A new kind of politics: Lefty Brownshirts target Republican donors

Aw c'mon pgabs, you're not fooling me. I know that you've got your pressed brown shirt on now, you're leading goose-walking practice tonight, and you're going to a book burning for the weekend. I've got you lefties figured out.

 

I'm a little punch drunk on meds right now, but I'm not sure what you mean. Please elaborate.

 

now my thanks was genuine, I'm refering to other posters

 

In defense of pgabriel, I hardly believe he is a far right winger. Nazism is considered right wing, communism left wing. Basically, Nazism is dictatorship in the name of one man. Communism is dictatorship by one man in the name of the people. The cages they put their respective peoples into does not allow either wing to fly because flight requires freedom.

 

I was tweaking pgabriel's whiskers, and pointing out the ridiculousness of the term.

That being said, both fascism and communism are far left wing on the global scale. Fascism and Communism are branches in the tree of the evolution of socialism. Fascism is centralized state control of everything by the government through puppet corporations and communism is centralized state control by the government through bureucracies. They are both completely anti-free market, but because the fascists don't have the anti-capitalism rhetoric that the communists do, they are improperly labeled. All of European fascist states evolved out of social democracies.

If you've never read The Road to Serfdom, please give it a look.

 

So what's on the far right of the spectrum? Theocracy? Or is it just all good.

 

No theocracies run all up and down the spectrum. Pure capitalism is the far right.

 

So are there any examples pure capitalism? Do you think it's bad/good/possible?

Sorry for all the questions, but I usually come in here to learn, and you usually have interesting perspectives...

 

Pure capitalism, pure socialism, et al., are never really achievable, they're just ideals that the idealogues push towards. The closest we had to pure capitalism was the United States in the 19th Century. During the same time period, the Netherlands were also pretty close. Today, none are very close, but Singapore, New Zealand, and Switzerland are the closest, along with little pockets like the Bahamas and Bermuda.

I'm a big believer in a rising tide floating all ships, so I do like capitalism. I think a lot of the issues with capitalist societies are really created because of unhealthy alliances between the state and corporations. I also think that tearing down all of our social programs would create undue hardship on those who have come to rely on the state. Even though I'm a idealogical radical, political things that I actually fight for are grounded in realism.

 

I'm familiar with this argument but never much cared for it. It seems to me to be a lot of rhetorical gymnastics to put all the bad guys at the end of the political spectrum furthest from the speaker. Liberals will do the same with Soviet communism and call it a far-right, or a so-far-left-its-far-right, phenomenon.

In any case, why does basso always need to put these ridiculous baiting comments into his posts? It's an interesting article and merits some discussion, but everyone is talking about brownshirts. That's irrelevant to the article.

 

That "left" version of fascism is so lame.

Il Duce called fascism "corporatism," but hey, what did he know?

And how does the "far left" nazi regime preach so forcefully from a supposed religious perspective?

 

Getting back to TFA:

I could see this happening as well.


basso, why do you post articles without commenting on them?

 

Except the fascist governments we can use as examples were liberal governments in terms of economic and social policy.

 

I don't want to argue about it in a thread about swift-boaters and swift-boater-swift-boaters. But, I'd say that wasn't true of the Third Reich or of Fascist Italy. I'm sure one could pick examples of specific policies that are generally perceived in America as liberal, but the sweep of their philosophy does not go in that direction. And, I think it is rhetorically easy to conflate fascist cooperation with big business and communist co-optation of big business, but they are still philosophically diametrically opposed. Fascists still employed principles of capitalism and the market while communists sought to circumvent them.

 

it is MOSTLY right, ethnically nationalist, racist, anti liberals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism

 

Really? You are going to go with that? Napoleon called himself a Republican right before he crowned himself Emperor.

National Socialism was a nice label they could give themselves to gain interest during a time when Germany was highly impoverished and when socialism was the cool new thing on the block. Nazis were all about militarism, nationalism, racism, and restrictions of rights. None of that has anything to do with socialism.

 

More Bull***** from McShame.

McCain Blogger Lies, Insinuates Obama Has Received More Money From Big Oil Than McCain»

In a post titled “Exxon Obama,” official McCain blogger Michael Goldfarb insists Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) “made a mistake” when he said Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is the favored candidate of the oil companies. Goldfarb cites a report by the Center for Responsive Politics to claim that Exxon, Chevron, and BP employees have given more to Obama than McCain. Goldfarb triumphantly declares, “Big Oil’s candidate is…Barack Obama.”

However, Goldfarb selectively edits out three sentences from that same report, which emphasize that oil companies overall have given three times more money to McCain than Obama:

McCain leads the money race with nearly every other top giver in the oil and gas industry, though — Koch Industries, Valero, Marathon Oil, Occidental Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, the list goes on. (You can see detail on all these companies in the spreadsheet linked below.) McCain also has a big edge with Hess Corp. — $91,000 to Obama’s $8,000 — which has gotten some attention. And, overall, McCain’s campaign has gotten three times more money from the industry than Obama’s has — $1.3 million compared to about $394,000.

The report shows that, since McCain’s reversal in favor of offshore oil drilling, oil industry contributions to his campaign have skyrocketed — creating the perception that he is outsourcing his energy policies to the oil companies:



The report concludes, “Comparing Obama’s and McCain’s financial ties to the oil industry, there’s no question that McCain has benefited more from the industry’s contributions.” That said, since his false claim was contained in a blog post, Goldfarb probably “knew the charge was bogus.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/08/goldfarb-big-oil-lie/

 

More pesky facts for baseless-o and McShame.

 

Nationalism and restrictions of rights are necessary for socialism.