Which is it?

"The enemy is both strong and weak."

-Umberto Eco, 14 points of fascism

Can you define fascism and which side they take?

The definition of fascism is very broad but it is generally a far right ideology characterized with nationalism, militarism, bigotry, and authoritarianism while retaining private property and corporate power. All these elements help wide inequality within a fascist society. You can look at Eco's 14 points of fascism for key elements of a fascist society.

Fascism to me is the abuse of power, doesn't matter what side you are left or right through the left seems to abuse their power far more.

Hahaha you're accusing me of having ambiguous positions when this is the definition that you agree with, literally the most vague, expansive definition ever that could apply to basically everyone. You're the king of projection.

Ok, so from what I've gathered from your response is that you obviously don't know what you're talking about (also don't get how my response is remotely unhinged; plus it's coming from you so that's rich).

People in power abuse their power, regardless of their ideology. Your definition boiled down is "fascism is when someone in power does bad thing." Your definition is the poster boy of a definition that lacks meaning and which is abundant in ambiguity. Liberals can abuse their power. Leftists can abuse their power. Conservatives can abuse their power. Fascists can abuse their power. Slave masters abused their power. Monarchs abused their power. Feudal lords abused their power. Factory owners abused their power. Members of congress abuse their power. Presidents abuse their power. According to your definition of fascism, a parent who spanks their child for not doing their homework once is fascism, even if that parent is completely apolitical and has never voted in an election ever in their entire life. If your definition of fascism can be prescribed to everyone of every ideology and system or lack thereof (even ones that predate the conception of fascism), then your definition means nothing. To quote Syndrome from the Incredibles movie, "If everyone's super, no one is." If everyone's fascist, no one is.

And you have the audacity to call my definition of fascism meaningless and ambiguous. Maybe proofread your responses to prevent very obvious contradictions?

Additionally, I find it absolutely hilarious that you unironically believe Trump has abused his authority less than any president in recent history lmao

So fascism doesn't exist then. Fantastic. Incredible. Amazin'

PS: Trump corruption
https://www.americanoversight.org/areas_of_investigation/abuse-of-power
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/president-trumps-3400-conflicts-of-interest/
https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/corruption-and-money-laundering/trump-deals/
https://prospect.org/power/mapping-corruption-donald-trump-executive-branch/
https://www.gq.com/story/trump-kids-profit-presidency

1. Do you understand how your definition of fascism literally has zero relevant meaning? My definition applies to certain people and does not apply to others. Yours can apply to literally anyone. You're in no place to patronizingly lecture me what definition is more meaningless.

2. Man o man, I looooove genetic fallacies!

3. Ah yes, the clerical error that was immediately fixed and relentlessly debunked to the point that the original disseminator of the misinformation retracted his claim of fraud because even he knew that it was BS. But go off.

You can dumb down an entire ideology with "abuse of power". If that's your definition, a whole bunch of things would be considered fascist even when they are not.

Is Trump fascist?

Yes.

Was Obama fascist?

No, he was a neoliberal.

Then why would he make Obamacare?

But here's the thing Obama doesn't really support free-market capitalism.

He is tho

By free market, do you mean laisse faire capitalism? Because nobody supports that.

Obamacare was a regulated free market approach to trying to achieve universal healthcare. That thing every other developed country in the world guarantees to their populace.

England, Canada, Germany, Italy, Israel, Japan...you name the country and they have universal coverage.

Some things shouldn't be 'for profit'. Fire departments, police, the military. We don't want to force Fire departments to somehow bill for putting out fires. Sure, it would be more fair if the person who caused the fire was responsible, but fair isn't everything. Police given bonuses for number of arrests or tickets written. Some of us think medicine should be the same.

Socialized medical insurance and/or highly regulated free market insurance is cheaper. We pay more per person and per capita than any other country in the world and we aren't even covering everybody. And we have medical bankruptcies. Medical lobbyists have literally written laws and talking points for politicians to use to fight back against universal care.

yes medical tourism is a thing, but it goes both ways. Wealthy come here to get care you pay more for, but Americans also go elsewhere to get surgery and medicine they can actually afford.

We pulled the teeth from Obamacare and it didn't end up being universal, and now progressives are calling for a different approach since the free market version didn't work. Other nations have achieved it with a free market version...but honestly, based on metrics those systems are less efficient...but that may be too much info all at once.

or Laurence Britt's 14 points as well

Randomly wavered back to this. Fascism is right wing. Nazis as a classic example used Marxism as a foil.

Marxism is a left wing ideology.

