How to Explain that the Democracy Crisis Transcends Principle

The communist dialectic says societal change comes from radical means. It’s all part of the plan.

Oh sure. Soviet Communists for one. Stalin made a pact with Hitler. Then he deported German communists back to Fascist Germany, at least the ones he didn’t kill outright.

In terms of groups, plenty of people routinely hold their nose and vote for the lesser of two evils. The 1991 Louisiana Gubanatorial election comes to mind, when David Duke was defeated by a Democrat. Bumper stickers read, “Vote for the crook. It’s important.”

Don’t you remember all those times that Kamala and Biden had leftists killed?

Yeah because no historical account is ever critical of anyone other than the socialists in 1920s Germany. Other than them the term Weimar Republic is synonymous with liberals being effective and not utterly crap in the face of the rise of fascism :roll_eyes:

The reason it’s such a telling indictment of far left Trump enablers like the one in the OP, is it’s not the liberals who are so fond of absolutist “with us or with the fascists” statements. It’s the far left who love that kind of thing. Well here you are a real life fascist is on the verge of power and you can either do something about it (by voting and otherwise supporting the Harris campaign) or be complicit in his seizing power, and all the things that will result.

Not that’s it’s super relevant to the OP but any “consideration” owed the far left is cancelled out by the fact the next thing they did in the “grand project of saving democracy” was to ally with the nazis and invade Poland with them,

As if this post and this thread are not examples of “with us or with the fascists.” It is only the Left that does that. Sure.

The problem is that it’s also a long-standing move from the fascist playbook.

When democracies collapse, sometimes they’re replaced with left-wing dictatorships and sometimes they’re replaced with right-wing dictatorships.

Personally, I think if democracy collapses in this country, we’ll get a right-wing dictatorship. They’re the ones doing the prep work.

That’s arguable. After all, the communists did end up taking over from the Nazis in half of Germany.

Only because an external force of that persuasion invaded and occupied them. No such external forces exists to do the same in the case of the US, even if such a thing could happen without the result being a nuclear war.

Yup it took 8 years and taking the US to brink of fascism but the rest the political establishment has come around to your way of thinking. Feel free to gloat self righteously and throw out as many I-told-you-sos as you want as you vote for Harris

We can say that now. But if Trump gets a second term, he might invite Putin to station Russian troops here in America.

But modern Russia is fascist, not communist regardless of the lies the Russophile portions of the far left tell themselves. So that still wouldn’t result in a leftist dictatorship but a right wing one.

All of 'em illegal immigrants. :slightly_smiling_face:

I believe in one previous thread I asked where the hell did the Soviets find any indigenous communists in eastern Germany, given how thoroughly the native ones were exterminated.

My point was that we can’t rule out the possibility of foreign military forces interfering in American political issues under a Trump administration, not what ideology the resulting dictatorship might be.

Conversion by the sword; they only needed to point a gun at someone and ask if they were communist to find plenty of communists.

I’ll give props for the leftie Popular Front Republicans in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) as well as all those who volunteered to fight Hitler, whatever their politics. I’m honestly not sure what to think about the Soviet Union under Stalin.

Stalin was about Stalin. He didn’t do much paperwork. In fact, he didn’t make many routine decisions. Based on Bazhanov’s memoir on what he did as Stalin’s Secretary, Wilson Center fellow Kamil Galeev explains:

So what the hell did Stalin do in his office all day? He listened in on phone calls, without the knowledge of the people who were talking. Technologically it was a sweet system set up by a Czechoslovok Communist engineer, who was later executed. Along with many others afterwards.

Anyway, the Communist Party of Russia has always been concerned about the possibility of military coup. So they made very sure there would be no popular generals on their watch. Since competent generals are often popular, the Communist Party preferred incompetents, as does Putin. Bad decisions were baked in. Luckily, they had American industry backing them up after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. While I suppose Private Ivan deserves my thanks, I find it hard to credit Stalin and the Politburo for the defense of democracy as that wasn’t their goal, nor was it a project that they carried out particularly well.

PS: There are plenty of members of the Left who are smart enough to vote for Harris. Hell, I suspect most of them are. Antifa activist Talia Lavin is one. Most Leftists are not tankies.

There’s a far left Reddit I sometimes read (it’s not directly a political Reddit) that banned all discussion of the invasion in Ukraine because members were attacking one another. There was a contingent who hated Putin and his naked aggression and thought it was good idea to help the Ukranians. The other side thought NATO was the most evil thing since sliced bread and blamed it and the United States for pushing Russia into war. Both sides were really lighting into one another until the moderators banned all discussion on the subject.

Sounds a lot like the Green Party.

On a left-leaning forum I used to be on they ended up having to repeatedly infract people who were calling for the genocide of Ukriainians, called them fascists and Nazis and supported the invasion in the name of “the Left” while ignoring how un-Left the Russians are.

Some were pretty clearly just anti-American/anti-Western; many didn’t even bother to pretend otherwise. But there appears to be a significant number who are essentially ideologically driven crypto-Russian nationalists, who have so absorbed the idea that Russia = Communism that they support everything Russia does in the name of Communism while ignoring that modern Russia is anything but. Probably in part a leftover of how the USSR managed to effectively take over the international Communist movement and turn it into an extension of themselves.

I think I am even further away from understanding your support for them.