As opposed to black identity politics? Or female identity politics? Would you feel better if the context was a place like South Africa where the white minority is actively being persecuted/discriminated against? Would that make white identity politics okay in your book?
>"I just find this impossible to reconcile with his support for Trump, the most authoritarian presidential candidate in a very long time and possibly ever."
I'm not an American, but I'm a libertarian and I definitely support Donald Trump. He represents an active regression back to a mean, rather than further towards the socialist-left. That is why I think it'll be better for him to be president, rather than someone like Hillary or Obama, or even Gary Johnson.
Tbh. I find it horribly sad how much time and energy people invest in this election where the both possible outcomes are equally bad.
"Voting for the lesser evil" is still voting for evil. So why not take all that time wasted on internet arguments about which evil is the lesser one and do something fun instead?
As you see that's a non-argument.
As an American, forgive me for actually caring about my countries politics.
Supporting the lesser of evils is still supporting evil and going along with it as the new status quo just prolongs and reinforces your problem IMO, because it makes them legitimate. The fact there is so much hostility against the idea of rejecting both parties is a big reason why the standards have reached such a low point, where Trump/Clinton are the best available options and people are just okay with that.
People prefer to rabidly support the red/blue teams blindly while the majority of the western world has far more healthier functioning multi-party political systems and more advanced electoral systems.
Even though polling shows the average person doesn't like nor trust either candidates it's rare to find news articles in US papers about the poor state of politics and the need for reform (not just deciding to attack one side or the other). Maybe Trump has been too much of a distraction away from the higher level downward-spiral America politics faces.
Unless there is some resistance and holding everyone to higher standards, it's just going to continue like this. America has swung to the other side of the pendelum from their political ideology of the 1750-early 1900s where the status quo governance systems was constantly questioned to now having a culture of doubling down with lost causes, fighting a war of attrition from the trenches while both sides lose. I'd rather not be wasting my life in the trenches TYVM.
Did I say or even imply you couldn't? No, I didnt. I was simply disagreeing that these candidates are the same.
I'll be voting for my interpretation of the "lesser evil" unapologetically.
I'm not 'wasting my life in the trenches', I'm an American citizen with an opinion. I respect your decision to vote third party or not at all, but please stop trying to shame me for "being evil" and voting how I see fit.
TYVM
So, in theory you would be against forcing someone to pay taxes to build roads or provide education, but would arguably be for paying for a police department and justice system to protect people from having others infringe on their rights.
It basically means the only function of government should be to protect our freedoms and anything outside that purview should be done by the private sector and let the markets decide what has real value and is worth investing in.
Too many climate laws, too many laws protecting groundwater? How would this Libertarian definition fit those? The freedoms of the individuals in the town that has a giant polluting factory. Now that town needs laws to make the factory safer.
How about gun laws? Libertarians might suggest more "freedoms" with respect to gun availability,... many years later, revealing that more guns available actually means more deaths => freedom lost for the dead? Now they're a democrat too...
How's this definition different than democrat?
I'm just asking, because reading this mini-thread I'm lost here.
Libertarianism make few exceptions to that principle in order to allow for such things as limited government policing, courts and defence.
Bathroom laws require forcing companies to pay for additional bathrooms, and by extension, pay for the policing required to prevent gender-mixing in the non-approved bathrooms.
Environmental regulations force companies to pay for expensive pollution-limiting equipment. Pollution is already handled by libertarianism as pollution means either damage to people's health, or damage to people's property. Both of which are violations of the non-aggression principle. No environmental "regulations" necessary as the repercussions far outweigh the benefits of pollution.
Gun-laws means imprisoning people for owning a piece of property. Same thing with drug-prohibition.
If you force people to do something with the threat of losing money/property/freedom then your policy is not even remotely libertarian. If you are genuinely curious, I suggest you not rely on this mini-thread to define libertarian-concepts to you. Rather research it.
Not usually.
> Environmental regulations force companies to pay for expensive pollution-limiting equipment. Pollution is already handled by libertarianism as pollution means either damage to people's health, or damage to people's property. Both of which are violations of the non-aggression principle. No environmental "regulations" necessary as the repercussions far outweigh the benefits of pollution.
I'm having some trouble parsing what you mean. Are you saying the government should stop pollution because it causes damage to people/property, but they shouldn't call it 'regulation'?
