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darthzeta88 posted:That salute Is older than Germany is. Hitler thought the roman salute is bad rear end. I kinda agree and wish he never used it. Also Americans use to say the pledge with that same salute before ww2. It is pretty universally identified with neo-nazism these days, though.
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Aug 30, 2013 23:13
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Or a more useful question: when does it become acceptable and prudent to retaliate against fascists? When they identify as such. reignonyourparade posted:(Also Germany probably would've turned out very different if Stalin had given the german communists the okay to form a united front against fascism with social democrats.) Or if the Social Democrats hadn't sold out the Communists initially. Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
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Nov 2, 2013 04:20
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Panas posted:But that would have deprived us of Mitterrand. A former fascist who then became the socialist president of France. A man complicit in the Rwandan genocide. Good pick, dude.
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Nov 3, 2013 03:02
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So Geert Wilders is teaming up with Le Pen to rid Europe of undesirables. He reached out to the Danish People's Party to be part of the alliance, but while they have no beef with him, they consider Front National to be "deeply rooted in anti-semitism" (whereas Islamophobia is totally cool) and are "shocked" that their Swedish sister party, the Sweden Democrats, are even considering the offer. Their spokesman also distanced himself from the Austrian FPÖ and the Belgian Vlaams Belang for good measure. What makes this funny is that, 1) their spokesman is a former member of the Danish National Socialist Movement, 2) Jörg Haider refused to meet with him and the party founder in 2000 because they were too racist(!), and, 3) the party belongs to the same EU parliament group that houses the former chairman of Vlaams Belang, a former member of the virulently anti-semitic, Bulgarian ATAKA, the neo-fascist Lega Nord and the neo-fascist Slovak National Party, noted for routinely honouring executed nazi-collaborator Jozef Tiso.
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Nov 14, 2013 06:55
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Orange Devil posted:It's a very shaky alliance given that Le Pen has the history of antisemitism, not sure if they still do this but hard to imagine it is all gone, whereas Wilders is the most rabid pro-Israel guy you can find in the Netherlands because of lone island of civilization fighting the savage Muslim hordes type of thinking. Similarly, he is (well, portrays himself as, really) a staunch defenders of gays and their rights because the uncivilized Muslims hate them, whereas Le Pen is a raging homophobe. Anti-semitism and pro-zionism are not always mutually exclusive, but fascists will generally take anything they can get as long as there is some overlap, which is hatred of Muslims and immigrants at this particular point in time. The spokesman I mentioned is also married to a Jewish woman and rabidly pro-zionist despite his past, and the party's founder went to a WACL conference in the '80s, an organisation historically fraught with anti-semites and literal nazis. None of them give a gently caress about Jews unless they can wield them as a weapon against Muslims, whether locally or in the world at large.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:12
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Local elections in Denmark today. A literal neo-nazi party campaigning for ethnic cleansing is on the ballot in six municipalities, including Copenhagen.
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Nov 19, 2013 14:53
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Luckily the neo-nazi Party of the Danes, which as I mentioned favours total ethnic cleansing and unconstitutionally revoking citizenship from all non-whites, establishing white-only schools and other forms of apartheid until that can be achieved, only got about 1,400 votes in total across five municipalities. It's still a frightening tendency and I shudder to think what they could muster nationally. The Danish People's Party looks to be getting their first mayor in addition to a sizable increase in votes in most places.
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Nov 20, 2013 02:01
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Mans posted:Can you post the general results? Who were the winners and who were the losers? Social Democrats 29,5% (-1,1), 774 mandates (-27). Liberals 26,6% (+1.8), 746 mandates (+67). Danish People's Party 10.1% (+2), 256 mandates (+70). Conservatives 8.6% (-2.4), 205 mandates (-57). Unity List 6.9% (+4.6),119 mandates (+105). Socialist People's Party 5.6% (-8.9), 115 mandates (-225). Social Liberals 4.8% (+1.1), 62 mandates (+12). Liberal Alliance 2.9% (+2.6), 33 mandates (+32). Others 5% (+0.4), 114 mandates (-1). Huge leap forward for the Unity List, who were barely present locally a few years ago. They're siphoning votes primarily from disillusioned Social Democrats and especially Socialists, who've managed to bungle their first ever inclusion in a cabinet spectacularly; there's basically no longer any meaningful distinction between the two parties and their neo-liberal reforms are massively unpopular to the left of centre. A recent school reform and subsequent lockout also meant pretty much every public school teacher abandoning them in disgust. The Social Democrats had their worst parliamentary election in over a century in 2011, despite nominally winning the Prime Ministership. This is just further punishment and there's no way they're winning the next election, even if they change their tune significantly and jettison their incompetent leaders. The Danish People's Party didn't manage to get their first mayor, but they did score a councilman seat in Copenhagen. I'm terrified to see which area of policy they'll be ruining in the coming years. On the upside, a proudly workshy welfare recipient and minor tabloid celeb nicknamed "Lazy Robert" campaigning for universal basic income managed to beat out the neo-nazis in Copenhagen. I guess that's something.
