I was going to argue against this, but then you’re right. There has been regulatory capture of socdems as they became neoliberals; who keep chasing the magical “centrist” unicorn. But in reality, who they are trying to appease are the property owning base who want their property value to keep going up and up, at the expense of the youths, families and homeless, and to appease rich donors.
What a stupid person. There is a fascist in the White House and he’s a conservative. It’s all to do with fear. Specifically fear or freedom your own, or someone else’s.
Just wait until you figure out that every President in office for your lifetime was a “fascist” and a “conservative”.
Some hide it better than others.
Using the word conservative to describe someone you just called a fascist is hilarious.
You are terribly uneducated on politics.
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Reducing fascism to amygdala size is idealist pseudoscience (in the vein of nazi race science), biology does not dictate politics. Material conditions drive history. Fascism emerges when capitalist contradictions sharpen and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall creates crisis. The bourgeoisie faces two paths. Either socialist revolution or they turn imperialist violence inward to preserve accumulation. The Nazis suppressed the left to protect industrial capital. Krupp and IG Farben did not care about conservative values but cared about markets and crushing unions. Calling it National Socialism was a tactic to co-opt worker sentiment while serving monopoly capital. Fear is merely a symptom, the disease is capitalism. When accumulation stalls the mask comes off, focus on who owns the means of production not brain scans.
You are mostly correct. Except the bit about fear being a symptom. Fear is the driver. The amygdala bit is an interesting fact. Those with bigger fear centres tend to vote for the no change party.
Fear isn’t the driver. Fear is produced. Where does that fear come from? Not from brains. From material life. Precarity. Job loss. Debt. Crisis. These are capitalist relations, not neural pathways. If amygdala size determined politics, how do you explain workers who risk everything to strike? Or revolutionaries who face death without flinching? Consciousness changes through struggle, not anatomy. Doubling down on amygdala talk is phrenology-tier pseudoscience, same logic as Nazi race science. Measuring skulls to explain politics didn’t work then, measuring brains won’t work now. The “no change party” exists to preserve bourgeois rule, not because of brain scans. This idealist framing naturalizes oppression and lets capital off the hook.
Fascism is when the capitalist class feels that liberalism no longer sufficiently serves their interests.
Once more let me remind you what fascism is. It need not wear a brown shirt or a green shirt – it may even wear a dress shirt. Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.
— Tommy Douglas
Does anyone have that Wolfenstein meme of the two klansmen and a nazi soldier talking, and the caption is something like “two American liberals talking before being interrupted by a european social democrat?” I can’t find it
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) historically opposed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) due to ideological differences, particularly regarding the approach to socialism and the use of revolutionary tactics.
I wonder how that worked out. Oh, right.
Pretty sure that’s every political system, unfortunately…
Don’t be pretty sure about things you haven’t studied, then.
You don’t enjoy people talking on your social media, do you?
Talking yes. Talking out of their ass no.
Both of you could’ve simply named the political system that you think is magically immune to being overthrown, while somehow not being authoritarianism itself.
2 things quickly:
Authoritarian is a meaningless pejorative. All states/countries/political groups etc. must be authoritarian by necessity in class society.
This meme isn’t about states being overthrow this meme is about how socialdemocrats entire ideology is built upon “reforming” capitalism by implementing a welfare state to more evenly spread the profits of the super exploitation of the periphery. When those profits dry up so too does the welfare state which inevitably pushes them right or left to deal with the heightened contradictions. The meme is pointing out the unfortunate pattern of it almost always ending in a rightward shift (due to many factors).
What would you characterize as authoritarian/authoritarianism?
Wikipedia seems to do a decent enough job defining it:
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.
But basically, my point is:
- If your government represents the people, then it is possible for your people to elect authoritarianism, especially if they are unhappy, like the meme describes, and/or when there’s foreign nations trying to destabilize the system.
- If your government does not represent the people, then it is likely to devolve into authoritarianism on its own, because individuals or individual groups will want to assume all power and limit the rights of others.
Basically, my opinion is that politics is a constant work in progress, no matter the political system.
