Comment by thepasswordis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thepasswordis | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Are those positions really ideologically consistent though, or based on any underlying political philosophy?

Were the “anti police” people at any of the protests for Ashli Babbitt? Were any of them any of the protest for the prisoners being held for crimes like “conspiracy to commit interstate commerce” after the January 6th riot? How many anti civil asset forfeiture people also believe in “red flag laws”?

Leftist political philosophy is authoritarian; that doesn’t mean that sometimes left-voters don’t accidentally protest authority when it suits them.

A violent revolutionary trying to topple a western liberal democracy to replace it with a communist dictatorship is locally anti authority, but authority is still the core of the political philosophy. They just want to get rid of the existing authority because they don’t think it is strong enough.

> Leftist political philosophy is authoritarian;

That's just not true, though. Leftist political authority is about overthrowing the dominant existing authority (formerly, feudalism, today capitalism), and replacing it with something where whatever authority remains derives more meaningfully from the people governed. Marxism-Leninism was a strategic philosophy about using as much authority as necessary to prevent counterrevolution; Lenin's writings specifically refer to the state "withering away" as it is no longer needed to defend the revolution. Of course, in practice, the need to defend the revolution never ended, which meant the state could never wither away, which is, I'm sure, how a lot of Soviet bureaucrats liked it. On the other hand, there was never any shortage of criticism of Lenin from the left, starting with Luxemburg (supportive but critical) and Makhno (actually fought the Red Army) to Trotsky (more critical than supportive, killed by Stalin's agents).

I'd also note, with regard to your example of "red flag laws", that actual leftists are much more supportive of gun rights than liberals. Look into the John Brown Gun Club or the Socialist Rifle Association if you're interested.

In practice, leftism has led to the most tyrannical, murderous, and totalitarian regimes in human history. That's the simple fact of the matter, and no amount of coping can change it.

The fact that you even dare to excuse Soviet totalitarianism with the perennial excuse of tyrants, "the need to defend the revolution never ended", betrays your own authoritarian leanings.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com