Nice "both sides" argument, very subtle.

When one side of crazies goes after a different side of crazies, “both sides are crazy” is an appropriate way to look at it.

I guess if you want to completely abandon nuance... but at that point everyone is some variety of crazy. Half the US believes in ghosts.

There is obviously a huge difference between fascist-aspiring westerners and communist-aspiring westerners. It's disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Tankies are crazy and I don't approve of their ideology, but they also do not dehumanize large swaths of the population.

> they also do not dehumanize large swaths of the population

They dehumanize and kill everyone equally.

I think the West (US especially) has a great system of government figured out, and I wouldn't try to say any group attempting to break that is better than another. It's not disingenuous to say that both are authoritarians who kill millions.

Please don't be childish. I have no love for communism and I get that you probably have some personal grudge against communism because of what your family has gone through. But the way you are expressing your hatred of communism is diminishing the evil committed by the NAZIs and the suffering of their victims, and that's just not right. And it's also not winning you any friends and you'd be better served if you showed solidarity with victims of other evil regimes, instead of trying to up them with your personal victim-hood.

The above commenter's point was actually drawing a distinction between these, and "one-upping" by saying there was a difference, or worse one, out of these extremist ideologies.

I disagreed and said that they are both equally horrid.

Expressing equal hatred for people and systems that kill countless millions through starvation, gulags/concentration camps, and disappearing them, is not childish. I have a ton of solidarity with victims of other evil regimes.

You're purposefully ignoring all the nuance. There is nothing more to say.

Sometimes both sides do suck.

One side is metastasising in the US government right now, the other has been long dead.

"it's the same because they're both bad"

ok...

It's not been long dead. There's a communist who's just been elected to Mayer of New York.

He’s a socialist. Painting all socialism as “evil communism” is reductive and dishonest.

Mamdani has said that (1) they'll open government-run stores, and (2) the government will seize buildings from bad landlords.

My family is from a communist country and I can assure you, that is communistic.

I would agree that government run stores falls into the communist playbook. Despite the communism boogie man, though, I don’t think supporting a couple of communist policies strictly makes a person a communist.

Trump sent a bunch of government checks to people during Covid and no one called him communist for this.

> Trump sent a bunch of government checks to people during Covid and no one called him communist for this.

Giving people money on a temporary basis is the opposite of the government opportunistically taking over areas of the market.

> Mamdani has said that (1) they'll open government-run stores

We've had those for ages. Called commisaries. Here's a picture: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_020813-N-364...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Commissary_Agency

> the government will seize buildings from bad landlords.

We've had eminent domain since the founding of the nation.

Any time someone mention "fascism" or "communism" you can be sure people instantly lose 50 IQ point and come up with the most convoluted definitions of these terms

The US army have their own government owned supermarkets. And there are plenty of US states and other countries with public stores which are definitely not communist. Is the US army communist ?

In Berlin we voted to seize housing from megacorp landlords profiteering from housing, I don't think Berlin is communist either. https://qz.com/2065655/berliners-voted-to-seize-housing-from...

The US army isn't communist by that definition, no. Any more than any employer who provides food to their employees isn't communist.

In Berlin you didn't realise that population increase is what enriches landlords and screws regular people, but you still vote for a lot of immigration. Population increase in a finite, well-settled country is what gives rise to landlords.

So is he communist or islamist in the end ? I keep hearing both but they're mutually exclusive

It’s intentionally blunt. That’s exactly the issue right now: fascists and communists are going at each other and tearing apart what remains of our liberal world.

I think "facists" is a tiring word to describe them. I would recommend christian nationalists.

"Christian nationalist" is a term that on the one hand, insults Christians, and on the other hand flatters these power hungry grifters. Why would you use such a term?

I mean - obviously the modern day communists rarely use the original name too. But I guess we are adults and know that in reality, under all of that political marketing, we are talking about fascists and communists.

It's not particularly worth saving

I guess we have to learn every 80-100 years, that, actually it is.

> and communists

Communists left the chat in 1989, grandpa. There are multiple factions competing for power but communists aren't really in the ring right now. It's mostly different flavours of establishment factions and alt-right factions.

Where are all those communists? As far as I can see, only one extreme of the political spectrum is viable in the first world, and that extreme is currently rapidly approaching its logical conclusion of completely crippling democracy. It's not a both sides issue.

Jacobin is to communism as Gary Johnson is to JD Vance. "Left politics" covers a lot of ideologies and they all hate each other.

Jacobin is not a whole journal on literal communism.

It’s a magazine with a professed socialist view point but it’s more aligned with left-of-center American politics. Think Sanders or Mamdani rather than Stalin or Mao.

For the US, that's still "far left" as opposed to merely "left of center."

Jacobin is more closely aligned with Stalin or Mao than Sanders or Mamdani, actually.

> Jacobin is not a whole journal on literal communism. It’s a magazine with a professed socialist view point but it’s more aligned with left-of-center American politics. Think Sanders or Mamdani rather than Stalin or Mao.

> Sanders or Mamdani

Sanders and Mamdani are about as far left of center as one can get at the moment, such that they almost meld into Stalin or Mao.

The mental gymnastics you’re doing to blunt that fact is absolutely incredible.

> Sanders and Mamdani are about as far left of center as one can get at the moment

No, they aren’t. They are about as far left of center as you can get and be competitive in US elections, maybe, but that’s a very different thing. There’s a lot to their left (as you an see from the by the opposition from leftist as sellouts to capitalist/imperialist/etc. institutions both have.)

> such that they almost meld into Stalin or Mao.

... Oh, come on now. I can't tell whether you're extremely confused about Sanders and Mamdani, or extremely confused about Stalin and Mao.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/25/bernie-sande... would have gone very differently if Sanders was Mao, for a start.

