Let me be more blunt then, it's not really a good argument to use celebrities as standins for all "X political group here" because they aren't involved in policy decisions, they're the equivalent of any other single voter really unless the context is in them donating money or raising awareness for a campaign or something.


Perhaps you could explain why she had any relevance in your mind in the first place?

__________________
Brought to you by Sanguine Enterprises.

My Worldbuilding:
http://bloodinkworlds.tumblr.com/

She's a left leaning person speaking her mind.

Why can't all totalitarian dictatorships be like Franco's Spain, and normalize/democratize after the crazed totalitarian dies?

not every dictator is Franco or Pinochet unfortunately.

Qaddafi was developing nukes but gave it up in exchange for assurances that he would be left alone... which didn't happen. Likewise we should not forget that NK had asked for similar assurances in mid 2000s, a written confirmation from the US that it will leave them alone in exchange for dumping the nuclear program but the US refused. This shows that their actions are not crazy and that the US has a part of the blame pie.

Now there are two choices. Go in, maybe they are bluffing and their defense is not as half as good as they are pretending or maybe it goes tits up and millions die. Or we leave them alone, hope they are not crazy (or don't get crazy in the future) and take the hit to nuclear proliferation.
I am usually decisive in my opinions but this one I just can't make a decision. On one hand we have, for a lack of a better term, nuclear chauvinism where nuke owners don't let other get them and it is BS. But nukes are so dangerous that they sort of cut through philosophy, ideals will be pretty hollow if NK starts a nuclear war and such things can easily escalate into a global conflict. I just don't know.

Meanwhile, on the right...
https://web.archive.org/web/20120218...enocide-right/

__________________

Right, and Kim Jong-Un definitely remembers what happened to Qaddafi after he gave up his nuclear program. I don't think there's any way to get Un to give up his nukes.

Diplomatically, the most likely scenario is that we make him promise not to develop further nuclear weapons. He will ignore this promise, so it'll be kicking the can down the road. But the military option risks bringing China into the conflict, so it's not really an option.

I think we'll be waiting for NK to collapse, and hope that Kim is either quickly neutralized or doesn't decide to take his neighbors with him. It's not really a good scenario, however.

There's an interesting book called The Cleanest Race, by BR Meyers. He analyzes NK propaganda and concludes that NK is more of a racialist state in the vein of Nazi Germany or militarist Japan than a typical communist dictatorship. He points out that NK propaganda lacks any of the internationalism periodically seen in Soviet or Chinese propaganda—it's all about the purity and innocence of the Korean people, who must be protected from outside threats.

Which is one of the reasons they cannot be trusted to keep to an agreement. They are racialists, who believe that virtue is innate to being Korean. Thus, anything they do is automatically justified. International law (which the Soviets sometimes made a big deal about) simply doesn't matter to NK, because the propaganda presents them as an innocent and victimized race in need of a protector (the Kims).





You can see an example here. The Kims both look very loving and parental.



Even here, with the military, there is a familiar closeness.

Contrast this with Stalin.





Stalin's holding a child in the first image, but he doesn't look nearly as warm or paternal as the Kims. There's a distance. Likewise, he cuts a more ominous figure in the second than Kim does when he's standing in front of the soldiers. Soviet propaganda tended to emphasize strength. NK is more about purity.

__________________
See WoW in a way you've never imagined it.

"He came to Ahn'qiraj for the strife... instead, he found a wife! She's my qiraji love-bride, next on Sick Sad World of Warcraft!"

Use a different site and example brotates.

This is the 6th time youve used that, and its from a fringe site.

__________________
Fucking Epic :X

I'll stop linking it when you guys stop picking random people's opinions and prop them up as "the left." Unlike right-wingers, the rest of the country isn't in lock-step with each other.

__________________

What if all the years North Korea was firing missiles into the water they were waging war against Poseidon and now that they have defeated him they got his powers? The US is currently being hit by two powerful hurricanes back to back. Somebody should tell Trump!

Says the sheep.

__________________
Fucking Epic :X

Because, in many cases, they don't let them, and in the others, it's virtually impossible. Let me elaborate.

