I know of many examples of Communism not working; SSR, Mao's china, Venezuela, etc. However I often encounter people who identify as Communists who claim that these are not 'real' examples of Communism.
I claim that this is an application of the no true Scotsman as these countries self identify as Communist and by en large follow the teachings put forth by Marx.
Since our debate on examples of Communism failing has reached an end, I wonder if there is room to explore the other side of this coin. What examples are there of Communism policies helping the country they were implemented in?
EDIT:
Most comments seem to be based on this video, watch for context
The Communists here are arguing that North Korea is 'successful' here is a source video they cited
EDIT2:
This person doesn't understand the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. You can see it in the religious examples they provide. Also quoting from the bible means nothing to me. This is an appeal to authority (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority) which is a different form of logical fallacy.
Most religions believe in equality of opportunity. Everybody should be treated the same at a base level, then if you work hard you can get ahead.
Socialism believes in equality of outcome. It doesn't matter who works and who doesn't, at the end of the day we all have the same.
The major argument against Socialism, or any equality of outcome argument, is the incentive structure it produces.
If at the end of a day you will always have the same amount of stuff, regardless of if you work hard or don't work at all, then it de facto rewards those who don't work. You create an incentive not to work.
Calling Mao or Stalin 'right wing' suggests to me one of two things; this person is not from America, or this person is uninformed.
People like to label things without understanding why they deserve those labels. What does it mean to be 'right wing'?
This actually has a couple answers depending on the context.
Throughout history 'right wingers' all believe in nationalized healthcare, a large national government and government involvement in citizen lives. This stands true in Europe today.
However America is a unique country founded on the principle of the people keeping the government in check. Right wing in America means that you want less government, you believe the rights/responsibility lies with the individual, not the government. For example I believe it is my right and my responsibility to take care of myself and the people I love, I don't think this is the governments right or responsibility.
Claiming that Mao or Stalin are 'right' is incorrect by this definition. They did not aim to create smaller national governments and push the rights and responsibilities back to the citizens.
This is a horrible lie that some people are pushing in modern America. It tries to pair all Republicans and conservatives with Mao, Stalin and Hitler using the term 'right wing' without providing the necessary context. This is a reprehensible thing to do, it purposefully spreads false information and I really do not appreciate it.
Stalin murdered 20 million and Mao close to 30 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
There are no verified claims that anything close happened in the US. I see one claim by a Russian author that 7 million died from famine in the US during the great depression, but the source is biased and it happened several decades before Mao's famine.
I am interested in long lasting, successful socialist or communist governments that helped their populace without killing them. Are there any examples of this?
Response videos;
5 myths about capitalism with Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_7Jv2oh9s4&list=PLdwuTqmWh5XVhPUknvtADg8raCXvZQhzR
Debunking the 'Southern strategy' with Carol Swain, Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University.
Firstly, these countries were not communist, and most said as much themselves. They were (arguably) socialist. The people were communist in that they strove for communism, not that they lived in it.
Now a major presupposition of your question is that these countries "didn't work". That's really entirely too reductive to completely negate, but I think some of these countries worked very well in many regards. Take the Soviet Union; it brought Russia from a feudalistic backwater to the second largest economy in the world in under fifty years amidst two world wars on its soil, one in its infancy, and beat the US in the space race. China has a similar meteoric rise from obscurity to world superpower.
Maybe you're talking about famines? Remember people were starving to death in the US (and much of the rest of the world) at the exact same time.
Anyway, as for "following the teachings of Marx", that's actually a very contentious statement. The left is a very splintered, fractured group, unfortunately, and there are huge disagreements over what "Marx's teachings" were and, by extension, which countries followed it. Trotskyists, left-comms, anarchists (some of whom don't like Marx, but are still communist), all of them would say the USSR, PRC, etc. did not follow Marx's ideas.
Anyway, if you think those countries "didn't work", you might be more receptive to anarchist countries. They were much more palatable to most people, even though they usually didn't last as long. Check out the Paris Commune, the Ukrainian Free Territory, Revolutionary Catalonia, or, for modern examples, the Zapatistas, and, arguably, Rojava.
