Fidel Castro Dead at 90

[1slow]

Let's accept for the moment the identification of the Nazis as "right" even though I reject that definition because Hitler was a darling of the progressive set in the western world before our troops started liberating concentration camps. The labeling is largely bullshit because in reality whether you examine Stalin or Hitler you still end up with a corrupt oligarchy achieving wealth and power by completely defiling any concept of individual rights and freedoms with all power to the state and anyone in the way getting steam-rolled. Sometimes literally.

How many US university departments have Nazi instructors in them?

How many have openly communist instructors in them?

If you go to the average college campus, how many Hitler t-shirts will you spot?

How many Che t-shirts will you spot?

How many Nazi organizations successfully recruited people within the government of the United States and in important cultural positions within the United States to advance the Nazi cause?

How many did the KGB successfully recruit in the United States?

In other words, if we accept the proposition that the Nazis were "right wing" then it does not seem to be a terribly successful sell here in the states. Probably because it's rather difficult to ignore the outright criminality of the Nazi regime since we invaded their territory, killed a bunch of them, and captured plenty of evidence of their crimes.

Meanwhile here in the US you can count on Thomas Friedman writing at least two columns a year in our supposed newspaper of record about how awesome the Chinese are because they "get things done", completely glossing over the fact that how they get things done is by killing people. He's the Walter Duranty of our time. And he's even using the exact same verbiage progressive luminaries of the 30's like George Bernard Shaw used about Herr Hitler and Stalin to boot.

And our mainstream press has been giving Castro a rhetorical blowjob while there are still survivors of his concentration camps and prisons alive to tell their tale. Because he's a communist.

If we accept the preposition that there are different flavors of murderous tyranny, it's worth noting that there's only one flavor of it being sold on every street corner in the country. If we were keeping score in the sheer levels of human misery and murder inflicted on the planet, that flavor of murderous tyranny was murderous on levels that make the combined efforts of Hitler, Pinochet, and Franco look like a bunch of pikers.

Very nice summary.

[NickA]

One of the weirder things I saw during the media adulation of Castro the last few days: his interview with Edward R. Murrow. The guy leads a coup and makes his intro to the rest of the world wearing... pajamas. That should have been a clue that he was crazy and/or gangster as f#$k.

https://youtu.be/VRjFkxIU8v4

[TCinVA]

Joe Rogan's latest podcast is splendid. It deals with a lot of the things mentioned here.

[RevolverRob]

How many US university departments have Nazi instructors in them?

Depends - Do we include religious universities with strong ties to the White Supremacist community or not?

How many have openly communist instructors in them?

Probably more openly communist instructors than openly neo-Nazi or even open Nazi...but the Nazi Party as originally founded IS dead and so are the vast majority of its members. However, if you surveyed academics in 1935 you would have found a bunch more Nazis than you might predict. But my guess is less communists than you think. Socialists? Sure. Communists? No.

If you go to the average college campus, how many Hitler t-shirts will you spot?

Depends on if that Hitler is the face of Donald Trump/George Bush/Hilary Clinton/Some Other Politician morphed into Hitler or not.

How many Che t-shirts will you spot?

In three years at the University of Chicago, I have seen ZERO Che shirts. I've seen zero Hitler shirts. In 8 years at UT Austin, I saw maybe a handful of Che t-shirts.

How many Nazi organizations successfully recruited people within the government of the United States and in important cultural positions within the United States to advance the Nazi cause?

If we count white supremacy groups that use Nazi rhetoric? More than the communists have. Seriously. There is a reason white supremacy is a real issue in prisons and the military. There are a number of radical right leaning Neo-Nazi affiliated individuals in positions of authority from police all the way up.

How many did the KGB successfully recruit in the United States?

Great question. We don't know.

In other words, if we accept the proposition that the Nazis were "right wing" then it does not seem to be a terribly successful sell here in the states. Probably because it's rather difficult to ignore the outright criminality of the Nazi regime since we invaded their territory, killed a bunch of them, and captured plenty of evidence of their crimes.

And yet we have the largest percentage of white supremacy groups world wide. Who identify ideologically with the more morally corrupt constructs of National Socialism but promote it with radically right-leaning conservatist rhetoric. Including the outright support of genocide and complete and utter destruction of the American public. And they are definitively - radical right in their use of rightest conservative ideology to promote and sell their brand of hate. Aryan Nation, Neo-Nazis, fuck the damn Hell's Angels are all classified as hate/terror groups globally and have contributed a disproportionate number amount of violence and terrorism in the US relative to Communists...

If we accept the preposition that there are different flavors of murderous tyranny, it's worth noting that there's only one flavor of it being sold on every street corner in the country. If we were keeping score in the sheer levels of human misery and murder inflicted on the planet, that flavor of murderous tyranny was murderous on levels that make the combined efforts of Hitler, Pinochet, and Franco look like a bunch of pikers.

And the Africans conducting tribal genocide make the Commies look like fucking wimps.

As you clearly articulate at the beginning that I snipped out - The trouble with regimes, be they right OR left is they ultimately seek a power imbalance. They ultimately seek to conquer the opposing side, and then eliminate it. This country runs a real risk if strong radical conservatism runs amok just as it does if strong radical liberalism runs amok. It's not a dichotomous nature as you're painting it. Quite the contrary, it is very clear that along the continuum from ultra conservative to ultra liberal there is a fine balance point that respects individual liberty, freedom, and life. But that at either end you're killing a bunch of non-like minded people, because they aren't like minded.