All ideologies can lead to corruption and abuse of power. Marxists abusing power is not fascism.

All abuse of power isn’t fascism. I think maybe you are taking the context of people calling cops or soldiers fascist. But in that case it is more about goal than method. An authoritarian government that oppresses dissenting views. And honestly, it’s often misused in that context. Like calling someone a Nazi. It’s generally more a figurative insult than an actual accusation.

There are plenty of abuses of power that would not meet the definition of fascism.

Stalin was left-wing was he fascist?

History is complex.

I once read that at high levels of totalitarianism, the left/right distinction fades.

Ideology wise and stated goal wise, left. But in order to achieve those goals he did things that don't fit the ideology.

Honestly, I'm not all that read up on stalanisn, but you could probably make the argument that it checks some of the fascist boxes. He was definitely a dictator.

Lenin was a lot more clearly left than Stalin if you are looking for an example. It's actually one of the reasons Hitler associated Jews and Marxism. A lot of Jews did support Marxism, but not because of a global plot. Lenin was relentless in asserting that all people were brothers/sisters and treated Jews equally under the law. At a time when antisemitism was prevelant worldwide (including the US), a lot of Jews did look to Marxism as better. But again, Russian history isn't really my strong suit.

Also, off topic, but just because Nazis called themselves socialists doesn't make it true. North Korea is officially the Demicratic People's republic of North Korea. So, if you do look into this and see that argument, bear that in mind.

Antisemitism happened because of the belief of eugenics (which was very popular at the time) the very base of what planned parenthood was founded appon.

Antisemitism has been around forever. I'm not sure I see the link between Eugenics and Antisemitism. I'm sure people who believed in Eugenics and hated Jews wanted to apply Eugenic theories to getting rid of them, but that is correlation, not causation.

Planned parenthood // Eugenics - the founder believed in Eugenics, but so did a lot of people of the time. The source of something does not determine its value.

One of the goals of the Nazi propaganda was to rewrite WWI. They didn't lose because they weren't the best. They lost because we were plotted against from within. Jews made a convenient scapegoat relying on the underlying racism towards them at the time.

People who support marxism are hilarious.

I don't consider myself a marxist. I think all the 'isms' are too simplistic. There is no government in the world today that isn't a mixture of public and private sector, and there is a reason for that.

I think socializing certain things where we don't want the profit motive to be involved makes sense. Things like law enforcement, soldiers, firefighters, etc. And in my opinion, medicine falls in that category.

Things where we are willing to allow for variance in quality and potential for those services going out of business in order to foster competition should stay free market. If in doubt, go free market.

Unless you missed it, I'm pointing out that we already have things that are funded with tax dollars for the benefit of all. Can you imagine if cops were in competition? If their bonuses or pay were dependent on how many arrests they made?

Do you remember in the movie gangs of New York where the two fire crews had a brawl over who would put out the fire while nobody put out the fire? Those things used to happen because the city would pay whichever crew responded, but they would only pay one of them.

Look at what progressives have done to California and you want to do that to the country?

Can you be specific?

Millions of people are leaving California, housing is extremely expensive, businesses are failing or leaving the state, it has the highest taxes, the highest amount of homeless people, and on top of that, there are people doing drugs on the street. (I've been to California)

So, I'm going to start with an observation. I have lot of conservative friends and family. And it is almost without fail that they point out how awful things are because Democrats. I find it odd. I don't immediately look at party when trying to figure out a problem. Things are generally complex and by that logic, out president is Republican.

California is the most populous State. Even so, I agree it's homeless rate is staggering. It is definitely an outlier. There is a housing crisis what can be done or is being done? What policies caused it? Idk. If you want to talk about the policies you think led them there, ok. But I don’t have the knowledge to speak to this.

The people leaving, high rent, limited housing, all seem like the same issue.

Cool, I've never seen that.

Sided with leftists.

What does that even mean?

Turning healthcare into a government-run agency would kill the development of medicine and other medical technologies that the rest of the world depends on not to mention the long wait times and higher taxes that come along with it.

The federal government already funds ~23% of medical research.

Medicare for all only makes the insurance government run.

To compare, the UK has fully government run medicine and they are actually proud of it. It has issues but they also spend a lot less than others. But that is a dude conversation as no candidate is pushing for that.

I'm not saying every implementation is perfect, but if you just pick a couple who are top 10 spending wise, you can debunk the wait times.

Canada as an example has longer wait times for non-critical procedures. Their wait times are slightly longer for critical, but not much.

