Hey! Someone on Lemmy actually read a history book! Thank God.

You gotta stop thinking of it as a left/right thing. It doesn’t exist. It’s clouding your perspective. Populists vs establishment might be a better way to categorize if you needed just two groups, but that’s still too simplistic.

The world is a messy place with lots of different groups trying to get power, enrich themselves, and push their ideology. Whatever ideology a group is pushing has little to do with having the moral high ground and will typically result in their own benefit.

I see a great deal of economic rationale being thrown around and usually I love a good discussion on economics, but I believe we are overthinking the question. I would argue any group of people getting together with some shared narrative is going to want to procure more resources for themselves. This can be a family, a tribe, a friend group, a company, a nation, etc. It’s just how we are.

Aw fuck yeah, that’s what I like to see. Thanks for writing that up friend. 👊

Some argue that there are even more! I’m definitely not an expert on this one, but I remember something about Yahweh being the god of some town or village that then somehow got absorbed into the old testament god when tribes and traditions consolidated, and then new testament god is just a completely different animal. I’m probably getting something wrong, so don’t quote me.

It’s been know for decades that NSAIDs and acetaminophen are more dangerous then the pharmaceutical companies want us to think. They are the cause of the most overdose deaths in America (legal drugs).

To find a causal relationship between acetaminophen and autism will likely never happen, but a correlation is worth paying attention to. If people are telling you it’s perfectly safe, they’re confused or lying to you. There’s no free lunch. Everything has a cost.

Have you read the text exchange? No timestamp, no confirmation on what platform the exchange even took place on so that the third party could verify their legitimacy, and their exchange just so happens to layout the motive, discussed the murder weapon, uses perfect punctuation, and just flat out sounds weird.

To be real, I have no idea if those messages are fake or not. At this point, nobody but the FBI can vouch for their legitimacy and they don’t have the best track record.

I don’t know why anyone cares about this kid. He’s the alleged shooter. The feds still haven’t provided anything credible to prove he was the guy, no video of the kid on the roof with the rifle, no bullet, no medical report, weird people in the crowd causing a distraction, tampering of the crime scene, clearly fake text exchange…there are so many more important questions that need answers.

I’m still not convinced that this was the guy. The FBI’s narrative doesn’t make any sense. Does anyone know a conspiracy theory community where I can go full tin foil hat?

His artery was definitely hit, no question. There is a fair amount of compelling evidence that he was hit from the front, I’m not saying that was impossible. The speed at which the blood started to flow is one of the things that make me think exit wound though.

Also, I just can’t help but speculate other theories when the official story doesn’t make any sense. They still haven’t found the bullet to corroborate the weapon that was used and the bullet trajectory, no autopsy report, there was that old guy causing a ruckus that was also involved in 9/11 reporting and the Boston bombing, there was immediate tampering of the crime scene, lots of other video camera footage that hasn’t been released…I don’t know, just a bunch of weirdness around this event.

Weird, I don’t know. It certainly looks odd to me. I’m leaning towards the ‘neck wound was an exit wound’ theory, which throws out this entire rooftop sniper narrative and put the shooter somewhere behind and to the right of Kirk. Again, I really have no idea but anyone pushing this left/right bullshit is just trying to get people divided.

100%, that text message chain is ridiculous. The entire official doesn’t make any sense. Just seems like they are trying to pin the whole thing onto a ‘lone shooter’ and quickly move on. And then politicians are trying to capitalize on the death to push through whatever agenda they are already trying to push through, it’s disgusting and embarrassing.

I think what “they” want is confusion.

None of us know anything for certain, but I sure get the sense that this kid is a patsy. I’m inclined to dismiss everything the authorities and the media are saying about him. It all sounds like incongruent nonsense. My fingers are crossed that we actually get to hear him speak before the powers that be murder him.

That’s fair. The title did seem a bit click-baity and the they both seemed to be pushing capitalism as the superior system from the parts that I did listen to.

I dream of a day that we regularly meet up for lunch, perhaps once a week, drink a beer, have some laughs, and when we say goodbye to each other, you’ll say “The Nazis weren’t socialists” 🤣

Let me just start with my working definitions so that we are on the same page.

Socialism - the state controlling the means of production/distribution Communism - a stateless, moneyless, and classless society; as described by Marx/Engels Capitalism - privately controlled means of production/distribution, personal property, free markets, etc; as described by Adam Smith Authoritarianism - strict obedience to an authority at the expense of individual freedoms and democratic processes

In most of my interactions on the topic, these definitions are well accepted. These ‘-isms’ are ideological goals and never truly achievable. A system of governance will simply lean more towards one system or the other. There are capitalist policies inside of communist China. There are socialist policies inside capitalist USA. The world is messy.

The communism definition is the one that generally produces the most confusion due to some nations claiming to be communist, but having radically different social and economic policies from each other. Thankfully, we have the 10 planks from the ‘Communist Manifesto’ that we can always reference if we need to get into the weeds. Which, I don’t think we really need to get into for this. Obviously there are lots of different versions of these ‘-isms’ as well (i.e. democratic socialism, laissez-faire capitalism, stakeholder capitalism), but let’s just ignore all those for now.

Just to touch on unionization. This concept is something that I would put in a somewhat separate category. In theory you can have moderate to strong unions in most of the mentioned ‘-isms’ so long as government policies align to allow such things; I’m thinking of the ‘Nordic model’ as a good example of market based economies with strong unions and good social welfare programs. This is all an aside though.

