thotsky posted:

Really? It's laid out pretty clear, I feel. For liberals the argument is that it enables totalitarianism. That it allows China (and communism) to oppress Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland minorities and rich people. For conservatives the argument is that a strong China hurts the US economy, and bruises the American ego.

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Good job on whoever (presumably the original author) wrote the disclaimer.

https://twitter.com/davidgross_man/status/1686817596333506569

brugroffil posted:

Maureen Dowd has been paid many millions of dollars for her terminally stupid thoughts

Pomeroy posted:

The paper of record calling for Code Pink and every anti-war force to their left to be prosecuted as Chinese agents: https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1688018364176764928?t=AC5sfNfUTc4ZuSLl4ueztA&s=19

quote:

‘Hijacked’ in South Africa
Several times a year, activists and politicians from across Africa fly to South Africa for boot camps at the Nkrumah School, set in a popular safari area.

They come to learn to organize workers and left-wing movements. Once on campus, though, some attendees are surprised to find Chinese topics seeping into the curriculum.At a recent session, reading packets said that the United States was waging a “hybrid war” against China by distorting information about Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Xinjiang region where Uyghurs were held in camps.

The packets praised Chinese loans, calling them “an opportunity for African states to construct genuine, and sovereign, development projects.” No mention was made of China’s role in a recent debt crisis in Zambia.

“They’re being rounded up to be fed Chinese propaganda,” said Cebelihle Mbuyisa, a former employee who helped prepare materials for the workshop. “Whole social movements on the African continent are being hijacked by what looks like a foreign policy instrument of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Those who objected were shouted down or not invited back, four past attendees said.

Truga posted:

let's loving go

Centrist Committee posted:

That article owns, but not for the reasons they think it does

Frosted Flake posted:

Yes, but unlike "Communism" which had decades of negative connotations to the American public, Totalitarianism has never been clearly articulated, neither has Authoritarianism. People could understand that the Commies would take away their business and close the white clapboard Church on Main St., but the terms in use now, while signalling things to liberals and the media class, and used in official US rhetoric, NGO world etc., there's no threat of what Americans would lose even if "authoritarianism" expanded or whatever.

my bony fealty posted:

I had to read this dogshit stupid book in undergrad, which was my fault for taking political science classes.



The ideas contained within are childish enough that it would be easy to communicate them via mass media to the American public - Arendt's analysis of "totalitarianism" already amounts to comic book villainy. Authoritarianism or totalitarianism isn't a hard concept to communicate, because it's so bland and meaningless. You can scare Americans of all classes with it by saying that rule by authoritarians would take away consumer choice at the grocery store.

gradenko_2000 posted:

"The Authoritarians" was very popular in D&D during the Obama regime as a way for liberals to explain Republican behaviors

The Kingfish posted:

Origins is a good and interesting book.

PERPETUAL IDIOT posted:

I always thought totalitarianism and authoritarianism both basically meant "dictators America does not like". Does Arendt's book have a better definition?

my bony fealty posted:

lmfao

I read it and nodded along back then, I won't lie. In retrospect it's neat how useless it is. Guess some people are just predisposed to be aUtHoRiTaRiAn, must be their skull shape.

Truga posted:

let's loving go

Danann posted:

how are people surprised that the school named after a famous communist in that area is most likely to be the one passing around pro-communist stuff

quote:

‘Hijacked’ in the United States
Several times a year, activists and politicians from across Europe and North America fly to the United States for boot camps at George Washington University, set in a popular neighbourhood of Washington, D.C.

They come to learn to organize fund managers and right-wing movements. Once on campus, though, some attendees are surprised to find American topics seeping into the curriculum.At a recent session, reading packets said that Russia was waging a “hybrid war” against the United States by distorting information about elections, the war in Ukraine and the border region where Latin Americans were held in camps.

The packets praised American loans, calling them “an opportunity for African states to construct genuine, and sovereign, development projects.” No mention was made of the United States's role in a recent debt crisis in Nigeria.

“They’re being rounded up to be fed American propaganda,” said a former employee who helped prepare materials for the workshop. “Whole social movements are being hijacked by what looks like a foreign policy instrument of the Democratic Party.”

Those who objected were shouted down or not invited back, four past attendees said.

my bony fealty posted:

I had to read this dogshit stupid book in undergrad, which was my fault for taking political science classes.

my bony fealty posted:

The ideas contained within are childish enough that it would be easy to communicate them via mass media to the American public - Arendt's analysis of "totalitarianism" already amounts to comic book villainy. Authoritarianism or totalitarianism isn't a hard concept to communicate, because it's so bland and meaningless. You can scare Americans of all classes with it by saying that rule by authoritarians would take away consumer choice at the grocery store.

