain assigned me so as to be better versed before I come back here and discuss this with y'all.

I'm still trying to understand:
Is fascism Left, Right or independent of left or right?

I've gotten into a couple similar arguments recently. It seems that the Wingnuts think I'm a retard for questioning the "liberal fascist" train of thought and the moonbats are giving me shit for refusing to drop my whole "Fascism as an ideology, not THE platform" train of thought. It's like surprise double-penetration no matter where I go!

Someone I know and respect told me that what I'm thinking of when I criticize the extreme Liberal, socialism-by-force shit that boils my blood lately is more likely Stalinism or Maoism. Now I'm mega-confused: I thought Stalin *was* Fascist... (?)

Whatever. I'm reading stuff. It's hard. I have a busy life and it's been a loooong time since I was that little girl who used to eat books for weeks and weeks without doing anything else but eat and go potty. The advent of the webbernet has made my brain very very lazy. I find myself going "Can't I just Google or wiki this and be done with the whole bit?" I fall asleep a lot.

But I think this is important. Shit's wrong these days and I don't know if I even comprehend why. I get angry but I find myself unable to articulate beyond a pop-culture level exactly WHY. Or what it all means. I constantly worry that I'm falling into cognitive traps that make me no more atypical, complex or intelligent than the 400 lb dude with the doughnuts in the basket of his Hoveround in front of me at Wal*Mart.

The more I read, the stupider I feel.

(http://www.conservative-resources.com/images/right_wing_vs_left_wing.gif)


(http://www.conservative-resources.com/images/right_wing_vs_left_wing3.gif)

(http://www.conservative-resources.com/images/right_wing_vs_left_wing2.gif)

these might help ...
if i am using these diagrams of the political spectrum i still get a bit confused on what the difference between Communist totalitarian(all over one) and fascists (one over all) are in the real word where one dictator (totalitarian or fascist) runs every thing, I will leave awnsering your question to our resident experts..

Oops, never saw this before.  

Stalin was a Communist, and so on the left.  Communism is a left-wing ideology, in fact I would go so far as to say THE left-wing ideology, which most others can be compared to.

Stalin didn't really care about race, except where nationalism got in the way of establishing Communism.  Sure, he did some pretty nasty shit to people of several races, such as the Chechens, but that was usually because his opponents grouped themselves together on national grounds.  Stalin was about establishing worldwide Communist revolution, and all that entailed (the overthrow of capitalism, establishment of a classless society, worker ownership of the means of production - with the Leninist caveats of a vanguardist party, naturally).  Things like a return to a glorious past, or definitions of the state on racial terms, or even Nazi mysticism (an often overlooked aspect of their ideology) simply had no place in Stalin's worldview.  

You can also tell fascism was on the right by whom it allied with.  All over Europe, fascist parties allied consistently with conservative and ultra-nationalist groupings, often against Communism.  Communism was the major threat, the "levelling" of society in favour of workers and without regard to nationality, gender or race was completely anathema to fascist thinking, and presented a worldview that, they believed, would lead to weakness, dissolution of racial differences and Jewish dominance (for some bizarre reason, probably because Karl Marx had Jewish ancestry, fascists tended to believe Communism was a Jewish plot.  That Jews tended to be more sympathetic to left-wing or liberal politics because of their own history of persecution at the hands of people like fascists is apparently not a factor).  Even without the Jewish conspiracy factor, their policies and aims represented a major ideological and political threat, since naturally many workers found elements of Marxist thinking to be quite cool, even if they were not sold on the whole Communist thing.

Fomenter, I suspect those diagrams are meant to be a theoretical explanation of the ideologies, how they work best ideally.  Because even under dictators like Stalin or Hitler, there were often several centres of power capable of checking the executive - in varying ways.  But Fascism idealises the leader - the Fuhrerprinzip - while Communism idealises collective decision making over the individual.