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@m0xEE @PurpCat @ins0mniak @olmitch
> American young adults, who, like you said, might have very wrong idea of it themselves
If you wander by some of the cranker Poast users or basically anyone on Nice Crew Dot Digital, you can actually see where the Americans got their ideas of the 1950s: feminists of the 1970s painted a dark picture of the era, and kids that didn't like feminism as taught in school never bothered to question whether it was true. Some loopy professor says that in the 50s, men could go around and rape whoever and black people weren't allowed to make eye contact with horses and then these idiots declared it based.
> Their idea of their own country's past comes from what gets regurgitated in the West and fed back to them.
That is kind of a mess.
> And plastic bags — they were rare, but looked cool
Yeah, I listened to an account of a North Korean defector, he almost got caught because they went through this aqueduct and he spotted a discarded plastic water bottle and he tried to go back for it, he was arguing with the guy helping him get across and he wouldn't move until the guy promised to get him another one when they arrived. He said he hadn't seen one before and he thought it must be valuable. I don't think things were as bad in the USSR as in North Korea back then, but I don't think reducing pollution was very high on the list.
> But I would never be able to prove it to this girl — she just won't believe me as sustainability aligns with modern progressive agenda so well
Yeah, I can imagine. Even after the collapse, there was still a contingent of academic hard-liners here defending the USSR. A lot of them stonewall on objections because they've fully bought-in. Same thing as the Nazis or the other communists here, they're too invested to accept reality.
> Until that, Occam's razor applies: just because they could have, doesn't mean that they did.
No, but if these organizations have a long history of interfering in other countries and there are enough economic or political ties to incentivize them to influence large social movements, then it's more reasonable to expect that they will attempt to influence large social movements. You look at the FBI fedposting on 8chan, you look at the CIA inventing modern art (not directly, but they find a guy that likes it, then they offer him free money to fund artists he likes, so he's acting as a cut-out, etc.; I can dig up the article if you want), or you look at the Family Jewels reports, or you just look at their website. They've always stopped for real this time.
Apparently, because it has run for so long, there's a rule in the writing room for "The Simpsons": Homer and Marge have been married for twenty years, no matter what year it is. So an episode from the 1990s has Homer meeting Marge in the 1970s at a roller-disco, then an episode from the 2010s has him meeting her at a grunge concert in the 1990s. It feels like that with the CIA: they have always stopped doing evil stuff 40 years ago, so they'll put on their website some things they did in the 80s, and ten years from now they'll explain all the evil stuff they did in the 90s that is currently a "conspiracy theory". Incidentally, "conspiracy theory" is a term that the CIA coined to describe people that didn't think Oswald assassinated JFK or didn't act alone, and then started applying to other things because if the term is saturated with JFK assassination theories, you can use it to paint things with that brush, the same way that anyone that doesn't like the mRNA vaccines is called an "anti-vaxxer", even if they like all of the other vaccines.
Then you have the BMBF, which has admitted in court to conducting surveillance on American journalists that have never even gone to Germany, conducting influence operations targeting the US, and then you look at the BNF funding "hate speech trackers" in the US and eventually being outed as the source of the dox for the LiberalsOfTikTok account.
> I think there is a reason for that: these ops are extremely hard to carry out and coordinate, human error is not a made up thing
Well, sure. You mean Operation Eagle Claw? So that was a military intervention; Bay of Pigs was CIA. The thing is, an influence operation is much lower risk than shoving a bunch of guys in helicopters and not mentioning that there are sandstorms in Iran. You look at the Kremlin's astroturfing operations, right, that place called "The Agency" where people would be paid to troll on Twitter? Or even easier, you just figure what you want done, find someone that is committed to doing that, and then get him some money. (Find an agitprop activist without a Patreon or similar.) And if you screw up an influence operation, all that happens is you don't get the outcome you want. It's very low-overhead, very cheap, very low-risk. So if you have a reason to do something, it's a matter of risk/cost versus reward, right. If there's an interest in, say, some social movement in Poland, and you can find an activist pushing something you want pushed, then you can toss him $10k, $20k.
> It's always easy for me to believe in Russia's involvement, but it doesn't mean that I should always do that.
There's holding a positive belief in something and there's keeping the possibility in mind. Unless there's a reason they wouldn't or couldn't, it's always worth keeping in mind. It's probably more expensive to fund an American activist than a Ukrainian one, so you can reason that budget might get in the way depending on the direction of cashflow, or say North Korea where communications are locked down.
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@Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
> Are you calling National Socialists communists?
The context of that quote was socialist professors in Russia praising the USSR, so "other communists" applied to that.
But Nazis are not materially different from communists: totalitarian collectivism is totalitarian collectivism. The distinction between a national socialist and an international socialist is about as important as the distinction between Shia and a Sunni or the distinction between First Baptist and Southern Baptist or the distinction between a Republican and a Democrat.
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@p @m0xEE @PurpCat @ins0mniak @olmitch "Same thing as the Nazis or the other communists here, they're too invested to accept reality." Are you calling National Socialists communists?
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@Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
> Really? So National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union were essentially the same thing?