I see your point but if the government minded its own business the medical industry would develop technologies the consumers wanted faster and dramatically cut costs in a short amount of time(laser eye surgery for example).

Your kind of missing my point the U.S does most of the medical breakthroughs because it's not government-run, which is why the rest of the socialized medical industries around the world rely on us. If you want an example lookup Samuel Pierpont Langley. If the government wants to spend money it doesn't have on the medical industry it should do what Trump did for the vaccine.

The vaccine is a bad example. That was extremely inefficient. We spent a lot more money than would have been spent under regular circumstances. It was/is a fire and it made sense to do so, but it doesn't make sense for everything.

****tangent*****
Forcing innovation is expensive. And honestly, there is no guarantee of good results. That's one of the reasons military spending is so high. Lots of times they want something that doesn't exist yet. Its also why sometimes a ton of money gets spend and then the project gets abandoned anyway. If the best the state of the art technology can provide doesn't meet the need...then you either try again later or look at other options.

People sometimes cry about how wasteful that is, but that's the way R&D goes. Its expensive and there are a lot of false starts. You have to be willing to spend a lot on it, and you have to be willing to stop spending no matter how much you've already spent. One of the major errors in project management is justifying continuing a project based on what was already spent.
****tangent*****

The government can just as easily offer more grants, or do other things to spur innovation. Or, leave R&D private sector.

But being the only country in the developed world with uninsured people and medical bankruptcy doesn't sit well with me. In the end, the real impact to those people weighs more to me than a possible slowing of innovation.

Any compromise needs to address that. But we've been talking about legislation to fix some of the broken stuff in our system forever and nothing happens. Meanwhile, how much is spent on medical lobbyists? How much profit does that industry generate?

In all seriousness, If the free market can offer a solution, it should probably get on that. Because if it doesn't progressives like myself are looking at the metrics for other countries who are providing medical insurance/coverage for all of their citizens for far less than we spend and thinking (in accordance with capitalist ideas, oddly) that if you can get more for less, you should.

And spoiler alert, none of the countries that have gone this path are clamoring to go back to their old systems.

See the medical industry isn't really free-market anymore it's crony capitalism which is why it's so expensive.

Crony capitalism - I'm not sure what you are arguing.

crony capitalism always exists when businesses get too big. They work together to squash competitors. The only way to prevent that is to put policies, regulations, etc. in place to protect small businesses and consumers from those tactics.

And isn't paying for lobbyists to get laws passed that favor you just a good return on investment?

I'm not trying to convert you to any form of belief here, but honestly the tendency toward monopoly and crony capitalism is the flaw with unregulated capitalism. All the major 'isms' have strengths and flaws. Which I could go into...but....

Each 'ism' fixes issues with the others, but presents its own flaws. This is why no system has survived long in a pure form.

Conservatives have always called everything that isn't laisse faire capitalism either socialism or communism. They said it about unions, they said it about social security, they said it about labor laws related to set work weeks and overtime laws. Its one of the reasons it isn't a scary term to the left anymore. Everything is socialist...but Canada, Germany, etc. has the thing and are doing OK...are they socialist? Depends on who you ask. Do they have a comparable standard of living? Yes, yes they do.

Honestly, the 'isms' are just ideas, and whether certain things fall in one or the other can actually not be as clear as some would claim. Many far left movements tend towards anarchism and a distrust of all central government. If there is no government to speak of, then you are kind of back to pure capitalism. Many far right movements want a strong central leader and nationalist policies. Strong central governments need soldiers, taxes, and usually ignore due process in the name of expediency. Totalitarian regimes also don't tolerate dissenters.

Breaking up a monopoly is clearly a violation of pure capitalism, but without regulation, why wouldn't a business work to change laws to allow it to do anything it needs to?

If a group unionizes and performs collective bargaining, is that socialism by stifling competition and artificially setting the prices, or is that a group applying capitalist principles to their labor and working together to get the best prices they can for their labor?

Sir crony capitalism is when the government buys products from a business because of its political ties or gives out bailouts to failing businesses. Crony capitalism is a form of corruption in government.

You are correct. I may have gotten ahead of myself and mixed crony capitalism and monopoly practices without making the links obvious.

Big businesses work together to stifle competition. No competition and they can make bigger profits. Once a company reaches a certain size it becomes easy to get government contracts. Some of it is legitimate - a bigger company that has done large scale work before will be more likely to succeed on a large contract than a smaller one.

