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ulyssessword  6mo ago (text post)   2070 thread views

Canada Federal Election 2025

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communism is dead as a political force

Nazism has been dead as a political force for much longer. And was active as a political force for much shorter period. And "the handful of self-identified Nazis" most definitely are "LARPers with no aspirations to power" (if by "aspirations" one means serious possibility and not wet dreams under the influence of drugs) - while communists are plentiful in our academic institutions, can easily find themselves at positions of power in smaller local governments, and that is without even peeling the veil under which DSA is hiding. Short of violent overthrowing of the government, if a politician supports virtually any part of Communist program, she may be considered a bit of a radical but not completely out of the acceptable in the polite society. If you can shut up about the glorious revolution for a bit, there's no barrier for a communist to participate in modern politics. You may not win the presidency (though watch AOC, who knows?) but you won't also be kicked out. Is it really dead or just temporarily laying in wait?

whereas fascist sympathizers keep surfacing in positions of influence inside right-wing populist movements

Here we have not one rhetoric tricks but several:

  1. "Sympathizers" - we move from self-identified Nazis to nebulous "fascist" (on the left, anybody to the right of Bernie is damn "fascist", including one's own landlord who demands paying rent with the delay of no more than three months!) and then from that to even more nebulous "sympathizer" - which is pure mind-reading.
  2. What is "position of influence"? A blog on instagram is a "position of influence". A soapbox in the middle of the street is a "position of influence". Is professor in the university a "position of influence"? We have a ton of communist professors, find me one self-identified Nazi professor. We have school teachers parading in shirts with the portrait of Gevara (notorious communist mass murderer) - can you point any teachers parading in a shirt with a portrait of Hitler? Or even Eichmann? What would happen if a prominent movie star declares herself a communist and what would happen if she declares herself a Nazi? Where are "positions of influence" here?
  3. Which "movements"? Are "groypers" a movement? Are 4chan trolls a "movement"? Are Andrew Tate followers a "movement"? Who knows, maybe. None of those has serious participation in national politics. Which "populist movements" under the serious ideological influence of Nazis can you name? Can they take over and burn down a whole city, and repeat it for months? Because I know movements on the left that can, and did.

but there just isn't the kind of symmetry they're looking for.

True, there isn't. "Neo-nazi problem" exists almost exclusively as a thing to accuse everybody on the right in, not as stand-alone political movement that is capable of anything more than moving the stale tiki torch inventory in the local hardware store. Violent leftist movement are capable of much, much more. And their political wing controls a lot of society's cultural and educational institutions. It's not even close to symmetry. That's why a former communist terrorist can be a respected professor and a mentor to the US President, and a former Nazi never could. Former KKK member probably could (did Byrd mentor anyone? don't remember) but he would end up in the same party as the Communist one.

The closest you get are pro-palestinian activists, who rather famously don't get along with mainstream left-wing politicians

The not getting along is rather one sided though. The militant left doesn't like the polite left, because they consider the latters to be wusses, hipocrites and pretenders (in which they might even be correct, even if for the wrong reasons) but the polite left would always cover for, enable and defend the militant left. And the antisemitism is just the "current thing" in fashion today (though antisemitism is never truly out of fashion on the left) but there's always some cause where violence, especially deniable violence, would be very useful to the Party. Be it protecting the Gaia, enforcing DEI, suppressing enemy speech or impeding enforcement of the laws the left doesn't like, there's always enough reason for political violence. And those who deploy this violence look very much like those whose existence you deny.

There's no equivalent neo-stalinist movement

Why it has to be Uncle Joe? Neo-Nazis have no choice, they had only one prominent figure. Communism has so many bloodthirsty tyrants or wannabe tyrants on record, one could choose freely among them, or proclaim all of those weren't true Communism, which has never been tried, and thus it all doesn't count.

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