Ok, so with those definitions in mind, let’s visit this idea of ‘authoritarian capitalism’ that you mentioned. I’ve heard this term before and find it frustrating. Let’s break these terms down via an analogy. Imagine a soccer game:

• Capitalism is a game with a neutral referee. The referee (the state) enforces the rules (property rights, contracts), but doesn’t step foot on the field. The teams (businesses) compete, and the team that scores the most goals gets the most fans (consumers).
• Authoritarianism is a game where the referee is also the captain of one team. They can change the rules, red card the other team’s best players, and award themselves goals. This isn’t a fair game or a competition, it is a rigged system controlled by one power (the state).

Maybe this isn’t a perfect analogy, but you get my point. Smashing these two words next to each other becomes oxymoronic. An authoritarian system cannot also be a capitalist system. The premise of each concept is in direct conflict with each other. In Adam Smith’s “The wealth of nations” he discusses the folly of a similarly centralized planning authority extensively. He was mostly talking about monarchs, but for our purposes they are close enough. The less a centralized authority is involved in the economy, the more capitalist it is. If you want to make the argument that the Nazis (the state) were an authoritarian regime AND heavily involved in the means of production/distribution, then we’re talking about a form of socialism.

In Richard J. Evans’ “The Coming of the Third Reich” he made a somewhat similar claim as you had about the Nazis ‘privatizing’ the industries after they came to power. Perhaps he had been working under a different set of definitions or understanding, but this choice of word left me baffled the first time I read it (btw, I have the utmost respect for Evans, he’s great). By Evans’ own account, the Nazis took over the government and became the state. Then they used their state powers to take control of businesses and industries to better accommodate their needs and provide the welfare programs they promised…the state took over the means of production/distribution…that’s the opposite of ‘privatizing’, it’s socialism.

You had also mentioned ‘welfare chauvinism’ which would still fall under the state controlling the means of distribution under the definitions I started with. It’s a shitty form of state controlled distribution, but still the state deciding who gets what resources. Aaaaaaaandddd I’m pretty sure the rest of the points you made are similarly addressed given the definitions. If I missed anything important to you let me know.

Also, I’m not alone in these thoughts about the Nazis being socialist, today I also randomly stumbled on historian Dr. Rainer Zitelmann echoing this sentiment. As I said yesterday though, I think we mostly just disagree on definitions. Where did you get your definition for socialism anyway?

In case you were looking for a more academic person to explain the nazi/socialist connection, this randomly popped up in my youtube feed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjkQZ3MmGgY&t=2623s

I didn’t listen to the whole episode and I don’t endorse the show, but there are some serious modern academics saying things similar to what I was saying yesterday. All the best.

Wow, thanks for the awesome write up and keeping it super respectful and even complimentary! Yeah, we were using a few of the same words a bit differently. Once I shifted my thinking to your definitions, we might not have a whole lot of daylight between us.

I don’t have time for a full response at the moment, but I can see the argument you’re making for the Nazis practicing authoritarian capitalism and find it somewhat compelling. The amount that they spoke out against ‘the jewish money system’ of capitalism does give me pause though, perhaps it was more rhetoric than policy. I’ll have to dig into when I have a bit more time tomorrow night.

We might have some differences on what counts as left/right policies, but I think that’s mostly on me struggling to define what is left/right. We’re also probably in massive agreement on the travesty of the unions losing relevance in the US and the harm that it’s done.

Democracy is a funny word. At some point the world decided that the word democracy means good and we should slap that label on anything we want to be perceived as good. Plato is rolling in his grave. Thanks again for the feedback friend.

I did zoom! Everything got blurry. You might be right about the glasses though, my eyes are garbage.

Thanks for the definition of Ur-Fascism from Mr. Eco. I was not familiar with it. Super interesting. He’s on point touching on ‘action’ and ‘eternal struggle’, pulling directly from Marx. Rejection of ‘the age of reason’, pulling from Hagel and/or Marx (depending on who you talk to). The Nazis also borrowed those concepts heavily. Some of this is slightly different from what Gentile wrote about, but it does adhere much closer to it. Creating the national narrative, appeals to emotion, celebrating machismo, nationalism, being one with the state, social darwinism/eugenics, etc etc etc. Very neat.

One glaring difference is the racism part. Gentile made racism impossible within his Fascist ideology, so long as you adhered to the ‘proper thought’ you were in the club. For the Nazis, the racism/ethno-supremacy part was obviously at the core the beliefs they promoted.

I just stumbled on a quote from historian Ian Kershaw that is very relevant, “trying to define ‘fascism’ is like trying to nail jelly to the wall” 😆

Any who, I appreciate your reply and introducing me to Mr. Eco. I’m adding him to my ever growing list of authors to read more of.

I can’t read most of the small text in the ‘early warning signs’, but I think it mentions the Nazis, Mussolini, Spain, and Portugal and the rest is too blurry to make out. I’m guessing whoever made this ‘early warning signs’ was looking for similarities across all those regimes and lumping them all under the term ‘Fascism’? Which…feels weird to me, Mussolini was the only one to actually call themselves Fascist. The others had differing ideologies or were just straight up dictatorships (assuming the small text says Salazar and Franco, but I’m not 100% on that).

And the Keene definition you linked to mentions ‘White replacement theory’ for some reason? Does that mean only white people can be fascist? Maybe they were just using it as an example of a fascist idea?

I appreciate the reply, but I’m not sure either definition helps clear up how the term is used in modernity.

If you want to know what Gentile was talking about when he was promoting Fascism, there’s a decent translation over here (not a quick read) - https://ia601807.us.archive.org/26/items/giovanni-gentile-english-translation/Origins And Doctrine Of Fascism - Giovanni Gentile.pdf