Jorge

Were you were being sarcastic? I am Brazilian and know nothing of the DSA.

I bet you don’t watch conservative right wing media like Fox News, yet you watch CNN, New York Times and other progressive right-wing media.

Poor analogy. The US kills muslim people like they were rats. The secretary of offense is covered in tattoos glorifying the Medieval crusades and wrote a book titled “American Crusade” explaining the US is in a “holy war” agains muslims and China.

So “East Turkestan government in exile” is headquartered in the capital of the empire that is is in a bloodthirsthy fanatical war against muslims. This empire also has “must destroy China” as its foreign policy absolute priority.

Therefore, the corret analogy would be a separatist Jewish movement that wanted to take away a critical part of the USSR. And it is funded and headquartered in Nazi Germany. Who would believe them? The same people who believe the US is motivated by love of Muslims and only reluctantly funds a separatist movement to take away a critical part of China.

False. The US prison population (relative to total population) is more than five times superior to China’s. US prisons are for-profit and lease prisioners to perform slave labor for other companies.

China is not only freer than Trump’s US, it is freer than Obama’s or Clinton’s US.

By the way, US elections have only two viable parties by design. Billionaires control the media and campaing funding. The system allows two choices for the people:

• Republicans: the entire world, including its natural resources and its people, is the private property of 100 persons.
• Democrats: Agreed! But we impose gender quotas on this 100-persons elite. This makes us democratic ™.

The article above is from Brazilian 35 years old marxist-leninist comrade Jones Manoel. He is a tall black man from a slum in the state of Pernambuco. The cop who killed his father worked (security guard) in Jones’ school. He had to see that cop daily. Did not tell his mom, to avoid worrying a solo mother who worked like a horse to feed her children.

Jones graduated in History, then got a MsC and is now getting a PhD.

https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Jones_Manoel

He recently debated much older Breno Altman, a brilliant communist journalist and member of the Workers Party. Breno, a secular Jew from an influential anti-zionist family, is a major and fierce critic of Zionism. He is under fierce attack by the Zionist lobby. He has been to Israel, and an Israeli politician (a rare humane one) warned him it wouldn’t be “convenient” for him to try visiting Israel again. Breno was also convicted in Brazil (facing possible jail time) for accusing a zionist of being “coward”.

Breno is a rare Brazilian communist who still supports Lula’s government. Breno maintains the current government has an internal dispute between social-liberalism and social-developmentalism. Jones maintains the goverment is just neoliberal. Great debate!

Governo Lula é neoliberal? Breno Altman x Jones Manoel - Debate especial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqPhJnShKWA

After reading your comment, I have come across this: https://redsails.org/really-existing-fascism

It says:

• Nietzche is to fascism and liberalism what Karl Marx is to communism
• It is confusing to think of fascism as the death rattle of capitalism in decay. Fascism and liberalism coexist. Fascism is based on what Marx called “primitive accumulation”, which is violent expropriation. Liberalism is based on (superficially) voluntary exploitation of surplus-value. Liberalism is more common in the empire core, while fascism is more common in the perifery.

The poor summary above is meant to entice you to read the article. Please do! And then post it on Lemmy for we to discuss. Please message me when you do.

You said liberalism is the ideological superstructure of capitalism, as if it was the only one. But there is also fascism, right? Were you imprecise, or am I missing something?

I was a far-right theocratic (Catholic) lunatic until about 2009. Many factors converged to slowly convert me to communism, but a big factor was indignation against the grave damage (from hateful obscurantism) to my personal life, including mental health and academic performance.

Here in Brazil, cariocas – people from the city of Rio de Janeiro – have a bad reputation, but I actually had pleasant encounters with people when I stayed in the city for more than a month. I do not know if this is analogous to international tourism, but wanted to share this anecdote.

Fascism is liberalism’s plan B, as confirmed by History and by liberal theory itself.

Historically, look at Latin America (I am Brazilian). All over Latin America, when people elected leftist (not even communist) governments within the institutions of liberal democracy, the elite (with US support) staged a coup and installed a military dictatorship, effectively saying: no, the people are not allowed to choose socialism. So we hereby abolish democracy.

