You just labeled this a debate. How dare you label something! Actually I see what you're doing. Don't get mad that you can't come up with a way to define your position because you actually have no idea about your own ideological underpinnings. You should confront your own beliefs and see if they're consistent instead of complaining that I use words (labels as you label them).
You are obviously just trolling, so shame on me for taking the bait. There's just no way on earth you are dumb enough to not know the definition of the word LIBERAL. Here straight from the dictionary you insufferable old fart: You asked in the OP "what constitutes TOO FAR LEFT" and it's obvious that you were looking for only one answer... that Liberals, if allowed to go "TOO FAR LEFT" would be Nazis. If you are too ignorant or hard headed to understand what the world Liberal means, and what too much Liberalism, or Liberty means then that's on your dumb ass. But again... you know and are 100% just trying to be a massive douche. Especially when the answer is not some ringing endorsement for Liberalism with no checks and balances. The best case scenario would be the example I laid out for a very beautiful and great place to visit, but no doubt a third world country. Democracy is GOOD. I don't know why you nimrods try so hard to make it seem as though the Left in the US somehow hates Democracy. It's kind of what we've been fighting for the past 4 years and why we don't shut up about free and fair elections, and its still unnerving that folks like yourself are so hostile to free and fair elections where it's okay for a Soviet KGB Agent (literally a communist) to help install & influence our presidents, elected officials, and pay to have our military killed in the process. In the end there's a whole hell of alot more to say about whats wrong with people like you who are helping shred Democracy than folks like myself who openly are sounding the alarm that Democracy is under attack and that's generally a bad thing.
Bro, I'm a liberal. I know what it means. Do you really take to heart what it means and how it applies to the way people misuse it and align it with authoritarian beliefs such as socialism? Not sure what bothers you so much, but you should learn more about that word before you go around attacking real liberals like myself. Also you're just ranting and saying I don't like democracy. Patantly false. I like democracy because democracy has a purpose but it's also, without limits, illiberal in that it can oppress if unchecked. Thus the checks and balances of our system and the measures, like making the US a republic, in order to prevent the tyranny of the masses that unfettered democracy brings about. As for your comments about Russian conspiracy theories, the FBI didn't come up with anything solid. You've bought a spin to support your view and bias, but it's not worth a damn outside of far left circles. If you actually care about democracy, you should wise up and support voter ID laws and come out hard against ballot machines, riggable, and mail in voting, also riggable. But, I will bet you don't. Because your posts indicate you've had too much DNC Kool-aid and you are impressionable because of your lack of understanding of key terms.
With all due respect, you aren't a liberal. Not even close. Not remotely. Either you don't know what the word means, or you're simply playing here.
He does this a bunch. He made up definitions or appropriates out of context definitions and applies them as he sees fit. In the context of 1849 economic reforms he is a liberal as opposed to a royalist, as he believes in a Laissez-faire economy instead of state control. Therefore, he is now a liberal. Controlling how things are labeled to try and direct the conversation seems to be a little game for him. Case in point the dreaded "red fascist" which is an extremely out of context term he appropriated from 1920s arguments between anarchists and Marxists to apply to everybody on the left.
What I think is funny is that people hear talk of academic Marxism and then think that means the “communism” or “socialism” of USSR or China or whatever. There is a long tradition of Marxist critical theory that has nothing to do with literal economic or political systems and plenty of Marxist scholars who are not Marxists in the sense that ignorant people think. When an American says “I am a trained Marxist” that doesn’t mean they went to Stalin camp. And, of course, even talking about Marxist in the “political” sense usually gets messed up because Marx wanted the dissolution of the State, not the USSR or Maoist fascism. And who were his biggest opponents? Those to the left of him - libertarian socialists like Bakunin who identified that his system would be abused and lead to fascism not libertarian socialism. So how can communism be the “extreme left”? BTW, Napoleon called himself a republican then crowned himself emperor and was authoritarian. Labels are often useless.
So you're avoiding the point of this thread. My point about the far left not knowing what is too far is exemplified here in your post. You haven't a clue about marxism and you can't answer the main question of this thread.
Seriously? I haven’t a clue? I’m not using words incorrectly and making a mess of political, economic, and critical theory. But, ok, I am dumb. Sorry for wasting your time. I will answer your main question. Nazism, fascism, and communism are all bad. Far left libertarian socialism is not bad but I don’t think that is realistic. I like nonviolent political steps that move in any way towards liberty, justice, and compassion for all. Yay.
Wow. You aren't looking good, @dachuda86. You should read some more history about the topic you are attempting to "discuss." @rimbaud is on target.
