• scrion@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Some context:

    After Elmo’s venture into posting anime stuff on Twitter, this feels rather tame I guess. Or I’m just too jaded to care about this timeline any longer.

  • erp@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I have become so desensitized to the festering dumpster sludge media that the window treatment shocks me the most in this picture

  • NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    For like 80 years, the west prepared for war with Russia. Russia played the long, quiet game and just parasitized our politics, and our economies. They’re winning without ever firing a shot. It’s impressive, albeit infuriating.

              • NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Russia has had dramatic political influence in this country for a very long time now. If you’re not worried about that as well, then you’re extremely naive, my guy.

                • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  Russia has had dramatic political influence in this country for a very long time now

                  Sure, but NOWHERE near as much or as bad as under-regulated capitalism, which has taken over the entire government and caused the needless deaths of tens if not hundreds of millions in the US alone, billions worldwide.

                  And that’s not even counting the even greater numbers that it has left alive but perpetually struggling and suffering!

                • uis@lemm.ee
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                  5 months ago

                  Putinism vs bipartisan right debate on lemmy?

    • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      You give Russia too much credit.

      Europe and USA put themselves on this situation all by their own stupidity.

    • volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      You’re absolutely crazy if you honestly believe that. First of all, talking of “Russia” as a constant for the past 80 years when it’s gone from part of the USSR, to liberal-minded capitalist country with talks of joining the EU, to fascist dictatorship just in the last 35 years. There’s absolutely no “long term plan to destabilize Europe” in Russia for the past 80 years, and you’re being conspiracist and throwing history out the window.

      Secondly, as sadly shown in the early 20th century, Europe is more than capable of creating its own fascist movements. You say Russia has been conspiring to push fascism in Europe, but I’m Spanish and the USSR was the only country which helped the Republican struggle against fascism in the Spanish civil war, and after the fascists won in Spain (with the help of the Nazis and the italian fascists while the rest of Europe did nothing) and WW2 ended, fascist Spain was perfectly joined into the international community just a few decades afterwards.

      The current far-right movements in Europe are learning their lessons from Trump and Bolsonaro, and have received most of their help and funding from within Europe and from the US rather than from Russia. They’re the consequence of one and a half decades of austerity policy, where the socialdemocrats have been complicit in austerity as much as the conservative parties have been. And after corruption schemes being discovered in most christian-conservative parties in Europe, a segment of right wing that used to vote for them but lost their trust, now votes for other right wing parties, including far right. Fascism isn’t a tool from Russia to destroy Europe, it’s Europe destroying itself from within to further the interests of the wealthy elites.

      • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
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        5 months ago

        Tbf, russia is currently financing fascist and right-wing populist movements and parties all over Europe, e.g the AfD in Germany or the FPÖ in Austria.

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      That’s right, there were no flaws in the political system invented 250 years ago and only outside actors in the last 20 years led to a conservative party vs a fascist party.

      • NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        At no point was I suggesting that we haven’t caused many of our own problems. I’m simply saying that Russia is exploiting those problems for their own benefit.

        • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          That’s kind of my point. The US is the problem with our political system. Russia is a factor, but they exacerbated division that was already present. It’s actually ridiculous to try and frame it as a problem that wouldn’t have appeared if Russia stayed out of our business.

    • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Russia is neither winning nor is their disinformation campaigns that successful. This is because despite their best efforts, when they needed their propaganda to work the most, it backfired and the west is more united than ever. Not only that but the country is basically wrecked due to the invasion of Ukraine

      • NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        They put one of their assets in the White House, and you think they’re failing? They might do it a second time for fucks sake!

          • NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            France on the verge of an extreme right takeover

            Germanys AfD party making significant gains

            Substantial foreign influence in the legislative and executive branches of US Politics

            By all means, please continue to ignore the signs. “It can’t happen here”, right?

            • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Those parties aren’t gaining ground because of Russia. Russia is definitely an influence, but they’re not the reason these parties are winning. They’re gaining ground because the establishment parties are failing people and these parties are the only alternative they have. We’ve seen such parties win in Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, etc but nothing really changed foreign policy wise.

        • uis@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          If he is Russian asset, can I sell his ass?

          He is corporate asset. A tool to strengthen neofeudalism.

    • uis@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      What? Modern Russia exists for 33 years. 80 years ago certain parlamentary union was so upset at nazis, that it destroyed them.

      Also 80 years ago for that parlamentary union the lefter politician was - the better. For Putin it’s opposite.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      The swing right is a rejection of globalism by the people more than Russia being some amazing propaganda source. Blaming Russia absolves the globalists from responsibility though.

  • uis@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Real conservatives: *shows school teacher*

    For context schools are ultraconservative social institutions. That’s what they were designed to do - preserve knowledge across generations.