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Nov 21, 2013 03:52
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Ahahahaha, the Danish People's Party gave up their bid for mayor in the suburb of Hvidovre and supported a Social Democrat after tough negotiations. Why? In addition to the vice mayor seat, they received a guarantee that public childcare would serve "traditional Danish food" (that's code for LOTS OF PORK). This follows an embarrassing national debate where people lost their minds over the fact that less than 0.1% of public childcare institutions, ones that have a large Muslim clientele, democratically elected to remove pork from the menu to save on expenses. The Prime Minister weighed in on the matter as well, saying that pork must reign supreme. I should probably also correct my earlier post about the neo-nazis. They received 1,295 municipal votes in five municipalities, but also 5,487 votes in the Capital Region for a candidate that received a conviction for racism for the following statement on his radio show: "There are only two possible ways to react if we want to prevent these terrorist bombings: Either by driving out all foreign Mohammedans from Western Europe, so they cannot plant bombs, or by exterminating the fanatic Mohammedans, that is to say, killing a sizable part of the Mohammedan immigrants. It is of course preferable to drive out all the foreign Mohammedans from Western Europe, because it is the humane solution. It is therefore repatriation we must choose."
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Nov 21, 2013 16:01
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To illustrate how utterly divorced from reality our Prime Minister is, here are the election results for the Social Democrats under her rule: Municipal election 2005, 34.3% (-0.1) Parliamentary election 2007, 25.5% (-0.4) European Parliament election 2009, 21.5% (-11.1) Municipal election 2009, 30.6% (-3.7) Parliamentary election 2011, 24.8% (-0.7) Municipal election 2013, 29.5% (-1.1) Following her party losing more than a third of their votes in the EP election, she stated, "When we've won the municipal election, we're going for the third victory in a row."  That 2009 municipal election turned out to be the worst for the party since 1943, followed by the worst parliamentary election since 1903 in 2011. Yet this Tuesday, commenting on the municipal results, she said, "We're facing adversity on the backdrop of the last election, which went really well." The leader of the Socialists, Annette Vilhelmsen, gave the exact same excuse—the last run went well—despite facing the worst municipal results in at least 20 years. Guildencrantz posted:Baby steps, dude, radical parties won't be sweeping votes from conservatives any time soon and we all know it. Meanwhile, social democrats everywhere are wrecking their credibility with the austerity programs, which pretty much leaves votes lying on the ground. It's the task of any socialist/hard-left party to grab them, much like the anti-immigrant right are doing with the more conservative parts of the former SD base. It's unfortunately not possible to stand up to neoliberalism without laying to rest the shambling undead corpse of social democracy, and especially without finally breaking its hegemony on the left. The Unity List are hard at work trying to make that happen, but they're at risk of alienating their original voter base of democratic socialists, communists and other radicals. They've bit the bullet on numerous occasions, scrambling to keep a massively unpopular government alive, lastly by agreeing to $145m in welfare cuts to extend the gutted unemployment security a bit. The argument being that "the alternative is worse"—but what does it really matter when there's no way the right isn't winning the next election, barring some unprecedented historic miracle, and they're laying the foundation for the, ugh, competition state? They're busy vacuuming their program of principles and carefully grooming their image to appear more attractive, but it's a double-edge sword and currently wielded by a chief ideologue who simply thinks an even larger public sector is the end goal. They're replacing their original program with some wishy-washy Critique of Capital 101, in which the only mention of communism or Marx is a paraphrase from the Manifesto describing "the great wonders built by capitalism", and beyond some vague "when we get there" rhetoric about workplace democracy and a state bank, necessitating a massive parliamntary victory with a majority of the votes, it's completely toothless. SplitSoul fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Nov 21, 2013 |
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Nov 21, 2013 16:53
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Guildencrantz posted:Well, I guess that depends on where you stand. Personally I see that as a good thing, but I'm an old-school democratic socialist so eh. I like Eurocommunists well enough, but I don't think it's an idea with much traction any more v It's important to outline what you mean by democratic socialism here, because the term is used for several, markedly different visions of how society should be structured, everything from simple welfare statism to non-revolutionary communism. The Danish Social Democrats, as I imagine most other major labour and social democratic parties throughout Europe, haven't stood for anything resembling socialism for nearly a century. They have since that time slowly drifted from being proponents of a mixed economy with a strong welfare state, large public sector and significant redistribution, through a Third Way transformation and then into full-on neo-liberalism, adopting populist anti-immigrant and pro-EU stances along the way. Guildencrantz posted:Also, sorry if this sounds harsh, but I've spoken to a lot of Scandinavian leftists, and from the outside the complaints you guys raise often appear kinda out of touch. Looking from way over here in