It's the same if you try look up concepts such as Marxism, Democracy, Mercantilism, Capitalism, Left vs Right, etc. At the end of the day, you need to find someone that can distill the concepts for you to something more easily digestible.
Personally for me, there really is only one consideration to clarify the position. Does the person support the Non-Aggression Principle universally? If yes, then they're an anarcho-capitalist, if "almost-completely" or something like that, then they're fence-sitting near the libertarian position. And if they say no, then they're definitely a Statist (Whether that is democracy, marxism, socialism, or monarchy, doesn't matter).
My initial reaction was that it would very likely lead to a nuclear holocaust.
I'm pretty sure going sleeveless will still be legal in a Clinton presidency.
Spelling aside, it's still incorrect. Nobody is proposing a repeal of the 2nd Amendment. Basic gun control-- for example, requiring a criminal background check with no gun show loophole-- is not the same thing as taking away your right to own a gun.
Now, what you can also do legally in most states is purchase a firearm from another private individual through a private sale. An enormous number of second-hand gun sales occur in this fashion, through Craigslist or classified ads or personal acquaintances. Effectively, this is no different than if you were buying and selling lawnmowers or comic books, or any other mundane object. I am skeptical of any attempts to really regulate this activity, because it is effectively unenforceable given the number of firearms currently in circulation and the almost complete lack of any records of ownership history for most of them.
http://www.breitbart.com/california/2016/10/13/feingold-okee...
It's a video, Briebart is just the messenger. When CNN is Hillary's 7th largest contributor, Reuters giver her $MMs, Google give her $MMs, Fox give her $MMs what's left ?
This guy is not the solution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSE-XoVKaXg
Though seriously, I don't think anyone can argue that Trump doesn't fall squarely in the "Authoritarian" camp. Also, the parent doesn't even mention that Trump is "Authoritarian?" Only that he "appeals to white identity politics?"
I can't understand why Trump gets any support from gun rights people. He advocates for exactly what they fear.
Not if Austria's 2016 presidential elections are anything to go by.
It's literally like in the Soviet Union, at least that's what my parents told me as they came from a Communist country.
The same thing happened to communists. After 50 years only idiots and sociopathic opportunists (since they still had the spoils of power) could be found in the party.
We may see a big difference between the polling and the election results this year. The Shy Tory Effect came to America.
Personally I think both candidates are awful, but suggesting that Trump might be right about something or Clinton might be wrong is social suicide on Facebook (for example) and I wouldn't dare discuss it at work.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145456082991/my-endorsement-for...
Maybe it's true, maybe not. But I can see how in the current situation it can be dangerous to you to endorse Trump. There's just too much hatred, especially after Trump is constantly compared to Hitler. (which can give people a justification to kill him or his supporters)
I get it that you dislike Trump (fine by me) but how on earth did you convince yourself to believe something like that. (I have no doubt you do, you could probably pass a lie detector test without a problem repeating this statement)
Yep, that's what xe said.
Only if you consider Clinton to be leftist, which really doesn't make much sense.
There are many thousands of people who are being richly rewarded for supporting Trump, including members of the media like Matt Drudge, Sean Hannity, Corey Lewandowski, Bill O'Reilly, the entire staff of Breitbart, the entire "alt right" media ecosystem, etc.
In addition there are many thousands more who benefit financially from the pervasive coverage of Trump, like Jeff Zucker and other media executives.
Trump is polling above 40% nationally; he is not some secret oppressed political minority. He has received more benefit from media coverage than any other candidate.
However he is almost certainly going to lose, and that is because it is obvious that he would be a terrible president.
I suspect it has a lot more to do with people paying more attention to his shit-slinging blog. Just on Thursday he declared that he's relieved that "Everything that goes wrong with the country from this point forward is women’s fault." How many people are going to pay to hear that?
Edit: I'm flipping through his blog and the extent to which politics, for him, is about the meta stuff is honestly kind of surreal
The thing that appears to set him apart is a complete indifference to the issues, in favor of a focus on his pet topic, the art of persuasion. He dismisses the correct answers to policy questions that come up as unknowable (wow). Except, amusingly, the question of what his own estate taxes ought to be. He somehow managed to cobble together an opinion on that.
> he's "clearly joking" about anything that is offensive or ridiculous.
We should all go through life with such a disclaimer in place.