Large companies sponsor charities and donate money to politicians. Some of it is explicit, some of it is implicit. i think the implicit is actually the most common. If I sell something and I donate a lot of money to your campaign...you are going to be unlikely to support legislation to make green balls illegal.

But also, I start to talk about deregulation. Mr. Mayor, why do you guys keep putting out these contracts for competition. You know I'm the best. I know its the law, but maybe an exception for this industry should be added since you waste so much time and effort when I always win. Nobody else around here is big enough to take on these large efforts.

Its all about using your bigger pockets to get influence and exploit it.

Repeal citizens united. Make it so that it isn't money that gets you elected. Because right now, no side can win without either a grass roots movement or wealthy backing.

Much of that is also an issue with monopolies. honestly, all of the corruption and red tape issues that affect government can affect larger businesses as well.

No, government intervention doesn't slow it destroys innovation. Can you name a major medical breakthrough from one of those socialized medical countries?

Maybe the vaccine was a bad example I was just saying IF the government wants to spend money on the medical industry it should make companies compete against one another to reach a certain goal not completely destroy them. It's easy to spend money that isn't yours.

I'm not a doctor, I probably couldn't name a medical breakthrough at all without searching. I did find google a list of innovations from China but it didn't mean much to me. So, while not exactly what you are asking for:

https://healthinformatics.uic.edu/blog/the-4-top-countries-for-health-tech-development/
they admit the US is still top, but point to challengers dumping money into research amongst other things

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/122215/worlds-top-10-biotechnology-companies-jnj-rogvx.asp
5 of the 10 are US firms, so again we are leading, but we aren't the only ones.

So we lead, but I don't think you could argue that innovation has been destroyed in those countries.

So you see my point right?

"Government was replaced with the consumer" - unregulated capitalism doesn't work. There is too much incentive for businesses to work together to screw the consumer.

Look up 'pay to delay' practices used by pharmaceutical companies.

Competition - making companies compete. it sounds simpler than it is. All those companies working on COVID vaccines? We were paying for that. There may be a bonus if they get it sooner, plus they will get to produce it and make whatever profit off that, as well as the prestige, but we are paying for the R&D.

If this were about food, it would be like "whoever gets me a sandwich first wins". We still paid for all the prep work that went into all the incomplete sandwiches. or all of the sandwiches that didn't pass the sniff test.

With competitive contracting in the government, usually they compete on cost and approach. The government asks for proposals, reviews them to make sure they are sensible and then picks the one that is either cheapest or better based on technical criteria. If they have 3 people actually working to develop something, they are paying all 3.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/08/feds-spending-more-than-9-billion-covid-19-vaccine-candidates/5575206002/

Basically but I would prefer it if the government was replaced with the consumer.

Well, the meme says Biden is a radical leftist I was saying he sided with leftists because Biden doesn't actually have a backbone of his own (unless it's the love for money).

Which point in his agenda do you find most 'radical'? Because most of the things Bernie supporters wanted have been compromised down to shadows of their former selves.

Harris is quite radical you know his VP.

In what way? Because I'll be honest, most progressives don't love her.

Also she's a socialist.

What makes her a socialist?

The Green New Deal

stop drilling - on public lands

Do you actually believe that?

"bad for the economy and the people" - disagree on that point, and either way, that doesn't make it socialism

By forcing oil companies to stop drilling that's not taking control of the means of production?

What about the Green New Deal is socialist? Is the latest version of it going to have the federal government owning he means of production?

That's kind of my point and question. How is it socialist? It's a broad term and a broad policy.

Socialism is a broad term. But yes the government owning means of production is part of socialism.

All of it broad or not is bad for the economy and the people.

Really believe that? Honestly, I'm surprised he went that far. He isn't a promise of change or revolution. Most people believe in climate change and want something to be done. This is something. Is it enough? I guess we'll see.

I invite you to go back and look at some of the predictions of doom and gloom around Obama leading into his second term. The left button is more likely. Biden will make half gestures but leave loopholes and all the same shit will happen. I remember thinking that was the worst that could happen. Turns out I was naïve. The worst is a president who intentionally scores points on the other side and cares more about winning than anything. Who doesn't even pretend to care about the people who aren't his supporters. Can you really point to another president who did that? I can't.

"Do nothing" is often because lots of compromises were made and bills were de-fanged. We are clearly split on many things. Compromise is how you have a country with diverse views. One side winning all the time isn't good for democracy...ugh. I used to think stuff like that was BS.

Joe isn't going to do much that I want him to, but at least I have no fear that the country will still be here in 4 years and we can try again with someone else.

