• SomeGuy@lemmygrad.ml
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    11 months ago

    About as fascist as any other capitalist nation. Which is to say if there was any threat to the Russian bourgeois by their working class it would be. Probably the only reason the US isn’t full fascist yet is because leftism is so dead in this country that the capitalist class doesn’t need to worry about such things.

    • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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      11 months ago

      The USA is fascist. Do not kid yourself. Remember that the Third Reich emulated the USA and the USA absorbed the Third Reich. The USA is the torchbearer for fascism. The idea that it’s not is almost entirely from a white perspective. The USA has continuously had racial ghettos, massive prison labor, criminalization of poverty and racial deviance, mass murder, fanatical Christianity, secret police, domestic surveillance, control of media, lack of democratic accountability, concentration camps, callous murder of racialized groups, constant war footing against engineered enemies, domestic and global terror projects, political prisoners, and protection of the minority bourgeoisie.

      The only things the USA doesn’t have right at this moment that the Third Reich had are the following: industrial mass murder, industrial mass displacement, violent purges.

      It is unlikely to develop these things because they understand that the reaction to these things will be counter to their continuous hold on power.

      The USA has, in essence, been fascist since beforeb it’s founding, because the European colonists essentially had all the components of European fascism during the colonial era. Mass murder was made easier by stuffing hundreds of black rebels into ships and gassing them. Haiti worked their slaves to death so fast they needed to import 50k a year to keep up. The USA’s relationship to the native peoples is nearly identical to what fascism showed us. We still have race science built into our culture through our media narratives and our particular use of statistics in social sciences.

      Don’t wait around for the USA to become fascist.

      • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
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        11 months ago

        All great points. And remember the US all but put gay people in camps in the 80’s as AIDS ravaged them and Regan (may Satan torture his soul forever) just sat there and smiled as it happened.

        Still, how should we describe a potential turn into those few things Nazi Germany had that the US has lacked? Like, I say I fear a fascist takeover of the US but really, that’s what I mean by saying that.

        • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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          11 months ago

          You gotta get specific about what could happen:

          Why would the US create death camps? Because of risk of revolt. So that means if the lumpen start getting organized, the risk of death camps becomes real.

          Invasion of neighbors is unlikely because strategically it creates way larger borders and the conditions for international intervention.

          Invasion of further countries is possible, for a number of reasons, but that will just create proxy wars, which… we’re already there.

          So what other than industrializing death are you concerned about? If that’s the only thing, then you should see that we’re already fascist, we’re already taken over, we’re already in that place, we just don’t have the rebellion that requires that tactic to be implemented.

          • bobs_guns@lemmygrad.ml
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            11 months ago

            Even without death camps we have a wide variety of concentration camps here in the US, many which have or had conditions bad enough to cause death at a higher rate. Whether it’s the indigenous genocide and reservation system, the prison system which is the biggest forced labor camp system in the world, mostly for Black and poor people, the immigrant detention centers that separated children of legal asylum seekers from their parents, or the Japanese internment camps in WWII, the US really is a world leader in fascism.

          • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
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            11 months ago

            The republicans very much are beating the war drum against mexico rn, remains to be seen if the MIC wants that or war against China imo.

            I just answered my own question trying to type this comment out to explain what I’m afraid of for the US lol. I’m afraid of fanatics, whether it be like the neo-Nazis with white supremacy or Evangelicals with Christianity (I’m aware there’s a ton of overlap, and it’s likely it would just be both in America), they would open death camps not for “fear of revolt” (That’s what violent purges are for, which the US already does to communists already tbh) but because they are fanatics for their ideology.

            Edit: I should add, I fear them taking receiving the reins of power as our living conditions decline here as dedollarization accelerates in the future.

            • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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              11 months ago

              I think my point is that they have the power. Do you think well-adjusted, compassionate, peaceful people are occupying Hawaii, Guam, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and South Korea. Do you think Victorian Nuland was handing out cookies during Euromaidan because she believed it was all for peace? Do you think it’s healthy libs overseeing the largest prison population per capitalist with $11Bn in slave labor profits?