Freedom of speech isn't freedom from people changing their opinion about you based on what you say.
Clinton isn't my first pick, but I realized long ago that quite a bit of the hate about her goes back to her feminism and activism in her early days in the white house, when many families felt she had led a full-on attack on their traditional family values simply by not practicing them.
Your comment reads slightly like you have a persecution complex.
The fact that you assume that I am the one who feels persecuted says a lot.
Hint: the faulty assumptions we make of others strengthen our bubbles.
And what exactly is wrong with wanting to "take back your country"? He's talking about enforcing existing laws like having borders.
Plenty of deplorables that are Democrat and non-white but her comment was playing the identity card just as deftly as Trump's people have.
>Maybe Thiel lacks education in history and pines for a glorious fictitious past, which is a core tenet of the trump campaign. And fascism.
Maybe you are the one confusing narratives built around each candidate by one camp or another with actual ideological separation between those two candidates. Trump is not an authoritarian and Clinton is not a progressive.
This election is about solving the great stagnation problem the world and the US are facing. Thiel understands that should Clinton win, there will be war and an ever increasing flow of immigration that will slowly grow to become impossible to assimilate into what is current mainstream American culture.
> And fascism.
Besides, this is not even the case. You understand concepts have definitions and you can manipulate those to fit whatever pisses you off in a candidate campaigning rhetoric.
He fits very squarely into the definition of an authoritarian. His greatest goal is "power" and he openly praises authoritarian leaders like Hussein and Putin. His supported policies include registration of minorities, torture, curtailing of the free press, restriction of religious freedom, and reprisals against political enemies—all straight out of the authoritarian playbook. At this point, I'm having a hard time thinking of an authoritarian policy which Trump wouldn't support.
There is zero evidence that he has any coherent plan to solve the "great stagnation" problem unless you think the real problem in this country is it isn't white enough.
Read this article and tell me it doesn't apply to Trump: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
Do you have a source for this? What is considered a "minority"? I thought it was directed at "illegal immigrants", which I agree is a dumb idea. But saying it applies to "minorities" is a stretch.
>torture, curtailing of the free press, restriction of religious freedom, and reprisals against political enemies"
How much worse is it to openly support these things, than to say you don't support them, but do so behind the scenes? Because all these things have happened under the watch of nearly every politician I can think of.
There are two different proposals I'm thinking of. One for making a national registry of all Muslims in the United States (a religious minority) and another for police being able to demand immigration papers at any time. The problem is that there isn't any way to look at someone and say they are an "illegal immigrant" so you end up with a totalitarian regime where police are stopping minorities and demanding to see their papers.
I honestly don't know how anyone can look at Trump and say he's not an authoritarian. He literally advocates stuff straight out of a comic book authoritarian regime: "stop and show me your papers."
> How much worse is it to openly support these things, than to say you don't support them, but do so behind the scenes?
Much worse. Openly advocating something so abhorrent pushes it into the room of acceptability and makes doing it acceptable en mass. It's the difference between the occasional hate crime and genocide. When something is unacceptable, you can't do it too much of it or you risk causing a scandal.
I also having a lot of trouble agreeing that these things "happened under the watch of nearly every politician I can think of." Has Obama thrown political enemies in prison? Has Hillary asked her supporters to violently attack enemies? Heck, has Bush tried to ban an entire religion from the United States? Citations severely needed.
In France, afaik, it is mandatory to carry an id card and, missing that, the police can stop you for up to 4 hours to verify your identity (according to Wikipedia). If you're a foreigner you have to prove that you are legally resident.
The last time I checked, France is not an authoritarian regime out of a comic book.
I have been stopped in dozens of countries for procedural controls. I have never felt oppressed, but obviously it could be abused.
Under Blair there was a plan to introduce, but it was widely opposed. Struck me as a little ironic with how easily UK has accepted surveillance and CCTV. Police need probable cause too, and generally behave well.
Not that it matters, but she's white and speaks perfect French.
In Korea, I routinely got stopped on the street to show my ID card. In Mexico, it happens to people all the time (random checkpoints, car searches, etc.) I once spent theee hours -- WITH proper documents while the state police practically disassembled my car for no reason other than having Texas plates and driving while white.
You need to prove lawful presence in France to open a bank account, but in Los Angeles, an illegal immigrant can open a bank account without any form of US identification or proof of lawful presence.
