Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "Why I Left Utopia | 5 Minute Videos" video.
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@EdoardoB-xz1jp "Fascism and Socialism are two completely opposed ideologies."
They are two different flavors of socialism that vilify each other and pretend to constitute the political spectrum. Each tells the lie "If you're not one of us, you're one of them." All sane and decent folk are neither.
"The first uses a capitalist economic basis"
"Capitalism" is Marx's caricature of free market economics. Fascism is not free market economics.
"This is completely opposed to socialism in which the economic model is that of commonly owned means of production. There is no person making profits that is above the rest, or cutting costs by firing employees and leaving them to starve on the side of the road."
The whole economic system is run for the benefit and enrichment of the Nomenclatura. When you say "That's not real Communism", what you mean is it's not theoretical communism, a utopia that has never and can never exist.
"I think we should start with the basic definition of socialism."
The only practical definition (definition of a thing that has existed and can exist) of socialism is central control of the economy. "Common ownership" is invariably a window dressing for despotism. In fact, and historically in practice, despotism results, and the reason why IS AN INHERENT FLAW OF THE THEORY. You seek to replace the free market with an arbitrary distribution of stuff. To do this you need an arbiter. The arbiter does not BECOME, he IS by nature of his function, the dictator. In fact, this is recognized in the theory, "the dictatorship of the proletariat". You, first, remove all the protections, restraints, checks and balances of the civic society, (often accompanied by the removal of checks on the conscience from religion,) give absolute power (in a sense greater even than the kings and emperors of old) to a person or a group, already acclimated to a free hand in the use of force when they steal everybody's stuff. Then you wonder why so many get murdered by your just and equitable and scientific government, and why life in your utopia is so similar to slavery.
A common fallacy of utopian ideologues is that human nature is inherently good, and that the problems of the human condition are the result of some social construct, because we don't want to face the truth about ourselves. To the communist free markets; to the anarchist government; to the New Atheists religion, to primitivists agriculture or technology, to racists whites or blacks or Jews or whoever; is the root of all evil. The clear, harsh, intolerable, and absolutely vital and central essence of human nature is that WE ARE OUR PROBLEM, not any externality or construct. As the song says, "You can run from yourself, but you won't get far. 'Cause wherever you go --- There you are." This is the starting point of clarity in history, sociology, and psychiatry; every study which pertains to the nature of humanity. In fact, the same flawed, imperfect, selfish, stupid nature that infests the lord, or the "capitalist", infests the revolutionary. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The "capitalist" AS SUCH, can only hire or bribe. An unchecked authoritarian government can do that (with other people's money), plus arrest, torture, and kill you or your family. It is incoherent to fear the former and not fear the latter. No "angel" is available to bear this power benignly.
Socialism IS despotism, inherently, invariably, and unavoidably.
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@EdoardoB-xz1jp
All Fascists and Nazis are Leftists. Mussolini was an editor of a leftist paper. Prior to the war Mussolini and FDR, the progressive (which at the time meant socialism plus eugenics plus Jim Crow laws) were exchanging political love letters praising one another and also in the American and Italian press.
Mussolini and his party developed Fascism because Marx's predicted proletarian uprising, long overdue by Communist prediction, never happened. Mussolini noted that despite ideology, people still fought for their country, so he added ardent nationalism to socialism. Unlike the Nazis, there was nothing acutely racial about Mussolini's nationalism (he was not anti-semitic, for example). When he took power he got a congratulatory telegram from Lenin for being a leftist leader who took control of Italy.
Hitler made no bones about being a leftist:
#1. “I have learned a great deal from Marxism” … “as I do not hesitate to admit”
#2. [My task is to] “convert the German volk (people) to socialism without simply killing off the old individualists”
#3. “If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-semites – and the opposite, in that case, is Materialism and Mammonism, which we seek to oppose.” “How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-semite?”
#4. We must “find and travel the road from individualism to socialism without revolution”.
#5. “Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.”
#6. “We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions” 1927
#7. “What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish we shall be in a position to achieve.”
Select planks from the Nazi party platform:
7. We demand that the State make it its duty to provide opportunities of employment first of all for its own Citizens. If it is not possible to maintain the entire population of the State, then foreign nationals (non-Citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
9. All German Citizens must have equal rights and duties.
10. It must be the first duty of every Citizen to carry out intellectual or physical work. Individual activity must not be harmful to the public interest and must be pursued within the framework of the community and for the general good.
We therefore demand:
11. The abolition of all income obtained without labor or effort.
Breaking the Servitude of Interest.
12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices in property and blood demanded of the nation by every war, personal gain from the war must be termed a crime against the nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all enterprises (already) converted into corporations (trusts).
14. We demand profit-sharing in large enterprises.
15. We demand the large-scale development of old-age pension schemes.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle class; the immediate communalization of the large department stores, which are to be leased at low rates to small tradesmen. We demand the most careful consideration for the owners of small businesses in orders placed by national, state, or community authorities.
17. We demand land reform in accordance with our national needs and a law for expropriation without compensation of land for public purposes. Abolition of ground rent and prevention of all speculation in land.
18. We demand ruthless battle against those who harm the common good by their activities. Persons committing base crimes against the People, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished by death without regard to religion or race.
20. In order to make higher education – and thereby entry into leading positions – available to every able and industrious German, the State must provide a thorough restructuring of our entire public educational system. The courses of study at all educational institutions are to be adjusted to meet the requirements of practical life. Understanding of the concept of the State must be achieved through the schools (teaching of civics) at the earliest age at which it can be grasped. We demand the education at the public expense of specially gifted children of poor parents, without regard to the latters’ position or occupation.
21. The State must raise the level of national health by means of mother-and-child care, the banning of juvenile labor, achievements of physical fitness through legislation for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and maximum support for all organizations providing physical training for young people.
25. To carry out all the above we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the Reich. Unquestioned authority by the political central Parliament over the entire Reich and over its organizations in general. The establishment of trade and professional organizations to enforce the Reich basic laws in the individual states.
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The early (pre-Holocaust) laws relegating Jews to second-class citizens were copied wholesale from the "Progressive" Jim Crow laws of the American South.
Stalin not only entered into a non-aggression pact with Hitler, he joined him in the conquest of Poland and gave him material and propaganda support until Hitler betrayed him with Operation Barbarossa. Stalin considered the liberal west the greater threat ideologically.
At the time, everybody considered Fascism and Nazism to be part of the left. After the war, when the Nazis had made eugenics unfashionable, the left exerted its propaganda power to attribute Fascism and Nazism to the right. The notion that Fascism is not leftist is historical revisionism.
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@EdoardoB-xz1jp
"A difference that MAKES no difference IS no difference."
Both commies and Nazis will:
Divide the public and foster hate along class/religious/gender/class lines
Segregate
Central plan the economy
Nationalize the press
End freedom of speech
Confiscate weapons
Persecute all non state sponsored religions
End all civil rights, including the rights enumerated in the US Constitution (and the Magna Carta).
Evict innocent citizens from their homes
Mobilize the apparatus of law and tax enforcement against their political enemies
Slander, imprison, and murder their political enemies
Eliminate or absorb all public organizations
Replace commercial entertainment media with a boring stream of propaganda.
The minor, insignificant differences between communism and Nazism are only important to communists and Nazis, not to anybody who loves freedom. You won't distract us from our fight for freedom with your internal socialist squabble over who should be our master.
"He is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind."-J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"
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