No, they were not. They were different countries. They were, however, under political systems with no meaningful distinction.
If you have something to say, say it.
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@p @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
" The distinction between a national socialist and an international socialist is about as important as the distinction between Shia and a Sunni or the distinction between First Baptist and Southern Baptist or the distinction between a Republican and a Democrat."
Really? So National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union were essentially the same thing?
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@Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch Your useless slogan depends on your definition of "the people" and even then, you'd have to have a very narrow definition. It sounds like you read the brochure for one and a critique of the other.
Hitler, without even a plurality of the vote, seized control of the coalition and the Reichstag and had himself made dictator with a gun to the rest of the legislature's head. You do not purges nor public executions nor a Gestapo if what you are doing is "good for the people". The "Ideas so good they have to be mandatory" joke applies. Whatever the Nazi pigs had to say about the strength and the will of the German people was undercut by the iron grip they needed to maintain around the German people's throat, and they were very selective about who counted as the German people. Heisenberg was declared a "white Jew" by the press because he ignored "Deutsche Physik" (the kraut version of Lysenkoism); it turns out, of course, that Deutsche Physik was completely useless and quantum mechanics is an accurate enough model of the universe to build the bombs that we should have dropped on Berlin twice instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and has remained the model we have used for everything that is small enough for particles to matter, or so large that particles become relevant again. Deutsche Physik is the perfect example of totalitarian degeneracy: nothing is permitted to challenge the state, not even the physical properties of the universe.
This is the issue with totalitarianism: it does not, and cannot, accept a limit to the authority of the state. It cannot even survive ridicule. Anyone living under such a system either accepts serfdom and eternal subservience, or they are executed. Fine for krauts; I'm a goddamn American. It doesn't matter if it calls itself "communism", "national socialism", "democratic socialism", it's a brutal theft of your future, your children's future, it's a social lobotomy, it's discarding your humanity and for what? Nazism has yet to deliver anything, even material prosperity or safety. So your suggestion is that everyone trade their soul for a crater? And your justification for this is a slogan? Are you goddamn retarded?
There was one important difference between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia: Trotsky, who wanted total war until global communism was achieved, was ousted by Stalin, who was a bit more conservative about which places to invade and what to do once he was there, so the USSR lasted longer than Nazi Germany.
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@p @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch National Socialism was good for the people. Communism was good for the people in charge.
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@Midwit @m0xEE @PurpCat @ins0mniak @p @olmitch >
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@amerika @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
> and we still use some of their controversial research.
My understanding is that we don't use much; as meticulously documented as most of the medical research was, most of it was useless, *except* the hypothermia research.
> winning the war and providing food, respectively.
Well, look: you have far fewer internal political concerns the more people you starve.
> note that the damages of democracy, when toted up, will dwarf any damage the Nazis did or could have done with their plans.
To the extent that a stable system that kills one person a year will do more damage after sixty-one years than an extremely unstable system that kills one person a day but only lasts two months.
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@p @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
The Nazis have a mixed record. They did some stuff really well, like environmental policy, and we still use some of their controversial research.
However, to a Platonist, the bigger point is this: totalitarianism is unstable. It seems to be strong power, but is in fact not, which is why Hitler and Stalin spent a lot of time and effort managing internal politics instead of focusing on things like winning the war and providing food, respectively.
Totalitarianism fails to spark joy because the only goal is the system itself. This produces not so much misery as listlessness, which is why totalitarian societies all militarize.
The Nazis were far ahead of, for example, the Soviets. The USSR only kept going because the Western democracies subsidized it while pretending to fight it.
However, the Nazis were made in the model of the French Revolution and Napoleon, as is our current society, and this made them unstable.
We need realists.
Between anarchy and totalitarianism there is a happy medium without the insanity of democracy, which in the end calculus is just an early form of totalitarianism.
I also object to the brutality of the Nazis, including the Holocaust (a slave labor program which killed up to 340k Jews through starvation and disease), but note that the damages of democracy, when toted up, will dwarf any damage the Nazis did or could have done with their plans.
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@Midwit @p @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
The question is one of time.
It worked... for how long?
Much of their early success came from (1) stopping the state from doing the really stupid stuff it had been doing (2) streamlining the welfare state and, most importantly, (3) going back to supply-side economics.
Deporting Jews and gypsies was a sane idea but it morphed into a crazy slave labor program.
Starting WW2... they got duped into it, perhaps, but they were going on a path that would obviously end that way.
Hitler was butthurt over WW1 -- I find it hard to blame him -- and tried for a rematch.
WW1/2 and Civil War stuff makes me queasy anyway. I like to read about Vietnam because I think killing Communists is a path to sainthood.
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@amerika @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch :lovethesmellofnapalminthemorning:
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@Midwit @p @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
Both were socialist states, just like the current regime in the West.
To a Platonist, yes, they were more similar than different.
Obviously Communism is the worst system ever created, but other than that...
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@amerika @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
> egalitarian, not collectivist,
The ocean is egalitarian but not collectivist, and it will outlast any society we have: if you can eat that other fish, go eat it. Collectivism relies on individual components behaving in a certain way.