Calling Trump or the US authoritarian isn't accurate if you measure authoritarianism by the actions of allegedly 'liberal' countries.
Employers are already required to effectively vet applicants for legal residency. They have all sorts of tax forms to fill out and they can be severely fined for hiring illegals off the books.
Obviously, as well, if a LEO discovers a faked driver's license during a routine traffic stop, the illegal is in big trouble.
Interestingly, deportations have greatly increased during the Obama administration.
> Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.
> “We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
Sounds like something you "understand". Clever little rhetorical trick though, similar to "it turns out that..".
Why is this?
"And by the way, with Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and they make gestures that our people -- that they shouldn't be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water."
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/donald-trump-iran/
That would be an abrupt act of war between the two countries, and on a completely different level than the NATO intervention in Libya which was based on a UN Security Council resolution.
I also started thinking about John Titor again, regarding how things happened in his story/anecdote. Obviously different, but a good deal of things seem pretty similar... How many rights will we lose before it's too many?
Indeed. I believe he holds his views for a more self-serving reason. Trump will reduce his taxes. They also align on their disdain for a free and independent media.
> Trump is not an authoritarian
Please examine, critically, the way he has treated journalists, dissenting voices at his rallies, and the few minorities that happen to attend.
> current mainstream American culture.
What is that, exactly?
Hitler enacted a 70% income tax for the highest incomes, implemented a full welfare state, free childcare, free schools, free everything to force propaganda down their throats. He was an arts student (probably he would have done well with SJW's of today), a vegetarian, anti smoking, pro animal rights, anti religion etc.
The right wing wants to get rid of all mandatory welfare and government influence on our lives in order to make it impossible for authoritarians like Hitler to hijack the system.
German people in specific are culturally one of least capable in understanding what freedom actually means. That's something that makes them unique in Europe. (and btw the main reason why Benjamin Franklin was so critical of allowing Germans into the US - he feared that they would subvert the system and freedoms with their hive mind mentality)
> Hitler enacted a 70% income tax for the highest incomes
Which made him more moderate in terms of marginal taxes than the US under any number of Republican administations. Are you arguing that the pre-Reagan Republic administrations were left wing too?
> implemented a full welfare state, free childcare, free schools
The first comprehensive welfare systems in Germany were pushed through by the very conservative Bismarck in the late 1870's, under the joint argument of support of Christian morality and to stop the socialists from being able to obtain support for structural changes. Welfare systems in Europe stopped being indicative of left vs. right by the end of the 19th century.
> The right wing wants to get rid of all mandatory welfare and government influence on our lives in order to make it impossible for authoritarians like Hitler to hijack the system.
Right libertarians want this. Right libertarianism didn't exist in Hitlers day. Left libertarianism did (it dates back to the 1870's), but the right wing of Hitlers day were generally supporters of a strong state.
Remember "right" in the left vs. right stems from who supported the French monarchy: the original right wing were monarchists; the classical liberals and libertarians of the time were firmly seated on the left.
As for wanting to get rid of mandatory welfare and government influence: the aforementioned Bismarck - nicknamed the "iron chancellor" - a leading figure of the European right wing of his time, and loyal monarchist, someone who had dozens of German left wing newspapers closed and outlawed and the leaders of dozens of German socialist groups arrested, was as mentioned also the politician who brought us the first welfare state.
In the 20th century we had an emperor, started two world wars, had a weak democracy in between, then had two dictatorships exactly exposing each other and were the most important puppet state for two opposing world powers and ideologies. The freedom team not only won but overtook many other free nations again.
I think if you have freedom or democracy related questions you should ask us. We would suggest to get your act with your agencies together. Why would a dictator use the healthcare system when you have all the fucking three letter agencies and the military industrial complex just sitting there, fuelled by corporate/right-wing money?
Hitler did not wait for generations to let social systems brainwash the people, he had the thugs of the SA to beat the crap out of the opposition. Today it is much easier to get your private military going in the US than in Germany.
He also used the data of the church to find Jews, so Germany has privacy regulations for private entities. The US has some private entities, who have data the churches of the 1930s could only dream of.
The German "freedom team" did nothing of value, it was the US that won or more precise the Soviet Union that imploded because it was unfeasible from the beginning. West Germany was a powerless Satellite state just as East Germany was.
