What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[viper37]

Is she predicting it, or threatening it?

In her case, predicting.  I don't think she is in a position to threaten anything.

[Syt]

Oh no.

[Caliga]

Neat trick that the 'Crazed Radical Left' can be communists and fascists at the same time!

[Valmy]

Neat trick that the 'Crazed Radical Left' can be communists and fascists at the same time!

That's nothing. They are both anarchists and authoritarians as well.

[Josquius]

Is it a widespread belief that the nazis were actually left wing or are is this just trump and his followers not getting words?

I've certainly heard this argument online but its not the most common

[Sheilbh]

It's been a trope on the right for years. Jonah Goldberg (now staunch Never Trumper, I believe) wrote Liberal Fascism back in the Bush years. Very little of this is new, it's just escaped from being a game for people who know better.

[Valmy]

It kind of depends on where you sit on the right wing. If you are some free market libertarian type and you identify left wing as meaning government intervention and control of the economy than yeah, the Nazis look pretty left wing to you. But then everybody who isn't living in an anarcho-capitalist commune, or at least aspires to, is left wing to those guys.

A lot of it also comes from the fact that if there was a stupid idea (left, right, center, whatever) the Nazis probably believed it.

It seems like the Italians and Spanish weren't quite as credulous but weren't exactly bright shining light bulbs either.

[The Brain]

Left and right is a pretty uninteresting divide since it doesn't matter if something is right wing or left wing.

[Sheilbh]

It kind of depends on where you sit on the right wing. If you are some free market libertarian type and you identify left wing as meaning government intervention and control of the economy than yeah, the Nazis look pretty left wing to you. But then everybody who isn't living in an anarcho-capitalist commune, or at least aspires to, is left wing to those guys.

I don't think it's sophisticated, I think they just want to call their opponents Nazis:


Again, I believe this guy is a hard-core never Trumper now. It has the twin benefits of delegitimising your opponents and innoculating against the power in "fascism" and "Nazi". It's the worst accusation, the ultimate evil within Western societies, so wearing out the shock is not a good thing.

Also if they want to attack the dangers of the left - Stalin is right there. I sort of sympathise with their view that the Soviets are not seen with sufficient horror (see the tankies ). Although I've been on a couple of holidays in Poland in the last year and they very much see them as twin evils - I imagine that's relatively commone in CEE.

[Josquius]

The Soviets complicate things though in that yeah you had Stalin who deserves all the shit he gets, and it's insane certain groups refuse to listen to it.
.. But then in later times the USSR was nowhere near as bad as the propeganda would have it. Yes. Still an undemocratic  authoritarian regime with all sorts of problems. But it did have pros too. At times it was a fair bit "nicer" than many solidly C list dictatorships the world has seen in the last century. The 1980s Soviet Union wasn't North Korea.
I know America tends to have particular problems with this and so much of the Eastern European views of the old regimes does have a heavily nationalist taint - like it wasn't the nasty regime that was the problem, it was entirely that the regime was subservient to a similar regime in Russia that was the issue.

[Valmy]

The latter versions of the Soviets were just kind of inept, bureaucratic, and corrupt so long as you didn't piss them off. Kind of like the Tsarist regime that came before.

[Josquius]

The latter versions of the Soviets were just kind of inept, bureaucratic, and corrupt so long as you didn't piss them off. Kind of like the Tsarist regime that came before.

The big thing that I find interesting with the later Soviets is when people did piss off the regime they (usually. Not unless they really angered the kgb) didn't get a bullet in the head or sent to a death camp... They just sort of had their life ruined. Demoted to cleaning duty, their kids denied a university place, and so on.
Which, yeah, not good by any stretch. But far from the most evil way of dealing with dissidents.

[viper37]

The 1980s Soviet Union wasn't North Korea.

The Afghans might disagree with that assertion.

[Zoupa]

The goulag was active still in the 80s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasyl_Stus

Pizza Hut Gorbachev sent tanks to Vilnius and Tbilisi, killing civilians.

The USSR was always shit.

[Barrister]

It kind of depends on where you sit on the right wing. If you are some free market libertarian type and you identify left wing as meaning government intervention and control of the economy than yeah, the Nazis look pretty left wing to you. But then everybody who isn't living in an anarcho-capitalist commune, or at least aspires to, is left wing to those guys.

I don't think it's sophisticated, I think they just want to call their opponents Nazis:


Again, I believe this guy is a hard-core never Trumper now. It has the twin benefits of delegitimising your opponents and innoculating against the power in "fascism" and "Nazi". It's the worst accusation, the ultimate evil within Western societies, so wearing out the shock is not a good thing.

Also if they want to attack the dangers of the left - Stalin is right there. I sort of sympathise with their view that the Soviets are not seen with sufficient horror (see the tankies ). Although I've been on a couple of holidays in Poland in the last year and they very much see them as twin evils - I imagine that's relatively commone in CEE.

I have not read Liberal Fascism, but I am now a fan of Goldberg's work more in terms of his podcasts and columns.  He's not as hard-core Never Trump as some (he's more of a "I'll write in the name of some GOPer rather than vote for Biden, but I'll never vote for Trump).

As I understand the thesis of Liberal Fascism (always dangerous when I haven't read it) it wasn't that Liberals are inherently fascist - but rather that fascism and fascist thinking has equal heritage on the left as on the right.