Kinda funny I randomly happened upon this DOA sub the day after you posted this lol
well you did a good job
thank you! :)
i'm pr passionate about politics lol
You haven't addressed anything I said. My first point is the' no true Scotsman' logical fallacy, rather than addressing my concerns you simply re stated them.
I asked for examples of communist or socialist countries that worked. By your own admission all the ones you could list 'didn't last as long'.
The countries which had meteoric rises to power were also accompanied with widespread murder. Stalin murdered 20 million and Mao close to 30 million.
There are no verified claims that anything close happened in the US. I see one claim by a Russian author that 7 million died, but it is unverified and also tied to the great depression (several decades earlier).
Let me flip the script, do you like capitalism? What if I told you that the only reason you don't like capitalism (assuming you don't) is because TRUE capitalism has never been tried. Every place that has capitalism also has governmental restrictions. Taxes exist, which are profoundly un capitalistic. Therefore no society/country today is capitalist and any arguments against capitalism are null and void.
Going through your examples; one is Democratic Federation of Northern Syria things are not 'working' well in Syria. Another is Zapatista Army of National Liberation which acts in southern Mexico, things are not 'working' well in southern Mexico. Revolutionary Catalonia lasted 3 years. Free Territory existed for 3 years. The Paris Commune lasted three months.
I am interested in long lasting, successful socialist or communist governments that helped their populace without killing them. Do you have any examples of this?
5 hour old comment with 2 upvotes on a month old post in a dead sub 🤔
You missed a word.
The Zapatistas have been around for more than twenty years, and are still going strong. And I didn't even mention Cuba, which has been around for quite a while and accomplished a lot.
First, the US Great Depression and Holodomor, were concurrent.
I think it's kinda funny how scrupulous you are with naming the source and assessing its validity when it's talking about America, and how unscrupulous you are with the same when it's about so-called Communist countries. Russian claims about US death rates are of course suspect, I agree, but would the US claims about Communist deaths not also be suspect? Remember the Red Scare? Either way, I'm not a big fan of the USSR or PRC. What I do think is interesting is that there seems to be very little information on how many people starved in the US during the Great Depression, aside from some government statement that no one did, which, considering (admittedly very few) people are starving in the US even today, comes off like some absurd claim FOX News attributes to Kim Jong Un.
Anyway, none of this matters, because it's pretty much an indisputable fact of the historical record that the US' meteoric rise from colonization to industrial superpower also entailed plenty of murder, death, rape, and slavery. Remember the Indians, or slavery, or the Alamo, or all the aggressive expansionism into central America, which incidentally birthed Cuba as we know it?
I'm not saying these Eastern Bloc countries were way better than the US, I'm saying they're not really any worse. Even today, capitalism kills millions every year.
I mean it's better than feudalism lol. I'd probably respond about exactly the same way you would if I told you that the only reason you don't like communism is because TRUE communism has never been tried. I think a government is a natural part of private property and the consolidation of power capitalism facilitates.
What is "working well"? Are you comparing these to the economic superpower that is the US, or the more fair comparison: the surrounding areas?
Yes, I think they were too soon. Just like if you went back to the 1200s and tried to start a capitalist society. It'd be too soon; you'd be crushed by the monarchists. I think these things have to arise more naturally.
Ignoring the shift of goal posts, Cuba is doing pretty well, but again, I think it's too soon for communism. Either way, you've pretty much admitted that you have no examples of long lasting, successful capitalist governments, so I guess we're at a stalemate.
Great Depression in the United States
The Great Depression began in August 1929, when the United States economy first went into an economic recession. Although the country spent two months with declining GDP, it was not until the Wall Street Crash in October 1929 that the effects of a declining economy were felt, and a major worldwide economic downturn ensued. The market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal advancement. Although its causes are still uncertain and controversial, the net effect was a sudden and general loss of confidence in the economic future.
Holodomor
The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомо́р); derived from морити голодом, "to kill by starvation"), also known as the Terror-Famine and Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, and—before the widespread use of the term "Holodomor", and sometimes currently—also referred to as the Great Famine, and The Ukrainian Genocide of 1932–33 was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 that killed an officially estimated 7 million to 10 million people. It was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–33, which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country.
