that drivel you posted is nowhere near a legitimate discussion and it's impossible to talk to you about this stuff because you don't have realistic grasp of history.
Biden may be number one or even top 3 in most polls, but here's an analysis of why none of that may matter: "Why no one is treating Biden like a front runner." https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...89eea1b326b29c3778c8a/?utm_term=.a3c3cb766f5a
Nothing ever is. Also I can't help but just laugh at this thread. I am reminded of some memery I saw about this, Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler
Well, Stalin was. I'm not sure why you guys just didn't go with that? Stalin was horrible enough, why even bring up a guy that most historians agree wasn't a socialist?
I don't think you know what socialism is and how it actually ends up playing out. The NAZIS are there saying hey we are socialists and you say no, you are not socialists. I am sorry, but they were socialists. Did they implement the type of socialism you want to see? No, of course not. People don't actually follow through on that. Hitler never wanted socialism and that's the point. He wanted power, and that's all anyone wants at this high level of politics. You are joking if you think that socialism is going to actually get implemented somewhere and the big magic government fairy is going to be this emotionless benevolent patreon to all of man kind and share everything equally. People are not to be trusted, especially in positions of power. The party will get the spoils of the war, and everyone else will be left out. This is not a good way to govern. It is not "fair" or "equal" I agree that Hitler didn't ultimately enact what most people would consider socialism in practice. And that is my point about socialism! Yes he was a socialist because they never give you what you are sold. It is a bait and switch to appeal to the low IQ working class, the lazy, the meek, and the weak. The majority. It creates mob rule by appealing to greed. It is too good to be true. Hitler was a socialist. Until he wasn't.
What are we even disagreeing about then? Above you say exactly what I've been saying. That Hitler wasn't a socialist and the Nazi's weren't socialists. Yes, that's what I've been saying. The thing is that Hitler's Nazi party NEVER wanted to try socialism in the first place but he wasn't going to change the name of the party that put him in power. So he ran with it. What does it matter to him? He was going to sell his country a bed of lies. People are saying he wasn't a socialist and you're agreeing that he wasn't but...he said he was (although those quotes came from Strasser...) and him, a noted liar and a leader who relied on propaganda, means more than his actions and policies. It being a bait and switch? I mean...that's the point with Hitler. Almost everything he did was a bait and switch. Let me just have Poland, that's it...oh no Stalin, we are great allies! It shouldn't then be a surprise that his party sold socialism to the country and then didn't go through with it.
How do I not have a realistic grasp of history? I studied quite a lot at uni. Sincerely -- please give me an example of how I don't have a realistic grasp of history.
Ok, look at who has announced, or is about to announce, for the Dems: Harris, Gillibrand, Warren. These are hyper-partisans on the left. Look at the whole drift of the Democratic party in the past few years, from health care, taxation, immigration, environment -- it's all gone to the extreme left. AOC is the best (or worst) representation of that. The Dems have few, if any, remaining centrists. For example, as far as I can tell, they have no members of Congress that are pro-life. The Democrats of the type represented by Bubba, or Dick Gephardt, pretty much don't exist anymore. Every indication I hear about Biden is that he is not running.Now, I think that that should Biden run, he would probably give the Dems their best shot at beating Trump. It would be interesting to see those two debate. But Biden too, it seems to me, has become more extreme, and abandoned his centrist ways. His endorsement of same sex marriage is but one example. Contrast that with the DOMA passed under the Clinton adm back in the 1990s.
But they were socialists in the early days and before the night of the long knives. They may have diverged later on, but they were socialists. You can't say they weren't at all. That is false. They were born of a socialist leftist movement. A worker's movement. They birthed a fascist tyranny and that is essentially what happens with socialism when it is tried. It is a lie to say they adhered to socialism as they progressed, but they were at one point socialists. They promised one thing and delivered hell to pay. Hitler brought mayhem to the masses. He was a sick and evil man. And that is what happens with socialism. When thrust to power, it never works out in the end. The best example you can make is a mixed model in the nordic countries which are only working because they are primarily capitalist countries with a dash of social programs and unfortunately they have some state run companies (which is a huge weak point in my opinion. They may be better off selling those and will likely have to to prop up their welfare states as more migrants flock to Northern Europe). These are the best you have because the actual places where socialists are put into power turn into heaping trash dumps that socialists then quickly disown it as not real socialism. (the same way the left disowns the Nazi movement because they fail to learn the valuable lesson about socialist pie in the sky promises) Also Nordic model countries are not too regulated and don't tax their corporations a lot. That is very business friendly and good for the economy. They can also afford all that welfare because they don't maintain militaries that are capable of fighting two super powers at the same time. It is a huge burden on our tax payers. Also the individual tax rates are really high, because the people pay for all of those benefits. Delightful. So to go back to the AOC issue, I can't take her seriously because she is dismissive of the how do you pay for it question. This is not a serious answer or a serious plan. The people who fall for her are just as dumb as Trump supporters. Maybe even dumber. We can thank our click-hungry media for boosting her clout.