I don't really care to attempt to create the perfect society or even a good one (I have some ideas, but I am not in charge of society and no one that is cares to listen to me), but I do know that collectivism asks much of the collective and, historically, you don't get to pick whether you are in the collective or outside it. Nearly everything that bothers you about any society is inert if you strip off the collectivism.
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@p @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
Socialism fails because it is egalitarian, not collectivist, in my view. That it fails is all we need to know.
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@amerikaner @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch @p
> "I think killing Communists is a path to sainthood."
I'm in.
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@Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch That's the dumbest shit I've heard before and I have heard it a million times.
> You're an American, what does that even mean nowadays?
The fuck do you think it means?
> Any black, brown, or yellow thing can crawl in and be an American.
Yer a kraut fed, yer one of those guys the BMBF is paying by laundering orders through the BNF.
> Birth rates increased under National Socialism.
You disingenuous cunt, birth rates here increased after the war: correcting the cause of an economically disastrous treaty combined with the end of the great depression definitely had nothing to do with it. The US didn't change governments, did we have a huge increase in birthrate? Like some sort of baby boom?
And the sheer number of people doesn't matter if we're talking about serfs rather than humans.
> That's why it took the combined forces of America, Britain, and the Soviet Union
Nazi apologists always do this. The US didn't enter the war for quite some time, and Nazi Germany was *allied* with the USSR for a big chunk of the war. In fact, without the help of the USSR, Nazi Germany would not have been able to discard the Treaty of Versailles, and it would not have been able to take nor hold much of Poland. The reason they were able to get to Paris was an eastern border full of Soviet allies.
You think I've been operating this site for as long as I have and I haven't heard this shit before?
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@p @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch Purges and public executions are absolutely good for the people. As was getting rid of the degeneracy of the Weimar Republic. You're an American, what does that even mean nowadays? Any black, brown, or yellow thing can crawl in and be an American. National Socialism is a theft of you and your children's future? Quite the opposite. Birth rates increased under National Socialism. And Germany was the strongest military on Earth. That's why it took the combined forces of America, Britain, and the Soviet Union to defeat a country the size of Texas.
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@p @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
The problem with collectivism is that it is just one form of the universalist society.
The other struggle is to have something positive that the society stands for.
Too much anarchy and you get no unity and therefore, no function. That is the third world.
The ocean I would say is far from egalitarian. It is capricious in its own way.
"Collectivism" in the sense of wealth transfer, I agree, is always bad. It depletes the good to fund the apathetic.
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@cvnt @Midwit @PurpCat @amerikaner @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch @p
It should be part of the environmental movement.
Make everything locally, avoid commuting, recycle and reuse, and compost the Reds.
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@p @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
Maybe, but I think there are more damages than death. Democracy has left a group of confused zombies behind.
I recall neuroscience research being used that was achieved through methods we could not in a non-barbaric society.
However, I think the ultimate criticism of National Socialism is that after an initial lift, its system started to fail.
That means that it is not what we want after all.
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@amerika @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch Well, the initial lift, I'm not convinced exists. The crash does seem to be reliable.
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@p @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
We should also mention here what Junger noted: the Nazis recruited most from ex-Communists.
No wonder they had a mechanistic, bureaucratic, approach to life.
This ultimately made a system that could not adapt in the small, and that paralysis began creeping up toward Hitler.
He was, in the end, an artist. Those are really good at appealing visions and terrible at reality.
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@amerika @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
> the Nazis recruited most from ex-Communists.
Yeah, it's easier to swich flavor of radical politics rather than switch to something else.
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@p @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
If we were to take the good from Nazism and discard the rest, we would be left with supply-side economics, ethno-nationalism, and a national parks program.
That could be integrated into a less unstable and failure-prone system. Also a less repressive one.
It is not possible to defeat anarchistic impulses of a population through authoritarianism.
Only by building a system that rewards the good and yeets the bad, like nature.
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@amerika @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch That's the thing: nature built such a system already, so the less we do, the better.
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@p @amerika @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
Did you know that international socialists, and national socialists, being just a single point of contention apart, both invented in the same area, at the same time, and among the same people largely shared demographics? Isn't that wild?
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@cvnt @Midwit @PurpCat @amerika @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch REJECT GERMANIC POLITICS
RETVRN TO SHIT JVST BEING COOL
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@p @m0xEE @PurpCat @Midwit @amerika @cvnt @ins0mniak @olmitch TRUE
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@p @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
Nature built natural selection and it makes sense to incorporate that.
But we have displaced most of it, and need a replacement.
Even more, I have learned that there are two options in any group: either the best command the rest, or the rest command the best.
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@amerika @Midwit @PurpCat @ins0mniak @m0xEE @olmitch
> Nature built natural selection and it makes sense to incorporate that.
Seems like if we, instead of incorporating it, just try to get out of its way, then we end up ahead of the game.
> But we have displaced most of it, and need a replacement.
Not if what you mean is farming. If what you mean is the opening to Idiocracy, sure, no one can disagree.
> Even more, I have learned that there are two options in any group: either the best command the rest, or the rest command the best.
Well, rhymes and everything.
I am gonna bail out of this thread, though.
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