              The violence domestically is already here. The mass shootings are insane and the politicians are all in support of them. White people get called “mentally unstable” and everyone else is a terrorist participating in a conspiracy against the perfectly normal USA.

              All the people you’re worried about are already in the power structure. The crazies will only be elevated when the domestic threat requires it. But it’s all prepared. The Florida militia is a great example. We’re there, comrade. We’re already there. We can trigger the death camps just by organizing the lumpen left effectively. As soon as we do that, we’ll see the reaction from the power structure. It’s already what you fear it is.

              • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
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                11 months ago

                Yes takeover was a poor choice of words, I should say I fear the handover. Didnt mean to come across as trying to do the “this is the most important election of our life” type thing like we could prevent them from holding power with that.

                Could you expand on what you mean by the lumpen left? Or just like an article about it? I know that was a thing the BPs pushed for (like organizing gang members right?) but I’ve hardly read anything about them aside from quick rundowns and a few of their speeches.

                • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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                  11 months ago

                  I’m reading bout BPs mostly, and contrasting it against contemporary analysis of the labor aristocracy. With the massive prison population, homeless population, those with addiction diseases, and the underemployed, the lumpen is getting larger and larger compared to the days of the BP when it was mostly blacks in ghettos (still here) and the American Indians (still here). So if we manage to get them organized, likely by building from the AIM and Black Power movements, it is simultaneously the most likely formation and the formation most likely to trigger the most violent reaction.

      • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
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        11 months ago

        They already do industrial murder and displacement too, they just perfected it so it’s less overt and they can’t easily be criticized for it. Poverty killing us all, then of course mental health/suicide, plastic food, brain rot water, the slow death of intense stress put on workers trying to chase the Dream, multiple avenues of drug abuse, catastrophic destruction of community in a foundational sense, ecocide, obliteration of the mind the create a perfect obedient slave class…

      • SpaceDogs@lemmygrad.ml
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        11 months ago

        Yeah but if I call the US fascist in my political science classes I’ll be laughed at… and get a bad grade.

        • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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          11 months ago

          Yes, because the US is fascist and indoctrinates its children almost immediately upon their birth but most thoroughly through their schooling.

      • SomeGuy@lemmygrad.ml
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        11 months ago

        Most of those are quite business as usual for capitalism though. Calling it fascist while good for drawing a parallel isn’t entirely true. Its peak capitalist settler colonialism which is pretty close but not entirely fascist. Communist parties are still legal, people still have some civil protections (not many, but far more than you’d have in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy). The US is basically diet fascist. Not quite fully there, but doing as much as it can to get close to it.

        Like I said, if the left actually got its shit together then the US would happily fully implement fascism but really that is the only reason it hasn’t fully done so.

        • The US is absolutely fascist toward indigenous and black people. Communist parties aren’t illegal (because pretending that they have freedom of speech and association is required to uphold their national myth), but if they’re led by black people (e.g. the Black Panthers), they’re brutally repressed. It may not be fascist from the perspective of the settlers, but having a relatively privileged ethnic majority and heavily persecuted ethnic minorities is a core part of fascism

        • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          Most of those are quite business as usual for capitalism though. Calling it fascist while good for drawing a parallel isn’t entirely true.

          This is going to come down to what words mean, which is dependent on your ideology. As it turns out, European fascism IS capitalism - it comes from capitalism, it protects capitalism, it is required to maintain capitalism, it uses techniques developed through capitalism, it does not destroy capitalism nor replace it. So what’s the difference between ideological European racialized capitalism, as a historical phenomenon, and European fascism? From a materialist stand point, literally nothing. From a propaganda standpoint, it’s that the violence of capitalism is turned towards Europeans.

          Its peak capitalist settler colonialism which is pretty close but not entirely fascist.

          Again, settler colonialism is fascism, just directed at non-whites.

          Communist parties are still legal

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954

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

          people still have some civil protections (not many, but far more than you’d have in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy)

          They had civil protections. The idea that this is a distinguishing feature is the perspective of white person living in a fascist empire that has been indoctrinated to believe that those other fascists are the real fascists. Just look at the civil liberties of blacks, indigenous, women, queer, and other oppressed groups in the USA.