Late to the party and skimmed to catch up. I see a lot of arguing about labels. Don't know if this has already been brought and squashed, but I guess this is my view. The ideology of Nazism centers around authoritarianism (cult of the leader) and identitarianism (racial purity). The reason it has a stigma today is not that it is "too far right" in its economic principles (an afterthought for Nazis) or other attributes we ascribe to mainstream conservative politics here. The far-right economic ideologues (free market everything) are not stigmatized in this way. Nazism has a stigma because it is an ideology of dictatorship and racism, which is pretty antithetical to the American ideals of democracy and inclusion (there's plenty more to be said about how American inclusion is and how the conservative attack on "political correctness" is a rejection of inclusion, but I'll leave that for some other time). When neo-Nazis praise the Third Reich, these are the values they are espousing. In contrast with Nazism, communism doesn't have this definitional purity. You can say the USSR's communism was a dictatorship and caused mass suffering and death. Which is true. But the USSR doesn't have a monopoly on the word "communism." Marx and Engels wrote about a communism in which the state withers away, the opposite of whatever happened in Russia and China. So a person is not automatically espousing some terrible ideology of dictatorship, oppression, and exploitation if they call themselves a communist. It is a word with so much baggage that you actually don't really know anything about the communist until you ask him what he means by that. Now, if the communist tells you he means he wants a totalitarian government in which an unelected supreme leader has total control of all the assets in the country and he will share only as much wealth as is necessary to perpetuate his own supremacy -- yeah, I'm going to agree with you that there should be a huge stigma on that brand of politics in the US political dialogue. But that's never what the American communist means by that. He's always thinking of some better mousetrap -- how to deploy Marxist ideals for the common good while protecting ourselves from the exploitation and corruption we've seen in the post-colonial 'communist' regimes. By contrast, the American neo-Nazi is not thinking of how to have Nazism without the racism and totalitarianism; racism and totalitarianism is the whole point.
Also the fact that communism is a mere economic/government philosophy while Nazism is a ideology that makes claims of racial supremacy. Also communism in the US is heavily stigmatized.
You can't have a discussion on policy without invoking "left, rights Nazis, communists, socialist" so on and so forth. It's impossible for you. It's funny because it's obvious you just watch YouTube right wingers and that is the source of all your information and of course those people always frame problems in this country in a left vs right paradigm. I've not seen one discussion from you in this subforum outside that context. No discussion about healthcare policy, solving the wealth gap between POC and white people, no discussion of how to fix our public education system. Nothing. Just "leftist that, right wingers this".
Not that I read through the whole thread (my eyes would melt), but I'm sure someone pointed out, What is it with right-wingers always seeing black and white (no, I don't mean in terms of race)? Everything is 180 degrees. For.............................Against. This.......................That. As if all of those aligned more to the left than Tucker Carlson are Communists. Not all people on the political right are Nazis, not at all. My dad is actually fairly moderate otherwise but his racism is the cockroach on the wedding cake. I'm going to go looking for these Commie flags. I didn't know they were everywhere---like those Pittsburgh Steelers flags on cars, even if Houston!
Bro, you are a white nationalist. Nothing liberal about anything you write except that you take liberty with reality.
To follow up on what Rimbaud and JuanValdez have said what most Americans think of Communism isn’t really what Marx and Engels envisioned when they wrote Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto. What Americans think of is really Leninism, Maoism and Stalinism. Revolutionary change through violent class warfare, overthrow of traditional cultural norms and centralized state with a cult of personality. Communism was seen as revolutionary by Marx but one that would happen over a period of time and not through sudden overthrow. It also definitely would not be an authoritarian state with centered in a strong man. If we look at what Marx thought in many ways Andrew Yang’s ideas are Marxist. Marx saw that industrialization was creating inequalities in wealth generation and that this would only get worse. He believed that wealth was only generated by labor so that instead of wealth going to an investor and management class it should be going to the workers. Now if the question is how far is too far left yes Stalin and Mao are too far Left. they don’t really represent Marx and I don’t think there are a lot of American Leftists claiming to be Stalinists or Maoists.
[/QUOTE] Yup, this is a very important distinction. I've never seen a American leftist praise Stalin or Mao. Que someone finding an example.
“The Left” embraces Socialism, not Communism. The problem is a the “Right” doesn’t know the difference between Communism and Socialism. England, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, Italy, etc...Socialism.
The more notable thing is this thread made it to 5 pages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare Ahh nostalgia and hating the reds when trump is an agent of russia and majority leader of repugs is called "moscow mitch"..lovely stuff..Managed to get the commies AND the nazis into one group good one!
