And because this is more or less the asshole base assumption of people who consume the "journalism" this site pumps out, immature "socialists" might take the tack described above.
A solid "fuck off and die!" the moment the troll started in with the usual right wing "cleverness" regarding socialism would be preferable.
It is just not factual that this admin is telling private universities what to teach and how. That is a lie and it's a stupid lie. They are simply saying that if these universities are engaged in antisemitic activities, they will not get taxpayer funds. That is the fact, Madame.
Columbia can teach "How to Rape, Torture, and Murder a Jew" if that makes you happy. You just can't have federal money for that.
It’s the authoritarianism of the weak, envious, and resentful. Next stop: murder those Docker wearers! Excluding people is so purifying! There’s a short leap from ‘not allowed to speak’ to ‘not allowed to live.’ For the good of the good people we must get rid of the bad. Who are easy to identify in their Dockers.
Agreed. Thanks, Ben! This is exactly what people need to see over and over. Morally grounded rational people will inevitably be repelled be this kind of behavior, and although they may not be driven over to their version of the Dark Side, they will be driven away.
When all it takes is a somewhat ambiguous question to get the yellowjackets buzzing in and looking for someone to sting, it starts to become obvious to rational people what's going on.
Through continuous learning, open dialogue, and equitable practices, we strive to create a space where all individuals can thrive.
Commitment to Non-Violence
We are dedicated to promoting nonviolence in all aspects of our interactions, fostering a culture of respect, understanding, and peaceful conflict resolution.
We believe that dialogue, empathy, and cooperation are essential in creating a safe and just environment for all.
Through our actions and commitments, we strive to reject harm and build a community rooted in compassion and mutual respect.
Commitment to Conflict Resolution
We are committed to fostering peaceful conflict resolution within states and organizations through dialogue, collaboration, and mutual understanding.
By promoting diplomacy, mediation, and inclusive decision-making, we strive to address disputes constructively and prevent escalation.
Our approach emphasizes respect, fairness, and long-term solutions that strengthen relationships and contribute to lasting stability in the movement.
antifa, who used to known as “black bloc” in Occupy, are young fools who give cover to provocateurs. they usually have no affiliation with the groups holding the action, and this is why DSA and the unions needed to have their own “security” team to herd them away b/c they don’t actually share the beliefs of DSA (or whatnot). they’re just hoodlums. their “ideology” is “break stuff.”
Beliefs are what you actually practice. 50501 and DSA do not practice what they preach ever. They are selling you a product which they lead. In all of these socialist and communist groups the elites always are above the serfs.
Back in Occupy Seattle ~2011 there was a 'black block' group that seemed to be a bunch of teenagers led by a guy in his 30' s who was encouraging the kids to run out into traffic. I'm sure if one of those kids had been hit by a car, it would have been used to further their narrative. The first few weekends of Occupy were exhilarating. The last one I went to, that included this incident, was depressing as hell.
I protested the WTO in Seattle in 1999. The high tone of our protest "Turtles and Teamsters Unite" was ruined by the black block, which went around smashing windows and tarring us with their misdeeds. I've always thought they were police or military provocateurs.
"I've always thought they were police or military provocateurs."
Are you fucking kidding me? To what end? The police- as ordered by the mayor at the time- just "contained" the destruction- herding them through the streets and allowing them to smash, grab, burn and loot. That was the beginning of the end for Seattle. Next you'll say the "CHAZ" debacle was a psyop inside job planned by the FBI...
BTW: There was no "high tone" of protest. It was all a bunch of misfit malcontents with nothing better to do than cause trouble. Sorry you were one of them.
there is much confusion on the definition of words in far left communities. Fascists, inclusion, colonizer and basic biological terms confuse the hell out of these kind, confused, peaceful souls.
Also, we should never have closed the mental institutions.
"We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to contribute."
This is a big tell. As the first in a list of really ignorant and idiotic position statements you know what they mean is exactly opposite as their actions belie the statements. LoL
Well Brook, they were very peaceful in driving anyone who would question them or their supporters from the field weren't they.
They only thing about the greedy few at the top of the capitalist mountain that they care about is that it isn't them at the top. And the only way they see how to get on top is to knock the whole thing down and put themselves on top.
Not by creating a service or product that people want but by force.
See the leaders of BLM as a recent example, they raised alot of money for 'black folks' and then promptly spent the majority on themselves.
Must've been the precise point where Orwell and Muggeridge crossed paths and accordingly refined their direction. If you want to know where Orwell would have ended up if he'd lived another 30 years, just look at Muggeridge's trajectory.
Libertarians believe government should provide for public goods like a military, emergency services, etc. Most believe in some sort of social safety net.
Libertarians believe government should not be in the business of social engineering.
In general, Libertarians believe in government that is not intrusive on individual rights, individual responsibility, peaceful coexistence of people and governments, free markets, and limited taxation.
Libertarianism has two primary tenets: thou shalt not initiate violence against your fellow humans or their property; and thou shalt keep thy promises. If you think about it the former underlies all criminal law and the latter all civil law...
Libertarian beliefs aren't the same as the party with its name. If you want a pretty good synopsis of libertarian perspectives, Reason's website and magazine does a good job expressing it on specific issues.
Rather than being an ideology, libertarianism is best described as a heuristic for testing and challenging political assumptions and initiatives.
In plain English: if there's some law that looks dubious to you because it curtails personal freedom and expands governmental control—and is probably unnecessary anyway—you are taking a libertarian viewpoint. Even if you don't call yourself a Libertarian.
