Heh. Is that a joke?
> It looks something like political/national racial purity. Once people start spouting that, they tend to be removed from polite conversation.
Yeah, the American Right has really marginalized Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, et al.
> There is no similar outer bound on the left
Really? Which of the following statements will get you excluded from public political dialogue in the US)
“Europeans did Africans a favor by bringing them to America as slaves”
Or
“Capitalist ownership of the means of production is a root of injustice and fundamentally incompatible with democracy”
(One of these has been prominently made by prominent voices on one side of the spectrum without repercussion, while people are routinely excluded for statements for more moderate than the other. At least in the US, to the extent anything vaguely resembling your point is true, it's exactly the reverse of the split you've proposed.)
The fact that Trump is what you think passes for an ethno-nationalist these days is all the evidence needed to demonstrate my point.
>“Europeans did Africans a favor by bringing them to America as slaves”
This is a pretty gross thing to say, but it's not ethno-nationalism. Words have meaning for a reason.
>“Capitalist ownership of the means of production is a root of injustice and fundamentally incompatible with democracy”
The most popular politician in our country a couple years ago, and perhaps still today, is the open socialist Bernie Sanders.
The discussions on SSC were often intellectual and rationality-based, but a lot of the super-commenters were right-leaning. Left-leaning commenters were more scarce, and even benefitted from some affirmative-action less-strict moderation to encourage them to sick around. In fact, after the recent BLM protests, a new user showed up to argue and explain the social justice position, and did so respectfully and was well-received.
But I think a lot of the regulars had their blind spots. So many arguments were essentially: since A is true, B and C are the logical conclusions, but often nobody questioned A, let alone tested it—the rationality was often superficial. A popular format on the open threads (thus I’m characterizing the blog readers and commentariat, not the blog author) was impossible hypotheticals leading to un-provable speculation. Questions like what would’ve happened if Germany in WW2 had such-or-such a weapon. The format was even codified in the format of friendly aliens offering some weird bargain (take a pill to sleep 12hrs a day—or never need sleep but always be tired), then asking people what they would do or how that would change things. Fun thought problems, but so disconnected from reality or practical thought—essentially nerd-sniping (to use an admittedly uncharitable term).
Tl;DR: SSC was a mixed bag, but mostly civil and well-intentioned.
Here is the comment on archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200622224636/https://slatestar...
You think Stephen Miller wants to stop with border camps? This is an absolute absurd claim to make.
> There is nothing you can support that's so far left you will be expunged from polite society.
Where is the comparable person to Stephen Miller being anywhere close to public policy on the left? We have one barely socdem congressperson. Where are the NYT opeds about third worldism?
Meanwhile, from my perspective, we Europeans lookt at North America and see a lot of racists, transphobes and anti-poor agitators complaining about being cancelled on national Media and while giving speeches at universities (e.g. fox news, Jordan Peterson). Which feels...off.
Sure, one easy way of gauging this phenomenon is the social response to the swastika compared to the hammer and sickle.
Another is that the biggest ethno-nationalist gathering in decades in the US was a few years ago, tragically someone was run over by a vehicle. There were only hundreds of people there. The next year they tried to hold another rally and only dozens showed up.
>Meanwhile, from my perspective, we Europeans lookt at North America and see a lot of racists, transphobes and anti-poor agitators complaining about being cancelled on national Media and while giving speeches at universities (e.g. fox news, Jordan Peterson). Which feels...off.
The business model of the corporate press is to fill your heart with fear, so that you will watch/click/share/etc. A great example of this phenomenon is the "Fine People Hoax." You might recall there was a major news story claiming that Trump called white nationalists "fine people." Except if you read the transcript he clearly states, in the same breath as the words "fine people," and without prompting, that white nationalists should be condemned totally. These types of things happen over and over again.
And regarding the symbolism...I can kinda see that example, maybe, but I generally don't see the hammer and sickle used in mainstream politics either. And even then, there is a line between something like the hammer and sickle which was used before and after Lenin/Stalin as a symbol vs. the swastika which was literally designed by Nazis and only ever used by them (the Buddhist one is slightly different)
If anyone directly sympathises with Stalin/Lenin and calling for dekulakhisation, I'd expect that to also remove them from polite conversation. It just seems to happen less ?
My point is that there is not widespread public support for this tiny group of awful people. The fact that so few people showed up is evidence of that. These people went "too far right" and were abandoned, as they should be.
>If anyone directly sympathises with Stalin/Lenin and calling for dekulakhisation, I'd expect that to also remove them from polite conversation. It just seems to happen less ?
AOC tweeted Marx's Labor Theory of Value. Bernie Sanders, recently the most popular politician in the country is an open Socialist. Michael Moore can openly/publicly support and wish Happy Birthday to Marx. Can you actually name an instance where a person went so far left that they were canceled?
1. People tried to cancel Bernie Sanders, it just didn't work https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/15/bernie-sa...