Not saying all of you disagree with this, but I am going to share one of my favorite quotes about the nordic model here for some of the armchair economists who have been frequenting this thread:
You can't blame socialism for Nazi Germany when they dropped socialism when Hitler took over. That would be like the silly argument that the democratic party supports the KKK because they at one point in history did. The fact that they dropped socialism means they weren't socialist, not when it mattered. The fact that they were at one point is the fact that they were...but socialism didn't make Hitler? Are you serious with that? He was a psychopath made by WW1 and his own personal demons, not by socialism. Hitler wasn't a socialist put in power. He was a maniac put in power that believed in social darwinism. And yes the left disowns the Nazi movement because it has nothing to do with left wing politics lol. Not one person has brought up a socialist policy in Nazi Germany yet, just old quotes from Strasser...a man that Hitler had killed when he took power...and we are still arguing that Hitler was the result of socialism and left wing politics? Politicians are not always completely truthful, I rather look at the policies and actions and judge myself. There are quotes from nordic power players saying quite the opposite through history, at the end of the day, it's just words...and as Hitler...Trump...and any politician has shown...words are just words, what is done is sometimes completely different. This has been a war of words for some time and there's a lot of...I'll just call it propaganda...against the word Socialist....so that anytime someone mentions free healthcare someone on the right cries "SOCIALISM! VENEZUELA!" until they drown out all points that could be made. Here is a good article on it that I challenge you to read... http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018...nservatives-social-democracy-scandinavia.html Summary, these states are far more 'socialist' than you might expect. The % of contracted union workers is pretty telling... The point is this. you may not take AOC seriously but her ideas are not coming from la la land, they are coming from Nordic countries. She can call herself socialist but what does it really matter? The right is going to lose all ownership of that word soon, in fact, I'd argue that they already have. At the end of the day, you're going to argue policy, and it's going to be increasingly hard to do so unless the Nordic countries flame out and become...Venezuela. Until then, just marking her as socialist and all socialist countries fail isn't a valid argument for what she's arguing for. This is why she continues to catch on and why more 'progressive' democrats pop up.
Yikes. She just keeps going further left: Ocasio-Cortez Compares America’s Past To Nazi Germany, Says US Should Pay Reparations Like They Did Molly Prince on January 22, 2019 Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated on Monday that the United States should pay reparations to the non-white communities who were negatively impacted by America’s New Deal. “I think the first thing that we need to do is realize that there’s a balance between this more universal struggle for racial, social and economic dignity, but at the same time, not erasing the individual stories of different communities,” Ocasio-Cortez responded when asked how government can create a just outcome among its citizens. “You and I are in the same struggle. That does not give me a pass to not talk or acknowledge the black experience and that does not give you a pass to not acknowledge or talk about the plight of Puerto Ricans and people overall,” Ocasio-Cortez told interviewer Ta-Nehisi Coates. “It is in that exchange, and to say ‘you are distinct and you come from a distinct community that is valued and uplifted’ and vice versa.” The self-proclaimed Democratic socialist contended that while people tend to associate reparations with slavery, instead, they should be associated with the effects of The New Deal, which, she argues, disproportionately impacted non-white communities. More at link: http://dailycallernewsfoundation.or...says-us-should-pay-reparations-like-they-did/
This assigning of labels is too simplistic. If we want to talk about the early Nazi/DAP days (and they were not a lot of days -- DAP was formed in Jan 1919, Hitler joined by September and was party chairman by mid-1921), they were started as an ethno-nationalist, anti-semitic organization that appealed to populist sentiments in the German working class that was specifically anti-communist. It was like Trumpism in this regard -- a working-to-middle-class conservative reaction to elitist, globalist, left-wing, and non-white forces. There was dispute at their founding as to whether they were a workers' party or a socialist party. They didn't want the sort of socialism that the German communists wanted, whom they hated. So they weren't Marxist socialists who wanted to seize the means of production, but more like racist welfare socialists. And that was an area of policy they never managed to much flesh out because they were really focusing their attention of the injustice of the Treaty of Versailles, the stab in the back (Trump echoes the stab in the back grievance when he says all these foreign countries were taking advantage of us under previous presidents), the threat of communism, and the scourge of international Jewry. So does some soft socialism of pre-Hitler leadership in 1919-1921 that was never much developed really qualify them as socialist? In my view, not really. But more important (and more important to the question of whether Nazis were 'left' or 'right') is how much did their socialism really matter to the party's identity? They were, even before Hitler joined, first and foremost by a long mile a white supremacy party. They talked far, far more about the superiority of the Aryan race, racial purity, and the evil of the Jews. They were not a party built on economic philosophy at all, but on a racial philosophy. If it's just a name game for you, I want to be a Nordic Free Marketeer.
You left out the most relevant quotes for some reason: I don't think we'll be paying reparations, but she is partly right about the racially unequal economic effects of the New Deal and she is right that America still has a problem with acknowledging and repenting for not only slavery and the native genocide, but also Jim Crow and racist policies that have exacerbated our wealth disparity problems. We don't tell the truth about ourselves, or we don't seem to really hear it.
Yep, just as I figured. "The answer is everything...." Which is pretty much a non-reply. I asked for one example. You couldn't give it to me. Nuff said.