I think it means different things to different people. For the people who call themselves libertarians in the US, I'd say the overarching libertarian position is that personal freedom is the paramount value, sometimes to the exclusion of all others. This generally leads to belief in minimal govt, sometimes to the extent of the only legitimate govt function being the protection of property rights. Libertarians for the most part seem to oppose all social spending or regulation of the economy and tend to not even particularly like the idea of nations, since those are involuntary associations. So libertarians tend to be globalists, and oppose restricting movement across country borders. There's a lot of overlap with conservative ideas (although taken to extreme lengths), but significant differences as well. The main being that conservatives believe that preserving a nation's values and culture is a proper societal goal, whereas libertarians strongly oppose that. There are also so-called "left libertarians," which as far as I can tell are for laissez faire capitalism on the economic front, but otherwise support the standard leftist social agenda. Some of the most authoritarian people I know are left-libertarians, which seems self-contradictory to me. Perhaps I just don't understand what they're about. My understanding is that in recent years the Libertarian Party has become left-libertarian.
But I think that the way Orwell was using the term he was just using it generically to mean leaving people alone as opposed to telling people what to do.
Hmm I became libertarian in the late 70s. I would say as a political party it was born from the philosophy of Ayn Rand- objectivism. That is when it formed into a political party anyway. Like any political party ( excluding the current Democratic Party) we never completely agreed on issues. For example I personally would never consider libertarians globalists -ever. But there could be people considering them selves libertarians who do. Co opting of movements is a thing.
If I had to drill it down to its most simplistic thought I would say they are fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Taxes are theft and you can be trans but do not try to force me to behave in certain ways to validate you.
Practically speaking, there's nothing in Fascist ideologies requiring actual conscription of the private sector. Rather, Fascism seeks to *restrict* plutocrats, corporations and other special interests from subverting governmental institutions when their power is harmful to the common weal.
The actual communists existing around the globe that I’m aware of want to nationalize their nation’s natural resources vs allowing those profits going to a foreign owner for their private profit.
Yes an independent Norway maintains Earth’s supposed highest standard of living with their nationalized petroleum wealth yet meanwhile divested themselves from all investments in the global petroleum market which makes them an outlier. Kinda like the teacher who grades on a curve by throwing out the highest scorer, I would not include Norge but I understand your point, thanks.
Nationalize just means a bunch of bureaucrats headed by an autocrat gets to tell everyone else what they can and can’t do with everyone’s resources. They’re doing may not technically own it, but in practice it’s just another elite group at the top. Human nature and history tells me it won’t create the equitable paradise desired.
I think the Cartesian graph with two axes, one for left/right on economic scale and one for libertarian/authoritarian scale to plot where one lies on the political spectrum seems the most accurate. Racket's audience seems to be probably close to 100% made up of people on the libertarian side of the libertarian/authoritarian axis, but who vary from right to left to on the economic right/left axis.
It opened up my mind quite a bit and explained why I found most discussions of right vs left lacking when I found this way of illustrating it. See politicalcompass.org.
Exactly! But that undermines the Mainstream Notion that those who want less gov't (conservatives) have morphed into the authoritarians and fascists. Gotta love the "education" system!
LOL, Well I don't think they are assholes. Why you may ask! Well assholes are and have been a necessary item to have and you know what I mean . Antifa etc are of no use and therefore are just the equivalent of a hemorrhoid IE a pain in the ASS.
The same analogy applies to the saying " he a dick " well I , for one , like my dick. It comes in handy , no pun intended, for two very important actions in living a good life!
"Given the prospect of looking idiotic, the movement would rather look paranoid, thuggish, and insecure" because it is all of these things.
Even organized leftists in the US are a gaggle of clownish LARPERs. The ones who take themselves too seriously dress in black, put on masks, harass, intimidate, and assault the enemies created in their fevered imaginations while claiming to be "anti-Fascist," making it clear to everyone that not one of them knows what Fascism is.
I would be interested in the comments of the young man interviewed who was "holding his own" before the "antifa" kerfuffle began.
Isn't the real purpose of woke/DEI extremism, and the central banking political/financial grift they serve, capture of issues of legitimate social concern, and prevention of the truth/fact based solutions oriented conversation that would result in the social transformation our Republic deserves? The Musk/Trump USAID investigation revealed the existence of a well manned and well paid alphabet mafia (your tax dollars at work) that pretends concern while furthering the aims of spook land and the international oligarchy. There is no "left" or "right". The prosecuting District Attorneys gnawing the legs of the Trump administration, like those of Stalin and Hitler claim populist "leftist" virtue but were placed there by light years beyond "right" Georgie Soros. Meanwhile We the People live crisis to crisis and the grift hums along in the background.
The grift AGAIN!!: Manipulation of uneducated disposable human labor (20% of Americans are illiterate and 60% read at a 6th Grade level) and access to all natural resources for personal profit and exploitation without oversight or consequence. It is criminal pathologized instituted thugdom (paid for with citizen life and labor) simply talking/screaming over the top of the truth/fact based solutions oriented national American conversation that would create the unifying truth/fact based national reality We the People must demand.
What does it say about a group whose members refuse all dialogue with anyone who questions their views? That in the utopian socialist world of their dreams, dissenters would be forcibly re-educated, imprisoned or killed. Just as they were in the Soviet Union.