> I think if you have freedom or democracy related questions you should ask us. We would suggest to get your act with your agencies together.
???
> Why would a dictator use the healthcare system when you have all the fucking three letter agencies and the military industrial complex just sitting there, fuelled by corporate/right-wing money?
You want your slaves to cooperate, which is easier to accomplish when you're not beating them up on a daily basis.
> Hitler did not wait for generations to let social systems brainwash the people, he had the thugs of the SA to beat the crap out of the opposition.
That's not how it was historically. He did not use massive violence to get into power (he got there fair and square in a democratic manner), but he encouraged it to get rid of the Jews once he was in power.
And he was in power for a very long time. since 1922 he was leader of the NSDAP, in 1931 a majority of Germans wanted him chancellor and in 1933 he finally was made chancellor. That's 12 years in the highest positions and he used it immediately to brainwash the population.
Or do you want to argue with me that the Hitlerjugend had no real effect on the youth? Children started to report their parents if they said something against their dear leader.
Exactly what I said in my comment. West Germany was the "Klassenfeind" of the East, it won economically in a way, which was literally called a "Wirtschaftswunder". The East then made a peaceful revolution leading up to the Euro and the expansion of the EU.
>>> I think if you have freedom or democracy related questions you should ask us. We would suggest to get your act with your agencies together.
> ???
I am saying that the US agencies are undemocratic and much more problematic than functioning social systems would be.
> You want your slaves to cooperate, which is easier to accomplish when you're not beating them up on a daily basis.
It is always easier to govern a country, whether you are democratically elected or not, if you have a functioning system. I would not count this as a reason to not have a functioning social systems. It is also easier to govern if the people are not starving, that does not mean that a starving population is more free.
>> Hitler did not wait for generations to let social systems brainwash the people, he had the thugs of the SA to beat the crap out of the opposition.
> That's not how it was historically. He did not use massive violence to get into power (he got there fair and square in a democratic manner), but he encouraged it to get rid of the Jews once he was in power.
I never said that he beat the people to get in power, I only said he used the SA to beat up the opposition on the street, which is exactly how it historically was.
> Or do you want to argue with me that the Hitlerjugend had no real effect on the youth? Children started to report their parents if they said something against their dear leader.
Sure. But why are you talking about this? A Hitlerjugend is something different than public infrastructure like a functioning healthcare system we were originally talking about. As soon as the left proposes a Hitlerjugend I would advise you to vote for the other candidate.
This confusion about Socialist vs Fascism is common because - as you point out - they enact similar policies, e.g. high taxes.
There are numerous differences between the two. The biggest has to do with the relationship between the state and the individual:
In a Fascist / Authoritarian regime, the individual is subordinated to the state. E.g. "The state knows what's best for me. I'll do whatever they tell me to do." That's why Nazi = "National Socialism..."
In a Socialist government, the state is subordinated to the individual. This is also sometimes referred to as "active state liberalism". E.g. "The state exists to ensure we all live a happy life that enables us to pursue our own interests." France is a good example of this.
These are in contrast to what is called "classic" or "minimal state" liberalism. A liberal will say "The state exists to make sure that no one oppresses me, but it's not the state's responsibility to take care of me". This is the original version that comes from Locke, Mills, F. A. Hayek...
Why can't they let individual dissenting opinions exist beside their own hive mind ideology.
Why do Socialist governments always try to get control over education to indoctrinate the next generation instead of allowing parents to raise their children however they see fit.
Why do Socialists always attack people who are successful for merely being successful. (back then: filthy Jewish bankers, today: filthy bankers)
No, I do not buy it that in Socialism the government is subordinated to the individual, my family actually lived in such a shit system and I've seen it as a child myself. You can maybe convince gullible youth and students in the West who frequent overrated Universities that this is true but not me.
Edit: And last but not least: Hitler himself frequently said and wrote that he is a Socialist. Not an International Socialist like the Soviet Union but a National Socialist.
The don't actually, since Socialism does not discuss anything of that sort - it's an economic theory, not a political one.
What you're describing is authoritarianism, which is a mechanism for quickly and forcefully delivering ANY political ideology, not just socialism.
If you actually look at why i.e. Stalin and Castro did things the way they did, it was because they were afraid the "imperialists" in the West were working 24/7 to overthrow them (which they were) so they wanted to consolidate their grip on power to make that less likely to succeed.
