General Politics Thread

No, I know enough about post-revolutionary Russian history to know that the answer to that is no. I'm asking for cases involving any other country at some point during their recent history was in a state that was at least a microcosm of what Russia is suffering through right now, but managed to climb out of it. Something that could reasonably be scaled up, even if some Acceptable Breaks from Reality have to be made for convenience.

Edited by MarqFJA on Oct 1st 2022 at 3:34:55 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

@Diana 1969

I see fascism as totalitarian by definition, which requires transformation of society. I agree that we should not strictly define fascism by what those two did. I do disagree here, thought. Total transformation is total transformation, regardless of how it is done.

Edited by Risa123 on Oct 1st 2022 at 3:21:21 PM

Japanese fascism wasn’t really aiming for that, though. What was the transformation? It was all elements that already existed as far as the Meiji constitution.

Meiji Japan was (flawed) constitutional monarchy thought. Fascist Japan was a one part state with state controlled economy you can't just ignore that.

Edited by Risa123 on Oct 1st 2022 at 4:20:47 PM

It wasn't a constitutional monarchy in the classical sense, it was never intended to have a strong parliament at all. It was always a tool to preserve the authority of the nobles and imperial council under the guise of "constitutional monarchy". Parliament only began holding greater say when Taisho's inbred ass was emperor, and even the era of "Taisho democracy" is debatable.

As far as state control of industry, that was already a big thing during the Restoration, it just became an even bigger deal in 1938 to emulate Japan's allies and prepare a war economy.

Even then, all these happened between 1938-1940...generally I don't think those are the dates where Japan is considered to have finally become fascist? I usually see earlier dates cited.

True, but you do not build a new regime overnight. My point that transformation was (eventual) goal. That depends on what do you mean by constitutional. When I say constitutional then I meant that the power of monarch is limited by constitution. Even if they still have significant powers. For figurehead monarch, I would call it parliamentary (constitutional) monarchy. This nuance is often ignored by people.

Edited by Risa123 on Oct 1st 2022 at 5:16:25 PM

Well, yes. Mussolini and Hitler didn't install one-party rule overnight. I'd argue, though, that even military dictatorships require buildup before they can take effective power and carry out their goals.

Perhaps there should be a dividing line between "conservative" military dictatorships and "radical" military dictatorships.

What about fascist military dictatorship ? I mean, "radical" military dictatorship is probably fascist, except maybe something hypothetical.

Edited by Risa123 on Oct 1st 2022 at 6:42:36 PM

Most military dictatorships are rarely radical at all and seek to enforce their authoritarian version of the status quo. In Uruguay, the military deposed the president after he unveiled a Francoist document that would have given them absolute power - that was too radical for them.

But in the case of Franco and Pinochet, the former sought to erase all traces of the Republic through terror, to ensure that his victory was final and the Republic had never existed in favor of Old Spain or Holy Spain. Remember that even children born to Republican women were considered subversive and taken away from their mothers.

The latter, once terrified and insecure as part of the junta because he feared even crueler men within that'd kill him for past ties to Allende, enjoyed his newfound power and used it to turn Chile into the profitable police state of his dreams, where all leftists were tortured and then the liberals and Christian Democrats got thrown out of helicopters (as opposed to pop culture thinking that he did that to everyone.)

I was told by a Chilean that genuine economic boom came after Pinochet and the return of democracy - Pinochet actually drove companies away with his privatization madness.

Note that Franco in his case tossed aside the actual Falangists, whose even more radical brand of fascism was not doing well since Jose Antonio died.

Franco also erased the traditional autonomies joined by the minorities within the Republic in favor of attempting to crush cultural identity and their languages.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Oct 1st 2022 at 11:07:20 AM

That's what I mean, yes. The ones that try to promote a whole transformation of the country instead of merely saying "We're ruling until it's 'safe' to return to democracy." Peron and Velasco would be examples. If one considers Gaddafi to be a military dictator, he would fit as well.

Pinochet's privatization crap was so bad that he had to re-nationalize a few industries Allende had nationalized, just to preserve the economy.

Edited by Diana1969 on Oct 2nd 2022 at 5:31:40 AM

Guess we are in agreement at least about that. I should note that I have learned a few things from talking to you, and that does not happen every day. So thanks, I guess.

Edited by Risa123 on Oct 1st 2022 at 8:36:50 PM

For me, I don't particularly view Franco throwing away the more radical side of the Falangists as being any different than Hitler purging the Strasser brothers during the Night of the Long Knives. The deal with Franco is that, in what I could possibly call a reactionary parallel to the Popular Front of the Republic, he pushed to unite the various right-wing factions of Spanish politics into a common Nationalist front. That meant uniting the Falangists with the Carlists and, by necessity, watering down both sides' views.

I've seen Franco labeled as someone who was only using fascism as a means to an end, who was never "truly" fascist and just a standard conservative co-opting it. I disagree, and frankly part of me wonders if part of those claims might have been rooted in post-WWII attempts at rehabilitating Franco now that he was an ally in the fight against communism. Part of me wonders similar things about Salazar, who was already an ally during WWII.

It was probably that and Franco entering his dictablanda phase. As for the Falangists and Carlists, one was proudly fascist but in a twisted way, the most socially progressive of them all, for Jose Antonio also vowed revenge on the old monarchist elite that deposed Dad when he was dictator of Spain. The other were reactionaries so devoted to traditionalism that they opposed communism, liberalism, and fascism equally.

