93 replies to this topic

[Juni Ori]

BP, be careful, somebody might be insulted.

Tanaka, actually that link you gave is quite interesting reading. Especially if you try to figure out what are the personal motives and political view of its writer. At least I haven't noticed any blatant flaws in the text. Might give some people quite a lot to think of.

[Blood-Pigggy]

Haha, there's all this crap about Americans in this thread and I make that comment and someone has to say something about it  

[Tom Henrik]

I don't really see what this has to do with games anymore

[A. J. Raffles]

Juni Ori, on Jun 25 2006, 10:05 PM, said:

BP, be careful, somebody might be insulted.

Well, at least he didn't say "tee-totallers with ill-maintained saunas". THAT would have been an insulting.

[Sinke]

Hitler was a nazist, and they are different movement from fascist. Fascism was developed in Italy.

I don't think that timeline can be firm excuse for this link of Rushmore with fascism. The game is not chronologically founded. But it is interesting that I wasn't the only person who found this "link" provocative.

Blood Piggy, careful! The argumentation which was given in the AA discussion isn't the same level as your Nordic claim. However, I believe that was a joke.

[Tom Henrik]

Why should BP be careful about his statement? It's true:

[Blood-Pigggy]

Jesus! You seriously do look like a Nordic barbarian.

Lawl, that's kinda scary.

[Sinke]

I guess I can't have a counter on that one.

[Juni Ori]

Sinke, yes, fascism and national socialism are two different things, even though they have a lot of similarities. Fascism has national socialistic characteristics and quite a lot bases on it, but Italian fascists and German nazis had different goals and policies. But that didn't prevent fascists to be in German regime.

Edit: Finally I found interesting flaw in that link you provided, Tanaka:

Quote

He says that Hitler cannot have been a Leftist because he favoured: "politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy". Phew! So Stalin was not political, not a militarist and not a dictator? Enough said.

Who has proven Stalin was leftist? He was power-seeking dictator, who happened to use leftist agenda as his personal tool.

[Blood-Pigggy]

What does it matter if they're left handed or right handed?

[Sinke]

I think that Soviet Union's leftism was quite shallow in everything what supposed to help people. And quite deep in everything what was supposed to restrict the people.

Communism is a system where everybody is equal, but some are more equal than the others. Capitalism is a system where everybody is talented, but some are more talented than most talented.

[Japofran]

Tom, in that photograph you look like some ancient Greek.

Looks like the topic has widened, I guess it was unavoidable all the time. Leftism is about *planning society* instead of letting it develop espontaneously, going after some utopia which always results in a nightmarish dystopia in the end and even some leftists renounce sometimes, such as stalinism. No wonder that radical leftist regimes are dictatorial, in fact totalitarian, they need be in order to force society the way they want. "Helping people" and "everybody equal" are pieces of propaganda you can find in fascism as well. But then fascism is about planning society as well, even if based on nationalism instead of marxist class-struggle theory. And then again every communist regime including the URSS and China do also use nationalism to rally support among its subjects. Italian fascism may not be quite the same as German nationalsocialism, but I guess Russian leninism and Chinese maoism would be more different. By the way Mussolini was also a member of a marxist party before founding the Fascist one.

I don't think democracy is by default left-oriented. My model of democracy development would be the British one, without revolutions. It was also inherited by countries such as the USA and Australia. The leftist model is the French Revolution, which killed thousands of innocent people a day during months, and then resulted in the Napoleonic (fascist-like?) empire which ravaged whole Europe. Then France convulsively evolved through five different republican regimes, a second imperial one (Napoleon III) and many bloody revolutions.

I think Sweden is a good discussion point. I've heard that Swedish authorities claim that the unemployment is only 5 per cent, but a similar amount isn't working either, only that the government doesn't officially recognize them as unemployed--because it's subsidizing them. I invite you to obserb the Swedish future long-term developments, they might be heading for some slow disaster, somewhat like France's GDP growth's having reached negative figures and unemployment's being already higher than the Spanish one.

The period between the first and the second World War was the worst historical period for freedom so far, and the tide influenced even democratic countries. But I don't think the USA has ever been remotely close to fascism, neither in the past nor now.

[Tulac]

Quote

Leftism is about *planning society*

Not true, leftism is about less social differences but also more overall liberty, because liberals are also considered left wing, you seem like portraying every leftist as a communist which just isn't true, just like every right winged isn't pro fascist...