Obamacare was a failer anyone who believes otherwise is blinded by their own party pride.

If Obamacare sucks then it sucks. I didn't write it.

I'm a democrat because I'm a progressive, not the other way around. F#$& both parties. We need to get ranked choice voting implemented and limits on money in politics so we can realistically get rid of the two party system.

Obamacare has good and bad points. Coverage for pre-existing conditions is a biggie. My wife has asthma and one of the first things she told me when we got married is she could never ever ever not be insured. If she had no coverage and then signed up again then asthma would be a pre-existing condition. There are other things it did that helped a lot of people, but the pre-existing thing was huge. Bad sides? The market was a mess. Its actually been a while since I read up on this, but there are definitely some issues. Could Trump have designed a better plan? Sure. I'm a progressive. Things can always be made better. Lessons learned from Obamacare could have definitely been used to design something better. But that didn't happen. Trump was only interested in tearing it down.

Can you explain why 'its a failure'? because if you can't, then maybe you are blinded.

cheating - words are cheap. Where's the proof?

DJT has been claiming there would be cheating for months in an attempt to invalidate voting results. He did the same in 2016 - he claimed nobody should believe the results...until he won.

So the story is Dems cheated but forgot to steal the senate too? That's weird.

Democrats didn't cheat. For one, they didn't think they needed to. They thought there was going to be a blue wave, and there wasn't. We probably have the presidency, but the Senate stays with Republicans. Them's the breaks.

You don't believe Trump lost, and I can't believe as many people voted for him as have.

The sharpie thing has been refuted - https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/sharpies-can-be-used-on-voting-ballots-in-arizona-officials-say

Trump is suing Michigan saying Republicans were denied access to witness counts...but Michigan already requires both Republican and Democrat witnesses during counting. I think they just refused to let in extra people.

"vote drops" were reporting errors.

But whatever. Let him pursue his lawsuits and recounts. It won't change the results.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/recounts-rarely-reverse-election-results/
"Recounts typically don’t swing enough votes to change the winner. Out of 4,687 statewide general elections between 2000 and 2015, just 27 were followed by recounts, according to data compiled by FairVote, a nonpartisan group that researches elections and promotes electoral reform. Just three of those 27 recounts resulted in a change in the outcome, all leading to wins for Democrats"

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/04/yes-democrats-are-trying-to-steal-the-election-in-michigan-wisconsin-and-pennsylvania/

You clearly don't understand economics because if you did you would vote Republican have a good life.

Honestly, there are Republicans I considered voting for. Most of them never seem to make it through the primary. I can understand people who are fiscally conservative, but not socially conservative.

Honestly, based on the spending before COVID (the deficit going up every year when it went down most years under Obama), I'm not sure Republicans can claim the fiscally conservative title anymore.

Yeah, it will be a Republican.

Maybe. And that's OK. You can't claim to love America and hate elections. I mean, you can, but it doesn't make sense.

Look at the Dems they're cheating in the presidential election as we speak.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/04/yes-democrats-are-trying-to-steal-the-election-in-michigan-wisconsin-and-pennsylvania/

Any credible news site would have labeled that article an opinion piece.

How to spot fake news: They tell you what to think and skip facts. The reason un-postmarked ballots received within the 3 day period were ruled to be acceptable is that "in Pennsylvania, postage is prepaid on ballot envelopes to be returned by mail. Typically these prepaid envelopes are not automatically postmarked. The USPS has instructed their people to postmark them anyway, but it is a deviation from their normal processes and they "acknowledge that circumstances can arise that prevent ballots from receiving a legible postmark." Wouldn't you say that acknowledgment by the USPS that led to the ruling is something that should be mentioned? My source here, btw, is Fox. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pennsylvania-mail-in-ballot-postmark-challenge

“Under the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that allows the three-day extension, ballots with no postmark or an illegible postmark are presumed to have been postmarked by the Election Day deadline, unless there is evidence the ballot was mailed after the deadline”. Someone mailed it, the USPS didn't postmark it...the only other option would be to throw out the ballot which might have been mailed on time. The deadline is Friday regardless.

The mail dumps...I will look into those later, but I have work to do. Presuming malice where human error could be the cause is not good for news sites to do.

Michigan has people voting from the civil war.

Do you have evidence? Because...https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/meet-michigans-dead-voters-theyre-quite-alive-despite-false-fraud-claims

Well she wants ]to destroy the 2nd amendment and I can tell she has no respect for the 1st. That seems pretty radical to me.

No she doesn't. Nobody wants that. But, if you really think so, examples?