By Matt Underwood Right wing authoritarianism doesn’t creep. It’s overt.
Left wing version pretends to be something it isn’t. Either on purpose or lack of understanding. I think it’s mostly the latter, but there are certainly grifters on the left as well.
The authoritarian portion of both sides are non starters for me. The media amplifies these voices because it creates conflict.
Yeah. Left wing authoritarianism is just infantilization run amok rather than some strict desire to centrally control everything. Rent control, minimum wage, wokeness, gun control, it’s all very much like “you can’t seem to play nice so we’re going to make you play nice.”
Right wing authoritarianism is very much the classic six-evil-rich-guys-in-a-smoky-room-trying-to-fix-the-fact-that-they-only-control-99%-of-everything-and-desperately-need-that-last-1%. It’s giving the veneer of being “small government” while being overwhelmingly about concentrating power in the hands of non-government powers because tHe MaRkEt. The government never was their path to power, it’s just a tool they use to have that power.
Which is why it was always so hilarious that they were saying “Trump’s already rich so he can’t be bought!” Like yeah motherfucker because he’s the one doing the buying; congrats on saving him money by cutting out the middleman
Exactly, it’s not even comparable. The left wing stuff is more fixing problems with government and people painting it as authoritarian whereas the right is actually authoritarian and evil shit. But because people are so willfully ignorant they can justify it as both sides being equal and wrong when it’s not even remotely the case. It’s as if these people have never looked at voting records
It’s not comparable. Let’s not mix up political and economic ideas. Communism is an economic model – which can exist in ANY form of government; leftwing, rightwing, authoritarian, democratic, etc.
America will never be socialist or communist. That’s just a fact by virtue that no where has ever been socialist or communist. It’s red scare propaganda. No country has ever eliminated class and given the workers the means of production (socialism). No country has eliminated class, eliminated the commodity form, or eliminated currency (communism). Communism is literally utopian – we should strive for it but it’s essentially impossible – just imagine a society where money doesn’t exist.
Socialism/Communism is not when “nobody should be able to own anything”. Private property doesn’t exist (ie: the private means of production) because the means of production is public – owned by the people. Personal property still exists – we’re not sharing toothbrushes, houses, cars, whatever.
“redistribution of wealth” isn’t in Socialism either. If you do more work under socialism, you make more pay just the same as capitalism. You don’t share everything. It’s a democratic workplace as opposed to an authoritarian workplace under Capitalism.
Everyone should want Capitalism gone. Socialism is the next evolution from Capitalism just like we went from Feudalism to Capitalism. Market Socialism would essentially be society as you know it but with individuals earning more for their labor and having a greater say in how their labor is used.
Saying that if Lefties get their way they’d be as bad as a fascist takeover is a pretty far out take. Especially when the left is held to a much higher moral standard than the right which is a big reason that so many constitutional issues under Trump were just permitted to occur – it’s more about just how shameless the Right has become for control in the face of losing power.
It’s a testament to the effectiveness of the American owner class’s war on the middle and lower class that people have such twisted, misguided misunderstandings about socialism. People have such strong opinions on something they refuse to even read the Wikipedia entry on.