These people just like the cosplaying masked cowards shouting “Intifada!” are morons that should visit true socialists countries to educate themselves. Any American can easily travel to the Communist “paradise” of Cuba, a mere 90 miles from our shores so that they can see the abject misery, absence of any human rights and a true system of apartheid where citizens have little access to nutrition while tourists from Europe and elsewhere binge on vast quantities of food only available to them and not the citizens of Cuba. Long food lines for miserable scraps of food, suffering for decades while Castro entertained other “communist” leaders on his private palatial island off the coast of Cuba. If these useful idiots actually looked at the history of the modern leftist state they would see that the likes of Stalin and Mao killed more of their citizens than both World Wars combined.
I did not forget, first the Soviets now the Chinese are helping them. It never made sense to me that we trade with over a billion Communist Chinese and do not trade with 11 million Cubans 90 miles from our shores. Apparently they bring nothing nothing to the table as far as producing anything. It is a foreign policy dated back to the refugee population in Florida which is dying out. We have had a number of attempts to normalize under Clinton and Obama but the truth is that the Cuban government loves to demonize the “Yanqui” enemy and use us as a propaganda tool. They themselves do not want to normalize relations because they know their people may be infected with Capitalism. The people there are literally dying for change.
No worries, it made for further discussion and it has been said before by many critical of our foreign policy and it does foments the anti Yanqui attitude down there. The fact that they even exists shows that the embargo has been a failure.
Thanks for posting this Ben. I have to wonder though... if they are a tree and they crash in the forest, if there is no media around to report the crash, does it even matter?
Some of the people one encounters in events like this are paid anarchists, who seek to make their orchestrated actions seem like spontaneous popular eruptions. Just ignore the professionally made signs. Dialogue with the “enemy” is intentionally not part of their tool kit.
I think that at the organizational level you are correct and the preponderance of professionally-made signs is a giveaway, indeed. However at the top level (WEF?)they are certainly not anarchists, but rather the exact opposite.
It is truly startling to me how often reality is the exact opposite of what is asserted. It’s like we’ve elevated the ability to lie to the pinnacle of virtue. Perhaps that’s why we’ve made into demi-gods those who do so for a living: Hollywood actors.
I wonder if the Weimar Republic had rent-a-fascists. I wonder if these ones know that Stalin used his own "antifa" (expendable Communist baboons) to help Hitler become chancellor, and that Stalin was an ally of Hitler for the first year of the war.
Indeed. In fact, a tacit alliance between Nazis and Communists (directed from Moscow) can probably be said to cover a whole decade and a half, beginning even before 1933, if either Trotsky or Kennan are right.
I don’t think so-both the Communists and the Nazis looked for disaffected personalities first, the ideology could be added later. Hitler himself said he could convert a communist to Nazism much easier than he could a “normie”, centrist democrat type.
One of the Proud Boy leaders confirmed the basic truth of this when asked why he became a Proud Boy instead of an Antifa type “Because I saw the Proud Boys YouTube first”.
That's an interesting way to put it. Hitler actually claimed to be a socialist at the outset (hence the name of the party) because the public mood was on the left as in much of the world and sent goons (brownshirts) out in mobs to attack communists in the street. So, yes they had rent-a-fascists. Stalin redefined socialism in his era to be a centralized system of industrialization within the Soviet Union only rather than a progressive internationalist movement consistent with Marx-Lenin... they were like-minded fascists in the end with respect to their economic plans and they governed in similar ways which made them natural allies as you said. What's disturbing to think about today, though, is that the Allies were actually on the fence about the Weimar Republic right up until 1939 (1942 for US) because it was so good for business
In strict and narrow senses, both socialism and liberalism are 19th century myths that are not wholly serviceable to analyze 20th and 21st century politics. The core point is not (just) that Hitler was a socialist and Stalin a fascist--though on a certain level that's certainly true--but that both were totalitarians and saw liberal democracy as the enemy more than each other. That's the fact (along with the delusion of a world revolution) that undoes Trotskyism.
The Bolsheviks killed bottom up communism, which was happening to some extent in Russia. Soviets were originally groups of workers who got together to make collective decisions. While I view collective decision making as difficult or even impossible, perhaps it depends on scale. In any case, before the final victory of communism there were some experiments that more closely approximate true collective decision making. I don’t know enough about this but the prospect is intriguing. My understanding of human nature makes me pessimistic about group decisions. All this to say that collectivism has so far always devolved into a top down system.
You are correct, except that Stalin's misplaced affection for fellow socialist Adolf Hitler was a bit over a year beginning with the Molotov - von Ribbentrop Pact in July 1939 and ending with Barbarossa in the summer of 1941. The whole thing was a marriage of convenience, somewhat like two wolves agreeing as to who gets what portion of a sheep they are about to slaughter. It was karma at overload level for Stalin when Hitler began Operation Barbarossa, it took him days to recover from shock-induced stupor to come to grips with the reality that his friend Adolph had betrayed him.
Following Kennan, I say the alliance between Hitler and Stalin was both real and much longer than that--going back to the Communist coinage of "social fascists" to describe Social Democrats well before 1933. The street fights of Nazis and Communists served the purpose of destabilizing the Weimar Republic. The Hitler-Stalin Pact was a fruit of that kinship, not its origin. Hitler of course always knew he was going to invade Russia, but Stalin genuinely strove to avoid this realization, and to believe that he and Hitler had a more important common enemy in Britain, France, and the US.