‘Working towards the Führer’: Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship posted:

The renewed emphasis, already visible in the mid-1980s, on the intertwined fates of the Soviet Union and Germany, especially in the Stalin and Hitler eras, has become greatly intensified in the wake of the upheavals in Eastern Europe. The sharpened focus on the atrocities of Stalinism has prompted attempts to relativise Nazi barbarism—seen as wicked, but on the whole less wicked, than that of Stalinism (and by implication of communism in general). The brutal Stalinist modernising experiment is used to remove any normative links with humanising, civilising, emancipatory or democratising development from modernisation concepts and thereby to claim that Hitler’s regime, too, was—and intentionally so—a ‘modernising dictatorship’. Implicit in all this is a reversion, despite the many refinements and criticisms of the concept since the 1960s, to essentially traditional views on ‘totalitarianism’ and to views of Stalin and Hitler as ‘totalitarian dictators’.

There can be no principled objection to comparing the forms of dictatorship in Germany under Hitler and in the Soviet Union under Stalin and, however unedifying the subject matter, the nature and extent of their inhumanity. The totalitarianism concept allows comparative analysis of a number of techniques and instruments of domination, and this, too, must be seen as legitimate in itself. The underlying assumption that both regimes made total claims upon society, based upon a monopolistic set of ideological imperatives and resulting in unprecedented levels of repression and attempted indoctrination, manipulation and mobilisation—giving these regimes a dynamic missing from more conventional authoritarian regimes—again seems largely incontestable. But the fundamental problem with the term ‘totalitarianism’—leaving aside its non-scholarly usage—is that it is a descriptive concept, not a theory, and has little or no explanatory power. It presumes that Stalinism and Hitlerism were more like each other than different from each other. But the basis of comparison is a shallow one, largely confined to the apparatus of rule.

My starting point in these reflections is the presumption that, despite superficial similarities in forms of domination, the two regimes were in essence more unlike than like each other. Though seeing greater potential in comparisons of Nazism with other fascist movements and systems rather than with the Soviet system, I would want to retain an emphasis upon the unique features of the Nazi dictatorship and the need to explain these, alongside those characteristics which could be seen as generic components of European fascism in the era following the First World War, through the specific dominant features of German political culture. (In this I admit to a currently rather unfashionable attachment to notions of a qualified German Sonderweg.)

Sometimes, however, highlighting contrasts can be more valuable than comparing similarities. In what follows I would like to use what, on an imperfect grasp of some of the recent historiography on Stalinism, I understand to be significant features of Stalin’s dictatorship to establish some important contrasts in the Hitler regime. This, I hope, will offer a basis for some reflections on what remains a central problem of interpretation of the Third Reich: what explains the gathering momentum of radicalisation, the dynamic of destruction in the Third Reich? Much of the answer to this question has, I would suggest at the outset, to do with the undermining and collapse of what one might call ‘rational’ structures of rule, a system of ‘ordered’ government and administration. But what caused the collapse and, not least, what was Hitler’s own role in the process? These questions lie at the centre of my enquiry.

First, however, let me outline a number of what appear to me to be significant points of contrast between the Stalinist and Hitlerist regimes.

• Stalin arose from within a system of rule, as a leading exponent of it. He was, as Ronald Suny puts it, a committee man, chief oligarch, man of the machine; and, in Moshe Lewin’s phrase, ‘bureaucracy’s anti-Christ’, the ‘creature of his party’, who became despot by control of the power which lay at the heart of the party, in its secretariat. In a sense, it is tempting to see an analogy in the German context in the position of Bormann rather than Hitler. Is it possible to imagine Stalin echoing Hitler’s comment in 1941: ‘I’ve totally lost sight of the organisations of the Party. When I find myself confronted by one or other of these achievements, I say to myself: ‘‘By God, how that has developed!’’

...

• Stalin was a highly interventionist dictator, sending a stream of letters and directives determining or interfering with policy. He chaired all important committees. His aim appears to have been a monopolisation of all decision- making and its concentration in the Politburo, a centralisation of state power and unity of decision-making which would have eliminated Party– State dualism.

...

