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they are pretty good at falsely painting some people as brutal dictators while installing brutal dictators in power elsewhere, though, don't trust them that much
Hi, this is completely off topic, but has anyone seen this man?
He was last seen doing peaceful democratic and economic reforms in an impoverished, oil-rich state. He's a good man and a firm believer in democracy. He would never crack down on free speech or suppress protests or anything like that. But I'm worried because I haven't seen him around in a while, does anyone know what happened to him?
Thanks.
You don't have to defend the brutal dictators to shit on the fuckwits in the CIA.
You can, in fact, hate both.
"I need supreme authority to transfer control to the proletariat once the revolution* is complete!!1!"
* never completes the revolution
"Disband the CIA but popular discontent in dictatorships is generally not a CIA plot" is where I'm coming from.
We know what happens when the CIA tries to home grow a movement against a dictator from scratch
It was called the bay of pigs, and it was such a disaster it's why the CIA started exclusively using the tactic of attaching themselves to already existent movements.
Amazing self-report with the instant whataboutism when defending dictators is mocked. Weren't you just on another community saying that the Soviet Secret Police pulling fingernails off of interogatees to extract confessions were necessary, and that it's actually the West's fault that North Korea is a divine monarchy?
I like the dichotomy. Fuck power structure and you may be misremembering the dialogue prier, definitely inflating it though 
You delete these comments :/ but this is what I said.
Someone had said how communism has caused much suffering, I wanted to add context to the history of communist revolutions.
Yes, thank you for the second self-report on how you were defending Soviet Secret Police pulling fingernails off of interrogatees and blaming the West for North Korea becoming a Divine Monarchy.
Your being manipulative. To construed context as apologetics is ridiculous and dangerous.
I didn't realize 'context' meant "Actually, North Korea's divine monarchy is the West's fault and the Soviet Secret Police were actually Super Necessary You Guys"
It sounds almost like apologetics.
These are both reactions to imperialism. Not pretty, not good but reactions. And this is something we should learn and talk about openly without conjecture and insults.
These are both reactions to imperialism.
It's funny how they resemble exactly how other authoritarian regimes acted even without the prodding of imperialism. Hmm. Hmm...
Can you give examples?
Can you give examples?
Of other authoritarian regimes having secret police torture dissidents to extract confessions and creating divine monarchies?
Are you being serious right now?
Authoritarian regimes with out imperialism.
You are quit difficult you know. Conflation, exaggeration and disingenuous.
Authoritarian regimes with out imperialism.
Authoritarian regimes that developed without the prodding of imperialism? Is that what you're asking for?
You are quit difficult you know. Conflation, exaggeration and disingenuous.
Yes, yes, I know I'm quite difficult. It's a shame when people stay on-topic instead of wandering off chasing irrelevant points. It makes Whataboutisms so much harder to peddle, doesn't it?
Yes I want you to provide a name of a country that developed into an authoritarian state without prodding from imperialism.
The Han Dynasty. The Russian Empire. Nazi Germany. The "Estado Novo" of Portugal. Francoist Spain.
All that you list apart from François Spain were imperial countries.. I'm going to assume your trolling.
All that you list apart from François Spain were imperial countries… I’m going to assume your trolling.
Wait, so now you're changing the criteria from "Countries which turned authoritarian without prodding from imperialism" to "Countries that were authoritarian without being imperialist"? How the fuck is that at all relevant, then, to the very imperialist Soviet Union?
This is turning into semantics. How can a country that is imperial not be effected(prodded) by imperialism?
I was making a point of the ridiculousness of your prior comment. Well done I guess.
How can a country that is imperial not be effected(prodded) by imperialism?
So you're including self-prodding by imperialism. In that case, the fuck was your point about the Soviet Secret Police being necessary and justified because of imperialism? Are you just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks at this point?
Authoritarian is a word that was made up so that Communist regimes could be lumped in with Fascist regimes more easily.
Edit: I read this somewhere and it apparently is not correct. Turns out sometimes things that feel true are not. Thanks to BarrelAgedBoredom for their well-researched reply.
Just gonna hop in and repost an old comment of mine. The context is that someone said the word Authoritarian was created during the cold war to slander "communist" countries.
The first use of authoritarian is in 1852, in the writings of AJ Davis apparently. Here's the quote:
1856 A. J. Davis Penetralia 129 Does any one believe that the Book is essential to Salvation? Yes; there are many externalists and authoritarians who think so.
Authoritarian was also increasing in usage well before the cold war, beginning around 1910 or so. An example from Nationalism and Culture by Rudolf Rocker (an anarchist political philosopher), written in 1933:
Nietzsche also had a profound conception of this truth, although his inner disharmony and his constant oscillation between outlived authoritarian concepts and truly libertarian ideas all his life prevented him from drawing the natural deductions from it.
That's a thoroughly modern use of the word authoritarian, written almost 15 years before the start of the cold war. Authoritarian is used to describe those who support hierarchial systems of government. That's the short and sweet of it, perhaps not a perfect dictionary definition but it illustrates the distinctive bit. Auth-left ideologies get equivocated with fascism because there's an undeniable ideological throughline between the two, no matter how much they hate each other.
"The working class [...] cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers [...] Compulsion of labour will reach the highest degree of intensity during the transition from capitalism to socialism [...] Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps.'
Trotsky wrote that. It may not be 1:1 but the similarities between his ideas and those.of fascists are pretty obvious.
All of this, written before the cold war. Tell me again how authoritarian is a made up word that serves only to slander "communists"?
Auth-left ideologies get equivocated with fascism because there's an undeniable ideological throughline between the two, no matter how much they hate each other.
How? Example?
Authoritarian is a word that was made up so that Communist regimes could be lumped in with Fascist regimes more easily.
Wow.
This thread is fucking bizarre. You're getting downvoted for being not-a-tankie
I have a feeling there are a bunch of Hexbears or .mls mass downvoting. Seems targeted at PugJesus in particular as I've seen similar happen to them in other threads.
Prolewiki
I'm sure I'm about to get fair and unbiased information
not that trying to scrub any media of all bias is effective anyway but wikipedia has similar information if thats what you trust. my country is on that list, wasnt pretty.