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Comment by danudey | Hacker News Reader

Nice "both sides" argument, very subtle.

When one side of crazies goes after a different side of crazies, “both sides are crazy” is an appropriate way to look at it.

I guess if you want to completely abandon nuance... but at that point everyone is some variety of crazy. Half the US believes in ghosts.

There is obviously a huge difference between fascist-aspiring westerners and communist-aspiring westerners. It's disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Tankies are crazy and I don't approve of their ideology, but they also do not dehumanize large swaths of the population.

> they also do not dehumanize large swaths of the population

They dehumanize and kill everyone equally.

I think the West (US especially) has a great system of government figured out, and I wouldn't try to say any group attempting to break that is better than another. It's not disingenuous to say that both are authoritarians who kill millions.

Please don't be childish. I have no love for communism and I get that you probably have some personal grudge against communism because of what your family has gone through. But the way you are expressing your hatred of communism is diminishing the evil committed by the NAZIs and the suffering of their victims, and that's just not right. And it's also not winning you any friends and you'd be better served if you showed solidarity with victims of other evil regimes, instead of trying to up them with your personal victim-hood.

The above commenter's point was actually drawing a distinction between these, and "one-upping" by saying there was a difference, or worse one, out of these extremist ideologies.

I disagreed and said that they are both equally horrid.

Expressing equal hatred for people and systems that kill countless millions through starvation, gulags/concentration camps, and disappearing them, is not childish. I have a ton of solidarity with victims of other evil regimes.

You're purposefully ignoring all the nuance. There is nothing more to say.

Sometimes both sides do suck.

One side is metastasising in the US government right now, the other has been long dead.

"it's the same because they're both bad"

ok...

It's not been long dead. There's a communist who's just been elected to Mayer of New York.

He’s a socialist. Painting all socialism as “evil communism” is reductive and dishonest.

Mamdani has said that (1) they'll open government-run stores, and (2) the government will seize buildings from bad landlords.

My family is from a communist country and I can assure you, that is communistic.

I would agree that government run stores falls into the communist playbook. Despite the communism boogie man, though, I don’t think supporting a couple of communist policies strictly makes a person a communist.

Trump sent a bunch of government checks to people during Covid and no one called him communist for this.

> Trump sent a bunch of government checks to people during Covid and no one called him communist for this.

Giving people money on a temporary basis is the opposite of the government opportunistically taking over areas of the market.

> Mamdani has said that (1) they'll open government-run stores

We've had those for ages. Called commisaries. Here's a picture: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_020813-N-364...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Commissary_Agency

> the government will seize buildings from bad landlords.

We've had eminent domain since the founding of the nation.

Any time someone mention "fascism" or "communism" you can be sure people instantly lose 50 IQ point and come up with the most convoluted definitions of these terms

The US army have their own government owned supermarkets. And there are plenty of US states and other countries with public stores which are definitely not communist. Is the US army communist ?

In Berlin we voted to seize housing from megacorp landlords profiteering from housing, I don't think Berlin is communist either. https://qz.com/2065655/berliners-voted-to-seize-housing-from...

The US army isn't communist by that definition, no. Any more than any employer who provides food to their employees isn't communist.

In Berlin you didn't realise that population increase is what enriches landlords and screws regular people, but you still vote for a lot of immigration. Population increase in a finite, well-settled country is what gives rise to landlords.

So is he communist or islamist in the end ? I keep hearing both but they're mutually exclusive

It’s intentionally blunt. That’s exactly the issue right now: fascists and communists are going at each other and tearing apart what remains of our liberal world.

It's not particularly worth saving

I guess we have to learn every 80-100 years, that, actually it is.

I think "facists" is a tiring word to describe them. I would recommend christian nationalists.

I mean - obviously the modern day communists rarely use the original name too. But I guess we are adults and know that in reality, under all of that political marketing, we are talking about fascists and communists.

"Christian nationalist" is a term that on the one hand, insults Christians, and on the other hand flatters these power hungry grifters. Why would you use such a term?

> and communists

Communists left the chat in 1989, grandpa. There are multiple factions competing for power but communists aren't really in the ring right now. It's mostly different flavours of establishment factions and alt-right factions.

Where are all those communists? As far as I can see, only one extreme of the political spectrum is viable in the first world, and that extreme is currently rapidly approaching its logical conclusion of completely crippling democracy. It's not a both sides issue.

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