12-21-2016, 11:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-22-2016, 09:23 AM by FireIceTalon.)
While fascism as a whole is somewhat more complex in terms of racist ideology, the specific type of fascism in question when holocaust denial is the subject, is Nazism. I don't think there is any reasonable person, besides white supremists, Nazis, fascists of most stripes, the KKK or similar organizations (all of which are far from "reasonable"), that would deny both the Nazi regime and Nazism as an ideology is inherently racist. Almost all historical examples of fascism however have included some institutionalized form of racial or ethnic oppression, it just so happens that the Nazi's brand of it is the most prominent example. Because of this, and because of many of its underlying premises of masculinity, chauvinism, national superiority and xenophobic tendencies towards any threat (internal or external, perceived or real); it is extremely difficult if not impossible to be fascist without being a racist (being racist without being fascist though, is quite a bit easier - many liberals make racist remarks without even realizing they are being racist, for instance). I think the following article here breaks it down quite well. Marxist views of fascism are mentioned, though the article isn't written from that particular premise but it nevertheless is quite thorough in making its point:
http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analys...g-a-racist
I am definitely not in this camp, and have had disagreements with other comrades on this issue. I firmly believe fascists, white nationalists and other racist groups should NOT be allowed free speech or any sort of platform to convey or perpetuate their disgusting ideas. Indeed, my views regarding fascists are quite authoritarian, and unapologetically so. But, for good reasons explained below.
Speech has causality. Pacifism has never stopped fascists - I can't think of a single historical example of this ever happening. Organizing for racial extermination, segregation, oppression, or superiority has nothing to do with "free speech". The consequences of said "speech" are absolutely in no way compatible with freedom by any measure. Their speech is intrinsically tied to death camps & slave plantations when they fly that swastika or their confederate flags. "Freedom" to be fascist is not "freedom" at all, any more than the "freedom" to rape is "freedom" at all. Their speech is weaponized, and it is so in a racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, ageist, xenophobic, nationalistic, militaristic direction. They are organizing for the most hierarchical, coercive, repressive elements of capitalist society to be seen not only as necessary, but even as heroic.
No platform for fascists is simply the realization of knowing what the consequences of not physically confronting fascism are: The consequences are that no one will have freedom of anything. Except of course, white, straight males. There is no reasoning with fascists, but we shouldn't be trying to reason with them anyways since they hold nihilistic moral and political positions that are entirely untenable. It cannot be confronted or overcome by simple ideals like love, diplomacy, or other abstracts. It has to be confronted with direct FORCE, even its most famous figure acknowledged this fact:
"Only one thing could have stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement." - Hitler
^^He was right, but we won't make the same error again. Indeed, we will heed his advice, and will crush the scum seeking to continue his rotten-to-the-core, cancerous ideological legacy, and we will do so with the upmost brutality and violence as we deem necessary. All his followers can join their fuhrer on the best endeavor they will partake: being maggot food.
Fascism was designed to exploit the political terrain as it stood, and no platform is an attempt to alter that terrain to halt fascism. It must be stopped by any means necessary, up to and including the use of bullets. There will be no gulags, re-education camps, or prisons for fashies - none of that. Just plain ol' bullets, simple as that. Then, we will burn all their corpses into ash, lest we suffer from a fascist zombie apocalypse. There will be NO fascist martyrs this time around. Sounds violent? It is, but a far less violent and horrible measure than the alternative of letting fascists have things their way. Fascism needs to be looked upon and be treated for what it really is: a cancer with absolutely no redeemable qualities to the human species.
Too often, immigration reform is just a euphemism for "send all the beaners back to Mexico where they fucking belong", and being against affirmative action is like saying "dont attack my white privilege". Both are heavily reactionary and racist positions, even if they use less volatile language than what I put in quotations above during discourse, at the end of the day it boils down to being the same thing.
Most of that violence is enforced by the police and state itself, I'd say. When fascists organize, the police show up to protect the demonstration. When leftists organize for any reason, whether for economic reasons, minority, women, LGBTQ rights, the police usually show up to oppress them.
There is no classes, and therefore no state in communism. What you are thinking of I bet, is the transitional period between capitalism and communism, called 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat', or in a larger context, socialism. In this phase, classes and thus a state still exist, but that state is now controlled by an organized, revolutionary working class instead of the capitalists. As a result, the state will be used to restructure and reorganize society along socialist lines while at the same time used to prevent the former ruling class from sabotaging the construction of socialism, and ultimately communism. Capitalism is the dictatorship of the bourgeois, socialism is DotP. Communism is a stage reached only when all reactionary elements of the former society have been eradicated and everything is produced for human consumption/need instead of for profit (as in capitalism) or for restructuring social organization (as in socialism), all class distinctions and the social processes (i.e. wage labour) that necessitate them, along with the state itself, are abolished.
Regarding Stalin's anti-semitism, this is just another good reason for communists of all stripes to distance themselves from him as far as possible. His anti-semitism should be reviled as much as anyone elses that holds such despicable views. That being said, the reason holocaust denial gets more attention I think, is largely because of the ideological nature of the respective systems and their actions. The Nazi regime was explicitly anti-semetic ideologically and it fostered a system that was built upon this premise for the systematic oppression and extermination of not only Jews, but also Gypsies, blacks, disabled persons, leftists/communists or others they viewed as a threat or inferior to them. Stalin might have been anti-semetic also, but his regime wasn't organized or constructed on such a premise in general; and further, his dislike of Jews can probably be attributed to his huge paranoia that they were a nationalist bourgeois organization hell bent on the destruction of the Soviet Union (which of course, was/is utterly ridiculous - many of the original Bolsheviks were Jewish), rather than along ethnical lines as it was for Hitler. This of course, doesn't make it any more excusable, but nevertheless is probably why it recieves less attention than holocaust denial.
http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analys...g-a-racist
Quote:I'm in the camp of supporting all speech, even the right to be an idiot with hateful speech, or our quibbling about perceptions of truth. Because, policing of thoughts is a subjective exercise, and prone to be abused by thought police.