All fascist dictatorships end eventually, once the problem they first fought against is solved. See all ancient empires, and how many of them naturally evolved to include democratic systems. Fascism works, through blood and destruction, but it works, and thus, it creates wealth and peace for those on the right side. Eventually, they will embrace that peace and enjoy the results.

The only thing you need to kill fascism peacefully is patience. Trying to solve it the quick way almost never ends up well, for the power vacuum only makes things worse. See all the Arab springs. Fascism is almost always there to fight and contain something else, with genuine support from a big part of the population, who are tired of the bullshit. Let's imagine someone is annoying you, and you tell him to stop, but it never works. Now, take a shotgun and blow his head off. Problem solved. This is fascism, logic without emotions.

Communists dictatorships are an entirely different thing, because they follow an "endless revolution", and make up new enemies all the time. The only peaceful end they know is starvation. It works almost like ancient religions, where emotions override logic, and people brainwash themselves into believing in lies to comfort each other. And when one lie crumbles, it's replaced by another, until some day, nature itself blows up. See all those idiots who believe in "magic" instead of science, and then die.

The original leaders are always frauds who are on it for the money and the power, but eventually the fanatics they created start taking control and reach power, where they keep spreading the lies, except that this time, those at the top believe them too. The original leaders might even get killed for "heresy" by their own followers.

Communism never ends well, and to a point, I think it's even more dangerous than fascism. The problem here is that we're all well aware of fascism across history, from the early empires to the last century, for it prides itself on "peace through totalitarian law and order". It's their whole point after all, to fix things the clean way.

Extremist religions (and communism), however, pride themselves on "peace through faith". It sounds good at the beginning, make everyone think the same and feel the same so there's no conflicts. However, humans aren't a hive-mind species, so it doesn't work, and thus, they lie, and pretend it's working, blaming it on lack of faith or whatever. When they kill people, they hide it, lie, and make up bullshit excuses. Sometimes they even portray their own victims as martyrs to their own cause, and blame their deaths upon the enemy (real or imaginary). They are pure, and never do any wrong. This same attitude lead to the Dark Ages, where a series of religious movements destroyed civilization all across Europe and Asia.

My point is, people living under fascism know what's going on. Some support it, others don't, but all of them understand why things are the way they are, and eventually, they don't feel the need to be so restrictive. And since the big baddies were killed a long time ago, we can start talking about new things.

In the other hand, most people living under communism or an extremist religious cult are totally brainwashed, and those who aren't have to pretend they are, out of fear of a witch hunt. Remove all their leaders, and you wouldn't achieve anything. New, probably worse leaders, would replace them. The only way to fix their brains is misery and hunger, to crush their faith until they wake up, and even then, many won't, and will probably die praying.

In both cases, there's a natural order, a life cycle of sorts. Established fascism can only get better through patience, letting the dust settle. Leave them alone, even if they took shit from you. Don't give them more fuel, and let them achieve "order" so they calm up. Established communism can only get better through death and suffering, and if you oppose this, you'll only make the toll higher. Their brainless faith needs to be crushed, and it's better if they find the way on their own. Let them make mistakes, again and again, until they learn.

Of course, this is all about established societies. If they're expanding, you should always try to stop them, though you should analyze why they are there too, and attack the root of the problem. Fascism almost always has an unheard plea behind of it, desperate people who got tired of trying things the peaceful way, and communism almost always has someone pulling the strings, manipulating the people through greed and envy.

So, let North Korea starve, and only attack them to stop them from attacking us. Invading them, or destroying non-military targets, will only make things worse. Of course, if things get too bad, we shouldn't risk the rest of the world. As for Syria, leave Assad alone, and let him rebuild the country. He was doing fine until foreign actors promoted the revolutions (which were awful for other countries). In any case, you can't change the leaders and pretend it's going to work, because it won't.