2. Not a single person who openly advocates Stalinism or similar forceful collectivisation makes it onto the national stage. Meanwhile Richard Spencer was so "cancelled" that he continued to interviewed on national TV
3. In Germany and Europe, most communist parties are under observation by the constitutional secret service, despite being democratic parties
4. In the US, Colin Kapernick was cancelled by the NFL for kneeling to protest police brutality
Leftist positions, as it turns out, are much less inherently tied to authoritarianism than Nazi ideology. Thus, you often see people advocating for democratic socialism on the national stage, but not for Stalinism and a violent revolution. The latter of which immediately gets them cancelled before they become much of a public figure,
calling yourself 'nazi' will have the same consequences, so I don't see what is the problem here, communism is every step as bad as nazism (source: born in USSR)
And being up Bernie Sanders name in "polite" democratic circles, let's see how supportive they are.
Reality is, the far left doesn't get cancelled as much because their popular ideas generally involve democratic control over the means of production and treating everyone like a human being, not revolution, while the far rights "popular" ideas are racism, sexism and the disenfranchisement of the "proles". One of these inherently requires authoritarianism, the other doesn't.
2. Not a single person who openly advocates Stalinism or similar forceful collectivisation makes it onto the national stage. Meanwhile Richard Spencer was so "cancelled" that he continued to interviewed on national TV
3. In Germany and Europe, most communist parties are under observation by the constitutional secret service, despite being democratic parties
4. In the US, Colin Kapernick was cancelled by the NFL for kneeling to protest police brutality
Leftist positions, as it turns out, are much less inherently tied to authoritarianism than Nazi ideology. Thus, you often see people advocating for democratic socialism on the national stage, but not for Stalinism and a violent revolution. The latter of which immediately gets them cancelled before they become much of a public figure
2. Richard Spencer has not been canceled because he went too far left.
3. So not a single person then.
4. Is Kapernick far left?
I actually see people supporting leftist authoritarians openly pretty regularly. I already provided some pop culture examples elsewhere... AOC tweeted Marx's labor theory of value. Bernie openly supported the USSR (even honeymooned there), Cuba, Venezuela, and is an open socialist. I see people wearing Che Guevera shirts walking down the street.
If the left is so powerful, so accepted, where are all the communists in power? Who's in the white House?
Colin Kapernick isn't remotely far left, and he still got cancelled.
There are open Marxists in Congress, in Hollywood, in the top Universities. Corporate press and the NBA openly supports Communist China. There is no such equivalence on the right. There's no open Hitler supporters pulling the levers of power. Trump is not a white nationalist, not even close.
Trump has on multiple occasions used Nazi imagery, quotes and Slogans. "America First" was a Slogan used by American fashists https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/20/...
He only condemned David Duke after a media uproar.
If your standard for "white supremacists" is "openly admits to wanting to eradicate or enslave blacks and Jews, as was done before" and your standard for "far left" is "anyone who admits to some Marxist ideology" then you are measuring with two different sticks. And trying to make these two equivalent is dishonest.
The Marxists in power did so by democratic elections and without any shady business (I know of no ongoing investigations or impeachments at least). The barely shaded fashist in power still has investigations running, has deteriorated the democratic institutions in the US whenever he could and used rubber bullets and gas to (possibly illegally) clear a parc from protestors for a photo op. Which of these are more in line with authoritarianism?
But actually, don't bother to answer unless you will actually engage. If in the charitable case, for you any form of Marxist thought means hardcore left, then you are also dismissing all of social democracy as "far left", which is literally most of Europe. And in the most uncharitable case, you are wasting my time trying to create a false equivalence between democraty compatible socialist ideas and fashism, which is inherently nondemocratic. Have a nice day
It's simply not true that communists are canceled.
The media regularly openly supports the CCP. The
most popular politician in our country as of a
couple years ago was open socialist Bernie Sanders
Communism != Socialism
Each of these terms have been applied to a wide variety of beliefs and practices. Nobody owns these terms, but even Marx himself drew a sharp distinction between the two.
"Communism" is a system in which the state owns everything and resources are, theoretically, fairly and equally distributed to the people. In practice, this has never worked out well, and very few folks view communism as a realistic solution today.
"Socialism" refers to a much wider range of ideas. Broadly speaking, any redistribution of wealth is "socialism" and this would include collecting taxes and using them to build a public library, roads, or fund schooling for children.
In practice, just about every nation on Earth is a blend of socialism and capitalism. In a truly free-market/capitalist society with zero traces of socialism, the government would provide almost literally nothing except for perhaps border defense.
Canada and the UK are capitalist, but lean farther toward socialism (with their nationalized healthcare, etc) than the USA. When a modern American politician like Sanders or AOC advocates for "socialism", this is what they mean.
Unlike communism, socialism works. It's just a question of how much of it you want. Even your most "socialist" politicians in the USA don't advocate the abolition of private property, and even the most libertarian politicians don't advocate the total dismantling of the federal government.
It is also very important to understand that socialism is utterly compatible with democratic elections. Just as you could have a capitalist nation ruled by a dictator, you can have have a socialist nation with democratic elections. A nation's method of choosing leaders is almost entirely orthogonal to how it structures its economy.
CCP has "communist" in the name, but this is more of a historical artifact than anything.
Rule of thumb with political parties and countries is that their actual names have little to do with reality -- witness all of the dictatorships that have had "Democratic" in their names over the years.
Democratic Republic of the Congo springs to mind. And of course North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (lol)
only to communists, maybe. From where I stand, Leninism/Stalinism/Trotskism/other -ism are all extreme totalitarian ideologies
Maybe if North Korea suddenly turns into actual paradise, I'll reconsider.
So yeah, _all_ real world outcomes, definitely