During the Holodomor millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine. Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine and 15 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government.
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Your source for Capitalism killing millions a year is idiotic. For starters it doesn't factor in per capita deaths per ideology, secondly it assumes that all these deaths would be cured in a non Capitalist society without asking how many lives were saved by the Capitalist society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_7Jv2oh9s4&list=PLdwuTqmWh5XVhPUknvtADg8raCXvZQhzR
400 million Chinese people are living better lives today because of Capitalism, no amount of redistribution or federal aid could have done this, only Capitalism could have.
My point is not that there are actually no Capitalist societies, it is that there are clearly Capitalist societies and Communist ones. Neither adheres 100%, but they follow the majority of the rules and so we use them as case examples. The Communist ones do horrible compared to the Capitalist ones every time. However you refuse to accept any of these case samples saying 'it wasn't TRUE Communism'. I don't accept this argument. This is a logical fallacy, its not really an argument to begin with.
My 'flipping the script' was not meant to be a compelling argument, in fact just the opposite. It was supposed to highlight how dumb that logic is and why it cannot be applied to any situation, the logic itself is bad so any conclusion it creates is also bad.
Cuba had death squads and no due process, while you can claim its 'doing pretty well' I think that most people when judging with an objective standard would not come to that conclusion.
http://www.therealcuba.com/?page_id=55
I haven't seen you link any sources for the death tolls you're claiming, so I can't compare them to yours. Here's one per capita: https://youtu.be/QnIsdVaCnUE
[citation needed]
Literally untrue. The USSR was the second-largest economy in the world; larger than every single capitalist economy save one. Even today, and even if we reduce how well a country is doing to its GDP per capita, look at Cuba and compare it to Guatemala, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, etc. It's doing way better than average in that area.
I literally only said that to point out how silly you saying it "wasn't TRUE capitalism" was. So yes, I agree that's a logical fallacy and not really an argument lol.
What's not a fallacy is saying that, first, those countries never claimed to have achieved communism; they were (arguably) socialism, not communism, and second, that socialism is a huge umbrella with many different, often contradictory philosophies. Like saying the economy of Syria is different than the economy of the US, even though they both fit under the huge umbrella of "capitalist", is not a No True Scotsman.
When did I originally make that argument for you to "flip the script"?
lol wtf is this website? Can you link something from a more neutral website? And what is this "objective standard"?
Yes, Cuba has done fucked up things, but it's interesting that that immediately disqualifies it in your eyes when America's extrajudicial slaughter of civilians, the plea bargain completely subverting due process in around 94% of cases as of 2001, the Japanese Internment, the Red Scare, prison-industrial complex, forced labor (slavery) of prisoners, repression of homosexuals, slavery, Jim Crow, etc. etc. The United States literally has the first or second highest incarceration rate in the world, lol. The whole reason Cuba as we know it exists is because the US installed a corporate dictator to completely brutalize Cuba.
By what ""objective standard"" lol can Cuba be discounted because of its civil rights abuses while the US is not?
Plea bargaining in the United States
Plea bargaining in the United States is very common; the vast majority of criminal cases in the United States are settled by plea bargain rather than by a jury trial. They have also been increasing in frequency—they rose from 84% of federal cases in 1984 to 94% by 2001. Plea bargains are subject to the approval of the court, and different States and jurisdictions have different rules. Game theory has been used to analyze the plea bargaining decision.
Internment of Japanese Americans
The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in camps in the western interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific coast. 62 percent of the internees were United States citizens. These actions were ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
Japanese Americans were incarcerated based on local population concentrations and regional politics.
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term refers to U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from 1947 to 1956 and characterized by heightened political repression as well as a campaign spreading fear of Communist influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents.
What would become known as the McCarthy era began before McCarthy's term in 1953. Following the First Red Scare, president Truman signed in 1947 an executive order to screen federal employees for association with organizations deemed "totalitarian, Fascist, Communist or subversive" or advocating "to alter the form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means." In 1949 a high level State Department official was convicted of perjury in a case of espionage and the Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb, while the Korea War started the next year, rising tensions in the United States.