• Personalities apart, Hitler’s leadership position appears to have been struc- turally more secure than Stalin’s. If I have followed the debates properly, it would seem that there was some rational basis for Stalin’s purges even if the dictator’s paranoia took them into the realms of fantasy. As the exponent of one party line among several, one set of policies among a number of alternatives, one interpretation of the Marx-Lenin arcanum among others, Stalin remained a dictator open to challenge from within. Kirov, it appears, had the potential to become a genuine rival leader in the early 1930s, when dissatisfaction and discontent with Stalin’s rule was widespread. Stalin’s exaggerated feeling of insecurity was then to some measure grounded in reality. The purges which he himself instigated, and which in many instances were targeted at those closest to him, were above all intended to head off a bureaucratic challenge to his rule.

Hitler thought Stalin must be mad to carry out the purges. The only faint reflections in the Third Reich were the liquidation of the SA leadership in the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ in 1934, and the ruthless retaliation for the attempt on Hitler’s life in 1944. In the former case, Hitler agreed to the purge only belatedly and reluctantly, after the going had been made by Himmler and Göring, supported by the army leadership. The latter case does bear comparison with the Stalinist technique, though by that time the Hitler regime was plainly in its death-throes. The wild retaliation against those implicated in the assassination attempt was a desperate measure and aimed essentially at genuine opponents, rather than being a basic technique of rule.

...

Hitler, it has to be accepted, was, for most of the years he was in power, outside the repressed and powerless adherents of the former working-class movements, sections of Catholicism, and some individuals among the traditional élites, a highly popular leader both among the ruling groups and with the masses.

...

And within the Nazi Movement itself, his status was quite different from that of Stalin’s position within the Communist Party. There are obvious parallels between the personality cults built up around Stalin and Hitler. But whereas the Stalin cult was superimposed upon the Marxist-Leninist ideology and Communist Party, and both were capable of surviving it, the ‘Hitler myth’ was structurally indispensable to, in fact the very basis of and scarcely distinguishable from, the Nazi Movement and its Weltanschauung.

• Stalin’s rule, for all its dynamic radicalism in the brutal collectivisation programme, the drive to industrialisation and the paranoid phase of the purges, was not incompatible with a rational ordering of priorities and attainment of limited and comprehensible goals, even if the methods were barbarous in the extreme and the accompanying inhumanity on a scale defying belief. Whether the methods were the most appropriate to attain the goals in view might still be debated, but the attempt to force industrialisation at breakneck speed on a highly backward economy and to introduce ‘socialism in one country’ cannot be seen as irrational or limitless aims.

And despite the path to a personalised dictatorship, there was no inexorable ‘cumulative radicalisation’ in the Soviet Union. Rather, there was even the ‘great retreat’ from radicalism by the mid-1930s and a reversion towards some forms of social conservatism before the war brought its own compromises with ideological rectitude. Whatever the costs of the personal regiment, and whatever the destructiveness of Stalin in the purges of the party and of the military, the structures of the Soviet system were not completely broken. Stalin had been a product of the system. And the system was capable of withstanding nearly three decades of Stalin and surviving him. It was, in other words, a system capable of self-reproduction, even at the cost of a Stalin.

It would be hard to claim this of Nazism. The goal of national redemption through racial purification and racial empire was chimeric, a utopian vision. The barbarism and destructiveness which were inherent in the vain attempt to realise this goal were infinite in extent, just as the expansionism and extension of aggression to other peoples were boundless. Whereas Stalinism could ‘settle down’, as it effectively did after Stalin’s death, into a static, even conservative, repressive regime, a ‘settling down’ into the staid authoritarianism of a Francoesque kind, is scarcely conceivable in the case of Nazism. Here, the dynamic was ceaseless, the momentum of radicalisation an accelerating one incapable of having the brakes put on—unless the ‘system’ itself were to be fundamentally altered.

I have just used the word ‘system’ of Nazism. But where Soviet communism in the Stalin era, despite the dictator’s brutal destabilisation, remained recognisable as a system of rule, the Hitler regime was inimical to a rational order of government and administration. Its hallmark was systemlessness, administrative and governmental disorder, the erosion of clear patterns of government, however despotic.

...

This brings me back to the questions I posed at the beginning of the paper. If my understanding of some of the recent discussion on Stalinism is not too distorted, and if the points of contrast with the Hitler regime I have outlined above have some validity, then it would be fair to conclude that, despite some superficial similarities, the character of the dictatorship, that is, of Stalin’s and Hitler’s leadership positions within their respective regimes, was fundamentally different. It would surely be a limited explanation, however, to locate these differences merely in the personalities of the dictators. Rather, I would suggest, they should be seen as a reflection of the contrasting social motivations of the followers, the character of the ideological driving force and the corresponding nature of the political vanguard movement upholding each regime. The Nazi Movement, to put the point bluntly, was a classic ‘charismatic’ leadership movement; the Soviet Communist Party was not. And this has a bearing on the self-reproducing capacity of the two ‘systems’ of rule.