__________________


Metzen: They are one of the ancient races of Northrend that we haven't spoken of before... because we hadn't made them up before. (laughter)

~Main: Expansion theorycrafting, Expansions list, The Age of Nightmare, Empire of the Tides (coming soon)~
~Fan ficton: Anachronos Journey: The Timeless Heir~ ~Geography of continents series: Old Kalimdor (original), Pandaria~
~Locations as zones series: Azjol-Nerub, Barrow Deeps, Zul'Aman, Demon Hunter zone, Caverns of Time~

@Hlaalu Yeah I've heard such thinking before, that NK learned more from Imperial Japan than their official communist benefactors. IIRC they have removed virtually all references to Marx and communism from their official documents and now it's all Juche, Juche, Juche. (funnily enough juche means yesterday in Serbian.)

@Lon-ami, I think you are looking at fascism through some rather rosy glasses. Though I disagree with your analysis I understand how when everything seems rotten people become desperate for a strongman savior. However in most cases it doesn't work out.

There's a difference between Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism.
An Authoritarian regime just wants people to keep their head down. They aren't all that interested in reforming society into something it's not, just for people to keep quiet.

On the otherhand, Totalitarianism seeks to control every element of society. It seeks to shift and form society into whatever image the dictator imagined. It can be Nazism, Communism, Wahabiism or some other type of totalitarian ideology. I'd also mention that democracy is not necessarily a way of avoiding Totalitarianism.

When push comes to shove many will prefer an authoritarian dictator over a revolution, why? Authoritarian normalcy. Many people just want to live their lives and get their day over with. People don't want to deal with protests, road blocks, violent revolutionaries, or any such issues and will tolerate a dictator so long as they promise to crush the revolutionaries (Pinochet's big thing was throwing Communists out of Helicopters).

That's what I would call the real danger. Street fights between Nazis and antifa are pretty terrible but people are willing to tolerate surrendering freedom if only to be able to live normally again.

Umm, I don't agree? From my understanding, Spain went from a fascist regime to a constitutional monarchy not because fascism solved their problems, but because Franco died and his successor(s) began transitioning.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span...n_to_democracy

And I can't think of ancient empires that naturally evolved democratic systems. In fact, the Romans and the Greeks went the other direction thanks to Caesar and Alexander's legacies. The most prominent example of an "ancient empire" democratizing on its own is... what, the United Kingdom? I'm not sure that counts as ancient.

Aaaand now the SoL right wing is defending totalitarian fascism. I always knew you guys had it in you!

__________________

Lon-ami is a left-winger, genius. And at least he is not cheering that his political opponents are dying to a natural disaster. Pathetic as ever.

You need to stop, this is ridiculous

__________________
Brought to you by Sanguine Enterprises.

My Worldbuilding:
http://bloodinkworlds.tumblr.com/

__________________
So you wish to join the unofficial SoL Discord? Say no more!

Only one person is celebrating pain and suffering against those who they disagree with.

You're talking about the president, right?

__________________

It always works, that's what makes it dangerous. If you don't listen, if you don't reach an agreement, I just kill you. There, problem fixed. Is this a good system? Depends on the value you put in morals. If you find yourself in the mid of a disaster, you will kill to steal food. This is the same, but at a larger scale, and with pack leaders.

Fascism is pretty much the law of nature itself, eat or be eaten. It turns people back into animals for a few years, until civilization grows back. It's a reset button. We can and we must avoid reaching the situation were a big part of the population wants to push said button, because if they do, most of us would be fucked.

Yeah, that's a good summary. Fascism is usually authoritarian, while communism/religion is usually totalitarian. I do believe totalitarism is worse than authoritarism, for many reasons.

However, I disagree with the "nazi brainwashing" thing. I think Germans supported the nazis wholeheartedly. They loved Hitler, and you can't really blame them coming from the shitfest that was the WW1 post-war period. Had the allies not been such assholes with Germany, nazism would have never existed, and WW2 would have never happened. That genuine support is what made them so dangerous. They weren't brainwashed, they were cornered animals, that had experienced the worst life you could ever imagine, and now that they were recovering, their enemies wanted to take it away from them again. Of course they were going to fight back.

You won't find any old people "missing" their communist regimes, but you will find many old people missing their fascist regimes. For example, in Spain it's somewhat common to find old people saying "things were better" during the dictatorship. And, depending the side you were on, they probably were. There was no crime, and everyone could have a good job and some honest life. The question is, why are we doing worse now, in democracy? We should be doing better, why aren't we?