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots (also referred to as the Stonewall uprising or the Stonewall rebellion) were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay (LGBT) community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. They are widely considered to constitute the most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.
Gay Americans in the 1950s and 1960s faced an anti-gay legal system. Early homophile groups in the U.S. sought to prove that gay people could be assimilated into society, and they favored non-confrontational education for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike.
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (Spanish: [fulˈxensjo βaˈtista i salˈdiβar]; born Rubén Zaldívar; January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was the elected President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944, and U.S.-backed dictator from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown during the Cuban Revolution. Batista initially rose to power as part of the 1933 Revolt of the Sergeants, which overthrew the provisional government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada. He then appointed himself chief of the armed forces, with the rank of colonel, and effectively controlled the five-member "pentarchy" that functioned as the collective head of state. He maintained this control through a string of puppet presidents until 1940, when he was himself elected President of Cuba on a populist platform.
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It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users. I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click!
Here is link number 1 - Previous text "94%"
Please PM /u/eganwall with issues or feedback! | Delete
This is clearly going in circles as I think that most people would agree that the United States is better than the USSR or Cuba and while having its own problems, is still the greatest place to live in human history.
"Literally untrue. The USSR was the second-largest economy in the world; larger than every single capitalist economy save one. Even today, and even if we reduce how well a country is doing to its GDP per capita, look at Cuba and compare it to Guatemala, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, etc. It's doing way better than average in that area. "
So by your own admission we can take the USSR as an example of a Communist country? Then all my points above apply. They murdered 20 million citizens, for me that is not a 'successful' country but I recognize that we have differing opinions on this.
The website for Cuba has pictures of Cuban government shooting its civilians. That is how bad it is in Cuba they have pictures of the murders. However I suspect you believe America has done worse and somehow erased all traces of it.
This truly is a pointless argument, its like debating a flat earther, there is nothing I could show you or say to you to convince you to challenge your own position.
for certain demographics.
I'm still waiting on a source for this, but sure, you can call it a Communist country. Just like we can call modern Russia or Pinochet's Chile capitalist countries, and oh look at that they're also horrible.
Of course this is a bad comparison because Russia and Pinochet's Chile functioned drastically differently than most modern liberal democracies, even though they both fit under the definition of capitalism. Capitalism is a very broad word that applies to tons of radically different countries. Do you understand my point?
This is just an anecdotal appeal to emotion. Pictures aren't statistics. Do you not think I could find plenty of pictures and even videos of American police executing civilians? It happens to be on the news quite a bit; I'm surprised you haven't heard of it.
What it comes down to is that you ravenously search for any flaw or mistake for any example I bring up so you can completely disregard the concrete, measurable success they've had, while completely disregarding the flaws of capitalist countries.
I've shown that, yes, there have been economically-successful socialist societies, there have been humane socialist societies, there have been long-lasting socialist societies. If that's not what you mean by "successful" then you need to elaborate, because I'm starting to think literally nothing I could say would convince you. I can't catch these goalposts.
For all demographics. America is the best place to live in human history for all demographics.
You are not putting forth a convincing logic. I point out that these countries have all committed horrendous civil rights abuses then you claim that America has too so it is null and void. This is wrong. America has made mistakes but nowhere near the scale as these communist countries. It shows either a lack of historical context or a willful misreading of the history that you honestly believe America is not a force for good in the world today.
America provided aid and rebuild Europe after WW2. America keeps all the worlds oceans free of piracy. America pays for a majority of the free worlds defense. At no point in America's history has there been a widespread political movement relying on murdering the opposition. America went to South Korea and fought a war to free them from the self proclaimed Communist regime. Honest question do you think that life today is better in North or South Korea? Are you so blind that you will argue that the people in the North still have it alright, that things are still getting better there, albeit not as fast as in other places, but since things are getting better they are successful none the less?
