this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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*authoritarian, not fascist. There is a difference.
When authoritarians are in power long enough, whatever ideology the revolution the previous generation had gets replaced by an emphasis of simply maintaining power through whatever means necessary. And fascism is the easiest way to accomplish that.
We can debate over whether Mao was really socialist or whatever, but he's dead it doesn't much matter now. The CCP today is accepting of billionaires, capitalism is legal, labour unions are illegal, the leadership is misogynistic, oppressive towards minorities, promotes the "century of humiliation" narrative. Oh and people live in fear of another Tienanmen Square style massacre. Whatever China was in the past, it's fascist today.
And Russia? WTF are leftist (or so they claim) weirdos going on about there? The Soviet Union collapsed and was replaced with a capitalist democracy which became fascist under Putin's regime.
There's this weird thing where so-called leftists think that if some kind of socialism existed on a patch of earth then they need to carry water whatever fascist that's ruling over that patch of earth today.
All governments are authoritarian. Its a meaningless term.
"I hereby appoint myself the final arbiter of all terms and definitions!"
All you guys do this, for obvious reasons.
In this context, in political science, "authoritarian" does in fact have a very specific and well-defined meaning. Pretending otherwise just excludes yourself from the conversation. Maybe that's for the best.
Which governments aren't authoritarian then?
As if Hobbes' Leviathan isn't a thing. Thanks, but no thanks. This is a pedestrian understanding of reality, and one with which I have zero desire to engage.
Good day.
What definition is that? In what way is any western nation not authoritarian by your metric? Enlighten us
If you have to ask...
Yes, instead of Wikipedia let's just use this random wiki that is heavily biased toward those authoritarian states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism
Ok, maybe Wikipedia is biased, but I want to hear your arguments on why Prolewiki is not.
Nobody said it's not; the concept of an unbiased party, like so many other liberal frictionless spheres, doesn't exist and so is a useless hueristic for determining the veracity of information. The better question is what are this source's biases?
But then what the other commenter said would basically be "Both Wikipedia and Prolewiki are biased, but Wikipedia is biased to the wrong direction. I like Prolewiki's bias more than I like Wikipedia's bias. Therefore, Wikipedia is not reliable on the topic of Authoritarianism."
Bias is important for credibility of a source, but not for the validity of the argument presented, and for the latter you actually have to understand and think about the argument presented.
The most important part of that page is its argument that all states wield authority and tend to tighten or relax the exercise of that authority in order to serve a given set of class interests. There's nothing in this that relies on credibility, and dismissing it on account of bias makes as much sense as responding to someone in a debate by saying "you're biased, so why should I believe you?".
My main issue with that article on ProleWiki lies in its first paragraph:
In the very beginning of the article, ProleWIki equated liberalism with capitalism (they are very different), and also claimed them that liberals have "demonized" socialist states with this term. There is no denying that some liberals have demonized socialist states, but I would argue that this term was used properly in that context.
Have you ever noticed the most prominent difference between socialist governments and the governments of the rest of the world? In most socialist countries, you aren't really allowed to publicly criticize the government. Ever noticed how much criticisms of the USA, the UK, France, or really any liberal country floats around the Internet? If you speak Chinese, I kindly ask you to go check out Weibo (Chinese Twitter), try posting something remotely critical of President Xi and watch your post get removed. Or try sending a message to a Chinese citizen with Weixin (Chinese Whatsapp), talk about the protest banner that someone hung on Sitong bridge in Beijing 11 months ago and see how your account gets disabled.
As you can see, the Chinese government exerts a lot more power on censoring Internet speech than the liberal countries do. I am not qualified to say whether the "western" countries are authoritarian, but in comparison, those socialist states really do enforce a lot more rules. Socialist states really are more authoritarian in comparison. It is more than fitting to call them authoritarian.
Now that I think about it, I realize that that was indeed not a good argument. But that was also what another Hexbear user said to dismiss the Wikipedia article just a few parent comments above. They basically said "Wikipedia is biased, so why should I believe Wikipedia?"
BTW sorry for the late reply. I was kind of busy.
Yes
Uh huh
Aand here you lose me. The fact that you have to assign them a frivolous reason to choose one definition over the other (I just like it lol) as opposed to this choice being the outcome of any assessment of their relative usefulnes as analytical tools kind of gives away your game here.
Oh well, I guess I should not have claimed that you chose to like ProleWiki more because you just like it. Now, how about I explain why I don't trust ProleWiki on "Authoritarianism" because of its bias?
If you look at ProleWiki's main page, it literally says that it is a communist (Marxist-Leninist) project. It leans towards Marxism-Leninism, which IMO makes its defense of those Marxist-Leninist socialist states heavily biased and unreliable.
all sources of information are biased, dipshit
Death to America
The argument is not that it is "unbiased" but that it is correct.
All human creative output is biased, ProleWiki just doesn't pretend it's not biased by hiding behind scholars and quotes that agree with the editor.
Use critical thinking and observe the available information
Just try it
Your source is a joke. It doesn't even define the word, it just shit talks liberals.
It does give a definition: that there is none (lack of a definition is a definition). This is pretty clear if you read the whole page. Authoritarianism is just trying to distance itself from authority because all states wield authority in various ways, and so a word was created to separate the two and criticize the socialist bloc that also wielded authority, like the west did, but their authority was bad you see, not like ours which is good.
But why am I saying this; you didn't read the page, you're not gonna read this either.
In fact nobody has ever really been able to articulate to me why authoritarianism is bad beyond "I want my freedom". It just inherently is undesirable, don't ask too many questions, just accept it.
Prolewiki, lmao great source
Better than wikipedia
It's their go-to move. They'll do it every time. Redefine the terms and words in ways that are favorable to their positions. It's what one does when they have no objectively sound arguments. Again, pay attention, watch for it. They do it every single time.
Ah yes, the tyranny of small differences. Let us tear each other apart over this trifling distinction.
Fact; fascism falls under the larger umbrella of authoritarianism.
The problem is that people throw around "fascism" like my 70 year old mom uses the word "communism." She couldn't even define the actual meaning of communism let alone her use of the word.
In the common internet usage fascism just means "anything authoritarian and to the right of where I stand." It also has the issue of making people think that the problem is with left versus right politics when authoritarianism can and has existed everywhere in the political spectrum in history.