In the '60’s the protests were for free speech. Now the protests are about suppressing free speech.
You mentioned “traditionally” which was the reason for my comment. It depends on how far you wish to go, I suppose.
Inasmuch as he gained all 3 branches of government and then failed to deliver on the promises he made. Tony Blair had a landmark victory, 15 years of governance and now labour is so far from power I could talk about an SNP Westminster with a straighter face.
The issue with all ideological stripes is that when they fail it will be because “they aren’t _____ enough.” Obama was left wing, just not by Labour momentum standards.
This is so goddamn true. Dems had full control for 2 years and shit the bed pretty hard, Repubs seem to be equally shitting the bed so far. Let’s hope they can stop the bleeding, they’ve spent quite a bit of time talking themselves up to accept failure.
I cannot really add much to the discussion concerning the situation in the US. In Germany, official statistics have in the last few years listed a bit more than twice as many instances of politically motivated crime from the right compared to the left. Instances of assault are split pretty evenly. There’s a slight lead for the left, but attacks from the right tend to be more severe. Acts of arson from the right have shot up dramatically in recent years, including arson attacks on inhabited refugee centers.
The most significant difference seems to be in the number of killings. Since 1990, there have been (depending on who does the counting) up to six deadly politically motivated attacks from the left. In the same time, there have been between 75 (official statistics) and 178 (independent, reputable sources) victims of deadly violence from the right. I don’t want to condone or play down violence from the left and it should certainly be addressed, but over here it seems obvious what the more pressing problem is.
Oh, and one small remark concerning the discussion of the NSDAP being a left wing party. This is absolutely ridiculous. There have been some elements inside the party with ideas remeniscent of socialism, particularly the nationalisation of the industrial sector, particularly in the SA, but this has never been implemented and the faction of the party that favored such measures was stamped out in 1934. There’s much to be said against the classification of political beliefs as “left-wing” or “right-wing”, it definately oversimplifies things, but saying Nazism is a left-wing ideology is just nonsense.
What is nonsense is your use of “left” and “right”. They are relative terms. When you use them out of context they become meaningless. You may be correct that the German “right” commits more violence, but that “right” has nothing to do with the “right” in the US. From the US perspective you are talking about whether the left or the extreme left commits more violence in an entirely different demographic and culture.
And for the record, Nazism was expressly socialist every bit as much as communists ever were. But again, what I mean by left wing is the collectivist, socialist, authoritarian, big government, Big regulation, anti-individual. Nazism scores big and at the extreme left on all these issues. Collective (government) ownership of all property including people. 100% regulation of all of life. 100% authority to the government. Individual rights awarded and removed by the state. All on the extreme “left”.
Bullshit. The nazi’s were national socialists. They were collectivist in every sense of the word.
Have you seen the threat title? Of course these terms are vague. I used them because this entire discussion is based on the differentiation of left-wing and right-wing groups, and suddenly MY use of them is nonsense?
And where did I claim that it has? I said right at the beginning that I didn’t have much to add to the discussion of the situation in the US. What’s so terrible about a slight change in perspective?
In case you explained that before, I didn’t read every post in the threat. To repeat the obvious, these terms are just too vague. There’s no agreed-upon definition in our respective countries’ internal discourses and there’s obviously even more ambiguity when used across cultural boundaries. It’s just that your definition of the left is so different from the ones I’m used to that there was bound to be some confusion.
No. Are there collectivist aspects of nazi ideology? Most certainly, enforced ideological conformity being the most obvious. But there are some very important differences to socialism and communism.
First of all, Nazi-Germany was still a capitalist economy. In later years, the state increased its influence on major companies and industries, but these were not nationalised and as I said, the elements that favoured nationalisation and might have warranted the “socialist” in “national socialist” never had their way and were eradicated in 1934. Overall, Hitler’s economic policies were opportunistic, a mixture of ideas of varying origin. The only constant in all of this was the goal from day one to rebuild the military to the point where it could dominate mainland Europe.
Any remaining anti-capitalist notions in the party after 1934 are really just extensions of their antisemitism.
Also, socialism and communism are inherently internationalist while Nazism was the opposite. Communism aims/aimed at overcoming the class structure of capitalist society to create a classless one. In contrast, Nazism is a deeply elitist ideology that redefined and reinforced inequality through racial categories.
Didn’t want to turn the threat into a discussion about nazis though, so sorry for that.
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Well, I’m pretty sure the thread title is in the context of the US.
Absolutely not. This is one of the biggest lies ever told. All corporations operated at the whims of the party. It was capitalist as long as you did what the party wanted you to do, which is to say it was the opposite of capitalism. The only difference was driving style. The communists tried to micro-manage from the top. The Nazis tended to give the horse its’ head more. Both economies were still entirely being driven/ridden by the government.