As a result, the Carlists and Falangists started fighting each other after the Nationalist victory, and Franco sorted them out by co-opting them forcibly until he alone was in charge and they were a shadow of themselves.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Oct 1st 2022 at 2:42:46 AM

Yeah that sounds a little bit similar to what happened in Germany. The NSDAP were literally accused of being "Brown Bolsheviks" by the DNVP (the other main far-right party at the time, who advocated a restoration of the monarchy and a lot of revanchist bullshit) because their ambitions were for a big sweeping societal change of sorts in Germany. But, of course, the DNVP wound up supporting the Nazis eventually. The difference is that the NSDAP weren't exactly politically neutered like the old-school Falangists were by Franco. If anything, the DNVP were the ones who became politically neutered.

I mean, Polish Nationalism is probably at least a bit similar to this. They hate both Nazis and Communists, due to their history with them, and try to make their own brand.

Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian

Well, it's gone to levels where the Poles hated the following forms of German government equally: the KPD, the Kaiser, Hitler. They saw no change between the Tsar and the Soviets, and as far as they were concerned, both sides of the Russian Civil War were not to be trusted. The centuries of not having a country and being persecuted for it led them to believe that the Germans and Russians, the twin overlords, were always conspiring to subjugate Poland.

During the Weimar Era, anti-communist military men like Hans von Seeckt saw virtually no problems with the secret alliance with the Soviet Union for German rearmament and in fact encouraged it. Instead, him and the Junkers were all convinced that Germany's problems came from Poland existing and near rightful Prussian territory.

The other people with that sort of fierce nationalism that becomes inherent to culture are the Vietnamese and the Ukrainians.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Oct 1st 2022 at 4:18:24 AM

I don't like labelling it as "the Poles", there were a lot of political lines of thought within Poland at the time. Chiefly, there was Pilsudski's leadership, which led to the fascist Sanation regime coming to power (he straight up ripped off Mussolini's March on Rome with his own march on Warsaw, he wasn't even subtle about it). But of course, the Polish leadership at that time (Pilsudski and his successors) was heavily opportunistic, expansionist nationalists who gobbled up territory from Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, and later joined in dismembering Czechoslovakia in 1938 after Munich.

I think Pilsudski's rival was more of an actual fascist, though, Roman Dmowski and his National Democrats. They were open admirers of Mussolini and demanded a total Polish ethnostate from the get go.

Pilsudski was willing to grant some more concessions than Dmowski, but he was still a total chauvinist who expanded Poland into territories that weren't even majority Polish, which not only damaged relations with Lithuania (because Pilsudski *REALLY* wanted Vilnius to be part of Poland), but also led to a lot of armed actions by Ukrainian nationalists in the Kresy (which is its own controversial bucket of shit given the OUN were involved in a lot of that). Pilsudski was obsessed with remaking the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Dmowski wanted a Polish ethnostate, both were chauvinist nationalist nonsense. Only Pilsudski was able to actually become dictator.

To make things even more complicated, the OUN were actively fighting Pilsudski for a very long time - shot Prime Minister Narutowicz. The Polish grudge against Bandera runs extremely deep, not that it stopped the Polish population from eagerly helping Ukraine.

A Polish friend, when I asked him about it, replied that while Banderites nearly murdered his grandparents, Catholic Ukrainians had saved them, and his kindness to refugees - charity work, helping stack supplies going to the Ukrainian Army and handing out food - was a thank you to the family that had saved them.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Oct 1st 2022 at 5:14:03 AM

I was just thinking; I've seen it suggested that one of the reasons why right-wing populists have been having so much success for the past half-decade is, basically, because there hasn't been much meaningful opposition. That is to say, that there's no-one on the left, or even the centre, who's been able to captivate 'ordinary people' and sell their ideas in the same way, leaving them with no other option than to turn to the right.

What I wanna ask is: how true is that, if it's true at all?

"If you think like a child, you will do a child's work."

Not sure, globally. Trump's rise to power, for example, seems to have been caused by a series of events that don't seem all that inevitable.

But I'd say with Trump, a very big factor is that he appealed to what might be called anti-establishment nationalism. Basically, Americans have grown to rather dislike establishment politicians beyond what's reasonable, often viewing them as selling out the society they run. Cool People Rebel Against Authority is a very handy tool for the snake-oil salesman. And I do mean that literally, it's how they sell alternative medicine.

This also happened during a time when the Republican Party's brand was in serious jeopardy, with W becoming a pariah and the party deciding it has to distance itself from him as much as they can. It had become a party of pure contrarianism without any real ideology except for "Own the libs".

In addition, fears over "political correctness" were already at a boiling point and having a black POTUS was also causing racists to lose their mind.

So, here steps in a man, a political outsider, appealing to the anti-PC crowd, offering a chance to get back at those ivory tower political elites, and a chance for the party to reinvent itself in his image. Well, it was a perfect storm.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

From what I gather from my corner of the world there is some kernel of truth in that, but it's less just the right-wing making a comeback and more outright radical populism that has taken over politics in the last decade or so.

To make it short, the problems of all countries across the world have started to hit a point of critical complexity in which the solutions to them have become hard to grasp or tolerate by the common voter, this combined with the gaining of ground of minorities across the world and the interconnection between cultures has also made the complex nature of the world far more blatant than it has ever been before.

This is where populists like Trump, Bolsonaro, Putin, Chavez et al. enter into the game. What they promise is, basically, simple solutions that can push all these complexities under the rug, and as the saying goes "out of sight, out of mind", which is what appeals to people of various levels of education. The allure of a simple answer to a complex problem is just that strong for some people who do not want to accept that reality is often keeping you guessing.

Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.

And let's not forget the media's role in attacking the left at every turn while giving a platform to extreme right-wingers.

Not just the media. One downside of the rise of the Internet has been the fact that neo-Nazis now know where they can go to find other neo-Nazis and spout their bullshit. They know that they're not alone, and they've discovered (along with the rest of us) that maybe a third of humanity really are hate addicts.