I am definitely not in this camp, and have had disagreements with other comrades on this issue. I firmly believe fascists, white nationalists and other racist groups should NOT be allowed free speech or any sort of platform to convey or perpetuate their disgusting ideas. Indeed, my views regarding fascists are quite authoritarian, and unapologetically so. But, for good reasons explained below.
Speech has causality. Pacifism has never stopped fascists - I can't think of a single historical example of this ever happening. Organizing for racial extermination, segregation, oppression, or superiority has nothing to do with "free speech". The consequences of said "speech" are absolutely in no way compatible with freedom by any measure. Their speech is intrinsically tied to death camps & slave plantations when they fly that swastika or their confederate flags. "Freedom" to be fascist is not "freedom" at all, any more than the "freedom" to rape is "freedom" at all. Their speech is weaponized, and it is so in a racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, ageist, xenophobic, nationalistic, militaristic direction. They are organizing for the most hierarchical, coercive, repressive elements of capitalist society to be seen not only as necessary, but even as heroic.
No platform for fascists is simply the realization of knowing what the consequences of not physically confronting fascism are: The consequences are that no one will have freedom of anything. Except of course, white, straight males. There is no reasoning with fascists, but we shouldn't be trying to reason with them anyways since they hold nihilistic moral and political positions that are entirely untenable. It cannot be confronted or overcome by simple ideals like love, diplomacy, or other abstracts. It has to be confronted with direct FORCE, even its most famous figure acknowledged this fact:
"Only one thing could have stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement." - Hitler
^^He was right, but we won't make the same error again. Indeed, we will heed his advice, and will crush the scum seeking to continue his rotten-to-the-core, cancerous ideological legacy, and we will do so with the upmost brutality and violence as we deem necessary. All his followers can join their fuhrer on the best endeavor they will partake: being maggot food.
Fascism was designed to exploit the political terrain as it stood, and no platform is an attempt to alter that terrain to halt fascism. It must be stopped by any means necessary, up to and including the use of bullets. There will be no gulags, re-education camps, or prisons for fashies - none of that. Just plain ol' bullets, simple as that. Then, we will burn all their corpses into ash, lest we suffer from a fascist zombie apocalypse. There will be NO fascist martyrs this time around. Sounds violent? It is, but a far less violent and horrible measure than the alternative of letting fascists have things their way. Fascism needs to be looked upon and be treated for what it really is: a cancer with absolutely no redeemable qualities to the human species.
Quote:We need to be able to have conversations on immigration reform, or affirmative action without resorting to labeling our opponents as racists.
Too often, immigration reform is just a euphemism for "send all the beaners back to Mexico where they fucking belong", and being against affirmative action is like saying "dont attack my white privilege". Both are heavily reactionary and racist positions, even if they use less volatile language than what I put in quotations above during discourse, at the end of the day it boils down to being the same thing.
Quote:I think many more "left-wing demonstrations" lead to violence, usually instigated by external anarchist agitators.
Most of that violence is enforced by the police and state itself, I'd say. When fascists organize, the police show up to protect the demonstration. When leftists organize for any reason, whether for economic reasons, minority, women, LGBTQ rights, the police usually show up to oppress them.
Quote:In communism, the state is the custodian of everything and it is the state that owns everything.
There is no classes, and therefore no state in communism. What you are thinking of I bet, is the transitional period between capitalism and communism, called 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat', or in a larger context, socialism. In this phase, classes and thus a state still exist, but that state is now controlled by an organized, revolutionary working class instead of the capitalists. As a result, the state will be used to restructure and reorganize society along socialist lines while at the same time used to prevent the former ruling class from sabotaging the construction of socialism, and ultimately communism. Capitalism is the dictatorship of the bourgeois, socialism is DotP. Communism is a stage reached only when all reactionary elements of the former society have been eradicated and everything is produced for human consumption/need instead of for profit (as in capitalism) or for restructuring social organization (as in socialism), all class distinctions and the social processes (i.e. wage labour) that necessitate them, along with the state itself, are abolished.
Regarding Stalin's anti-semitism, this is just another good reason for communists of all stripes to distance themselves from him as far as possible. His anti-semitism should be reviled as much as anyone elses that holds such despicable views. That being said, the reason holocaust denial gets more attention I think, is largely because of the ideological nature of the respective systems and their actions. The Nazi regime was explicitly anti-semetic ideologically and it fostered a system that was built upon this premise for the systematic oppression and extermination of not only Jews, but also Gypsies, blacks, disabled persons, leftists/communists or others they viewed as a threat or inferior to them. Stalin might have been anti-semetic also, but his regime wasn't organized or constructed on such a premise in general; and further, his dislike of Jews can probably be attributed to his huge paranoia that they were a nationalist bourgeois organization hell bent on the destruction of the Soviet Union (which of course, was/is utterly ridiculous - many of the original Bolsheviks were Jewish), rather than along ethnical lines as it was for Hitler. This of course, doesn't make it any more excusable, but nevertheless is probably why it recieves less attention than holocaust denial.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)