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Comment by candiodari | Hacker News Reader

In this case, not really:

1) economy destroyed to the point of famines. They promised food if they won the election and blocking of everything if they lost.

2) they attacked (including with machine guns) the opposition. Tortured opposition candidates. Forced others out of the country, ...

3) They attacked voters at polling stations.

4) They attacked the parliament, a number of parlementarians, and several judges, before, during and after counting the ballots.

I mean it's no mystery how these people got "elected": they didn't.

Nothing shows socialism like these people do: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/26/chavez-daughte...

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>Nothing shows socialism like these people do:

Are you suggesting there's never been a non-socialist dictatorship?

I think the poster above you is referring specifically to the self-proclaimed 21st century socialists in Venezuela (and family).

I'm pretty sure the OP pointed out that Venezuela is yet another example where socialism originated yet another totalitarian regime that assassinates the opposition and keeps the people starving.

Obviously, he's not suggesting that.

The idea is that fascism and socialism are both dependent on a common thread, the elevation of group/collective/state identity over the identity and values of the individual.

Socialism tends to play into a groups (arbitrarily defined, but generally based on wealth, class) with often legitimate grievances, but degenerates into attacks on groups based on envy.......... The Ukrainian experience under the Soviet farm collectivization is an excellent example of this. A great book, by a Russian WW2 veteran who was sent to the gulags by Stalin called "Gulag Archipelago" is a phenomenal insight into this pathology.

Fascist regimes tend to lean towards elevation of a collective ethnic/religious identity over other groups within a nation or other nations which turns the government into an all powerful protector and destroyer of the "other"..

Once the individual is subjugated to the collective in these types of nations, the logical conclusion is that any individual protesting the state is a nuisance to be eliminated, and a traitor to the dominant collective group.

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