I suppose that that the fly in the ointment would be the introduction of Benito Mussolini and his facist political model - Mussolini exerted a powerful mentor-like influence in his relationship with Hitler. I am not sure about the timeline of this relationship however. And I am not sure how much Mussolini influenced Hitler's attitude towards the Soviets. Any thoughts?
To my knowledge Mussolini was a model for Hitler before and perhaps even after the latter's ascension to power.
I like Ernst Nolte's thesis (qualified by Francois Furet) that 20s-30s-40s right wing extremism in Italy, Germany, and France (Action Française) (= fascism as a generic) adopted the methods and models of the extreme left, especially Leninism. It emulated the totalitarian ideology, party, and party-state of its adversaries (of course with adjustments). Furet qualifies this (while affirming it at core), pointing out that the fascist right drew on its own sources of anti-bourgeois and anti-liberal rage. It didn't just pick that up from the radical left. Lenin was, nevertheless, a model for both Mussolini and Hitler, though of course they rejected the Bolshevik ideology in favor of nationalism or racialism (far more popular, as it happens!). This understanding of the centrality of Lenin has been more recently argued, too, by the historian Robert Gellately.
Thank you for the comment re. Mussolini's role. After reading Barzini's The Italians, I came to believe that Mussolini's nationalist fervor was from tapping into the Italian sense of inferiority and proclivity for losing wars and more to the point, the lack of respect coming from other nations that considered the Italians their lessers. He was a politician with seemingly boundless energy and a physical fitness fanatic and as such, along with his nationalism he rose to the top of the post WWI political heap. Hitler admired this almost to the extent of fawning admiration, as I recall.
Yes the original antifa punched a lot of Nazis like the current idiots say they want to do, and even killed a bunch, and the chaos they helped create arguably only empowered Hitler.
Matt, it maybe time to abandon the deep thinking, the polemics, the historic analysis and take these people at their word.
They don't plan to win elections by seducing converts, they plan to take control with brute force.
There is no definable philosophy, there is no elegant spokesman. There is just hate.
I'll leave it to smarter people like you to figure out why.
Its a suicide cult. That's all.
And sadly there isn't much daylight between these people and AOC, Bernie Sanders, Hillary CLinton, and the DOC establishment.
Any movement that openly gives the middle finger to the middle class and sacrifices children to the "trans" movement has to be confronted and destroyed.
Its us or them.
That may be beyond your journalistic paygrade, but its the truth my friend.
“Gay lobby”? There is no gay lobby. There are “trans” activists, and there is a “trans” lobby, but trans has nothing to do with same-sex attraction, i.e., gay/lesbian.
Nice to see you here, Ben. You cannot reason with a demoralized person. Antifascists are communists who defend the indefensible - the protestors did the meme: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/defend-indefensible-leave-alone-memes
Everything a communist says is a lie, including when they call themselves anti-fascist.
And because this is more or less the asshole base assumption of people who consume the "journalism" this site pumps out, immature "socialists" might take the tack described above.
A solid "fuck off and die!" the moment the troll started in with the usual right wing "cleverness" regarding socialism would be preferable.
"Last week, I was hounded out of a protest by a pair of authoritarians opposing fascism."
What a great opening line, eh? The irony is absolutely delicious.
Unfortunately American anti fascists don't understand irony!
"When fascism comes to America, it will be called anti-fascism." -- Huey Long
Let's see: a couple of kids holding up a "Right Wing Troll" alert sign to identify a dick in a polo shirt. What color were the Dockers?
That is "authoritarianism".
The administration telling universities what and how to teach that all you cucks lurv like your daddy when he sodomizes you?
That is "freedom, democracy and apple pie".
You can't make this shit up. The right has finally completed its takeover of "snowflakeism" from the radlibs they model themselves on.
Yeah, you're just making shit up.
Of course, honey. Your feelings don't care about facts.
It is just not factual that this admin is telling private universities what to teach and how. That is a lie and it's a stupid lie. They are simply saying that if these universities are engaged in antisemitic activities, they will not get taxpayer funds. That is the fact, Madame.
Columbia can teach "How to Rape, Torture, and Murder a Jew" if that makes you happy. You just can't have federal money for that.
So, stop your moronic horseshit or fuck off.
But what won’t a Zionist call “anti-semitism” these days? Fart downwind from an Israeli and they use it as an excuse to bomb another hospital.
Columbia is neither an Israeli "rape, torture and murder" institution nor is it likely to become one.
Unless of course vicious fuckwits like you and the rest of the MAGAt scum have their way.
And this admin is telling universities what and how to teach. It is after all what you scumbags want, right?
It’s the authoritarianism of the weak, envious, and resentful. Next stop: murder those Docker wearers! Excluding people is so purifying! There’s a short leap from ‘not allowed to speak’ to ‘not allowed to live.’ For the good of the good people we must get rid of the bad. Who are easy to identify in their Dockers.
They held a sign labeling the dweeb a "right wing troll".
You see why this snowflake-level paranoia and fantasy victimhood is called "woke right", right diddums?
Did we watch the same video? No one hounded him at all… just the opposite! They refused to talk to him. Now he is crying to the world over it.
Only goes to show that you can dismiss what your lying eyes are telling you if it doesn’t fit your narrative.
Agreed. Thanks, Ben! This is exactly what people need to see over and over. Morally grounded rational people will inevitably be repelled be this kind of behavior, and although they may not be driven over to their version of the Dark Side, they will be driven away.