The problem is, no-one ever left socialists alone, i.e. look at Nicaragua in the 1980s - they actually tried to implement liberal socialism. What happened? Regan sponsored the Contras to turn it into a right-wing state after his own gusto.
If there weren't constant efforts to overthrow socialists by the West, they probably wouldn't have turned to authoritarianism.
But again, authoritarianism is a forceful method to deliver a political change, just look at the number of right-wing military dictatorships in LA that used authoritarianism to deliver their will.
> Why do Socialist governments always try to get control over education to indoctrinate the next generation instead of allowing parents to raise their children however they see fit.
Because in the same way a parent does not have the right to kill their child, they should not have the right to i.e. teach their children creationism, in order to ensure a certain quality of life for all children, regardless if their parents are brainwashed or poorly educated.
> Why do Socialists always attack people who are successful for merely being successful.
They don't, but they think that perhaps you shouldn't be able to have $80 billion if the average personal wealth is $30,000 because you CERTAINLY didn't work THAT much harder than everybody else, it's mathematically impossible.
Also, Hitler was against the Jews, socialism isn't.
I'm not going to argue against the fact that others try to subvert them because this is a fact, but the thing is that other Ideologies also face the same issue.
Yet we consistently always see the same thing in Socialism. The last one where this happened is Venezuela, which has enacted a forced labour law recently.
Regarding education: I wouldn't teach my children Creationism but I also fail to see how this can in any way negatively impact a child in 99,99% of all existing professions. If my child wanted to work in Biology it's a problem, if it wants to work in any other profession - not so much. For me in IT it is completely irrelevant what my beliefs about these matters is.
The only problem that can arise is other people treating you bad because you hold other beliefs than them, no matter how irrelevant they are.
To me it is a matter of freedom. I'm not here on this earth to further some agenda that someone in an ivory tower has thought up. I'm here for myself and the people around me and I want to be free to act in a way that I see fit. Socialism negates this, I'd be just a part of a collective and someone else is going to tell me what my role in society is, what ideas are good and which are bad.
Regarding wealth distribution: Why shouldn't you be able to have 1 trillion dollars, provided it wasn't accumulated through use of force or other criminal means. What you have to understand is that a company makes its money by providing goods and services that other citizens are willing to pay for voluntarily. Maybe the guy with the $80 billion did some shady things, but unless proven so you can't argue against him owning that money.
> Also, Hitler was against the Jews, socialism isn't.
Socialism is against successful people. Why? Because they have options to ignore what the government wants them to do (they are not dependant) and because their success often comes with power.
As it happens Jewish culture has shown again and again that it is a highly successful one at raising children that prove to be highly productive and successful in societies. No amount of persecution and discrimination over 2000 years could change that.
It doesn't surprise me in the least when a Socialist make an Anti-Semitic statement, I know they hate them for their success.
You yourself made a statement one sentence before that arguing that the successful person with lots of money is somehow criminal, which means you despise success at some level. It's not a big step to move from that belief to outright Anti-Semitism.
Others face it too, true, but there's no denying that the country with the largest military in human history does have much more bullying power and if that country is opposed to your country's ideology you better be prepared to be bullied into submission.
> Regarding education: I wouldn't teach my children Creationism but I also fail to see how this can in any way negatively impact a child in 99,99% of all existing professions. If my child wanted to work in Biology it's a problem, if it wants to work in any other profession - not so much.
Except you're making the decision as to what he/she will be able to do for them, years before they themselves can decide - what if they want to go into Biology? Now they're years behind their peers, which is in opposition to the "free will" libertarianism you seem to advocate.
> To me it is a matter of freedom. I'm not here on this earth to further some agenda that someone in an ivory tower has thought up. I'm here for myself and the people around me and I want to be free to act in a way that I see fit. Socialism negates this
What Socialism does is prevent you from "being free to act in a way that you see fit" once you start to infringe on the freedoms of others. It, believe it or not, is there to protect you as well, or do you really want somebody with more muscle than you to come by, rob your house, beat you up and abuse your family just because that was his free will and you couldn't stop him?
> Regarding wealth distribution: Why shouldn't you be able to have 1 trillion dollars, provided it wasn't accumulated through use of force or other criminal means.
