A return of Fascism in Europe?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > A return of Fascism in Europe?

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

It's a shame the far-right scum often seem better dressed and organized than their opponents. Why do the good guys have to look like slobs? I guess it's because they've got cops and soldiers (or people attracted to such professions) while the left has college students, but still -- if an angry young male who feels disenfranchised sees a bunch of snappy outfits and tough looking guys one hand, and typical Trots or anarchists on the other, which group will make him feel more powerful and in control?

Edit: Fortunately there's also a lot of dorky fat guys on the right, whose cosplaying doesn't inspire awe or confidence in ignorant youth.

OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Aug 10, 2013

# ¿ Aug 10, 2013 03:39

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 13, 2024 10:40

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

I've seen that documentary, but that doesn't seem like the majority of left-wing people I encounter. Perhaps Europe is a bit better.

OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Aug 10, 2013

# ¿ Aug 10, 2013 03:50

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

I agree with ReV VAdAUL about the causes, but I think it's time for left-wing groups to get over the "counterculture" image. It's just not appealing to anyone, and while bad clothes, long hair, poor fitness and sporadic showering might have been radical in the 1960s, it's just harmful now. Look like competent, attractive people who have it together, and you'll have an easier time recruiting the same.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2013 09:38

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Crowsbeak posted:

if the left wants to combat the fascists they should take a few pages out of their books. For one organize soup kitchens for anyone in need of help, be they the most racist family out. Perhaps develop financial support programs as well, whi;e doing this offer your alternative to those you help, make them see the world you offer. Don't just attack the fascists but offer an alternative to their hate.

Leftists have been doing it forever, if anything that's where fascists got the idea.

Wikipedia posted:

In January, 1969, the Free Breakfast for School Children Program was initiated at St. Augustine's Church in Oakland by the Black Panther Party. The Panthers would cook and serve food to the poor inner city youth of the area. Initially run out of a St. Augustine's Church in Oakland, the Program became so popular that by the end of the year, the Panthers set up kitchens in cities across the nation, feeding over 10,000 children every day before they went to school.

In the mid 1960s, Black Panther Party chapters developed a series of social programs to provide needed services to black and poor people. Their intent was to promote "a model for an alternative, more humane social scheme." These programs, of which there came to be more than 60, were eventually referred to as Survival Programs, and were operated by Party members under the slogan "survival pending revolution."

One such program was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, which began in January 1969 at one small Catholic church in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, and spread to many cities in America where there were Party chapters. Thousands of poor and hungry children were fed free breakfasts every day by the Party under this program. The Panthers believed that "Children cannot reach their full academic potential if they have empty stomachs." The magnitude and powerful impact of this program was such that the federal government adopted a similar program for public schools across the country. The FBI assailed the free breakfast program as nothing more than a propaganda tool used by the Party to carry out its communist agenda. More insidiously, the FBI denounced the Party itself as a group of communist outlaws bent on overthrowing the U.S. government.

In Chicago, the leader of the Panthers local, Fred Hampton, led five different breakfast programs on the West Side, helped create a free medical center, and initiated a door to door program of health services which test for sickle cell anemia, and encourage blood drives for the Cook County Hospital. The Chicago party also reached out to local gangs to clean up their acts, get them away from crime and bring them into the class war. The Party's efforts met wide success, and Hampton's audiences and organized contingent grew by the day

# ¿ Aug 11, 2013 18:27

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Randarkman posted:

Which of the current parties would that be? I'd guess Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party, with their calls for Imperial Reconquest and such.

He's a joke and nobody likes him. Pat Buchanan has a better chance at becoming powerful than Zhirinovsky does. It's a sock-puppet opposition party run by the Kremlin.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2013 18:45

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Here's Zhirinovsky telling people that you need to shoot all birds, in order to prevent bird flu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQPU-r1LdAE

He's a punchline to most Russians, but the LDPR needs to be stopped anyway.

OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Aug 12, 2013

# ¿ Aug 12, 2013 18:51

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Yes, but they don't call label themselves that though, and tend to view themselves as more civilized and intellectual than their street thug and hooligan allies. You'll find them calling themselves "Nouvelle Droite", "Radical Traditionalist", "Alternative Right", "anti-Modernist" or something like that.

OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Aug 13, 2013

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 03:03

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Irrelevant sports derail, ignore.

OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 11:40 on Aug 13, 2013

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 11:18

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

HighClassSwankyTime posted:

Don't forget North Korea.

North Korea's got nothing to do with communism or Stalinism; it's probably got more in common with Japanese WWII racism and nationalism than anything else. Juche is a weird false ideological cover for their actual (even weirder, more evil) beliefs.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2013 21:58

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

So how true are the fears of John "Gimli" Rhys Davies, the EDL and their compatriots that "white" Europeans will be a minority within the next century, and/or extinct within the next few centuries?