I honestly think you are trolling me, as I try to lay out your argument it makes less and less sense to the point of idiocy.
citation needed lol. Even a poor white person would probably be better off in a nation that guaranteed them healthcare, like Canada.
honestly citation needed for pretty much everything you've said lol. You're just making sweeping claims and value judgements with nothing to back them. like America's never murdered political opposition? I guess the genocide of native Americans or the Civil War never happened? Or America's involvement in Korea, where they murdered political dissidents in the north and south? Oh wait, you think they "freed" the Koreans lol. They brought back the Japanese that had been ravaging the country forever and put them in charge lol.
For the record, yes I think South Korea is better off right now, though there is a lot of propaganda about the north.
Like to seriously think America's never straight murdered political opposition when the country is still heavily divided along the lines marked in a previous civil war and think America is well-intentioned and is just helping other countries in spite of a storied history of malfeasance and the very recent history of invading a sovereign nation on entirely false pretenses is just a level of ideology i can't deal with lol.
United States involvement in regime change
United States involvement in regime change has entailed both overt and covert actions aimed at altering, replacing, or preserving foreign governments. In the latter half of the 19th century, the US government undertook regime change actions mainly in Latin America and the southwest Pacific, and included the Mexican-American, Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars. At the onset of the 20th century the United States shaped or installed friendly governments in many countries including Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
In the aftermath of World War II, the US government expanded the geographic scope of its regime change actions, as the country struggled with the Soviet Union for global leadership and influence within the context of the Cold War.
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If we can't agree that America did something good by saving the South Koreans than we are not going to agree on pretty much anything.
All I can say is get out more. Talk to some Korean people and ask them whether they think the US is a force for good or evil.
If you're still wondering or of anyone else searches ask communism when thinking of ask socialism - watch this video entirely devoted to 'socialism doesn't work' by someone who's not a socialist. Communism is under the large umbrella of socialism. And this video would probably bother a lot of serious communists and socialists at some point or another, but for the general point furthered by the red scare and other corporate media evaluations and Pearson textbooks this is a very quick debunking to at least open up the conversation and end the absolutes. If you have any questions, I'm by no means an expert but it is my full time job to politically organize on socialist principles and I do have a degree in political science at least (not a great qualifier but w/e - I just mean I'm not an asshole on it).
Promise it's not a "You'll be converted" video but it still offers so many historical events and studies that really shed light very quickly to move beyond the basic dominant narrative we learned in high school.
https://youtu.be/k79wCaFgU40
You didn't post the video... Or I don't see it.
My B updated now -
https://youtu.be/k79wCaFgU40
Unfortunately there are massive logical holes in the first five minutes.
This person doesn't understand the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. You can see it in the religious examples they provide. Also quoting from the bible means nothing to me. This is an appeal to authority (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority) which is a different form of logical fallacy.
Most religions believe in equality of opportunity. Everybody should be treated the same at a base level, then if you work hard you can get ahead.
Socialism believes in equality of outcome. It doesn't matter who works and who doesn't, at the end of the day we all have the same.
The major argument against Socialism, or any equality of outcome argument, is the incentive structure it produces.
If at the end of a day you will always have the same amount of stuff, regardless of if you work hard or don't work at all, then it de facto rewards those who don't work. You create an incentive not to work.
Good point and I definitely notice the lack of differentiation. It did seem he pointed out specific examples at least within the Christian literature for redistribution of wealth - which even though isn't formally socialist, I think for folks who are hostile from the beginning, might be a good start to explaining in such a blunt way the inherent nature of exploitation in the capitalist system. Tho that last bit is all I typically need to explain to left leaning people to make them comfortable in their socialist views.
Calling Mao or Stalin 'right wing' suggests to me one of two things; this person is not from America, or this person is uninformed.
People like to label things without understanding why they deserve those labels. What does it mean to be 'right wing'?
This actually has a couple answers depending on the context.
Throughout history 'right wingers' all believe in nationalized healthcare, a large national government and government involvement in citizen lives. This stands true in Europe today.