Because it was accumulated via criminal means; i.e. there's a limited amount of wealth on Earth - if you have a significant percentage of that wealth as a single person, there's just no way you worked harder than 1/3 or so of the entire population COMBINED, unless you're God that is.
I'm not saying that YOU did something that wasn't already in place, you mostly just took advantage of the framework provided by others like you, but that doesn't make it fair.
Just to make sure we understand each other; I am not against you living very comfortably if you're successful, but $1 trillion is just such an amount that it goes WAY WAY beyond just living comfortably and again, you'd have a hard case convincing me that you worked harder than millions of people COMBINED, even if what you're created is desirable.
And let's be honest, we both know that the person with $80 billion I was talking about got there using questionable ethics at best.
> Socialism is against successful people. Why? Because they have options to ignore what the government wants them to do
They don't actually, because the government has a monopoly on the use of force, what they have power to do is corrupt the government enough with their money to ignore them.
> As it happens Jewish culture has shown again and again that it is a highly successful one at raising children that prove to be highly productive and successful in societies.
Sure, admirable and again, nothing that Socialism itself has a problem with. Also, if you look at Israel, it's a very socialist country, free healthcare, centralised education, gun control laws etc. so I don't think Jews themselves think that Socialism is against them, it isn't.
> You yourself made a statement one sentence before that arguing that the successful person with lots of money is somehow criminal, which means you despise success at some level.
No, what I said was that it is unreasonable for one person to have more wealth than the 80% of the planet COMBINED, I am not against success or against living in luxury - this goes way beyond that however.
> It's not a big step to move from that belief to outright Anti-Semitism.
Oh, this trick, I see - for one, I would say it's insulting to other successful ethnicities, say the Chinese, to suggest that the only people that are, and have for a very long time been successful are the Jews and for the Anti-Semitism comment, I see that you constructed your own narrative to reach your own conclusions, but be aware that such comments only undermine actual cases of anti-semitism.
How do you expect me to have a discussion with you when all you are doing is trying to twist my words? We were discussing if there's a connection between Anti-Semitism and Socialism so I commented on that. (in fact, you were the one who argued that the Nazis were no Socialists because they hated Jews)
Now you turn around and tell me that I do not give due credit to other ethnicities that are successful too.
Sorry, but I don't feel that you are actually trying to reason here. You just put out statements like "they must have stolen the money and you know it" and Socialism actually celebrates and encourages success. Yeah, with enormous tax rates up to 90% or nationalising private propert (= stealing private property)
You said that I wasn't far off from being an anti-semite because I hated success to which am saying that I don't hate success, but even if I did, suggesting that that means anti-semitism is a stretch at best.
Also, I have never heard of anybody paying 90% tax anywhere.
So you can have authoritarian governments that are socialist, or libertarian ones (in fact, libertarianism on the left predates right wing libertarianism by a century).
Marx spent one of the four chapters of the Communist Manifesto criticising alternative socialist ideologies, including reactionary, feudalist socialist ideologies. Marx himself was later condemned by people like Bukharin for being too authoritarian, leading to a split in the First International, where the most liberal socialists and anarchists left. Despite that there was shortly afterwards a resurgence in libertarian Marxism.
This difference grew greater leading up towards the Russian revolution. Lenin e.g. wrote the book "Left Communism: An Infantile Disorder" criticising the left-wing of his own party for its anti-authoritiarian views.
Consider that the "Russian revolution" came in two parts: The February revolutions where the Czar was overthrown, and a liberal socialist government under SR was put into place, and the coup that became known as the October Revolution, where the Bolsheviks decided to not honour the elections to the Constituent Assembly - an election that gave them ~10%, with a solid majority going to the liberal socialist SR, Left SR and Mensheviks.
After the coup, parts of the liberal socialists and communists tried cooperating with the Bolsheviks, parts joined the White's in the civil war opposing the Bolsheviks, and over the coming years tens of thousands of socialists and communists on both sides were murdered while opposing the Bolshevik rule. The purges continued for well over a decade (culminating in the Moscow Processes, where Stalin put on show trials to justify executing tens of thousands of Bolsheviks that had until then still fought against the rising authoritarianism).
In other words: Lookin for the label "socialism" to determine whether someone is left or right or liberal or authoritarian doesn't work.
> No, I do not buy it that in Socialism the government is subordinated to the individual, my family actually lived in such a shit system and I've seen it as a child myself.