          The US is basically diet fascist

          The USA birthed the Third Reich ideologically and scientifically. The Third Reich studied the apartheid of the USA and applied it. They studied our eugenics programs and applied them. They studied our enslavement, our prisons, our management of indigenous genocide and they replicated it.

          When the Third Reich was defeated, the USA protected its members, it’s distributed them all over the Western hemisphere through Operation Paperclip and distributed them all over Europe through Operation Gladio. They incorporated the Nazis into NATO leadership.

          The USA isn’t diet fascism, it’s the fascist reservoir from which other fascist movements have historically emerged and to which those movements recede.

      • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        I don’t disagree with what you have said (for obvious reasons), but out of curiosity - why did USA fight other fascists in that case? Imperial Japan was likely due to wanting control of Pacific region. What about the Nazis?

        I’d imagine this kind of questions arise sooner or later in discussion with USians in regards to their country’s behaviour and state

        • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          European fascism was directed at Europeans in the process of attempting to enslave the Slavs. It’s ultimate goal was to destroy the USSR because the ideology that led to the world’s first workers’ state was a threat to the entirety of the European project. Everyone in Western Europe and America was onboard for this.

          The first problem came when the Third Reich showed it would apply it’s brutality to white people. This had never been done before and it was a major moral affront to the West. The second problem was when it became evident that, in order to win, the Third Reich would need to consolidate much of the European economies under its control. The US needed that economy in order to sell its goods.

          The final problem, however, was that the Third Reich was losing to the USSR. Had the US not intervened when it did, the USSR would have marched all the way across Europe instead of stopping at Berlin. The USA had to intervene to stop the entire continent from becoming part of the workers’ state movement.

          Why did it intervene in Japan? Mostly because it gave the US access to the Pacific border of the USSR. Japan occupied Korea at the time, so defeating Japan gave the US legal and physical capability to occupy Korea in their wake, which they needed to do since the USSR had a long history with Korea and indeed arrived to secure it as a socialist society.

          There’s also the issue of China. China was beyond valuable to the Western Europeans. So much of White action in the Pacific is related to dominance over China for profit. Japan was fighting in China and the Chinese communists were fighting alongside the Chinese nationalists in a temporary alliance. The West wanted the nationalists to win the civil war in order to secure their dominance over the region. Pushing Japan into a full submissive surrender created room for the West to operate in the region, taking on roles and relationships and positions that used to be in the Japanese sphere of influence.

          Just because two people are fascist doesn’t mean they share goals. It just means they share ideologies. Fascists have no ideological framework for cooperating with other fascists. There may be some benefit to that cooperation. But that benefit cannot outweigh the problem of one fascist power eating another power’s lunch.

    • I think calling every capitalist country fascist dilutes the meaning of the word; as far as I know, the state isn’t completely controlled by the bourgeoisie in Russia (despite the West calling them oligarchs, they seem to have significantly less power than their imperial core counterparts), and while there are anti-LGBTQ+ laws which should obviously be condemned, I’m not aware of any mass imprisonment of minorities

      • SpaceDogs@lemmygrad.ml
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        11 months ago

        I remember hearing about prisons for gay people in Russia. I’m not saying it true, by the way, just that it’s something that was making the rounds.

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            11 months ago

            I found it! It was Chechnya! Which is a part of Russia? It’s a republic of Russia but I don’t know what that means entirely. Anyway, they had anti-gay purges and I remember hearing about it in high school (not in class, just on the news). It’s a Wikipedia link so viewer discretion is advised, but it works for summary of what I was talking about.

              • SpaceDogs@lemmygrad.ml
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                10 months ago

                I have a healthy dose of skepticism, I promise! I shared this to show what narratives were making the rounds. With how it’s talked about it reminded me of the “Uyghur concentration camps” in China, if that makes sense. I have a very hard time articulating myself.

              • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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                10 months ago

                Remember that the Chechens were portrayed by west as the good guys when they opposed Russia, and back then they were led by absolute scumbags compared to which Kadyrov is an angel, and even things like terrorist act in Beslan or Dubrovka theatre (imagine what would USA do if something like that happened there!) didn’t shaken that.

