Why do Liberals and Anti-communists claim Communists and Socialists are “Authoritarian/Totalitarian” when they (libs and anticoms) openly advocate for Authoritarian/Totalitarian Capitalism/Neoliberalism?
I simply can’t really understand why do Liberals and Anti-communists always keep saying that Socialism/Communism are “Authoritarian/Totalitarian” ideologies when they, Libs and Anticoms, can openly advocate for Authoritarian/Totalitarian Capitalism/Neoliberalism, whatever if it is advocating for the full privatization of everything and or if it is by having an Authoritarian Capitalist government with a facade democracy and with a quasi-legal appearance.
Like, I simply can’t take how much Liberals always complain about “Socialism/Communism is one-party state” when clearly PRC has far more parties than in the USA and than most Westerner countries, as well as even DPRK has more parties on parliament than the USA itself. But still liberals will just go and say “yeah, the multi-party system on the West is not perfect, still it is better than the multi-party system from PRC and DPRK”, and stuff like that.
Without mention they will legit say that “council/proletarian/socialist democracy is not democracy because it doesn’t allow right-wing parties” but they will say “liberal democracy is democracy because ppl can vote periodically, even if it means they can only vote for liberal parties”, and they will even dare to say “ppl should be allowed to have any kind of opinion on a proletarian democracy and freedom of speech should be absolute under a proletarian democracy and no law should violate the absolute freedom of speech” yet they will say “but you have freedom of speech under liberal democracy, as long as what you say don’t go against the law” and they will still add “but the laws are made by the majority who voted for them on liberal democracy”.
And some of them will even deny the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie because “everyone can be bourgeois” and or “but left-wing canditates are often elected” and just go full survivorship bias about that.
Without mention, you can even mention about the tyranny of the legislative power and of the judicial power and they will say “but it was the ppl who voted for the legislative and the judicial power just obey the legislative”, and stuff like that. And some will even dare to say “but if it legal and constitutional, then it is not authoritarianism nor totalitarianism”.
I could even mention about how much about spying and the Aiport Security Papers Please thing, but their answer is always like “yet it is not prison, if you don’t do anything wrong, you shouldn’t fear anything” and or “but they must counter terrorism etc”. And you mention about Western political dissidents and stuff and they will say “well, they were antidemocratic, even if they advocated for more democracy, since stuff like direct democracy and democratic socialism are utopian because ppl are just too ignorant, but ppl are very aware of who they are voting on liberal democracy”.
And that is fun how they always say “Socialism and Communism = Authoritarianism/Totalitarianism” yet they will just ignore all examples of authoritarianism/totalitarianism under capitalism. And some will even go to “but that is not real democracy” mode, and some will even say “well, liberal democracy doesn’t mean freedomocracy, because freedomocracy means that ppl can be free and stuff, and not oppressed nor repressed as it happens under most liberal democracies out that.”
And about Colletivism, that is fun how much they claim to be against “Collectivism” and they will claim “Democracy is Collectivism” etc, yet they will go to defend Javier Milei and Ancap politicians until the very end and if you say “but every state is inherently collectivist” and or “but every law is inherently collectivist” or they will just go cognitive dissonance mode and or they will just say “but look, Javier Milei is not a Collectivist himself, he is an Individualist who is just playing with the cards with the Collectivist State and with the Collectivist Laws and the Collectivist Law Enforcement, and he will abolish both three ASAP.” And stuff like that.
Sorry if it is quite long post. I just think I said everything about that.
The average westoid lacks an internal self and just repeats things they’ve heard before
dont most people repeat things they’ve heard before if not asked to think about it critically? I dont think that’s exclusive to westoids, its just that the things westoids repeat regarding politics is usually wrong.
I should have said Americans. Americans don’t think for the most part, let alone critically.
And if most people default to not being critical most people aren’t contrarian enough.
I could be wrong but my assumption is that most people in most countries choose to ignore politics as much as they can, but liberal democracies require the parties to rile up a voter base every election cycle. This mass of politically illiterate people is more than happy to repeat whatever the candidate that claims to represent them is saying if it means they get to go back to usual after the election cycle. Finally, you mostly only hear about this mass garbage American political takes rather than those of other liberal democracies because of American cultural hegemony through mass media.
Every country has a mass of the politically illiterate, yet only in America does the establishment rile them up and hand them a megaphone
I unironically think that white supremacist culture involves a denial of the self in childhood of oppressors that leads to a weak sense of self in adulthood. A weak sense of self makes it much easier to latch onto external signifiers like race and brands and things like that.
Why do you think this? This reminds me of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Friere says the same thing about peasants, that they lack subjectivity
Hyperbole, and I haven’t read Freire. It sounds like he was discussing the lumpen mindset in another context?
I was hyperbolically railing against how gestures broadly the way things are creates good imperial subjects who just consume slop, don’t question the propaganda, and repeat/poorly paraphrase the latest phrases they’ve been programmed with (much like an old remote, it only has the memory for 10 or so).
I can dig it. Yeah Friere’s context was fairly specific, so he developed a method for teaching illiterate peasants how to read that starts with restoring their subjective experience and imbues them with revolutionary consciousness, and this is what motivates them to want to learn. He’s viciously critical of teaching methods where a teacher dictates, which is the primary teaching method in the west.
Your comment touches some problems that face socialists in the core, like why do people act against their own interest and how do we get people who are imbued with sympathy and motivated to change things to become class conscious and revolutionary? Your comment reminds me of Friere because a lot of socialists have this experience of “radicalizing” which starts by just like giving up these preconceived notions that are force fed to us. The peasants that Friere talks about have a similar spell cast on them, they see themselves the way they are seen by the ruling class, as mere toilers with no potential, lower than animals even, dehumanized through oppression. And like, even those of us who benefit from the wages of imperialism and privilege, etc., are also alienated from each other and nature, we are subjected to the same dehumanizing forces, and dehumanizing the other dehumanizes the self. A lot of socialists are, understandably like, “so what? Fuckem.” And maybe that’s all there is to it. Friere was pretty insistent that the methods used to help the oppressed gain consciousness don’t work on the oppressors. But yet there are always those within the oppressing “group” who actively fight against oppression. And in my experience, most of us started out educated the same way, by the same forces, receiving the same privileges, etc., so why didn’t it stick, or how can it be unstuck?
Not sure what I’m trying to say here. Thanks for your response and comment.
honestly I think for most people its just engrained red scare propaganda. Their perception of communism starts and ends at the idea of a supreme leader at the top who calls all the shots, and their perception of capitalism is that as long as they are participating in a vote, it must be democratic.
Yeah, id agree that a lot of it boils down to not being educated on the subject. What little research has been done, if any, was provided to them by American history class textbooks and more modernized propaganda
They associate freedom with freedom to exploit and freedom to excessively consume in the face of incredible poverty and world destroying consequences. Trying to take that away is violence in their eyes
The interactions of negative vs positive freedoms is something rarely discussed in the west. The freedom to something or the freedom from something. Hell, they see concepts like being bound to family, community, and society as oppression because apparently being atomized into a lone individual who inherently is owed nothing and owes nothing is true freedom.
I swear this is why you see people in the US always “searching for meaning” in their lives. Alone and atomized. Not belonging to an extended family, community, and society around them, owing nothing thus owed nothing and vice versa. They want rights with no responsibilities.
Neoliberalism did some serious damage to everyones general perception of life. I’m very guilty of it at times
A lot of anti-communists consider themselves leftists/anti-capitalists and are struggling with some sort of false consciousness.