    All nazis that claim to be conservatives are actually nazis, not conservatives.

    • ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      If there are 9 conservatives and 1 fascist sitting around a table, then there are 10 fascists sitting around that table.

      • uis@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        So if there are 9 reformists and 1 fascist sitting around a table, would there be 10 fascists sitting around that table?

      • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        This argument is pretty dumb. If we follow this logic then American liberals are Marxist because American Marxists tend to support the DNC more often than not… But that’s obviously not true, and American liberals don’t support such an evil ideology.

        If we follow the logic in a different route and assume that 9 racists are sitting on a table with a civil rights activist, they’re all civil rights activists… But that doesn’t sound right, does it?

        Let’s try another attempt, if 10 world leaders are in a conference somewhere. Of those leaders, 9 are liberals from democratic countries and one is a dictator, does that make all 10 of them dictators? Of course not.

        The issue with this type of argument is that it’s based on guilt by association, not even that actually, it’s more of guilt by proximity. This is a logical fallacy for all the reasons stated in this article:

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

        Let’s not bring back guilt by association and doom ourselves back to the dark ages due to virtue signaling and ignorance. People should be looked as individuals and judged for their own beliefs.

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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          5 months ago

          False analogy is false. Fascism is not Marxism. In particular, very few Marxists would be willing to murder you for power, but all fascists would.

          • uis@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            Fascism is not Marxism. In particular, very few Marxists would be willing to murder you for power, but all fascists would.

            This is not what was said. I’ll rephrase it.

            Since 9 conservatives sitting around table with 1 right-winger makes all of them right-wingers, will 9 conservatives sitting around table with 1 leftist makes all of them leftists?

              • uis@lemm.ee
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                5 months ago

                Wow, manipulative. I never said that leftists are fascists. I called fascists right-wingers.

                Why no? Or you want to say that group of leftists and conservatives becomes group of conservatives?

                • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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                  5 months ago

                  Wow, dense. You can’t just replace “fascists” with some other ideology and expect it to make sense. Fascists are monsters and anyone who works with them is a monster, too.

          • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Actually I would argue that Marxism is even worse than fascism because Fascist know they’re evil and own it, but Marxists know they’re evil but pretend they’re humanitarians. It’s pretty sick. Also, looking at the theory of the ideology, it is inherently violent. This is reflected in history as tens of millions ended up being killed as a direct result Marxist violence and persecution in 20th century alone.

              • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Someone who isn’t historically illiterate? I’m not surprised either. Most people who aren’t tend to view Marxism for the evil that it was.

            • ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Well, you’ve kinda shown your hand by conflating a socio-economic theory with multiple political ideologies.

              • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Marxism is a full fledged ideology. That’s just objective fact. You can’t erase what it is or what happened because of it.

      • PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        conservatives oppose social progress and want to preserve the status quo, but are happy to fight for that within democratic bounds, more or less. Fascists want to subvert democracy and install a completely new status quo

        • masquenox@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          want to preserve the status quo,

          No different than liberals, then.

          Fascists want to subvert democracy

          All institutionalized political power is violently anti-democratic - it’s literally why you are forced to pay for violent paramilitaries to police you and protect the status quo from anything that can be called democratic with a straight face.

          Fascists are not unique in that regards.

          and install a completely new status quo

          The capitalists that funded Hitler and Mussolini into power did not do so because fascists “install a completely new status quo.” The CIA didn’t fund fascists into power all over the third world during the Cold War because fascists “install a completely new status quo.”

          They funded fascists into power because fascists protect the status quo. You know… the status quo liberals and conservatives all love so much?

          • uis@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            No different than liberals, then.

            Liberals can be conservatives. Opposite of conservatives are reformists.

            All institutionalized political power is violently anti-democratic

            Is voting anti-democratic? Because voting is political institution of democracy.

            • masquenox@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Liberals can be conservatives. Opposite of conservatives are reformists.

              All conservatives are liberals - that is, until they cross over into fascism territory. The people that get called “conservative” in the US do not disagree with liberalism in any fundamental way - they still believe in basic liberal ideas such as the fetishization of private property, capitalism, the (so-called) “free market,” and the ever-present “rule of law” (as dictated by a liberal, capitalist elite).

              Is voting anti-democratic?

              North Korea has voting. Apartheid South Africa had voting. I don’t see any liberals falling over themselves to describe those societies as “democratic” simply because of that… yet the one you exist in must be so simply because your media and your political racketeers told you it is?

              The bar for what counts as democracy or not is so damn low you need a deep-sea submersible just to see it.

      • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Fascism is more of an approach than a specific ideology. Its only core value is Strength Through Unity - but to achieve that it needs some populist values to unite the people over - which is how you get different flavors of fascism. The original Fascist Party was using nationalism. Racism is also a popular choice (fascism + racism = Nazism), and it seems like rightist values are more prune to it - but leftist values are not safe either, like we have seen in the USSR which based its fascism around socialism.

        Conservatism can be a base for fascism, but like all these other values - it doesn’t have to be fascist. The rule is simple:

        • If you want The Gays™ to just stop - that’s regular conservatism.
        • If you want a strong leader to “stop” The Gays™ - that’s fascist conservatism.
  • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
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    5 months ago

    Please stop framing backward-looking nationalists as conservative. They don’t want to conserve civil rights, environmental and protective standards, and other granted at status quo. They want society to go back to the 1930s.

      • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
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        5 months ago

        The post mentions Meloni who is nationalist (and was even fascist not too long ago). That, driven by nationalist parties, many European parties, not only conservatives, are drifting away further and further into populism is one effect of the problem of normalising populism and nationalism by the media.

      • efstajas@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I’m sorry but this really doesn’t apply to a lot of European political landscapes. In Germany for example the biggest conservative party, CDU, is still very much just annoyingly “conservative”, but definitely not “licking the gunpowder residue out of the bullet hole in Hilter’s decaying skull”.

        • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          And the conservative German nazi party (AFD) is in second place in E.U. elections right now. The conservative plague is on the rise globally, including in Europe.

          Conservatives are fascists. The more conservative one is, the more fascist one is.

          • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
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            5 months ago

            And the conservative German nazi party AfD is in second place in E.U. elections right now.

            FIFY. Since several years, the AfD is no longer a conservative party.

            • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              They are deeply conservative. The more conservative one gets, the more fascist one gets.

              AFD didn’t just suddenly abandon their conservative ideologies as they became more nationalist. Their conservatism is baked into their core ideology. Even they will tell you they are conservative. They are on the completely opposite end of the spectrum from progressives.

              Conservatism is the very foundation upon which fascism is built. Conservatism is a spectrum. This is how they can convince some moderate conservatives to vote for them. They share the same values; they just lean further to the right than moderate conservatives on some issues.

          • efstajas@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Not arguing with that, just took issue with calling all moderate-conservatives Nazis because no matter how much I dislike them, that’s just not true.

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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          Yeah, we have a couple sane right wing parties here in Denmark too, including all three of the current coalition government (one of which calls itself center left, but has been center right to right wing on most issues for a couple decades now), as well as some extremist ones to the right of those.

          “The farthest right/most conservative influential parties of all European countries” would be pretty fair though, what with frightening numbers of people voting for AFD, whatever Nigel Farage’s current party is called etc…

          To be simultaneously fair and insulting, though, they might only be able to name the extremist ones 🤷

    • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Conservatives never wanted civil rights or environmental protections. What alternate dimension did you drop out of?

      • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
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        5 months ago

        As I’m from Germany, our constitution was elaborated by a constituent assembly constisting in the majority of conservatives. It granted and grants a lot of civil rights which are questioned by modern day conservatives, such as the right for asylum or secrecy of mail and telephone. Starting from our first government, led by the conservative party CDU, the politics was also constantly pro-European towards integration. Also our first ministry for environment issues was established by a conservative government in 1986.

        This backward-looking stupidity is a phenomenon of the last 30 years. E.g. Franz Josef Strauß, the most conservative politician I can think of, was pro technical innovation. As of today, the state of Bavaria still benefits from decisions made under his government. He would rotate in his grave if he knew how his party has become.

          • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            A lot of people, including the best of the conservative politicians, take the whole “conserving our traditions” façade very seriously.

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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      Conservatives, from the very beginning, were more interested in conserving their own power, while realizing hiding behind the “conserving our traditions” mask will win them a lot, besides using the “my enemy’s hypocrisy is a fatal flaw of their character and ideology, my hypocrisy is human nature” tactic ad nauseum.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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      It would be silly to pretend the word “conservative” isn’t widely understood to mean backwards-looking nationalists. But it’s equally silly to call fascists conservative when we have a much better word for them.

      • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
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        It would be silly to pretend the word “conservative” isn’t widely understood to mean backwards-looking nationalists.

        I agree that it uses to be the norm now, however it was not always like this but the meaning has changed. The horse has left the barn. (Das Kind ist in den Brunnen gefallen)

        But it’s equally silly to call fascists conservative when we have a much better word for them.

        That’s my point.

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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          5 months ago

          The horse has left the barn.

          We have almost the exact same saying in English but it’s usually phrased as something about closing the barn door after the horses have left.

          • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
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            The German saying (I’ve just corrected the false replacements made by spellcheck) literally reads “the kid has fallen into the well”, so s.th. has happened and there is no way back.