• amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 months ago

    I would say it’s closer to “the US taking the mask off on being fascist” vs. “finding ways to keep the mask on for longer”

  • atro_city@fedia.io
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    6 months ago

    Honestly, do people in the US actually know what the words liberals, conservatives, communists, marxists, fascists, etc. even mean? The words seem to just have taken on the urbandictionary meanings and serve as expletives more than anything else. Seemingly long lost are their use as per definition in Meriam Webster or Cambridge Dictionary.

    • davel@lemmygrad.ml
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      6 months ago

      To be fair, the establishment dictionary definitions of those words are about as useless as the urbandictionary definitions.

      Even the Wikipedia definitions have their issues, because they’re written in the register of liberal/bourgeois hegemony. Just look at “totalitarianism”: it’s Arendtian horsepoo theory. Hannah Arendt came from a wealthy family and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist, and her work was funded & promoted by the CIA.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
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    6 months ago

    Tell me you don’t know what fascism is without telling me you don’t know what fascism is.

      • MudMan@fedia.io
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        6 months ago

        Oh, I can help. My best friend’s grandpa was a cop under fascism. He still had the gun he used to hunt down communists in the mountains. It really painted a picture to hear him talk about it and defend it.

        I mean it, go vote for Biden.

        • knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
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          6 months ago

          So US cops don’t hunt down communists, and therefore the US isn’t fascist? I’m having a hard time seeing the thought process here, but then again I’m not a fascist.

          • MudMan@fedia.io
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            6 months ago

            See, the difference is that when you protest police violence to a future Biden administration he’ll have at most a political problem to manage for the next election and may feel the need to enforce some change in regulation to address it.

            When my parents protested the work camps and death sentences for political prisoners during actual fascism (they were both involved to different degrees with banned socialist and communist organizations) the government found that to be a nuisance at worst, a chance to enact more political cleansing at best, so they sent people like that other guy.

            So yes, there is a difference. And yes, that guy sounded suspiciously like Trump and not at all like Biden. By the way, like Trump, he was actually funny and charsimatic. I didn’t hate him or dislike him. This is a weird thing to talk about because cosplayers talk about this as a hypothetical or a disingenous argument for online clout, but I’m telling you about a real person I knew and had a relationship with.

            • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
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              6 months ago

              Trump was already in office for 4 years though. It’s not some big mystery how he would act as president. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The nature of US fascism is not identical to every other country, but you’re just ignoring history if you think it has never seriously opposed communism internally. Like, COINTELPRO for starters? Come on.

              It just comes across to me like you’re inventing this arbitrary goalpost for fascism, so that you can say the US isn’t at it yet and then say vote for the other guy. With a helping of vague “I lived under anecdote” to go with it. Like what is with this language of calling people cosplayers? Where exactly do you think US citizens live, not in the US?

              I’m genuinely confused as to what your politics are supposed to be.

              • MudMan@fedia.io
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                6 months ago

                Hah. I can tell.

                My politics are real world politics. As in, from lived experience. So no, they don’t line up with your cosplay categories. Because it’s not a football match, or good guys vs bad guys. It’s people’s lives, where what you do has real consequences.

                So while I’m way to the left of Biden, I am also not an idiot and precisely because I saw what 4 years of Trump did I am telling you that a second Trump term should be avoided by all means necessary. It’s not even a lesser evil, Biden has done pretty alright, by most counts. But even if it was a lesser evil, Trump is a Netanyahu ally, a Putin ally, a fundamentally incompetent anarchocapitalist fascist, an overt racist, an authoritarian with plans to persecute his political opponents and… you know, an actual rapist. You’d think at least one of those would be disqualifying for anybody not pretending to a be a progressive.

                And no, I didn’t “live in anecdote” I live in a whole ass country that was a fascist dictatorship for decades. It’s pretty statistically significant, that.

                • pinguinu [any]@lemmygrad.ml
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                  6 months ago

                  It’s not even a lesser evil, Biden has done pretty alright, by most counts.

                  Yeah, the genocide came out alright 😊

                • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
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                  6 months ago

                  And some of us live in the US, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world, is built on genocide of the indigenous (still an ongoing problem), slavery (prison labor loophole still exists), and is currently funding and supporting a genocide against the Palestinian people. You can repeat the word cosplay as many times as you want, it doesn’t suddenly make your world real and others not.

                  My point about you “living in anecdote” is you’re playing the internet trope “I was X and I understand it better than you” card, and so far, as far as I can tell, you have yet to even name what this mystery country is, in spite of being directly asked by someone. Meanwhile, you’re pushing garden variety “vote blue no matter who” talking points and showing repeated ignorance of what kind of person Biden is comparative to Trump and what the US is actually like.

                  You are not “way to the left of Biden” in actual substance. You are enabling of genocide by framing one of two runners of it as lesser evil. You call others cosplayers, but it’s you who is treating the claiming of a political label purely as a badge you put on yourself rather than something that has to be backed up by, you know, actually aligning with it.

            • bobs_guns@lemmygrad.ml
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              6 months ago

              The cops literally ran over some of those protestors with cars under Biden but sure, whatever you say

            • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.ml
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              6 months ago

              You’re right that there’s a difference between, say, Pinochet disappearing thousands of political opponents as a more-or-less open policy of internal repression and the level of police violence we’ve seen thus far in the U.S.

              You’re wrong that Biden is going to do anything to help.

    • ForMyDemons@lemmygrad.ml
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      6 months ago

      It seems like you and your tech friend are Joe Biden supporters because you benefit from the current system. It’s interesting how people in the tech world think they are political experts without actually having studied politics. Your false confidence in this area seems to come from your expertise in another field. You labour aristocrats will never see fascism come simply by reason that it doesn’t affect you negatively. For the poor black person in the US, fascism is already here; for the labour aristocrat, it is always just around the corner. For Palestine, it has been developing there for about a hundred years now, supported by the USA and by people like you.

    • MudMan@fedia.io
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      6 months ago

      As a person from a country that was actually fascist within living memory, the US cosplay left is infuriating.

      Go vote for Biden in November. Seriously.

      • rainpizza@lemmygrad.ml
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        6 months ago

        As a person from a country that was actually fascist within living memory, the US cosplay left is infuriating.

        Which country are you referring to?

        Go vote for Biden in November. Seriously.

        Why? Will something change if people vote for Biden? Last time I checked, Biden is the one that is facilitating a genocide in Palestine.

        • MudMan@fedia.io
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          6 months ago

          I’m less worried about what will change if people vote for Biden (which hey, I’m actually pretty sure whatever change happens will be for the better, as it has been this term).

          I’m way more worried about waht will change if people don’t vote for Biden.

          Also, how do you figure the Palestine situation would have gone under Trump, who is the actual guy who reversed 70 years of foreign policy to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and made West Bank settlements legal? How do you think that situation develops the day after Trump wins again?

          • rainpizza@lemmygrad.ml
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            6 months ago

            Also, how do you figure the Palestine situation would have gone under Trump, who is the actual guy who reversed 70 years of foreign policy to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and made West Bank settlements legal? How do you think that situation develops the day after Trump wins again?

            >

            I’m less worried about what will change if people vote for Biden (which hey, I’m actually pretty sure whatever change happens will be for the better, as it has been this term).

            Fo whom will those changes be for the better according to you? As far as we have all seen, Biden is just as bad as Trump, and is facilitating war and Genocide. Also, if we check for the details, only white people are benefiting from Biden as this other person clearly posted here: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3608106/3622954.

            Also, you haven’t answered my question. What is the name of “this actually fascist” country that you are referencing?