                In Poland mainstream media emanated visible schadenfreude and more open fash were saying the terrorist are cool guys, or would be if only they werent “ciapaci” (polish slur for brown people, usually used for muslims).

              • SpaceDogs@lemmygrad.ml
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                10 months ago

                Honestly, when this news broke out I had no idea that Chechnya was majority Muslim. All I knew (heard) was that this specific region in Russia is torturing gay people. I really hope me sharing this event didn’t come off as Islamophobic.

  • JucheBot1988@lemmygrad.ml
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    10 months ago

    “Why do videos on Russia always have terrible AI-generated art for their thumbnails” is perhaps the more pressing question.

  • SpaceDogs@lemmygrad.ml
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    11 months ago

    If I remember correctly Russia was described as a Modern Authoritarian regime in my Political Science class, but I’ll have to look back at my notes.

  • FlightSimEnjoyer@lemmygrad.ml
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    11 months ago

    I mean, Russia is fashy, but they are way less fashy than their enemies (The West).

    edit: Also, this guy (Kings and Generals) is probably fash as well and is trying to make the West seem less fashy by exagerating Putin’s fashyness.

      • FlightSimEnjoyer@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        Do you even know what you are talking about?

        The USSR was a state controlled by the workers, while the Russian Federation is a state controlled by the russian capitalists.

        Putin distorts the history of the USSR every time he speaks about it. He wants russians to think that Russia was “a glorious empire that almost beat the West”, not a country led by the working class that gave hope to billions of people worldwide.

          • FlightSimEnjoyer@lemmygrad.ml
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            10 months ago

            You do not know what fascism is. You do not know what communism is. Go read a book before you argue online, it is good for you.

            I know that you did not read anything because of your mention of Tiananmen Square. You did not do any investigation on the subject nor did you read someone else’s investigation into the subject. You just took the propaganda as truth and ran with it.

            If you want to actually learn about communism, fascism, the USSR, China, Tiananmen Square, etc. you can just use the search function of lemmygrad. You’ll find many resources to learn.

            (or you can just continue helping the fascists by regurgitating propaganda, do whatever you want, I won’t force you)

              • FlightSimEnjoyer@lemmygrad.ml
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                10 months ago

                ???

                The sources are linked in lemmygrad, but they are from outside lemmygrad.

                Also, there is no neutral information in the world, all information has parts omitted (for many possible reasons), has parts that may be distorted because of the bias of the primary sources, or has other biases that you must take into account when reading it.

                If you only read information from one side you will only get the biases of that side, and won’t be able to understand reality. Most principled communists who study history do not use only pro-communist sources, they actually use mostly anti-communist sources (because, guess what, most historians with resources to do research are american or western european, and literally can’t publish pro-soviet or pro-chinese books in well-acclaimed presses) and then they filter out most of the biases (but not all, because that is literally impossible) by using primary sources or translations of primary sources, in case the primary sources aren’t in a language they know.

                I’m not saying you must read literal nazi books and take their word for it, for example. What I am saying is that if you want to research 19th century India, for example, you must read from at least most of the different perspectives, always questioning yourself about the sources like this:

                1. Which biases does this source have?
                2. How can these biases affect the information I am reading?
                3. Which other perspectives can I use to understand this information?
                4. Is this source reliable? (have they been caught lying?)

                If you can’t even do this, you really won’t understand history.

                Also, what is considered “neutral” at any point in time is what the ruling classes consider to be beneficial to them. If you could talk to the average white person of mid 19th century southern USA about slavery, they would tell you that news articles criticizing abolitionists and promoting slavery were “neutral”. The same applies to current times.

    • JucheBot1988@lemmygrad.ml
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      10 months ago

      One of the dumbest bits of reddit analysis I ever saw was in one of those self-professed “contrarian” subs, under a picture of Azov delagates in Washington: “We should be really worried about Russia, because the RF is objectively much closer to fascism than Ukrainian nationalists cosplaying their favorite 20th century anti-Semites are.”

      This might have been funny if it was satire, but I assure you the poster was completely in earnest.