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[martinuzz]

NAZIS CONFIRMED FOR RADICAL LEFTIES

Technically you could argue they were.

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei.
Socialist worker's party, sounds pretty left to me.

[TempAcc]

You could argue that fascism itself was more similar to communism than anything else. Mao himself famously commented on how Mussolini was the perfect guy to implement communism on Europe.

Lets see:

State has a firm grip over the market, wealth, goods production, resources and people's lives in general: check;
People with government jobs and connections live significantly better off than everyone who doesnt: check;
The individual is seen as only part of the state, and must work towards whats better for the state, because the state knows whats best for everyone: check;
General disdain for individual human rights in favor of the perceived idea of "collective": check;
Compulsory military service, militarism, and the army being one of the state's most overt manifestations of power and almost omnipresent in society: check;
Pro government propaganda is the norm and the state has full or almost full control of the media in general: check;
etc.
Free market capitalism as the worst thing ever: check;

Even on the points that the two ideologies differed the most, there was a certain degree of similarity. While soviet russia and china sought to eliminate religion altogether, it still tried to exploit it for its own purposes (soviet russia tried to use the eastern orthodox church to spread its doctrine, which was only half succesful, and they even tried to create a concept of a "soviet zion", trying to replace hebrew with yiddish and substitute the core of judaism with communist doctrine, which also failed and only resulted in pogroms later). Fascism, on the other hand, generally never really rejected religion and instead tried to fully absorb it into the state, which was more succesful, but still didn't quite work.

[Brigands]

Question is... Was nazi germany an authoritarian of totalitarian regime?
Hitler being the glorious leader that cannot commit a mistake kinda hints at the latter.

TempAcc... yeah guess i have to agree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapitalism_(concept_in_Italian_Fascism)

Still the Italian fascists wanted to create a corporate state rather than a communist utopia where everyone is equal.

[Rolepgeek]

Far as I know the only real economic/political difference between Fascism and Stalinist-brand Communism is what's being used as the motivating factor/inspirational force. Is it nationalism, love of country, and Supreme Leader, or is it love of your fellow man, class divide, and Glorious Leader?

Communism only seems to work when everyone wants to be part of it. Small, voluntary communities. It's hard to force people to do their share in communism, and trying to tends to result in Bad Things. You can't really use economic incentives to get people to work like capitalism does, since that's the whole point of communism, so you have to use things like threats of violence, or love of country/fellows. Since those are so important to maintaining the economy, anything that dissents from that ideological motivation is a threat.

Although, I did read an interesting article about how it almost worked, their economy almost made it through successfully, with a plan to implement shadow markets to try and allocate resources more effectively. Capitalists even thought communism would be more successful, economically speaking, but the idea was that the freedom of choice was more important than sheer economic growth. But then Stalin and the bureaucracy killed it because it looked too much like capitalism and what are these western-educated traitor economists doing to our beautiful communism? They must be purged!

Capitalism works because it's robust. It doesn't need a whole lot of infrastructure, only enough for people to be able to specialize and trade just a bit. It still has quite a few issues that I think might not be solvable until we have a one-world-government. Until then, multinational entities can just pull out of a country and hold economic wellbeing hostage in order to accumulate money at their leisure, and countries will be hostile enough to welcome the weakening of their rival rather than working together to tax those super-rich entities and redistributing the excess to help those at the bottom.

Incentive structures are hard.

[WealthyRadish]

NAZIS CONFIRMED FOR RADICAL LEFTIES

Technically you could argue they were.

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei.
Socialist worker's party, sounds pretty left to me.

"National Socialist" would've sounded like "Democratic Republican" or "Conservative Labour". It was essentially nonsense, which was part of the point. Hitler was attempting to bridge his appeal to the same sort of young post-war generation militants who were also joining the paramilitary wings of the communists and democratic socialists, and claim some sort of worker credibility (when the Nazis in reality were mostly middle-class and threw the worker rhetoric they campaigned on out the window depending on who was in the room).

[martinuzz]

Meanwhile in Turkey, Erdogan is preparing his next presidential decree under martial law.
He wants to change the constitution, to make the armed forces and the intelligence service fall directly under his command.

