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Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

They changed the gun emoji to be a water gun, which has a totally different meaning. This retroactively changes previous writings, changing their meaning.

From the op:

In his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera linked this kind of forced conformity to a fascist government’s unbounded desire for control, and its efforts to limit expression to kitsch, a cartoonish denial of objective reality

This is also a historical feature of communist governments. All governments, and all societies, in as much as they lose a commitment to individual rights, will tend to grab more and more control in pursuit of difficult goals. It's yet another thing that seems "nice" but which has disturbing implications under the surface for free speech, like Canadian Bill C-16.

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So wait, does that make Apple fascists or communists? Wouldn't want to grab the wrong pitchfork.

It would more accurately be described as corporate-flavored collectivism.

Of course, that doesn't make for a good ingredient in angry epithets.

Frank Herbert once made the observation that corporate hierarchies were very similar to feudal hierarchies, just with milder consequences for disloyalty and failure. (The hierarchies within organized crime are even closer to the feudal ones, even including the feudal ceremonial trappings. This even works across cultures, where Japanese organized crime harkens back to feudal Japan and Italian/Sicilian organized crime harkens back to medieval and rennaissance Italy.) Along this line of thinking, corporate flavored collectivism should be structurally similar to Stalinist USSR, including the requirement for ideological conformity. However, the branding is likely to be far, far different.

Corporations certainly have purges. Happens all the time after mergers.

I think they meant authoritarian, they come in all political stripes

Both, this is why the apple bite is shaped like a horseshoe.

"authoritarians"

Fascists and communists are both animated by the same principle: that Papa knows best and must be obeyed.

In the prophetic taxonomy of the Dead Kennedys' California Über Alles (https://genius.com/Dead-kennedys-california-uber-alles-lyric...), they're 'Zen fascists':

    Zen fascists will control you
    100% natural
    You will jog for the master race
    And always wear the happy face

Though today, they'd be more "fleece/denim secret police".

Fascism and communism are not complete opposites.

Both are authoritarian political philosophies with a heavy handed approach to economic policies.

Differences come in privatization, immigration, equality of rights, and religious toleration. [1]

Both have extreme takes on ideas falling under the umbrella of socialist thought (hence, Germany's National Socialist Workers party). You can argue 1984 vs Brave New World, but there are certainly common themes.

Both differ significantly from classical liberalism.

[1] http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/politics/ideo...

A friend of mine also pointed out that they appear to have different attitudes towards hierarchy. At least, the Marxist derived authoritarians brand themselves as egalitarian -- though they usually go ahead and have hierarchy anyway, having it both ways. Fascists and Nazis also seem to emphasize community while extolling elites, great men, and meritocratic hierarchy -- also having it both ways. It's just that the branding is different.

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