Gimli posted:

There is a demographic catastrophe happening in Europe that nobody wants to talk about, that we daren't bring up because we are so cagey about not offending people racially. And rightly we should be. But there is a cultural thing as well. By 2020, 50 per cent of the children in Holland under the age of 18 will be of Muslim descent

Not sure why he says "Muslim descent", since that could mean anything from Dutch converts and Bosnians, to Sudanese, to Indonesians or Chechens.

OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Aug 15, 2013

# ¿ Aug 15, 2013 08:11

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Ardennes posted:

The birthrate of most immigrant population closes to that of the rest of the popular fairly quickly within a generation or two. In addition, the proportion between visible minorities and "whites" in Europe is still very small. Basically, Europe is dealing with an issue that America has been grappling with since its founding (and its still here).

That kind of rhetoric is almost defensible if you're saying, "Gosh, a small ethnic group of Frisians, Scots, Welsh or Cornish people with their own culture and language is dying out for demographic reasons, how sad", but it ignores several things. ONE, the loss of diversity in Britain has a lot more to do with the English and the ruling classes of each of these groups than it does with immigrants, and two, it ignores why people need to leave their home countries and move to Europe in the first place: Europe ruined and impoverished their own countries.

But it's just absolutely insane when an American would say the same thing -- it's not their native land, it was built through the elimination of the people who originally lived in America, so to claim "we're being pushed out of our land" is tragicomic. This following video must have made some people explode from cognitive dissonance.

NWS language
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2chIBe2cG7M

OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Aug 15, 2013

# ¿ Aug 15, 2013 08:23

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Full Battle Rattle posted:

Juche being cover for something weird and evil is like throwing a bedsheet over a ghost and saying 'Now, no one will know that I have stolen a ghost!'

I just now saw this and it's hilarious.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2013 10:03

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

-Troika- posted:

Because the USSR and China were a lot more successful in covering up and otherwise obfuscating the many deaths their policies caused, helped in large part by many Western useful idiots.

You do realize that global capitalism has killed at least 100,000,000 people by starvation alone in the past ~~few decades~~ decade? I don't know the statistics for people who died from lack of medical care, but take a look around. Yes, Africa, the Caribbean and Asia are almost completely capitalist.

OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Sep 8, 2013

# ¿ Sep 8, 2013 04:21

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

-Troika- posted:

Your white guilt is your own problem, buddy.

Sorry, don't have any. "White guilt" is for liberals.

-Troika- posted:

The question I was responding to was "why is fascism looked down on so much more than communism" not "why is fascism looked down on so much more than communism and oh by the way how many people does Owlbot 2000 think died of capitalism".

Your question was phrased in such a way to make historical socialism seem just as bad as fascism ("why isn't communism looked down on as much as fascism?"), or at least make it seem significantly more deadly than Capitalism.

And it's "not how many people I think died", it's not terribly hard to calculate. if you've got estimates for the number of deaths per day due to starvation and malnutrition (21,000 - 25,000), adjust for population growth and subtract whatever happens in North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba. Try it yourself!

quote:

Also let's not talk about the farm policies of communist nations. I don't think you want to go there

Think you could tell me something I don't already know?

# ¿ Sep 8, 2013 18:25

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Fojar38 posted:

your argument that somehow prejudice and exploitation would vanish under a Marxist system is laughable

Exploitation is a technical term here, the amount of money the owners of a business get from the products workers make. The owners get: [amount of value created by workers] - [workers' pay], and the workers just get a wage. It's also called "profit". If you were to create a system in which workers are also the owners and get the full value of what they create, then by definition there's not that kind of exploitation happening.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2013 18:32

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Warbadger posted:

It also immediately preceded the Soviet invasions of Poland and Finland. The Soviets were perfectly happy doing their own empire building right along with the Germans.

What happens if you have German militarism / Polish nationalist buildup in Eastern Poland? Do you allow that on right on your border? Though any occupation Post WWII was unjustified, any serious military leader is going to want a buffer there. Furthermore, Finland were Nazi collaborators and the USSR needed to gain Karelia/Lake Ladoga to ensure supplies to Leningrad during the Siege. There were bigger things at play here, such as, I don't know, the possible victory of Nazi Germany and the enslavement or extermination of tens of millions more.

Finland thought Karelia was more important than fighting the Nazis, and that they could sacrifice millions of people for the sake of territorial integrity. While they did help Germany starve to death 650,000 civilians in Leningrad and deplete crucial resources for the anti-fascist cause, they were thwarted in their ultimate goals.

OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Sep 9, 2013

# ¿ Sep 9, 2013 22:20

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

fatherboxx posted:

The 8th of September was a "united election day": a number of mayors, regional and municipal councils got elected. As usual, Putin's United Russia won pretty much everywhere, most importantly, at Moscow Mayor Election - to much disappointment of "non-systemic" liberal opposition. The curious exception is Ekatirenburg ("Capital of The Urals"), where the mayoral elections ended with the victory of Evgeni Roisman, a representative of Civil Platform - political party founded by Mikhail Prokhorov (billionaire, owner of Brooklyn Nets among other things).

"Smoking marijuana is the first sign of male homosexuality" - mayor of a 1,3m Russian city

Roisman is the leader of City Without Drugs - a controversial organisation that routinely uses vigilante tactics in its activities. Such activities as:
1) Raids on crackhouses; akin to the fancy neonazi gents in OP, thugs go into CWD to "legally" punch addicts and low-rent pushers, preferably of non-Russian nationality. Of course, Russia had not lived through any kind of state-funded War on Drugs, so people genuinely believe that such actions will clean up the cities.
2) More interesting stuff - forceful rehabilitation. CWD has several centers that completely reject replacement therapy and medical methods in general. Employing same kind of thugs that go into raids, centers round up addicts from crackhouses and those that are dumped by their families (who obviously can't afford actual rehab). Treatment consists of beatings, starvation and handcuffing during withdrawals. In his interviews, Roisman doesn't make a difference between drug traders and drug addicts - they are evil scum that needs to be punished and cleaned away from the society.

Roisman served time in the 80s for robbing women that he seduced; his lieutenants have juicier biographies: rape, murder, hate crimes. The folk hero does not deny that he got help at starting his business from Uralmash - Ekatirenburg crime syndicate that operated in the 90s.

So here you go - in the dire economy and the abscence of competent policework, power fetishism takes place and ultra-right ringleader gets elected against fierceful resistance of the ruling party.

Roisman sounds to be a Jewish name (though he may have converted, like Zhirinovsky), odd that he'd be popular with Nazis. Then again, don't go looking for logic on the ultra-right.

Edit: Yep, some Nazi groups say he's "The right kind of Jew" because he "demolished" Gypsy homes. Wow.

OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Sep 14, 2013

# ¿ Sep 14, 2013 20:53

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

fafish posted:

How do extreme right wing people in the US perceive democracy? Is it an integral part of america as they see it? I mean the way its exercised, the constitution the elected president and all.

Their favorite catch phrase is, "It's supposed to be a Republic, not a Democracy!" and talk about how the founding-fathers never wanted the Senate to be directly elected because that would allow poor people to vote away the property of the rich. But unlike the European far right they don't have any "democracy is rotten and depraved" rhetoric and would never (consciously) support a Leader as the embodiment of The Eternal Nation and the Will of the People or anything really fascist.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2014 11:01

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Pope Guilty posted:

Other than Dubya pre-2007, of course.

Even then it was just, "he's a good man with good values and you shouldn't make fun of him during war time

", I don't think anybody said that George Bush was literally America Itself or thought he should get rid of the constitution and remain an absolute ruler until he died. American conservatives are prejudiced, not fascists.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2014 11:09

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Torrannor posted:

On the other hand I cannot even count the number of times I have read US right wingers write comment under Politico articles and the like, with the content about this: "If you don't pay taxes you should not be able to vote, if you get more money from the state than you pay in taxes you should not be able to vote, etc." Not to mention the fact that it is actually possible for the minority to win the presidency, House and Senate. How democratic is a nation anyways in which the party with less votes controls the lower house? And of course, Republican attempts at voter disenfranchisement should not be ignored either. And gerrymandering strikes me as pretty undemocratic as well.

Undemocratic is not the same as Fascist. And their objections to full democracy is from an Enlightenment and Liberal perspective, "tyranny of the majority" and "mob rule." Fascists oppose democracies because they think it is weak, watered down and decadent, and that voting can never actualize the will of the people in the same way a Leader can. Also, the American right talks constantly of 'individual rights', whereas Fascists view individuals as meaningless except in the context of being sons, fathers and soldiers of the Nation.

Really, American Conservatism and Fascism are nothing alike. To get Fascism in America you'd need a much stronger Left and a total collapse in government authority and the economy. When you get that and street-fighting between right and left is when you'll see some real fascists show up, and that incidentally is why there's Fascism all over Europe but not in North America.

OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Mar 7, 2014

# ¿ Mar 7, 2014 13:31

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 13, 2024 10:40

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

The international far right love Croatia because the Ustase were insanely zealous and brutal.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2014 06:18

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > A return of Fascism in Europe?