Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

The thing is, and this is what I think @Alley Oop is trying to say, is that there’s a clear distinction between the old school Communists, the anti-democratic and revolutionary who are most likely to whitewash the atrocities committed by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc; and the current day communists who see democracy as a valid system instead of just a mean to reach power.

This line has to be drawn mostly because the presence of tankies or left-wings apologists varies between regions, something we have discussed at length when talking about Latin America and the Pink Tide.

Personally, I do not trust communism and wouldn’t want any politician who talks about Marx to be near power here, that being said, I also don’t like Capitalism and would rather go for Distributism since I’m keenly aware how damaging can the “Free Market” model be.

This framing of the Marxist-Leninist communists as the "Old School" communists is what I'm calling incorrect though, as Marxist-Leninists still exist today, and the more democratic and libertarian socialists existed back then.

The main difference between the two is that Marxist-Leninism has been put through the crucible of being implemented in two large economies (both of which reached the point of being the second largest economy in the world at different times), and there's a lot Leftists can learn from the real world implementation of Marxist policies from those two examples, including obviously what NOT to do. Hence, probably why there's been a leaning away from viewing the state as the means to create Socialism, and viewing it with greater distrust in general.

The existence of tankies does not necessitate this line being drawn. Tankies exist, tankies are cringe. Authoritarian apologists can go do one. End of story.

I've just looked up distributism, and it's basically a form of libertarian socialism from what I can tell, but with no class politics for example. It's interesting how it (according to the Wiki page) frames socialism as an ideology that consolidates power, ignoring that Socialism is spread over the entire Libertarian/Authoritarian spectrum. Man, this ideology is steeped in rose-tinted nostalgia...

I don't have an opinion on which genocide is wronger than the other genocide. I don't see anything to gain by playing Genocide Olympics.

Hitler and Stalin are both extremely heinous people. Why does it matter whose crimes can beat up the other guy's crimes?

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 3rd 2019 at 7:31:17 AM

Because equivocation implicitly whitewashes the worst one.

A rejection of "genocide Olympics" is not entirely worthless but it is if you actually want to understand the world and have any hope of determining degrees of harm.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Dec 3rd 2019 at 7:56:51 AM

There is a level of harm above which "degrees" don't really matter anymore.

Trying to call one genocide a lesser genocide or a minor genocide just seems really disrespectful to the victims of genocide.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 3rd 2019 at 9:41:04 AM

Doubly so when the perps of the (so called) greater genocide are being whitewashed in the process.

Eh, I think it's important to note the differences between the ideologies that perpetrated different atrocities, the intent behind it (was it calculated or not in other words) and the means. It's an important part of history IMO, and historians often hold up similar events side by side to compare how and why they happened and how and why they were different. That includes comparing severity, cruelty, body count... all the "Genocide Olympics" stuff.

I simply disagree, there is a concrete difference between what Stalin planned for Eastern Europe and what Hitler wanted, pretending otherwise is far too high a cost just to appease some people.

If they dislike accurate analysis of the regimes in question then that's unfortunate but not the most important thing.

Well said, the particularities of Nazism and Stalinism can never be understood if we refuse to compare them and just lump under a greater category of "bad stuff".

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Dec 3rd 2019 at 8:58:55 AM

The debate that's occupied the last couple pages isn't about the complexities of different ideological philosophies, though. It's about whether Hitler is a more eviler Bad Dude than Stalin.

And I don't really see how the precise Kilonazi point totals between different historical monsters actually matters in any way.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 3rd 2019 at 12:00:22 PM

To quote something an aquaintance of mine once said: "Depravity is not a contest and everyone should stop comparing"

" Yeah, gas chambers are a thing because Himmler was squeamish."

Well not to be the defender here but morality is indeed to tie wotih squishminesh in one sense of another.

" If a person does something awful after gaining power, it wasn't the power that made them that way. They were always that person."

I disagree with that notion, having power, specially because power enable you or open thing you never know, I dislike the idea goodness is a thing that it is, it seen reductive and childish.

"I think you're conflating "communism" as a broader ideology with the specific Marxist-Leninist strand of the ideology."

Because the term communism is tie to it in one way of another, modern left ideology have evolved and in that they reject some tenet of old school communism to the point I cant call it like that, which why I made a diferent from social democracy or left progresivism for example, the later is pretty much reformist and want the actual model to acount for protection of minorities and people and not overthrow the power.

"Well said, the particularities of Nazism and Stalinism can never be understood if we refuse to compare them and just lump under a greater category of "bad stuff". "

Disagree, stalism and nazism are to many similiarity to disregard such because one is more genocidal than the other, hell by that regard will could said stalisim is worst because it can sustain in power longer than nazism who need war to perpetuate itself.

I think the nature of power is more complicated than "power inevitably makes good people terrible" or "it reveals who you always were". It's going to end up affecting people in different ways depending on who they are or their particular circumstances.