You can certainly make the argument that government ownership <> collective ownership and therefore Nazis aren’t socialist. I’ll even admit that there is merit to the argument, though it’s an equal charge against the Communists and no one seems to argue the Commies weren’t socialist.
This is the same misnomer as “crony capitalism” which admittedly shares many Nazi traits. Crony capitalism, where corporations and governing bodies merge to run private industry with the authority of government is still the dictation of industry by government authority. It’s just that corporations become the government. Which, dispite the use of the word capitalism in the name is expressly the opposite of capitalism. I think part of the reason this mistake happens is because people/parties est. that go to the right can end up full circle on the left. Trump is a good example of this. Despite the left’s hatred of him here, he is pretty extreme left on economic issues. Many of the things he’s done meddling in the business world are actually in line with and publicly endorsed by Bernie Sanders (our first publicly socialist presidential candidate). Trump is authoritarian, pro-regulation, est. But he’s a republican which is traditionally more right, so everyone calls him a right winger.
Yeah, I am not sure it’s the same thing. ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ tends to mean something different in Europe. The lines cut across different paths…
Unless you were a member of the Nazi party. Then you were free to pursue your own interests, so long as the coincided with state interests. hmmm.
I disagree, so far. I rather them kill a bad bill than pass it, just because it’s partisan. That’s what obamacare was, and it’s been a finger in my asshole since 2014, when my rates more than doubled and so did my deductibles. They put a bill that wasn’t good enough. It had some good, but not enough, so it got quashed. That may be a failure for the bill writers but it’s a victory for the republic. Bad bills should fail, it doesn’t mean they won’t try again and maybe get it right, or more right.
I agree here, but I was more referencing the GOP having the better half of a decade to come up with something, and tripping at the finish line.
To me that leads to one of 2 options, either they spent 6 years with zero planning for the future while saying they were (failure) or they spent 6 years on this bill and it turned into another set of broken promises (failure).
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I think what happened was basically the far right didn’t like what the middle came up with and put up a tantrum by not voting for it.
Which places it firmly into option 1. Unless the GOP has been sitting on this bill for years and never thought to check if it would pass.
Well, one can ask if there are votes say 6 years ago. But there is no accurate read. Anyone can say anything when Obama is President and you know it’s not going anywhere anyway. Also, I don’t think most of the GOP thought Trump would win. Nonetheless the thing didn’t pass so…yeah it doesn’t make any on the republican side look good. But then again when Obamacare is fully cranking the public will be crying out for change. Then the republican bill will start looking good again with slight modification.
I could be wrong…
This part depends on who you are. If you’re one of the millions that saw huge benefits from Obamacare, you’ll miss it. If you’re one of the millions that saw huge downfalls from Obamacare, you’ll (hopefully) do better under the Trump version.
That being said, the net swing from the first version of Trumpcare was horribly low. I genuinely hope they come up with a better version.
Quite frankly NO VERSION is what I would like. But once you give someone something for nothing there is no going back.
We have become and out of control entitlement society. It sucks and if we do not pull it back we are in danger
I think ultimately a straight repeal and de-reg of the HC industry just isn’t going to happen. Even if it follows with “standard” GOP mantra, they’ll never follow through because it will torch half their careers.
Ultimately, for all of Trumpcare’s flaws, it’s still something socialized enough that Dems 25 years ago would have had trouble passing it, god forbid Republicans. Entitlements are definitely something that both parties have shifted left on in recent years.
Well you definitely have a point here. They bitched, but instead of coming up with viable solutions, they just whined and forgot about the part where you need a plan and stuff.
It’s absolutely kicking my ass. There has never been a bill passed at the Federal level that has had such a direct and crippling effect on me personally. When I say that both my premiums and deductibles are literally more than double, I am not kidding. It’s not an exaggeration. I also happened to need a lot of medical care these past 5 years. I tried to get it all done before the bill kciked it, but things went wrong. Doctors made mistakes, and it cost me huge.
That’s why I am fine with a flat repeal, if not repeal and replace. I need medical costs to go down. It’s screwed me for years and it’s going to take years for me to recover…
I joke, only partially, that I need to die while I am working. That would set my family right with my life insurance. Any more major illnesses, I’d rather just live with it and die young than to put my family in the financial peril obamacare promises to provide.
One way or another, either obamacare needs to go, or I do. One cannot live while the other lives.
I am not trying to be funny, or morose, or whiny. That’s just the way it is.
If obamacare stays, I have a 20 year window in which to live. After that, it’s just too expensive to survive.
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