It is expected that the high military council (YAS) will agree to that. (Ofcourse they will, anyone who would oppose is either in prison or fired).

I guess that was expected, as he has already said long before the coup that he wants to change his presidency to be more like the US.

[Orange Wizard]

Yeah that's not going to end well at all

Rip democracy

[martinuzz]

FBI director James Comey has warned the EU that the Paris, Nice and Munich attacks are just a glimpse of what the EU can expect once IS is beaten in Syria.

"At some point, we will see an unprecedented exodus of terrorists from Syria. The military coalition will succeed in beating IS, but through the fingers of that crush are going to come hundreds of really dangerous people and they are going to flow primarily to Western Europe. But some could well end up in the United States. Not all IS killers will be killed on the battlefield".

Sadly, I think he may be right.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/world/isis-attacks.html?_r=0

Meanwhile in France, premier Valls has said that France needs to rebuild it's relationship to muslims from scratch. He wants to start with a new law to only allow French-schooled imams to preach in mosques, and forbid foreign funding of religious organisations. Not sure if he only means muslims, or he also wants the Vatican to stop paying for churches and priests.

[scrdest]

NAZIS CONFIRMED FOR RADICAL LEFTIES

Technically you could argue they were.

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei.
Socialist worker's party, sounds pretty left to me.

"National Socialist" would've sounded like "Democratic Republican" or "Conservative Labour". It was essentially nonsense, which was part of the point. Hitler was attempting to bridge his appeal to the same sort of young post-war generation militants who were also joining the paramilitary wings of the communists and democratic socialists, and claim some sort of worker credibility (when the Nazis in reality were mostly middle-class and threw the worker rhetoric they campaigned on out the window depending on who was in the room).

Tell that to Stalin. 'Communism in one country' essentially is what you could describe as national socialism, i.e. a nationalistic state with a state socialist economy.

[Orange Wizard]

Huh? USSR was extremely cosmopolitan. Stalin's goal was to bring the entire world (eventually) under one communist state.

[scrdest]

Huh? USSR was extremely cosmopolitan. Stalin's goal was to bring the entire world (eventually) under one communist state.

Eventually being the key word. The policy was to build up the USSR, even at the cost of international communist movements. In fact, supporting globally revolutionizationing was a good way to be denounced as a Trotskyist.

[TempAcc]

And it started kinda breaking down once the soviet union tried to exert control over anything that didn't fall under the category of "small country we can easily subjugate if they don't agree with us immediately". The Soviet Union and communist China never really did become a single entity and had its fair share of differences, despite what the anime communists of today insist on. Then there's south american and cuban communism which is also a thing of its own.

The USSR was cosmopolitan up to the point you were ok with being subjugated.

[Teneb]

Also keep in mind that Stalin was only communist when it suited him. Unlike Lenin, his main goal was to just get as much power as he could. He ruled through fear to the point that when he died, it took nearly an entire day for someone to muster enough courage to go into his office to check on him.

[Brigands]

Also keep in mind that Stalin was only communist when it suited him. Unlike Lenin, his main goal was to just get as much power as he could. He ruled through fear to the point that when he died, it took nearly an entire day for someone to muster enough courage to go into his office to check on him.

That or they just wanted to make sure he's dead completely before entering the office lest they actually get to save him and get unpersoned for seeing him in a moment of weakness.

[smjjames]

Meanwhile in Turkey, Erdogan is preparing his next presidential decree under martial law.
He wants to change the constitution, to make the armed forces and the intelligence service fall directly under his command.

It is expected that the high military council (YAS) will agree to that. (Ofcourse they will, anyone who would oppose is either in prison or fired).

I guess that was expected, as he has already said long before the coup that he wants to change his presidency to be more like the US.

Yeah that's not going to end well at all

Rip democracy

I thought he was trying to make it like Nazi Germany? In any case, he is completely missing the point of separation of powers with the three branches. So, in his attempt to transition from a parliamentary to a presidential system, he's still doing it wrong. Needs 200% less iron fist.