When all it takes is a somewhat ambiguous question to get the yellowjackets buzzing in and looking for someone to sting, it starts to become obvious to rational people what's going on.
How lucky we are to live in a time when our enemies are so evil that the only possible response is hatred and never debate.
Think of how much time is saved. Instead of being fluent in debate, we can be fluent in hate--which doesn't actually require any fluency.
Again, a huge time saver.
Do not underestimate that the biggest sales pitch for hatred is scheduling.
Wow! the 50501 website says “ 50501 is a peaceful movement. Violence of any kind will not be tolerated.”
it gets better…or worse, depending on your sense of humor. here’s their values:
Commitment to Inclusivity
We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to contribute.
Embracing diversity strengthens our community, enriches our perspectives, and drives innovation.
Through continuous learning, open dialogue, and equitable practices, we strive to create a space where all individuals can thrive.
Commitment to Non-Violence
We are dedicated to promoting nonviolence in all aspects of our interactions, fostering a culture of respect, understanding, and peaceful conflict resolution.
We believe that dialogue, empathy, and cooperation are essential in creating a safe and just environment for all.
Through our actions and commitments, we strive to reject harm and build a community rooted in compassion and mutual respect.
Commitment to Conflict Resolution
We are committed to fostering peaceful conflict resolution within states and organizations through dialogue, collaboration, and mutual understanding.
By promoting diplomacy, mediation, and inclusive decision-making, we strive to address disputes constructively and prevent escalation.
Our approach emphasizes respect, fairness, and long-term solutions that strengthen relationships and contribute to lasting stability in the movement.
50501 needs a *terms and conditions apply at the bottom.
Oh, you're wicked. Who says satire's dead?
It would appear that "inclusive environment" is only for those who hold their viewpoint.
There's nothing more exclusionary than cancel culture's understanding of inclusion.
antifa, who used to known as “black bloc” in Occupy, are young fools who give cover to provocateurs. they usually have no affiliation with the groups holding the action, and this is why DSA and the unions needed to have their own “security” team to herd them away b/c they don’t actually share the beliefs of DSA (or whatnot). they’re just hoodlums. their “ideology” is “break stuff.”
Beliefs are what you actually practice. 50501 and DSA do not practice what they preach ever. They are selling you a product which they lead. In all of these socialist and communist groups the elites always are above the serfs.
Back in Occupy Seattle ~2011 there was a 'black block' group that seemed to be a bunch of teenagers led by a guy in his 30' s who was encouraging the kids to run out into traffic. I'm sure if one of those kids had been hit by a car, it would have been used to further their narrative. The first few weekends of Occupy were exhilarating. The last one I went to, that included this incident, was depressing as hell.
I protested the WTO in Seattle in 1999. The high tone of our protest "Turtles and Teamsters Unite" was ruined by the black block, which went around smashing windows and tarring us with their misdeeds. I've always thought they were police or military provocateurs.
"I've always thought they were police or military provocateurs."
Are you fucking kidding me? To what end? The police- as ordered by the mayor at the time- just "contained" the destruction- herding them through the streets and allowing them to smash, grab, burn and loot. That was the beginning of the end for Seattle. Next you'll say the "CHAZ" debacle was a psyop inside job planned by the FBI...
BTW: There was no "high tone" of protest. It was all a bunch of misfit malcontents with nothing better to do than cause trouble. Sorry you were one of them.
there is much confusion on the definition of words in far left communities. Fascists, inclusion, colonizer and basic biological terms confuse the hell out of these kind, confused, peaceful souls.
Also, we should never have closed the mental institutions.
off to the gulag you go
This is exactly why communism devolves to wholesale murder
Their actions belied their lofty sounding words. Or, stated another way, their propaganda does not match up with their behavior. Is anyone surprised?
"We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to contribute."
This is a big tell. As the first in a list of really ignorant and idiotic position statements you know what they mean is exactly opposite as their actions belie the statements. LoL
We are committed to fighting fascism by dressing in black, covering our faces and threatening our political opponents.
We live in opposite world.
Left-wing people lie constantly. It's as simple as that.
Jk
*maga need not apply
No one ever reads the manual.
Well Brook, they were very peaceful in driving anyone who would question them or their supporters from the field weren't they.
They only thing about the greedy few at the top of the capitalist mountain that they care about is that it isn't them at the top. And the only way they see how to get on top is to knock the whole thing down and put themselves on top.
Not by creating a service or product that people want but by force.
See the leaders of BLM as a recent example, they raised alot of money for 'black folks' and then promptly spent the majority on themselves.
Buzzword salad.
Um, that should be "mostly peaceful....."
The actual political spectrum is between liberty and tyranny; fascists, socialists, and communists are all tyrants.
Well said. George Orwell said something similar:
‘The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.’
Excellent stuff !
George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality
1948 letter to Malcolm Muggeridge
Must've been the precise point where Orwell and Muggeridge crossed paths and accordingly refined their direction. If you want to know where Orwell would have ended up if he'd lived another 30 years, just look at Muggeridge's trajectory.
Can someone here explain to me what is libertarian point of view in politucs ?
Libertarianism is a direction, not a destination.
Libertarians believe government should provide for public goods like a military, emergency services, etc. Most believe in some sort of social safety net.
Libertarians believe government should not be in the business of social engineering.
In general, Libertarians believe in government that is not intrusive on individual rights, individual responsibility, peaceful coexistence of people and governments, free markets, and limited taxation.