You really think if they had the unchecked power of Stalin or mao they would be… better?

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s a no-kidding literary tool used throughout history.

> such that they almost meld into Stalin or Mao

Stalin was an ideological authoritarian that executed political rivals and used lethal force, price controls, and other governmental tools to control the economy and the general working population. The idea that Sanders and Mambani advocate anything close to that is laughable.

The rhetoric on both the right and left that liken today's politics to extremism in the 20th century is a ridiculous anachronism that needs to be called out more often.

> Sanders and Mamdani are about as far left of center as one can get at the moment, such that they almost meld into Stalin or Mao.

So, when's Mamdani's Great Purge coming? Do you think he's gonna stand by the standards of his historical ideological equivalent, Stalin, and execute a couple hundreds of thousands of elites (if we're going by the same proportions as the USSR), or is he going all out - maybe he could get a million deaths in? Maybe he could also start a famine or two on the way there?

The utter insanity of American politics baffles me. "Anything left is abhorrent totalitarian communism in the making" isn't just a meme, it's a foundational piece of mainstream American ideology that has been at its core for nearly a century now.

While I agree that the US has a historical obsession with communism, "anything right is abhorrent totalitarian fascism in the making" has been a far more commonly stated position for the last decade. At this point, it's necessary to regard both "communism" and "fascism" as simple pejoratives and focus on the specific policies being discussed.

This is unfortunate but perhaps inevitable. There are not that many left that remember the horrors of either ideology clearly.

Here comes another person throwing out words like “communism” yet using the term inaccurately. Please invest in a dictionary.

The core belief in communism is "collective ownership for the common good" which feels like a far cry from "the literal antichrist is coming."

I could follow an argument that Jacobin is naive, but it seems silly to make the direct comparison to someone who thinks we're approaching some predictable end of days and say they're the same.

100M+ dead ideology

Not sure why people keep bringing this up. Every ideology has blood on their hands, but communism is nowhere near #1. Try comparing the death tolls/genocides/etc of the capitalist/anti-communist side with the communist side.

Communism and its associated pairings have killed far more than capitalism ever will. Communism only ever exists when paired with an authoritarian government and cannot exist without one. Capitalism can (and does) exist without an authoritarian government. There is a reason why the only people that defend communism have never lived under it.

capitalism is great just don't ask the natives about it

Communism always implies death and destruction, capitalism does not. I am not saying that capitalism and its associated governments always result in perfect or even good outcomes, but that communism always results in bad ones. And either way, the natives were wiped out by governments under mercantilism, not capitalism.

what part of the communist ethos implies death and destruction? really it seems more baked in to capitalism and democracy is the more important piece rather than the economic system... a socialist system can be democratic too

Communism requires an authoritarian government. Authoritarian governments bring death and destruction. Therefore, any communist society will inevitably have death and destruction.

> Communism and its associated pairings have killed far more than capitalism ever will.

Ever will? The "capitalists" have already killed far more. Did communists wipe out a continent full of native americans? Did communists killed more people than the Nazi germany, the US, british empire, chinese empire, japanese, etc in ww2? Did communists kill more people during both the vietnam wars?

> Communism only ever exists when paired with an authoritarian government and cannot exist without one. Capitalism can (and does) exist without an authoritarian government.

Fine, that's an actual argument that can be discussed. But why lie outright about reality. But pretty sure the natives would have loved to live under their own authoritarian government rather than being wiped out by the capitalist paradise.

> There is a reason why the only people that defend communism have never lived under it.

Must be why you are so good at lying. Because you grew up under communism?

Capitalism did not kill the natives, the colonial governments and other European governments did. Communism implies evil/bad/death, but capitalism does not. And even then, the "system" in place at the time was mercantilism, not capitalism. For your last argument, you do not need to be Gordon Ramsay to know when something tastes bad. Once again, growing up under communism implies with 99% certainty that you do not want communism. It is an implication, not a bi-implication.

> Capitalism did not kill the natives, the colonial governments and other European governments did

Then neither did communism. The governments did.

> And even then, the "system" in place at the time was mercantilism, not capitalism.

Sure. Just like the soviet union, china, north korea, etc are not true communists. Idiots on both sides always make the same excuses.

> Once again, growing up under communism implies with 99% certainty that you do not want communism.

If that were the case, a certain percentage of the world wouldn't have had to spent trillions to undermine and overthrow communism.

> It is an implication, not a bi-implication.

Morons on both sides love to throw around logic terms they don't understand to buttress their shitty argument. That and silly statistics. 99% certainty. Good one.

Well capitalism does not always mean bad, but communism does. Therefore, one is objectively worse than the other.

Corporate capitalism largely started colonization. Most of the English-speaking colonization of America was started by companies like the Virginia Company, the Massachusetts Bay Company, etc. Most of India was conquered by the British East India company before it turned over its holdings to the British government. The Congo Free State was the personal property of the King of Belgium, not part of or governed by Belgium, for the exploitation of companies he had interests in.

Interesting that this is being downvoted considering "Thiel is a right-wing loon" and "Jacobin are a bunch of left-wing loons" are not mutually exclusive statements.

They're both wrong, just in different ways, and observing this is not "bothsidesism."

Discussing the messenger instead of the message is a common strategy to derail conversations away from the message.

As you observe, the original comment is wrong and as such it contributes nothing useful to the discussion.

Yeah, expect this to get flagged and vanish. This has nothing to do with anything even remotely interesting except to those who are emotionally invested with pwning their political or ideological opposition. At this level of discourse, they're all batshit bonkers.

it's not interesting at all - the comment is very stupid (jacobin is not "whole journal on literal communism") as well as such lazy both-sidesism everyone is dumber for having read it.

there's lots of stupid brigading on HN, but sometimes dumb comments get the downvotes they deserve.