The problem with painting it like you are in this case, TC, is that you're ignoring that it is a spectrum. Someone can be a socialist and advocate for socialist economic policies and not be desiring the genocidal removal of all people not in favor of socialism. Instead, they may well view that the necessary path to long-term economic stability is for the masses to control the means of production. - There may not, and in fact often does not, lie at the heart of many people the desire to murder every Christian on the planet. But as long as we continue to paint individuals in that light, they will continue to think that anyone who doesn't agree with them is a stark raving, well-armed, lunatic, hell bent on killing all of them for disagreeing with their desire to be an athiest socialist.

But hey what do I know...I'm just an agnostic, academic, libertarian, capitalist, who believes in individual freedom and responsibility, along with a government that does not have the means to actively support or oppress, disproportionately, any group based on their ethnic/religious/political/personal identifiers. And I stand around, ready, to make sure that no group gets loaded into cattle cars and slaughtered.

But if people keep pushing genocidal agendas...I might go from zero to jackboot in a hurry.

[Chance]

I used to think “socialist” was a hyperbolic pejorative we used to label liberals we especially didn’t like. This election I have been genuinely shocked at the number of literal socialists we have in this country. I heard a caller on NPR the other day who said something to the effect of, “If the government did this, no one would have to work very hard.” Castro is a hero to those folks.

Quibble- I have had a problem with calling Statist like Hitler, Franco, et al "rightist", especially since they tend to run their states in ways fairly indistinguishable from the officially franchised Communist. If you take away the L/R labels, is there really much difference in the way Castro or Pinochet ran things? Between Franco or Chavez?

I had a history teacher make a great observation: the political spectrum isn't linear, it's circular. So fascism isn't "extreme right" and communism isn't "extreme left", they're actually adjacent on that side of the circle. I thought that was a brilliant way of characterizing it.

[MDS]

If we accept the preposition that there are different flavors of murderous tyranny, it's worth noting that there's only one flavor of it being sold on every street corner in the country. If we were keeping score in the sheer levels of human misery and murder inflicted on the planet, that flavor of murderous tyranny was murderous on levels that make the combined efforts of Hitler, Pinochet, and Franco look like a bunch of pikers.

I don't disagree (much) and you have a way with words and I swore I would stay out of political blah blah on PF ... but the flesh is weak, and I'm not sure you got my point. Please take the following in stride, it's not a polsci paper and I really don't want to fight about semantics when the meaning is clear:

[TCinVA]

I don't disagree (much) and you have a way with words and I swore I would stay out of political blah blah on PF ... but the flesh is weak, and I'm not sure you got my point. Please take the following in stride, it's not a polsci paper and I really don't want to fight about semantics when the meaning is clear:

I'm not going to argue with that. Choosing facism as a response to marxism is like choosing to stab yourself with a giant rusty spike so you don't stab yourself with this other giant rusty spike with a slightly different point on it.

I'm just saying that if we look around there's a lot more opportunities to stab ourselves with the giant rusty spike with the slightly different point on it floating around because a sizeable chunk of our society is frankly delusional about the nature of that slightly different point.

[TGS]

There's no way they beat Stalin in the raw oppression numbers, though.

I don't think Cuba has ever even had a population as numerous as how many democides can be attributed to Stalin.

[MK11]

JohnO - ya beat me to it, buddy ^^^^. I just heard this morning that Castro/Che/et al, murdered more people than Stalin and Hitler during their "glory years." What possible thing can anyone come up with that can erase that? I'm sure our "Apologizer in Charge" (only for a very short time now!) will come up with some cockamamie statement extolling them.

Seriously, whatever source you heard that from should be ignored from now on.

[MDS]

I'm just saying that if we look around there's a lot more opportunities to stab ourselves with the giant rusty spike with the slightly different point on it floating around because a sizeable chunk of our society is frankly delusional about the nature of that slightly different point.

*looks for a way out of this thread*

Frankly, I'm not too worried about jack-booted leftism in this country. This election showed that there's too strong a red core, and what hasn't shown its ugly face yet is the fact that this core is not only large, but it's well armed. Good fuckin' luck with that, commies - those Che shirts and PhD's-for-Clinton make for shitty body armor, last I heard.

OTOH, I am a bit worried that the law-and-order aspect of the right will overplay its hand, especially now that Trump's in town, and make the pendulum swing very far in the other direction. Many ways that could play out, but imagine a very motivated Dem party voting Bernie into the WH in 2020. It would be a bloodbath, and that would suck.

On the gripping hand, and this is what I'm writing about, if the R's can focus on reducing the size of government, on liberalizing the economy with reduced regulation (including less-but-smarter foreign intervention, fucking STOP the drug war, make hard choices about entitlements, etc) and across-the-board tax reductions, this will lift the pressures that are pushing this country to extremes in every direction. Prosperity is fucking magical in its ability to defuse tension - if the BLM folks could easily start businesses or get jobs, and if they didn't have "easy-out" options like welfare or slinging dope, I don't think we'd be seeing as many highway blockages as we are.

But back to the point. Sure, it seems, from our perspective, that tyranny-from-the-left is a more clear and present danger right now than tyranny-from-the-right. But a) we shouldn't ignore the likelihood that our viewpoint is biased; and b) pushing the pendulum as hard as we can in the other direction, without any caveats or mechanism to protect from over-correcting, is pretty dangerous as well.

I feel like I've made my point clearly enough, so I'm out. No offense, and I do enjoy this kind of calm discussion, but it can really suck up a lot of my time, and I'd rather try to get this project done so I have time for the range again.