Libertarianism has two primary tenets: thou shalt not initiate violence against your fellow humans or their property; and thou shalt keep thy promises. If you think about it the former underlies all criminal law and the latter all civil law...
Libertarian beliefs aren't the same as the party with its name. If you want a pretty good synopsis of libertarian perspectives, Reason's website and magazine does a good job expressing it on specific issues.
The arc of human flourishing bends towards freedom.
Rather than being an ideology, libertarianism is best described as a heuristic for testing and challenging political assumptions and initiatives.
In plain English: if there's some law that looks dubious to you because it curtails personal freedom and expands governmental control—and is probably unnecessary anyway—you are taking a libertarian viewpoint. Even if you don't call yourself a Libertarian.
I think it means different things to different people. For the people who call themselves libertarians in the US, I'd say the overarching libertarian position is that personal freedom is the paramount value, sometimes to the exclusion of all others. This generally leads to belief in minimal govt, sometimes to the extent of the only legitimate govt function being the protection of property rights. Libertarians for the most part seem to oppose all social spending or regulation of the economy and tend to not even particularly like the idea of nations, since those are involuntary associations. So libertarians tend to be globalists, and oppose restricting movement across country borders. There's a lot of overlap with conservative ideas (although taken to extreme lengths), but significant differences as well. The main being that conservatives believe that preserving a nation's values and culture is a proper societal goal, whereas libertarians strongly oppose that. There are also so-called "left libertarians," which as far as I can tell are for laissez faire capitalism on the economic front, but otherwise support the standard leftist social agenda. Some of the most authoritarian people I know are left-libertarians, which seems self-contradictory to me. Perhaps I just don't understand what they're about. My understanding is that in recent years the Libertarian Party has become left-libertarian.
But I think that the way Orwell was using the term he was just using it generically to mean leaving people alone as opposed to telling people what to do.
Hmm I became libertarian in the late 70s. I would say as a political party it was born from the philosophy of Ayn Rand- objectivism. That is when it formed into a political party anyway. Like any political party ( excluding the current Democratic Party) we never completely agreed on issues. For example I personally would never consider libertarians globalists -ever. But there could be people considering them selves libertarians who do. Co opting of movements is a thing.
If I had to drill it down to its most simplistic thought I would say they are fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Taxes are theft and you can be trans but do not try to force me to behave in certain ways to validate you.
Exactly. Communists want to nationalize the private sector while fascists want to conscript it.
Other than that the differences are negligible.
Practically speaking, there's nothing in Fascist ideologies requiring actual conscription of the private sector. Rather, Fascism seeks to *restrict* plutocrats, corporations and other special interests from subverting governmental institutions when their power is harmful to the common weal.
The actual communists existing around the globe that I’m aware of want to nationalize their nation’s natural resources vs allowing those profits going to a foreign owner for their private profit.
Not sure if communists are the only group that wants to nationalise profits rather than giving them away to multinationals...
Norway nationalised their mining/gas etc.
So that they can control the majority of the profits...
Which makes more sense for a countries wealth..
Yes an independent Norway maintains Earth’s supposed highest standard of living with their nationalized petroleum wealth yet meanwhile divested themselves from all investments in the global petroleum market which makes them an outlier. Kinda like the teacher who grades on a curve by throwing out the highest scorer, I would not include Norge but I understand your point, thanks.
Nationalize just means a bunch of bureaucrats headed by an autocrat gets to tell everyone else what they can and can’t do with everyone’s resources. They’re doing may not technically own it, but in practice it’s just another elite group at the top. Human nature and history tells me it won’t create the equitable paradise desired.
I think the Cartesian graph with two axes, one for left/right on economic scale and one for libertarian/authoritarian scale to plot where one lies on the political spectrum seems the most accurate. Racket's audience seems to be probably close to 100% made up of people on the libertarian side of the libertarian/authoritarian axis, but who vary from right to left to on the economic right/left axis.
It opened up my mind quite a bit and explained why I found most discussions of right vs left lacking when I found this way of illustrating it. See politicalcompass.org.
Exactly! But that undermines the Mainstream Notion that those who want less gov't (conservatives) have morphed into the authoritarians and fascists. Gotta love the "education" system!
This is agree with 100%
There’s a simple and obvious answer to the question “why, instead, choose to be assholes?” They aren’t choosing it, they just are assholes.
LOL, Well I don't think they are assholes. Why you may ask! Well assholes are and have been a necessary item to have and you know what I mean . Antifa etc are of no use and therefore are just the equivalent of a hemorrhoid IE a pain in the ASS.
Love it!! (my "like" button doesn't work!)
The same analogy applies to the saying " he a dick " well I , for one , like my dick. It comes in handy , no pun intended, for two very important actions in living a good life!
"Given the prospect of looking idiotic, the movement would rather look paranoid, thuggish, and insecure" because it is all of these things.
Even organized leftists in the US are a gaggle of clownish LARPERs. The ones who take themselves too seriously dress in black, put on masks, harass, intimidate, and assault the enemies created in their fevered imaginations while claiming to be "anti-Fascist," making it clear to everyone that not one of them knows what Fascism is.
They can’t even argue for what they “believe” in.
"Choosing not to speak is quite different from a concerted effort to prevent ANYONE from speaking."
That's the money quote.
It's always about control with these sociopaths.
I would be interested in the comments of the young man interviewed who was "holding his own" before the "antifa" kerfuffle began.
Isn't the real purpose of woke/DEI extremism, and the central banking political/financial grift they serve, capture of issues of legitimate social concern, and prevention of the truth/fact based solutions oriented conversation that would result in the social transformation our Republic deserves? The Musk/Trump USAID investigation revealed the existence of a well manned and well paid alphabet mafia (your tax dollars at work) that pretends concern while furthering the aims of spook land and the international oligarchy. There is no "left" or "right". The prosecuting District Attorneys gnawing the legs of the Trump administration, like those of Stalin and Hitler claim populist "leftist" virtue but were placed there by light years beyond "right" Georgie Soros. Meanwhile We the People live crisis to crisis and the grift hums along in the background.
The grift AGAIN!!: Manipulation of uneducated disposable human labor (20% of Americans are illiterate and 60% read at a 6th Grade level) and access to all natural resources for personal profit and exploitation without oversight or consequence. It is criminal pathologized instituted thugdom (paid for with citizen life and labor) simply talking/screaming over the top of the truth/fact based solutions oriented national American conversation that would create the unifying truth/fact based national reality We the People must demand.
You aren’t an asshole because you are a socialist/communist, you are a socialist/communist because you are an asshole.
Actually, I think there are instances of the causation running both ways.
I like it, two things can be true at one time.
? were the "enforcers" chewing gum as they moved Ben out of the area?
that would involve walking at the same time.
See above post to Heyjude.
What does it say about a group whose members refuse all dialogue with anyone who questions their views? That in the utopian socialist world of their dreams, dissenters would be forcibly re-educated, imprisoned or killed. Just as they were in the Soviet Union.
I sentence you to be beat about the head until you come to your senses
Their brainless , therefore cannot be senseless and cannot achieve senses!
We are the ones that need the beating. We need to be re educated.
Lol
Or put another way, the beatings will continue until morale improves.
And would do so in a spirit of righteousness.
These people just like the cosplaying masked cowards shouting “Intifada!” are morons that should visit true socialists countries to educate themselves. Any American can easily travel to the Communist “paradise” of Cuba, a mere 90 miles from our shores so that they can see the abject misery, absence of any human rights and a true system of apartheid where citizens have little access to nutrition while tourists from Europe and elsewhere binge on vast quantities of food only available to them and not the citizens of Cuba. Long food lines for miserable scraps of food, suffering for decades while Castro entertained other “communist” leaders on his private palatial island off the coast of Cuba. If these useful idiots actually looked at the history of the modern leftist state they would see that the likes of Stalin and Mao killed more of their citizens than both World Wars combined.
Willful ignorance = Useful Idiot
Maybe could be that decades of US sanctions and blockades have something to do with that??
Yes..communism is $##@..but You forgot to mention the US trade Blockade...which just might effect the Cuban economy....
I did not forget, first the Soviets now the Chinese are helping them. It never made sense to me that we trade with over a billion Communist Chinese and do not trade with 11 million Cubans 90 miles from our shores. Apparently they bring nothing nothing to the table as far as producing anything. It is a foreign policy dated back to the refugee population in Florida which is dying out. We have had a number of attempts to normalize under Clinton and Obama but the truth is that the Cuban government loves to demonize the “Yanqui” enemy and use us as a propaganda tool. They themselves do not want to normalize relations because they know their people may be infected with Capitalism. The people there are literally dying for change.
I was being sarcastic..I knew you didnt forget ...you made fair points..peace
No worries, it made for further discussion and it has been said before by many critical of our foreign policy and it does foments the anti Yanqui attitude down there. The fact that they even exists shows that the embargo has been a failure.
Thanks for posting this Ben. I have to wonder though... if they are a tree and they crash in the forest, if there is no media around to report the crash, does it even matter?
I hope we can deal with them properly some day - with gloves off instead of coddling. They're scum.
Irrelevance is punishment enough. Unless actual crimes are committed. Stupidity isn’t criminal.
Firing squads?
Some of the people one encounters in events like this are paid anarchists, who seek to make their orchestrated actions seem like spontaneous popular eruptions. Just ignore the professionally made signs. Dialogue with the “enemy” is intentionally not part of their tool kit.
I think that at the organizational level you are correct and the preponderance of professionally-made signs is a giveaway, indeed. However at the top level (WEF?)they are certainly not anarchists, but rather the exact opposite.
It is truly startling to me how often reality is the exact opposite of what is asserted. It’s like we’ve elevated the ability to lie to the pinnacle of virtue. Perhaps that’s why we’ve made into demi-gods those who do so for a living: Hollywood actors.
I completely agree with you.
Thus the 'no debate' mantra that has warped conversation about many topics since about 2010.
A la "The science is settled". Or in other words, STFU!
I wonder if the Weimar Republic had rent-a-fascists. I wonder if these ones know that Stalin used his own "antifa" (expendable Communist baboons) to help Hitler become chancellor, and that Stalin was an ally of Hitler for the first year of the war.
Non aggression pact lasted almost 2 years
Indeed. In fact, a tacit alliance between Nazis and Communists (directed from Moscow) can probably be said to cover a whole decade and a half, beginning even before 1933, if either Trotsky or Kennan are right.
A socialist civil war
I don’t think so-both the Communists and the Nazis looked for disaffected personalities first, the ideology could be added later. Hitler himself said he could convert a communist to Nazism much easier than he could a “normie”, centrist democrat type.
One of the Proud Boy leaders confirmed the basic truth of this when asked why he became a Proud Boy instead of an Antifa type “Because I saw the Proud Boys YouTube first”.
Ideology is precisely the vehicle of disaffection, alienation, and resentment in the age of mass democracy.
That's an interesting way to put it. Hitler actually claimed to be a socialist at the outset (hence the name of the party) because the public mood was on the left as in much of the world and sent goons (brownshirts) out in mobs to attack communists in the street. So, yes they had rent-a-fascists. Stalin redefined socialism in his era to be a centralized system of industrialization within the Soviet Union only rather than a progressive internationalist movement consistent with Marx-Lenin... they were like-minded fascists in the end with respect to their economic plans and they governed in similar ways which made them natural allies as you said. What's disturbing to think about today, though, is that the Allies were actually on the fence about the Weimar Republic right up until 1939 (1942 for US) because it was so good for business
In strict and narrow senses, both socialism and liberalism are 19th century myths that are not wholly serviceable to analyze 20th and 21st century politics. The core point is not (just) that Hitler was a socialist and Stalin a fascist--though on a certain level that's certainly true--but that both were totalitarians and saw liberal democracy as the enemy more than each other. That's the fact (along with the delusion of a world revolution) that undoes Trotskyism.
The Bolsheviks killed bottom up communism, which was happening to some extent in Russia. Soviets were originally groups of workers who got together to make collective decisions. While I view collective decision making as difficult or even impossible, perhaps it depends on scale. In any case, before the final victory of communism there were some experiments that more closely approximate true collective decision making. I don’t know enough about this but the prospect is intriguing. My understanding of human nature makes me pessimistic about group decisions. All this to say that collectivism has so far always devolved into a top down system.
You are correct, except that Stalin's misplaced affection for fellow socialist Adolf Hitler was a bit over a year beginning with the Molotov - von Ribbentrop Pact in July 1939 and ending with Barbarossa in the summer of 1941. The whole thing was a marriage of convenience, somewhat like two wolves agreeing as to who gets what portion of a sheep they are about to slaughter. It was karma at overload level for Stalin when Hitler began Operation Barbarossa, it took him days to recover from shock-induced stupor to come to grips with the reality that his friend Adolph had betrayed him.
Following Kennan, I say the alliance between Hitler and Stalin was both real and much longer than that--going back to the Communist coinage of "social fascists" to describe Social Democrats well before 1933. The street fights of Nazis and Communists served the purpose of destabilizing the Weimar Republic. The Hitler-Stalin Pact was a fruit of that kinship, not its origin. Hitler of course always knew he was going to invade Russia, but Stalin genuinely strove to avoid this realization, and to believe that he and Hitler had a more important common enemy in Britain, France, and the US.
I suppose that that the fly in the ointment would be the introduction of Benito Mussolini and his facist political model - Mussolini exerted a powerful mentor-like influence in his relationship with Hitler. I am not sure about the timeline of this relationship however. And I am not sure how much Mussolini influenced Hitler's attitude towards the Soviets. Any thoughts?
To my knowledge Mussolini was a model for Hitler before and perhaps even after the latter's ascension to power.
I like Ernst Nolte's thesis (qualified by Francois Furet) that 20s-30s-40s right wing extremism in Italy, Germany, and France (Action Française) (= fascism as a generic) adopted the methods and models of the extreme left, especially Leninism. It emulated the totalitarian ideology, party, and party-state of its adversaries (of course with adjustments). Furet qualifies this (while affirming it at core), pointing out that the fascist right drew on its own sources of anti-bourgeois and anti-liberal rage. It didn't just pick that up from the radical left. Lenin was, nevertheless, a model for both Mussolini and Hitler, though of course they rejected the Bolshevik ideology in favor of nationalism or racialism (far more popular, as it happens!). This understanding of the centrality of Lenin has been more recently argued, too, by the historian Robert Gellately.
Thank you for the comment re. Mussolini's role. After reading Barzini's The Italians, I came to believe that Mussolini's nationalist fervor was from tapping into the Italian sense of inferiority and proclivity for losing wars and more to the point, the lack of respect coming from other nations that considered the Italians their lessers. He was a politician with seemingly boundless energy and a physical fitness fanatic and as such, along with his nationalism he rose to the top of the post WWI political heap. Hitler admired this almost to the extent of fawning admiration, as I recall.
Grievance is a must for fascists.
Yes the original antifa punched a lot of Nazis like the current idiots say they want to do, and even killed a bunch, and the chaos they helped create arguably only empowered Hitler.
Matt, it maybe time to abandon the deep thinking, the polemics, the historic analysis and take these people at their word.
They don't plan to win elections by seducing converts, they plan to take control with brute force.
There is no definable philosophy, there is no elegant spokesman. There is just hate.
I'll leave it to smarter people like you to figure out why.
Its a suicide cult. That's all.
And sadly there isn't much daylight between these people and AOC, Bernie Sanders, Hillary CLinton, and the DOC establishment.
Any movement that openly gives the middle finger to the middle class and sacrifices children to the "trans" movement has to be confronted and destroyed.
Its us or them.
That may be beyond your journalistic paygrade, but its the truth my friend.
“Gay lobby”? There is no gay lobby. There are “trans” activists, and there is a “trans” lobby, but trans has nothing to do with same-sex attraction, i.e., gay/lesbian.
You aren’t describing a suicide cult. You’re describing a murder cult.
The best thing to do with these folks is to completely ignore them.
They're looking for the attention they never got from their parents.
Progressives' understanding of freedom of expression: "People are free to express any opinions we don't find hateful."