Hacker News Reader

Comment by empath75 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think it’s possible or desirable to find common ground with fascists, personally.

I simply disagree. We need to get away from the us versus them narrative and find common ground. Otherwise we destin ourselves to repeat the problems of the first half of the last century.

I completely find many views among many people on the right in this country in the category of what I would call fascist at this point. I do find that alarming. We also need to understand the similar views are being found on the left--views that I will admit I also can see the romanticism of because I have coarse am on the left. But these fringes are feeding each other in a dangerous way that's tearing us apart when reality we all have so much in common.

Ultimately what I'm espousing here is that we need to be realistic about the nature of democracy. The institutions of the democracy which keep it sound against the will of the masses over the long run are only as strong as the trends of those masses. And this is a very dangerous trend.

Case in point though: People need to be able to communicate, so don't downvote him.

> Case in point though: People need to be able to communicate, so don't downvote him.

"What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." A political group who advocates deplatforming as a means of quashing "wrong" opinions has no right to complain when their own opinions are deplatformed by the public.

He's not complaining and again, it's not that he deservers to be able to talk, it's that people deserve to hear anything that is out there.

You think by throwing around labels he want two-way communication?

You missed it. Doesn't matter how wrong he might be, people need to see what everyone has to say. It's not for him, it's for others.

They will, just in light grey; and they'll also see its not an acceptable argument.

It's flagged now...

I don't agree with flagging, there's no point unless there is an urgent need to remove a post.

Calling people who merely disagree you 'fascists' and consequently shutting down discussion with them makes you much more of a fascist than they are.

Thanks for being a great example of what GP was talking about.

Shutting down discussions about issues based on the pretext that the people you disagree with are "fascist" or "bigots" is a huge part of the problem. (And yes, the other side does the same while calling you "communists" — doesn't change anything)

In my defense, the one person I accused of being a communist on this board, turned out to actually be one :)

Less flippantly, you're spot on. I'd go further, and say overuse of these words erodes their meaning, and makes it possible for actual facists or bigots (or commies!) to hide among groups of people who have been tarred with the same brush but don't hold the same views.

> And yes, the other side does the same while calling you "communists" — doesn't change anything

Well, both the right and left thinks the other is the fascist. The right also thinks the left is communist. Both think the other is bigoted in different ways.

Calling someone both fascist and communist is, if nothing else, logically incoherent.

How?

Fascism is by definition extreme right.

Communism is by definition extreme left.

Reinterpreting history and meaning of words is a national sport now, especially when you can use "bad words" against your opponents but it's nice to use the appropriate words.

Also, wanting free healthcare doesn't make you a communist, wanting market deregulation / more immigration control doesn't make you fascist.

It's a bit like people saying Trump is the new Hitler. Open a history book and read, he isn't 5% of a Hitler.

Using these words an comparison in these contexts completely destroy their meaning.

For some (European) definitions of "right", maybe. In the U.S., reactionary thinking goes back to literal readings of the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence, though. From that perspective (maybe not your own but a prominent one), large government ideologies have more in common.

> In the U.S.

The US has never been under fascist or communist governments so their definitions of said movements don't really matter. Hitler and Mussolini were fascists, Trump is just right wing with disputable opinions. Stalin and Mao were communists, AOC isn't even moderate left by communists standards.

Saying that Trump is fascist and AOC a communist is plain ridiculous.

Yes, fascism and communism do have, at least in the way they were implemented so far, things in common, but they're diametrically opposed. It's like saying you're a man AND a woman because men and women have 2 legs/arms and you do too.

I was saying fascism isn't the opposite of communism simply because the European right/left paradigm would map them on opposing sides of a spectrum. Other paradigms exist in which they have much in common.

One thing they have in common: being diametrically opposed to a lot of things.

They're both ideologically different and socially distinct groups, and for the middle of the 20th century were shooting at each other on that basis?

Both labels have become extremely overused. Not every authoritarian is necessarily Fascist, calling everyone a Nazi isn't useful, nor is calling relatively mild redistributive processes or universal healthcare Communist.

This was basically my point as well. There are certainly better words to describe concerns, and the concerns are more bipartisan than is popularly appreciated.

The rise of fascist in pre-WW2 Germany has to be seen in its cultural context. The country was a mess after WW1 and the attitude of neighboring countries which amounted to let's kick 'm while they are laying down.

The German population was desperate enough to welcome everybody promising some kind of solution. At that time that was the communists or the fascists. If you're hungry and the fascists promise bread, you're going to look away a little if a few of them are nasty.

History has shown neither choice was very constructive. But that's today. A new kind of desperation is growing, and a new kind of assholes are feeding off it. So please let's find a way to find common ground with the other side of the political spectrum. 'Their' solution might seem wrong, but the problems they point to is real and needs urgent solving. If 'we' are sitting on our high horse, pointing out their flaws, without providing our own real solutions, there is no reason for them to even take notice of us. And we do know form history what happens next.

I actually think it's unfortunate you're being downvoted because you're right: the Weimar Republic was torn apart by two extremes who were feeding off each other-- sure one that we on the left can generally agree espoused romantic views and the other hateful, but let's not put our heads in the sand around the reality of what was happening in Russia during the twenties and pretend that if the far-left fringe had won everything would have been wine and roses. Really what needed to happen was for the Weimar Republic to withstand the assaults from the extremes.. sadly the trend we're witnessing now seems to be towards a weakening of the center which is exactly the danger.

> but the problems they point to is real

Is it? What problem is that? Isn't part of the problem that the public is heavily mired in fake news such as the claim that Sandy Hook was fake?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com