And Jacobin covers the justification for this under liberal theory itself:

So, important liberal thinkers insisted as early as John Locke, you can’t tax the rich without their consent. If you do so, you give the victims of these policies a good reason to rebel and use violence against the usurpers. Liberal politics thus had a dictatorial option inscribed in it from the very beginning. And so it became a dogma to assume that the main task of politics is to protect property, and its principal sin to inveigh against it. But of course, that is a very narrow definition of what politics can or should do. And we suffer from that confinement to this day. In a typical Western democracy, you can do many things — as long as you refrain from infringing on private property. [1]

In short: liberal theory itself gives absolute priority to private property (over the means of production). If it conflicts with democracy, democracy is tossed out the window.

I always clarify “over the means of production” when attacking private property. There is this widespread confusion that communist thugs are going to invade your house and confiscate your bike. AFAIK, communists don’t do that.

Fun fact: in 1989 Brazilian elections, neoliberal Collor terrorized the people saying that Lula would confiscate everyone’s savings. With infamous support from Rede Globo (massive right-wing biased media corporation), Collor won, then quickly moved to confiscate everyone’s savings. Lula was elected in 2002, 2006 and 2022, and did nothing of the sort. Sadly, Lula is not communist, but social democrat.

1: https://jacobin.com/2022/08/nazi-germany-national-socialism-hypercaptialism-social-darwinism-liberalism

Context. If you look at the terrible Allied violence in WWII, without context, you easily conclude the Allies were the villains.

Also, of course, there is widespread capitalist propaganda.

Would you say that communists should not concentrate our energies attempting to prevent liberal democracy from turning into fascism? Like supporting social-democratic parties to keep fascists away. My understanding is that liberal “democracy” has some temporary advantages over fascism, but is not worth much energy.

Fascism is more acutely violent, but also temporary. Hitler initiated a war against much of the World, which he could not win. He was also incompetent. Out of insane hubris, he bypassed his generals and military strategists, because he was the chosen genius. Allegedly he didn’t have a real strategy to defeat the British Empire. He wanted to win the war by winning battle after battle. Thus he was defeated (largely by the Red Army), and “only” some 80 million lives were lost.

Liberal “democracy”, on the other hand, kills ten million people every few years, for centuries.

Fascism is brutal, crass, and visibly hateful. Liberal “democracy” is sophisticated, less acutely violent, and is falsely compassionate, but is also more competent at preserving itself and making victims.

Hi comrade! I am new here. Anyway, what you said is confirmed by History and by liberal theory itself.

Historically, look at Latin America (I am Brazilian). All over Latin America, when people elected leftist (not even communist) governments within the institutions of liberal democracy, the elite (with US support) staged a coup and installed a military dictatorship, effectively saying: no, the people are not allowed to choose socialism. They chose socialism, so we hereby abolish democracy.

And Jacobin covers the justification for this under liberal theory itself:

So, important liberal thinkers insisted as early as John Locke, you can’t tax the rich without their consent. If you do so, you give the victims of these policies a good reason to rebel and use violence against the usurpers. Liberal politics thus had a dictatorial option inscribed in it from the very beginning. And so it became a dogma to assume that the main task of politics is to protect property, and its principal sin to inveigh against it. But of course, that is a very narrow definition of what politics can or should do. And we suffer from that confinement to this day. In a typical Western democracy, you can do many things — as long as you refrain from infringing on private property. [1]

In short: liberal theory itself gives absolute priority to private property (over the means of production). If it conflicts with democracy, then democracy is tossed out the window. Fascism is liberalism’s plan B.

I always clarify “over the means of production” when attacking private property. There is this widespread confusion that communist thugs are going to invade your house and confiscate your bike. AFAIK, communists don’t do that.

Fun fact: in 1989 Brazilian elections, neoliberal Collor terrorized the people saying that Lula would confiscate everyone’s savings. With infamous support from Rede Globo (massive right-wing biased media corporation), Collor won, then quickly moved to confiscate everyone’s savings. Lula was elected in 2002, 2006 and 2022, and did nothing of the sort. Sadly, Lula is not communist, but social democrat.

1: https://jacobin.com/2022/08/nazi-germany-national-socialism-hypercaptialism-social-darwinism-liberalism