And you are making the flawed assumption that a name only describes a single system. By thinking North Korea is democratic, because it's name is Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. Clearly they are not democratic.
As mentioned above, socialism is not a single political system, but a set of characteristics that can apply to political systems across the spectrum.
> Edit: And last but not least: Hitler himself frequently said and wrote that he is a Socialist.
The NSDAP adopted the term because it was popular with the German working class. It was predominantly a populist move, the same way that the staunch monarchist and conservative Bismarck, when labelled a "state socialist" by his opponents for his welfare reforms adopted the name and turned it to an advantage.
Early on the party was a curious mix of left and right wing, that is true, mainly tied together by nationalism, and a variety of policies appealing to a mix of groups.
When Hitlers influence in the party rose, he quickly and brutally changed direction of the party, and pushed out the more left wing parts of the party in order to satisfy increasingly financially important right wing backers, and after he got power he went as far as having the leaders of the remnant of the "left" of the NSDAP murdered and arrested.
If you are going to be discussing the NSDAP, you need to be careful about which time period you consider, as the party that gained power in '33 had little in common with the party in its early days.
> Not an International Socialist
The Bolsheviks too gave up any pretense of being "international socialists" under Stalin, with the passing of the Socialism in One Country doctrine as official policy in '25. They tried to "export" their policies primarily as a matter of self preservation. In fact, the term "international socialism" from then on primarily became associated with Trotskyism (there are e.g. Trotskyist groups using that name).
Definition of Socialism: "A political and economic theory of social organization..." (via Google)
When a government enacts socialist policies, it is considered Socialist. Why? Politics is the mechanism by which economic and social policies are implemented and enforced.
> Socialism does not say anything about the political system. Socialism is about economics and welfare.
I would see welfare as a part of economics (how much of the resources are spent on welfare and who decides it), so I wouldn't make that distinction here.
But as I see it you can't divide between economics and politics. When the government controls a large portion of the economy (directly owning it or by having the power to enact arbitrary regulation) then it has a large political everyday influence on citizens. When it has almost no control over the economy then it has basically no say in the lives of its citizens.
Imagine a situation where the government actually owned 100% of the economy, how would that look like? It would be slavery, because all resources would be taken away by the government and then redistributed in a way they see fit.
What I can't see is how a strongly right wing government could act authoritarian or dictatorial because they will have no power over the resources, which leaves them powerless to influence the behaviour of their citizenry without actually convincing them through good arguments or lies to act differently.
Socialism will on the other hand always try to have a lot of power over the economy which means they decide who is to be supported and who is not, who is to be punished (by higher taxes) and who isn't. They also want to control what children learn in school, which is very dangerous in my opinion. It means that they are not confident that children raised in a way their parents want them to be raised will be compliant with the system they want to create. I believe it is pretty much a known fact that most people coming out of the educational system today (particularly the higher ones) will be overwhelmingly more likely to be left leaning than not.
He was a right-wing populist that wanted to do "socialism" for the superior German race by enslaving Slavs etc. He actually hated the Soviet Union precisely because it was socialist. In fact Nazism actually means "Nationalist Socialism" = Nazism, which is not the "Socialism" of the soviets, but a right-wing, one race owns everything ideology, which is precisely why Nazism is a separate ideology.
The fact that this is believed by some is disgraceful.
> And last but not least: Hitler himself frequently said and wrote that he is a Socialist. Not an International Socialist like the Soviet Union but a National Socialist.
International Socialism was the Soviets. By definition an international variant must be less racist and it's not surprising that a National variant was racist.
But the economy had similarities, it was controlled almost completely by the government. (to a greater extent in the Soviet Union than by the Nazis, but the Nazi economy certainly was no free market economy)
I think we all know why he was hated.
I just find this impossible to reconcile with his support for Trump, the most authoritarian presidential candidate in a very long time and possibly ever.
I think many of his supporters would actually agree with that description, they like that about him, and they absolutely do not describe themselves as libertarian.
They describe themselves as "conservatives" who want a "strong" president to "take their country back". They talk about "getting tough".
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I've lived in America my whole life, but I was born in Austria, and German is my first language. It pains me to see a fellow German-speaking immigrant support a right-wing populist who appeals pretty explicitly to white identity politics. We of all people should know better.