Also remember, one of the many reasons behind the rise of the nazis was the Bolshevist communist revolution. Police didn't do shit while communists did whatever they wanted, and good people had to suffer them, until some day a few kids with swastikas started fighting back and cleaning the streets.

Sounds familiar?

They say history repeats itself. Our streets are full of domestic terrorists and illegal immigrants, and the police does nothing. They put good people in prison for bullshit, and let terrible criminals go free. The fuck you think is gonna happen?

You can't ignore the public opinion on controversial topics for decades, and expect them to stay silent forever. The vast majority of the population in western countries is against immigration and against Islam, yet our politicians don't listen. And when some country tries to do something, the others menace it and corner them. See Hungary and Poland.

I fully believe that if these problems aren't addressed from the political center, we'll face a civil war across all of Europe, and they will be solved through violence once people get tired of the bullshit. People won't give a damn about their rights if they feel they have no future, they start starving, or get killed in the streets.

And it doesn't matter who wins, either way we'll lose the freedom we have now. Internet will probably be nuked, and we'll be back to the pre-digital era.

Things like the Brexit and Trump are last warnings. If those don't work out, the next will be terribly worse, for everyone.

He left everything planned for the transition before dying. The son of the previously exiled king was named his successor, and he knew what would be coming perfectly. The military supporting the dictatorship knew it as well.

Once the transition begun, you had moderate communists, falangists (far-right worker party linked to the dictatorship), socialists, nationalists, and ex-members of the dictatorship working together to make things work.

It worked. People got law and order, until they stopped being animals, and then they were able to sit down and talk.

The price was blood and death, but like many other fascists dictatorships of the last century, it had the support of a big part of the population, even those totally contrary to its ideas, just to fight Soviet communism.

By the USA standard, yes. By European/Spaniard standard, I'm a centrist I guess. I value personal freedom, and I like having public services (health and education), though I think those should be exclusive to the ones who pay for them, and free of political agendas.

After all, classic unions were very against immigration, because they didn't want competition. Nowadays there's no one in the left harboring those kind of feelings. Classic lefties in France voted the FN for things like that, and it's obvious Trump did, too.

I won't deny though, that I'm moving closer to classic USA libertarian stance in some things. I like to be part of a public system of sorts, but I guess I just prefer to be on my own rather than be part of a failing system. Not because it's a bad system, it's been working fine for decades, but it was ruined by the new left and their bullshit.

I guess I'm in line with the classic leftists, the guys from the old unions and such. Things have become such an abomination in the last years, many true leftists find themselves closer to right-wing parties than left ones. It's unbelievable. I blame the left for losing its core (hard-working citizens) and putting spoiled kids who have never done manual labor in charge. This is what happens when you put power above the ideas, you get rotten and ruin everything for everyone.

__________________


Metzen: They are one of the ancient races of Northrend that we haven't spoken of before... because we hadn't made them up before. (laughter)

~Main: Expansion theorycrafting, Expansions list, The Age of Nightmare, Empire of the Tides (coming soon)~
~Fan ficton: Anachronos Journey: The Timeless Heir~ ~Geography of continents series: Old Kalimdor (original), Pandaria~
~Locations as zones series: Azjol-Nerub, Barrow Deeps, Zul'Aman, Demon Hunter zone, Caverns of Time~

Okay, but what happens when the world unites to tear Nazi Germany apart? That feels like a setback.

EDIT: And the original fascists - Italy - crashed and burned. And they weren't even that badly off before Benny set them up for disaster.

Didn't he set things up for Juan Carlos to be an authoritarian monarch, but then he died and the people changed things to constitutional monarchy instead? Seems significant that these changes didn't happen until Franco died.

Holy shit.

"Prime Minister Browne of Antigua and Barbuda reports during press conference that more than 90% of structures on the island of Barbuda were destroyed. Over a shaky radio line Browne repeated the phrase “totally demolished” over and over again. There are unconfirmed reports in local media of one casualty."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/li...b066447a05c6be

90%.

__________________

Shit.