I wouldn't call Stalinism estable neither, the only reason why the URSS managed to last as much as it did is because the less insane members managed to get the control after Stalin's death.

Yeah, not all leaders are the same and not all face the same circunstances.

@ Golden Kaos

I actually think we're in full agreement then, as my point exactly is that ML/capital-C Communism (what I'm referring to with that it was by far the most prolific form of communism in the Cold War to the point it became synecdochized with the broad ideology as a whole) is a kind of lower-case communism (in the broader sense) that still has adherents in the modern day, hence why the old school vs. modern distinction which you also dislike is not useful. Tankies in the sense of dictator apologists are not really relevant, what I mean is that I believe that true believers in Marxism-Leninism/Communism, even if they don't engage in the whitewashing of existing dictators and atrocities, are nevertheless supporting an ideology that has been demonstrated to be fundamentally harmful and inequitable.

Edited by AlleyOop on Dec 3rd 2019 at 6:36:37 AM

Excuse me? When the fuck did I say anything about morality? I never equated morality and squeamishness?

And if your first inclination for an opportunity to abuse power that you never imagined is to exploit it...well that is revealing isn’t it.

Power reveals who we are.

And trying to say that good is not a thing is asinine.

Edited by M84 on Dec 3rd 2019 at 8:25:41 PM

You dditn said it, I did by using your quote, I never implied anything of what you said, as rule of thumb, poften thing equality godness with squishminesh and if you want to paint something as evil, make it gross.

"And if your first inclination for an opportunity to abuse power that you never imagined is to exploit it...well that is revealing isn’t it.

Power reveals who we are.

"

That some as sort of circular argument "if you are good you are good and if you dont then you dont" people often dont get used to that level of power neither have the chances, after all power can be said is the hability to do thing you never could and the hability to get away with problems.

As drag said, power is a little bit more complicated that "you have or not".

Squeamishness is about nausea. It has fuck all to do with morality.

And it's not a circular argument. There have been a lot of people throughout history and in the present who, after gaining a position of power, did not become corrupt assholes. They instead rose up to the challenge and owned up to their responsibilities and tried to do right. Clearly, power isn't inherently corrupting.

I generally think it's a bad idea to buy too much into the whole "power corrupts" narrative. It's probably part of why there's such an inherent distrust of politicians, since these are people who actively seek positions of power in our society. I have a problem with the Ambition Is Evil trope in general. Heck, one of the reasons Hillary Clinton got shat on repeatedly in public scrutiny was because of this (and with the added sexism of course — there have been studies indicating people are not inclined to trust women who seek promotions).

Edited by M84 on Dec 3rd 2019 at 9:19:14 PM

Yeah,I remember hearing about Himmler being squeamish in history class,all it meant that he had a gag reflex,that's all,nothing to do with morality or being disgusted by their own evil actions

While my google searching probably wasn’t the most thorough investigation, the psychological studies I looked up seem to support this. Power can corrupt, or it can reveal, but I sure do wish it would purify more often.

If there is anything corrupting about power, it's not the power itself. Rather, it's what comes with it, such as the new company you keep. If being in power means you're surrounded by assholes for most of the week, that's going to rub off on you a little bit. We're social animals, that's just how we are wired.

Edited by M84 on Dec 3rd 2019 at 9:20:01 PM

Oddly enough, it's slavery that convinced me of it the most. Frederick Douglass said that he often ran into problems trying to talk about slavery and plantation owners in the North. He said, and I'm paraphrasing obviously, that the majority of people assumed the purpose of slavery was money. A person might enslave another person to make money but he is not going to be cruel beyond the act that benefits him financially.

It was bad, obviously, but they assumed the means were in the service of the ends.

Frederick said that, instead, the absolute power over another human being and wealth that slave owners possessed warped every single one of them into The Caligula. That a plantation owner was to the man Ax-Crazy and engaged in countless acts of depravity, torture, rape, and more just to exercise that power. Also, that his worldview was warped to justify it.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Dec 3rd 2019 at 5:25:55 AM

George Orwell also seemed to believe in the idea that absolute power eventually becomes purely self-serving, given what O'Brien says about the party's motivations in 1984.

But even that could be explained by the point I brought up earlier. The company you keep helps shape who you are, for better or worse.

In a similar vein, it's why echo chambers are so dangerous.

Edited by M84 on Dec 3rd 2019 at 9:32:50 PM

With power corrupting, in the case of dictatorships it's actually unnecessary for it to corrupt, per se. The thing you have to keep in mind is that a prosperous people are actually a threat to a dictatorship. An autocrat who helps their people is funding their own overthrow. The only way for the autocrat to be safe is to make sure his people do not prosper.

In those cases, it's not power corrupting but rather fear that is corrupting. Dictators do tend to fall prey to paranoia (Properly Paranoid or not).