However America is a unique country founded on the principle of the people keeping the government in check. Right wing in America means that you want less government, you believe the rights/responsibility lies with the individual, not the government. For example I believe it is my right and my responsibility to take care of myself and the people I love, I don't think this is the governments right or responsibility.
Claiming that Mao or Stalin are 'right' is incorrect by this definition. They did not aim to create smaller national governments and push the rights and responsibilities back to the citizens.
This is a horrible lie that some people are pushing in modern America. It tries to pair all Republicans and conservatives with Mao, Stalin and Hitler using the term 'right wing' without providing the necessary context. This is a reprehensible thing to do, it purposefully spreads false information and I really do not appreciate it.
out of curiosity, do you think Hitler was a left-winger?
Looking at all his policies and asking which ones I think are closer to Republicans and which ones are closer to Democrats. If I total this number he is more Democratic than Republican.
Hitler took away the guns
Hitler believed in a strong and large government
Hitler believed in identity politics
Democrats want to take away guns
Democrats believe in a strong and large government
Democrats believe in identity politics
Republicans don't want to take away guns
Republicans want a smaller government
Republicans believe in merit based politics, not identity politics.
What am I missing?
OK, first, Democrats are a FAR cry from communists. They're neoliberals, and communism is no bedfellow with neoliberalism.
But even then, lemme look at these.
Almost exclusively from undesirables. It's very similar imo to how American gun control was kicked into high gear when the Black Panthers began carrying guns everywhere. This gun control move was bipartisan. Even today we have the Republican president in a Republican congress talking about pushing for gun control.
Either way, communists generally aren't gun control advocates; we want to overthrow capitalism with them. Former Eastern Bloc countries did have pretty intense gun control I think, but communists generally do not approve of gun control.
I've never bought the line that Republicans are small government. Since Trump came in to office, he's talked about building a wall, sent ICE agents to kick out undocumented immigrants, talked about expanding "law and order" into urban environments, bombed the fuck out of other countries, etc. etc. And he's no exception; take Bush and the massive expansion of domestic surveillance, and a huge land war started on completely false premises. Or Nixon and what has become the largest government crackdown on nonviolent offenders in America and fueled the prison-industrial complex: the war on drugs.
Yes, Democrats are big government, but I think Republicans are too.
I mean Republicans do too if you listen to what they're saying. Trump claimed to speak for "the silent majority", has talked about "Make America Great Again" (at what point in history has America been better for someone who isn't white?), has cracked down on illegal immigration, has retweeted white supremacists' false statistics, etc. I mean he practically rose to power appealing to poor, white, rural Americans with explicit populism.
I mean, looking at the makeup of the parties, Republicans are vastly majority straight white men, while Democrats have a huge mix of different sexualities, genders, and races.
MOST IMPORTANT PART HERE: The Nazis rose to power ardently opposed by the socialists and social democrats in Germany, and proceeded to wipe them out, first thing. You know that "First they came for" poem? The first ones they came for were the socialists. Then the trade unionists.
This happened in the Night of the Long Knives, and also eradicated the only somewhat left wing faction of the Nazi party, the Strasserists (though they were still shitty ethnonationalist anti-Semites). Hitler continued to run tons of anti-communist propaganda throughout the Third Reich, and repeatedly railed against communism in Mein Kampf.
Anyways, the main defining feature of the Nazi party imo was ethnonationalism, and between the party talking about building walls and deporting immigrants and the party (shallowly imo) promoting diversity and easier paths to citizenship, it's pretty obvious which one skews in that direction imo.
I mean the word "privatization" was literally coined by The Economist to describe the economy of early Nazi Germany. They were by no means whatsoever socialist; far from it.
Hitler took many policies directly from the American Democratic party including eugenics;
"Edwin Black wrote that after the eugenics movement was well established in the United States, it was spread to Germany. California eugenicists began producing literature promoting eugenics and sterilization and sending it overseas to German scientists and medical professionals.[10] By 1933, California had subjected more people to forceful sterilization than all other U.S. states combined. The forced sterilization program engineered by the Nazis was partly inspired by California's.[2]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics
I don't find any of your counter arguments compelling.