[Japofran]

Tulac, on Jun 26 2006, 11:45 AM, said:

Not true, leftism is about less social differences but also more overall liberty, because liberals are also considered left wing

No, that's the stuff they're selling, but I don't buy it. Every leftist measure curtails freedom to some extent, although of course democratic leftism can't be compared to extreme leftism--communism. In order to try to reduce social differences centre-leftist measures are forcing things and besides, they don't achieve anything good. Because history shows once and again that a free economy is the only thing that creates wealth thus supressing poverty--take Japan for instance, from the Middle Ages to a prosperous society where everybody lives among luxuries such as videogames in only a century. It's not true that leftist measures make the poor less poor and the rich less rich; they make the rich poorer and the poor also poorer.

Just tell me any centre-leftist measure and I'll tell you why it curtails freedom, even if very little. Look, here in Spain right now the government is passing some bill to force corporations and political parties to have a certain proportion of women in their top boards. Equality of sexes, it sounds so jolly and politically correct that even the "right wing" party here supports the core of the reform. But why on earth is the government entitled to tell a corporation whom it must appoint for its board? Is the corporate property of the government? That's not completely like nationalizing corporations as communists do but it's partially so. And besides, the reform also aims at forcing a certain proportion of "independent" board members. Why? Because corporations should be ruled by "independent" people instead of by their owners? It's crazy! But of course the true aim is the government's being able to appoint or "suggest" that members.

Not to talk about the political parties. Must the government be able to put restrictions about who is to be in an electoral list? Isn't that hugely anti-democratic!?

Juni Ori, on Jun 26 2006, 12:58 AM, said:

Edit: Finally I found interesting flaw in that link you provided, Tanaka:

Quote

He says that Hitler cannot have been a Leftist because he favoured: "politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy". Phew! So Stalin was not political, not a militarist and not a dictator? Enough said.

Who has proven Stalin was leftist? He was power-seeking dictator, who happened to use leftist agenda as his personal tool.

I don't agree. If Stalin had been but a power-seeking dictator he would have acted otherwise, he took far-leftist revolutionary measures which may have jeopardized his office--were it not for the communist iron control over every aspect of society. Take the Holodomor for instace, Stalin killed millions of Ukranians by starvation. Why would have he done such thing, thus maybe risking Ukraine's secession or at least popular unrest, had he seeked but to keep his office? Actually it was done for two reasons: because Ukranian small landowners were enemies to the revolution; and because the crazy socialist five-year plans had established the amount of wheat Ukraine had to export, and even after taking any wheat the Ukranian peasants had to eat themselves, those planned amounts were never reached!

Marxism-leninism wasn't a "political tool" suitable to keep popular support, it was implemented by Stalin because he believed in it. But we needn't talk about Stalin if you don't want. We can talk about Lenin, who also killed plenty of people. Or we can talk about wheter Chavez, or Kim Jong-il, or whoever you like, are militaristic or not.

[Tulac]

Tanaka:
Your view is totally distorted, you believe that leftist are bad for the economy and that laissez faire is the only way to go, ever heard of the great depression, if it weren't for public intervention and limitation of what corporations are allowed to do we would have such a crisis every 20 years, and probably great world wars because, that's what is needed to get the economy back up...
Just look at the 1800's laissez fare, yes economy is growing, but the conditions for the average man were worse if it hadn't been for leftist chances are you would still be working 12 hours a day for very low wages, which is sadly still the case in most of the world (because China, India, Indonesia and such countries are the most of the world)...
National control of the economy = no, limiting corporations in extortion of national resources and people = yes, that's what leftism is all about, maybe if you would work in a shoe factory for 15h a day barely providing for yourself you would be more grateful of the left wing...
China is a good example too, they've gone right wing (obviously with economy which is exploding), but has it helped bring up the standard of most people? No...
Our country was in communism, and was robbed in privatisation, these facts are interesting...
(CIA factbook)

Croatian GDP/per capita 11 800$
People below poverty line: 11%

US GDP/per capita: 41 800$
People below poverty line: 12%

This just proves you how worng liberal capitalism is, I mean USA has got almost 4 times larger GDP per capita than Croatia, and still they have even more people below poverty line...
And this is just my country which has been heavily robbed in privatisation process due to corrupt (right winged) politicians...
Also I believe that poor people are much better off here, because at least they have things like free health care, free higher education etc.

Also on the topic of Japan, that is probably the worst example, if you would know anything about the culture of business in Japan. They don't lay of workers the companies take care of their workers until they find them a new job, the economy is controlled via national banking system etc. It has much more left wing elements than right wing elements, although you seemed to marginalize the right/left wing only through the view of economy although there's much more to it like human rights, conservative/liberal etc.