former-Bloc-land, what you call "wishy-washy" seems like some sort of unimaginable dreamland far-left program (not to mention complete political suicide). It doesn't mention Marx or communism? Under the Polish constitution mentioning Marx or communism would get your party banned, and saying anything bad about capitalism is pretty much a recipe for getting <1000 votes nationwide. It's not as bad in most of Western Europe, but the radical left making actual gains is still extremely rare nowadays. A move away from orthodox Marxism isn't the end of the world. You have to understand, the Unity List was originally created from various minor Trotskyist, Marxist-Leninist and Maoist parties, and their old program reflected that to a point, there were concrete steps to how society should transition into socialism, why, and what that would mean. I call the new one wishy-washy because it's half "This is how capitalism exploits the worker (that's you!)" and half "Here are a couple of ways it could be avoided, maybe, I dunno". It's painfully clear that it's just going to be archived on their website and completely disregarded in the future, while their MPs keep on trucking with unpopular deals that hurt the poor and they piss away all the support they've amassed recently. That said, I'm sorry that Poland sucks.
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Nov 21, 2013 20:49
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Guildencrantz posted:I don't really want to get into my own ideological position here because it's not the thread for that, but suffice to say you could put my definition of "democratic socialism" somewhere further left than welfare statism, but definitely to the right of any form of communism. Not a fan of revolutions. Yeah, what good have revolutions ever done?  But that's still not very specific. Do markets have any place at all in your preferred society? Who will own the means of production and so? Because when I see the term democratic socialism, I think of a much more direct form of democracy, participation on all levels, the workplace, locally, all the way to the national decision-making process, and the absence of a parliamentary system. Guildencrantz posted:...but it doesn't mean an upsurge in support for Trotskyism and other Leninist ideologies that try to solve the problems of the 1920's. That's not going to happen, plain and simple, and that kind of ideology isn't even built for functioning in a parliamentary system. We're not disagreeing here, I'm just trying to illustrate where the party has its roots and how far it has moved since then. It was founded on whatever common ground these people could find in 1989—although the Maoists were kicked out on insistence of the Communist Party faction a few years later—and rested on a two-pronged strategy of parliamentary participation and grassroots work. Although they did narrowly save a Social Democratic government in the early '90s, they have until recently always stood their ground, not least because their MPs hands were tied by the party's executive committee. They still are, but although there are definitely still factions within it, the Unity List has long since grown into a proper party rather than an electoral list. This isn't bad in itself, of course, but it brings along with it some unfortunate tendencies that are gaining traction within the party. Aside from neglecting their grassroots work and focusing too much on individual popular issues (in my opinion), the parliamentary group is trying to consolidate power; there have been strong considerations as to abandoning the two-term rotational principle meant to avoid career politicians, because the media is ascribing their recent electoral successes to a single individual, spokeswoman Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen. Guildencrantz posted:With social democracy withering away, there's a niche opening up on the left side of their electorate. There are plenty of people who identify with very broad and basic socialist principles such as expanding the redistributive role of the state, which the center-left has completely betrayed and abandoned, and only the radical left offers these people representation. These principles have, in fact, become "radically left-wing" thanks to the austerity consensus. Upholding them is a growth strategy, running around calling for a dictatorship of the proletariat is not. And they've never done that. The "revolution" the Unity List referred to in their old program was always grounded in a popular majority, a peaceful transition rather than armed struggle, though still acknowledging that there will be pockets of resistance to be handled. It's still pie-in-the-sky, wishful naïvete to think that this will ever in a million years be possible within the framework of the current system, but it's a lot more concrete than "Vote for us if you think capitalism is bad—or don't" and insisting that, if they don't manage to transform society top-to-bottom in four years, you can just vote for the other guys in the next election. Guildencrantz posted:Do you have a link to the old one? My Danish is weak, but if I put in a little time I can understand it fine, and it'll probably be easier to form an opinion if I just read both programs for myself and compare It's not so much that I miss the language, it's that it serves as further evidence of their rightward shift and ideological dilution, and that I find it supremely ironic that the only Marx reference is one praising capitalism. New program: http://modkraft.dk/artikel/udkast-til-principprogram Old program: http://www.enhedslisten.dk/principprogram And here's a solid critique of the new program: http://www.information.dk/478850
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Nov 22, 2013 13:48
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That said, the deals and compromises with the austerity camp are worrying, that's always a Bad Thing. Much, much more worrying than abandonment of references to Marx.
