107
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
107 points (100.0% liked)
news
24594 readers
659 users here now
Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:
-
To learn about and discuss meaningful news, analysis and perspectives from around the world, with a focus on news outside the Anglosphere and beyond what is normally seen in corporate media (e.g. anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, Marxist, Indigenous, LGBTQ, people of colour).
-
To encourage community members to contribute commentary and for others to thoughtfully engage with this material.
-
To support healthy and good faith discussion as comrades, sharpening our analytical skills and helping one another better understand geopolitics.
We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.
Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:
The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.
-
Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
-
Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.
-
Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.
-
Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.
-
Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.
-
Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
-
American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
-
Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.
-
AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Back when words had meaning, which is usually only for as long as the first book describing the word is published, 'totalitarian' was used as a way to describe a system with 'totalizing' control and authority, i.e. full control over every aspect of society.
In practice, it was and is used by American political scientists to describe both the Soviet and Fascist systems of government, with full control of the every aspect of society, with the assumption, of course, that our system operates with different, particular controls, such as privatized media, private financial markets, etc.
Under such analysis, capitalism is simply a natural phenomena, and not a 'totalizing aspect', because American political scientists don't really recognize the concept of political-economy. This is one of the glaring axiomatic flaws. The particular flaws of the analysis are also quite poor, as not only was there massive privatization under Nazism, but there was fairly large latitudes in judgement that Soviets could use to pursue goals set out by the Central Soviet, and it was only during the 30's that the central soviet pursued major dictation of society (because Stalin and his advisors (the Central committee really) correctly predicted Germany would try to expand again, and military economies have pretty strict requirements ).
This is besides the fact that even under this model of analysis, modern Russia cannot be considered totalitarian. It now shares so much similar political institutional make-up with U.S. the U.S. would also be a totalitarian government, which was explicitly not the case by the creators of this analysis.
Needless to say, it's an incredibly flawed model that is unfortunately still taught in schools across the U.S., not just the 'bad ones', and tested for on standardized testing. However now it mostly has even been divorced from it's original flaws meaning to mean 'bad country I don't like's government'