Republicans are the party in favor of letting citizens keep their guns, Democrats and Nazi's opposed this.
Republicans are the party that believes in less government involvement in your day to day life, Democrats and Nazi's believed the opposite.
Republicans believe in merit based politics. Democrats and Nazi's both believe that you gain some added validity on certain topics by belonging to a certain group. For instance Hillary Clinton campaigned that she would be the first female president and Barack Obama campaigned that he would be the first black president. They are using a immutable characteristic to push a political agenda, this stands in direct contradiction to Dr. Mr Luther King Jr. words that "we should judge somebody by the content of their character and not the color of their skin".
Democrats claim that we need more 'women or people of color' in the government, they don't claim that we need the most qualified individuals regardless of race. This is more in line with Nazi's than with Republicans.
again, Democrats are not socialists. Socialists fucking hate Democrats lol. There's a whole sub to showcase this: /r/ShitLiberasSay (though we use the polisci definition of "liberal", and would consider you one too). We hate Obama and Hillary.
It's also worth noting that the Democratic party was the more conservative party at the time, and Republicans were the more progressive.
I love how you ignored everything I said that contradicts your claims of what Republicans believe and just restated your opinion. Republicans are in favor of letting citizens have weapons, yet the Republican president in Republican congress literally just called to take all the guns and worry about due process after the fact. Nazis wanted to take guns from citizens, yet the people they considered citizens (white Germans) had plenty of guns.
Southern strategy
In American politics, the southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. As the Civil Rights Movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s visibly deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern United States, Republican politicians such as presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative voters in the South that had traditionally supported the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. It also helped push the Republican Party much more to the right.
In academia, "southern strategy" refers primarily to "top down" narratives of the political realignment of the South, which suggest that Republican leaders consciously appealed to many white southerners' racial resentments in order to gain their support.
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The Southern strategy has been debunked by a variety of sources ranging from very liberal to right leaning. It shows your lack of unbiased education.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10Section2b.t-4.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiprVX4os2Y
http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/the-myth-of-the-racist-republicans/
Kinda disagree on the second to last sentence but you pointed out exactly what I was thinking of when I offered the caution in the video. I think the creator was going for 'authoritarian' at least in regard to some relative way for centralized governance for that specific country, instead of in relation to other countries or US practice.
I only disagree cause I haven't heard any left leaning, or center, or Democrat right, people pairing that. Tho I could imagine it happens. Just doesn't seem to be even a small narrative beyond knee-jerk 'Trump is Stalin/Hitler/Mao/Putin' that I don't see anyone considering seriously
Many thanks, I will watch even though I find it excruciating. In the future I would appreciate if you could condense the main points into a logical argument, I don't always have 20 minutes and if I posted a 20 minute video I wouldn't really expect you to watch it.
20 seconds in and I want to point out that Nazi's are National Socialists. Nazi's were a left leaning national socialist party (left leaning by American standards, right leaning by Eurpoean standards)
Yeah lol I recommend watching it on 2x speed. It would explain how Nazis could be Soc Dems or Dem Socialists or even 'broadly socialist' in regards to nationalizing a few specific parts of the economy, but how that differs from the ideological foundation. Like if Trump nationalized the oil and healthcare industry and seriously reigned in wall street/finance, the American economy wouldn't be socialist, it'd just have the former 2 being 'socialistic' (as described in the video with Sweden, Norway, etc) while the latter could be considered that in some minor way but still would be 'considered socialist' in contemporary American narratives.
And again it's made by someone who doesn't consider themselves socialist and still has a somewhat negative view of socialism. I understand 20mins is long but it's super condensed and quick (while still being totally comprehensible) if you do the 2x speed - he talks slow. It's definitely worth it. If you have any specific points in it you feel are unclear, I'd be down to talk to you about it since I do like to refer people to this video. But ya gotta at least watch the best, quick historical description of socialism first.
There are plenty of examples of Communism working, just ask any North Korean.
If you judge modern day liberal democracies based only on the fifty years following the American and French Revolutions you would probably conclude that liberal democracy is a terrible system that would never lead to the quality of life people enjoy today.