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Guildencrantz posted:When I read about that principle I was quite impressed, it's refreshing. And, as I understand it, it applies to any seat, so if you've had one term in parliament and one on a city council, you're not eligible for candidacy immediately after. Their salaries are also maxed out at the average for a member of the Dansih Union of Metalworkers, the rest goes in the party coffers.
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Nov 22, 2013 19:43
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Fojar38 posted:So nobody should support Marxism or Communism because we've all seen that it either leads to a psuedo-fascist plutocracy like in Russia or a neoliberal autocracy like in China? This argument didn't work so well for you in the GBS communism thread, why would you try it again? There is no comparison. No-one here is an advocate for the U.S.S.R. or Communist China as far as I know, but compromise is a central tenet of Social Democracy and every single party that ascribes to it has followed the exact same trajectory since the early 20th century.
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Nov 22, 2013 19:57
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Fojar38 posted:You're going to have a really hard time convincing anyone but the most destitute that they should give up the notion of private property when it turns out people really like owning stuff. This was addressed already, but are you trolling or just not familiar with what that term means? PT6A posted:In practice, you don't own a TV, though, and if you do it's probably poo poo and doesn't work properly because the electronics industry is controlled by some lovely government bureaucrat, since allowing the means of production to be owned by someone who has the faintest loving idea how to make a television would be unacceptably capitalistic. What the hell does this even mean? If anything you'd be free from planned obsolescence. PT6A posted:the capitalist system does allow for the workers to own and meaningfully control the means of production. You can't be serious.
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Nov 23, 2013 06:18
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Install Windows posted:"Planned obsolescence" is highly overblown and ironically enough outdated in itself. So what will you call it when the iPad 11 is out in a few years? The term doesn't just refer to technical durability, but that kind is nonetheless also very real.
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Nov 23, 2013 07:01
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Install Windows posted:That has absolutely nothing to do with planned obsolescence. Are you seriously suggesting things improving is a bad thing?? It can refer to several different concepts, not just technical or functional obsolescence, but we're getting off on a stupid tangent here and you're making me agree with Emden, so let's forget I even mentioned it.
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Nov 23, 2013 08:03
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Captain_Maclaine posted:His answer may very verbose or quite terse, but will in essence be only fourteen words long.  All this talk of Emden and walls is kinda giving me a semi.
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Nov 26, 2013 02:08
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Guildencrantz posted:Thanks for the links! I'll check them out more closely once I've had some sleep, since reading Danish takes a whole bunch of mental effort. If you're still interested in the topic, four members independently wrote an alternative new program that they're trying to gain support for, but it's mainly intended as an entry in the debate over the program revision and direction of the party. The Marxist origins are a lot more evident in this one and it offers a solid class analysis as well. It's probably a long shot, but I really hope it, or at least some variation on it, ends up replacing the old one. http://modkraft.dk/artikel/frihed-lighed-og-solidaritet
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Dec 10, 2013 09:17
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Amazing. Just amazing.
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Jan 21, 2015 22:02
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Randler posted:His explaination for it actually was the first politician's apology that I'd be inclined to believe. "It's a joke" is probably not going to go over as well when you're the leader of a movememnt full of NPD people, refer to refugees as "animals" and "scumbags", and are German. 
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Jan 21, 2015 22:48
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