“This is what tolerance looks like at UC Berkeley”

caveman1917 said:
We weren't talking about the Battle of Stalingrad.
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True. We were talking about how anarchists always lose to fascists. And you tried to use an example of one group of fascists losing to another group of fascists as a counter-example. But it doesn't work. Despite the propensity of anarchists to turn into communists, communism is in practice always a fascist ideology, not an anarchist one.

The irony is quite rich, though.
 
Ziggurat said:
True. We were talking about how anarchists always lose to fascists. And you tried to use an example of one group of fascists losing to another group of fascists as a counter-example. But it doesn't work. Despite the propensity of anarchists to turn into communists, communism is in practice always a fascist ideology, not an anarchist one.

The irony is quite rich, though.
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Can the Soviets really be considered fascists?
 
Argumemnon said:
Can the Soviets really be considered fascists?
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I find that these definitions get really fuzzy. Fascist being misapplied all the time to everything autocratic.

Both Soviets and Fascists are extreme statists that employ state violence. So, it's a question if the Soviets still qualify as left-wing.

I liked Jordan Peterson's explanation that both the extreme right and extreme left want an extremely homogeneous society. But one will kill those not belonging to the in-group, and the other will force everybody to join the in-group, and kill those who won't comply.

Both are a radical one-party solution that is supposed to represent the working class. So, they are pretty close there.

And of course, they are internationalist vs nationalist.

The overlaps are huge IMHO. But they are different things.
 
mgidm86 said:
That actually explains a lot, thanks.

When I am debating with people I've never actually met, I sometimes feel I can guess their age by certain questions they may ask, or their stances on certain things. Like if someone asks me in all sincerity why I can't stand Hillary, I sometimes think that that person hasn't been around long enough to have lived through the Clinton years.

Whether or not one likes her, most people my age are at least aware of all the scandals the Clintons have been associated with. At least I think they would be.

Similarly, your having some sort of history with the groups you mention makes a lot of sense, to ME anyways, because I couldn't figure out how someone could think this way. I wasn't sure you were even serious.
I dunno, it's just interesting. For me, it maybe helps me respect the person I am talking to a little more.
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Yeah, I get that a lot around here. :boggled:

A big bag of Internet Points to you for making a sincere effort to understand another party's opinion. It's tough on a faceless forum to 'get it' from a few typed lines, especially if one is not an eloquent wordsmith. Perspectives like yours make for a much more interesting discussion.
 
Argumemnon said:
Yes, but one's on the left and the other on the right. They're both authoritarian, sure, but saying they're both fascists just leads to confusion, I think.
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well that horse is pretty well out of the barn, with the Black Bloc/Anti-Fa scum throwing the word around willy nilly, and importing totalitarian leftist tactics to run roughshod over free speech and free assembly rights.
 
Argumemnon said:
Considering that this is a forum readable by anybody, I'd say confusing a lot of people in order to play games with one is indeed counter-productive, which I'd include inside the set of "bad" things.
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I don't think a lot of people are going to be confused. Most people can (or at least should) understand that both communism and fascism are totalitarian, violent, and oppressive, and that their particular flavors of their inhumanity don't really matter much compared to those essential features.
 
Ziggurat said:
I don't think a lot of people are going to be confused. Most people can (or at least should) understand that both communism and fascism are totalitarian, violent, and oppressive, and that their particular flavors of their inhumanity don't really matter much compared to those essential features.
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Both fire and water will kill you in short order in sufficient quantities, but I don't think it's fair to simplify to the point of saying that a drowning man is currently burning to death, even for the benefit of a single participant in the conversation.

Yes, extreme left and extreme right are in many ways the same, but they're also very different, and using the same word for both is, well, confusing.
 
Argumemnon said:
Both fire and water will kill you in short order in sufficient quantities, but I don't think it's fair to simplify to the point of saying that a drowning man is currently burning to death, even for the benefit of a single participant in the conversation.

Yes, extreme left and extreme right are in many ways the same, but they're also very different, and using the same word for both is, well, confusing.
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The difference is more akin to a coal fire versus an oil fire. Yeah, they aren't the same, but they'll ultimately kill you the same way.
 
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