cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26512687
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
959 points (93.0% liked)
Comic Strips
14247 readers
4280 users here now
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
- The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
- The comic must be a complete story.
- If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
- You may post comics from others or your own.
- If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
- The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
- Politeness.
- Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
Web of links
- [email protected]: "I use Arch btw"
- [email protected]: memes (you don't say!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Authoritarian is the word you're looking for, not fascist.
I'm surprised the comments seem to be defending authoritarianism like it's any more acceptable than fascism. "Stalin may have had millions of people killed and fueled the negative reputation of communism world wide for nearly a century, but at least he wasn't a fascist.". I don't seem to understand why democratic social ownership is considered a worse alternative than letting a centralized tyrannical government harm people unchecked.
I’m not defending anything like that, but:
Authoritarian != communism. Authoritarianism applies equally to communism and fascism. The latter two describe ideology, where ‘authoritarian’ describes scale. Your sentence is like if I said I I use reds, not apples, in my pies. It sort of makes sense, but not really.
You said: ‘I don't seem to understand why democratic social ownership is considered a worse alternative’ yes, exactly! That’s socialism, which is an economic – not a political – system. You can combine that with democracy or communism or fascism.
I really recommend you learn what all these terms mean, because it’s not only super fascinating, but we can each understand and communicate better when we can build upon common concepts.
I've been a democratic socialist for years. Communism is not an authoritarian belief, it is a socioeconomic model separate from that concept. Stalinist Communism -in practice- was an absolutely authoritarian dictatorship with well documented hardship suffered by the Russians, that people for some reason can't seem to unhook from actual proper communism and will defend to the death in a fit of tribalist rage as if all communism is good communism. I chose to define Democratic Socialism rather than use the term intentionally, because I felt like just blurbing it out would come across as a buzzword. I'm not opposed to communism and would prefer socialism, but I am absolutely not going to advocate for Stalinist Communism.
I don't know, the thing annoying me about the tread is everyone is correcting the person by saying "They're Communist, not Fascist!" instead of saying that it was "Authoritarian rather than Fascist". I feel like framing it in the latter way unhooks the term from authoritarianism, but also doesn't preclude it from possibly becoming authoritarian like any other socioeconomic system. I feel like the prior framing gave the impression that Stalinist Communism had nothing to do with authoritarianism in general, which I will absolutely disagree with. Stalinist Communism was absolutely not Fascism, but it was absolutely an Authoritarian Dictatorship and I don't appreciate the implication that it wasn't.
I don't know if any of that makes sense, I have a hard time articulating my points. Feel free to critique and thank you for the conversation.