...

The relevance of the model of ‘charismatic authority’ to Hitler seems obvious. In the case of Stalin it is less convincing. The ‘mission’ in this latter case resides, it could be argued, in the Communist Party as the vehicle of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. For a while, it is true, Stalin hijacked the ‘mission’ and threatened to expropriate it through his personality cult. But this cult was a gradual and belated product, an excrescence artificially tagged on to Stalin’s actual function. In this sense, there was a striking contrast with the personality cult of Hitler, which was inseparable from the ‘mission’ embodied in his name practically from the beginning, a ‘mission’ which from the mid-1920s at the latest did not exist as a doctrine independent of the leader.

gradenko_2000 posted:

"The Authoritarians" was very popular in D&D during the Obama regime as a way for liberals to explain Republican behaviors

The Kingfish posted:

Origins is a good and interesting book.

Pomeroy posted:

The paper of record calling for Code Pink and every anti-war force to their left to be prosecuted as Chinese agents: https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1688018364176764928?t=AC5sfNfUTc4ZuSLl4ueztA&s=19

quote:

Speculation about Mr. Singham first emerged on Twitter among self-described anti-fascists. Reports followed in the publication New Lines and the South African investigative outlet amaBhungane. The authorities in India raided a news organization tied to Mr. Singham during a crackdown on the press, accusing it of having ties to the Chinese government but offering no proof.

quote:

The Big Business of Uyghur Genocide Denial
A New Lines investigation reveals a network of charities funneling millions into left-wing platforms that take Beijing’s side on the genocide allegations — and they’re all connected to an American tech magnate
Alexander Reid Ross
Alexander Reid Ross, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right and senior data analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute
Courtney Dobson
Courtney Dobson is Senior Editor at New Lines magazine

Atrocious Joe posted:

from that New York Times story

That New Lines article?

https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-big-business-of-uyghur-genocide-denial/

loving Alexander Reid Ross
https://twitter.com/areidross/status/1462489774686564353?s=20
https://twitter.com/areidross/status/1067108877462790145?s=20
https://twitter.com/areidross/status/1064702366245474304?s=20

quote:

Ask a Democrat with a long memory what the numbers 97,488 and 537 represent, and their face will twist into a grimace. The first is the number of votes Ralph Nader received in Florida in 2000 as the nominee of the Green Party; the second is the margin by which George W. Bush was eventually certified the winner of the state, handing him the White House.

quote:

But today, no one can honestly deny that Biden is the most progressive president since at least Lyndon B. Johnson. His judicial appointments are more diverse than those of any of his predecessors. He has directed more resources to combating climate change than any other president. Notwithstanding the opposition from the Supreme Court, his administration has moved aggressively to forgive and restructure student loans.

And in a story that is criminally underappreciated, his administration’s policy reaction to the covid-induced recession of 2020 was revolutionary in precisely the ways any good leftist should favor. It embraced massive government intervention to stave off the worst economic impacts, including handing millions of families monthly checks (by expanding the child tax credit), giving all kids in public schools free meals, boosting unemployment insurance and extending health coverage to millions.

F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:

I'm not sure if this has yet been posted or not:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/07/left-liberals-biden-reelection-2024/

These fuckers still have not gotten over Nader. It was 23 years ago.



Unless I'm mistaken, most or all of these were promptly canceled the moment allegedly good economic data was churned out.

bedpan posted:

and the child care tax credit thing was an advance on tax returns

In Training posted:

George W Bush loving stole the 2000 election!!! The supreme Court decided the outcome!!!! Its the most tee-ball criticism in the world to point out how hosed up the US electoral system is. But they gotta blame Nader voters lol

gradenko_2000 posted:

"The Authoritarians" was very popular in D&D during the Obama regime as a way for liberals to explain Republican behaviors

bedpan posted:

also al gore literally cast the deciding vote to give the election to george w bush. al gore did not believe he should be president. why he ran if he didn't think he should be president is beyond me

gradenko_2000 posted:

Arendt's book is the origin point of that definition, because it's one of the cornerstones of equating Hitler and Stalin

Atrocious Joe posted:

loving Alexander Reid Ross
https://twitter.com/areidross/status/1462489774686564353?s=20
https://twitter.com/areidross/status/1067108877462790145?s=20
https://twitter.com/areidross/status/1064702366245474304?s=20

mawarannahr posted: