politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Stalinist? Come now, let's not mix our metaphors. Let's say it together, "Communism is the opposite of Fascism."
Edit: my point is that there are far better people on the ideological Right to compare him to than Stalin. Stalin was a fuck, but Trump... Wait, Trump is a fuck, too. Forget it. Call him whatever! (I concede to the points below).
As practiced by Stalin, it was just another totalitarian government. Ownership might have been different, but when you make everything else worse, its still really destructive and kills a huge chunk of the population
Yeah there's no reason to split hairs on nomenclature. When a leader has their opposition taken out and shot, and then imposes a totalitarian regime, their original political affiliation was just a means to an end anyway.
Comparing someone to Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Tojo, Mussolini, the Taliban, etc. isn't primarily to compare them to the societal leanings of their time, it's to compare them to how they acted after they gained total, uncontested power.
Let's hope that in this case those comparisons remain hypothetical.
By what metrics? In which ways was Tsarist Russia better about serving citizens than Soviet leadership?
This is like saying “in which way is capitalism worse than feudalism.” In the way that it was easy to imagine a better alternative.
Im not sure I follow. Are you saying the conception of a Soviet Union was easy/destined/inevitable given how bad the Tsars were?
I'm not sure I understand your point about feudalism either. Marxists understand capitalism as an economic development built upon feudalism - of which there were many benefits in abandoning, as well as many new evils.
Someone claimed that Stalin made things worse. You replied that Stalinism couldn’t be worse than the Tsarist system.
This is like if someone claims capitalism makes things worse, coupled with the reply that capitalism couldn’t be worse than feudalism.
Obviously such an argument is flawed. When we say that Stalinism “made things worse,” we mean compared to an easy-to-imagine, common-sense alternative for that time and place. For instance, if someone had shot Stalin and then allowed a random person to run the Soviet Union for a while, things would have almost certainly gone better.
Where did I claim this?
Why is this your comparison?? If the claim is that Stalin "showed up" and things got worse, it follows that your point of analysis would be comparing against whatever immediately preceded Stalin.
Actually, it's not at all like this... a better comparison would be if someone said "capitalism showed up and made things worse"
A: Stalin wasn't communist and B: not really. The political spectrum is just a model to aid with understanding. It's not a fundamental quality the way up or down is. Political ideologies don't have opposites in that way.
There are plenty of obvious similarities between fascism and Stalinism (and yes, some differences too).