Scarry speech by Merkel

[notdrunk]

I personally think that you're exaggerating because of ignorance and bias, but I'm more than happy to look at anything that you might find for my own gain of knowledge. Please feel free to enlighten me.

http://www.savanne.ch/tusovka/en/pil...ty-russia.html
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/countr...f0ba597,0.html
http://www.thegully.com/essays/russi...rview_law.html (has some statistics on how many homosexuals were tossed in jail during the late 1980s.)

That'll be that right-wing reactionary thingy I was going on about again.

The Soviets were smart enough to use homosexuals has tools for their goals. The KGB blackmailed John Vassall, a British homosexual, into working for them. There was some rationale for the West to look at homosexuals has security risks for a while because the Soviet Union were known to force homosexuals to work for them. I cannot think of the West forcing gay Soviet citizens into that position.

So it seems that there was no more persecution of homosexuals in the Soviet Union, an extreme left regime, than there was in the U.S., a liberal democracy.

You claimed the Commies were ahead of us on homosexuality and they were not. The Soviets, an extreme left peoples, were not a follower of egalitarianism (a trait that you claim is left-wing).

This is the complete reverse of what happened in Nazi Germany, and the points I've made in my previous posts about this still stand. Please stop trying to re-write history to fit your beliefs. When you do that the only people you are deceiving is yourself and other gullible fools.

The Soviets were equal opportunity killers. Millions died due to collectivization and the Great Purge.

[Rogers]

I personally think that you're exaggerating because of ignorance and bias, but I'm more than happy to look at anything that you might find for my own gain of knowledge. Please feel free to enlighten me.

http://www.savanne.ch/tusovka/en/pil...ty-russia.html
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/countr...f0ba597,0.html
http://www.thegully.com/essays/russi...rview_law.html (has some statistics on how many homosexuals were tossed in jail during the late 1980s.)

The links you’ve given also describe what has happened in the States too, both the sending of dissidents to hospital and the locking-up of homosexuals in general. I have little doubt that more of it happened in the authoritarian Soviet Union.

That'll be that right-wing reactionary thingy I was going on about again.

The Soviets were smart enough to use homosexuals has tools for their goals. The KGB blackmailed John Vassall, a British homosexual, into working for them. There was some rationale for the West to look at homosexuals has security risks for a while because the Soviet Union were known to force homosexuals to work for them. I cannot think of the West forcing gay Soviet citizens into that position.

The communists became as reactionary as those that they replaced. That’s what George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is all about. What you’ve just said and implied suggests that homosexuality was actually less acceptable in the West than in Soviet Russia.

You claimed the Commies were ahead of us on homosexuality and they were not. The Soviets, an extreme left peoples, were not a follower of egalitarianism (a trait that you claim is left-wing).

You gave dates for the legalization of homosexuality in the communist countries you cited that suggested that they were ahead of the U.S. on this issue. The Soviets legalized homosexuality when they took power, only for paranoid schizophrenic Joseph Stalin to repress it again. Homosexuality was only legalized across the United States only six years ago. People were sent to hospital and jail for it up until then. Egalitarianism IS a left-wing trait.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalita...n_philosophies

This is the complete reverse of what happened in Nazi Germany, and the points I've made in my previous posts about this still stand. Please stop trying to re-write history to fit your beliefs. When you do that the only people you are deceiving is yourself and other gullible fools.

The Soviets were equal opportunity killers. Millions died due to collectivization and the Great Purge.

Indeed, yet no one is claiming that they weren’t left-wing. This thread was about Nazism, remember?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...l-spectrum.png

[techi]

I agree, there's very little difference between fascism and communism.

Under Soviet communism the Politburo was in charge.

And if America ever went fascist then Wallstreet would be in charge.

Politburo... Wallstreet... whatever, two groups of people that I didn't elect and cannot count on to work in the best interests of our citizens.

I've found that the US main stream media seems to label pro corporate leaders as centrists, pro labor leaders as leftists and crazy people as right wing. This tends to confuse the already limited left-right discussion because pro corporate politics can also be called corporatism/fascism which is supposedly right wing.

Anyway, the only "-isms" that I aprove of is Americanism. Too bad we've gone horribly off course since 1963.

[Rogers]

"The following selection is an excerpt from an article on Fascism which Mussolini wrote (with the help of Giovanni Gentile) for the Enciclopedia Italiana in 1932. Following this selection I have included two versions of the Fascist Decalogue (1934 and 193 and brief passage on myth from one of Mussolini's speeches of 1922."

"9. . . . The theory of Fascist authority has nothing to do with the police State. A party that governs a nation in a totalitarian way is a new fact in history. References and comparisons are not possible. Fascism takes over from the ruins of Liberal Socialistic democratic doctrines those elements which still have a living value. It preserves those that can be called the established facts of history, it rejects all the rest, that is to say the idea of a doctrine which holds good for all times and all peoples. If it is admitted that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth must also be the century of Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority, a century of the "Right," a Fascist century. If the nineteenth was the century of the individual it may be expected that this one may be the century of "collectivism" and therefore the century of the State. . . . The doctrine itself, therefore, must be, not words, but an act of life. hence, the pragmatic veins in Fascism, its will to power, its will to be, its attitude in the face of the fact of "violence" and of its own courage."
http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html

[Rogers]

"For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Francos Spain, Salazars Portugal, Papadopouloss Greece, Pinochets Chile, and Suhartos Indonesia. To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.

Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity."

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
Often the regimes would incite spontaneous acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, andterrorists.

5. Rampant sexism.
Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.
Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elites behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug.

9. Power of corporations protected.
Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of have-not citizens.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/076.html


14 Points of fascism: The warning signs
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

[hippifried]

Thanks Rogers. Modern rhetoric equates fascism with the nazis, but Hitler was a johnny come lately. Franco, & especially Mussolini were the ideological purists & thinkers on the subject. We're still toying with the ideas of fascism. We just don't mention the "F" word.