• half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Ussr can do good thing. Can also do bad thing.

    Problem with bad things, like bad arguments, lack thought or think about self. Also call self reflection.

    Ask self, apartments good, yes. Ask self, stalin good, on whole probably not. Ask self, authoritarianism good, on whole no is bad. Ask self, shit posting on lemmy good, depends.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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      20 hours ago

      The term authoritarianism is utterly meaningless because all governments rely on coercion to maintain their authority. The state is fundamentally an instrument that’s used by the ruling class to maintain its dominance. The whole notion that political systems can be neatly categorized into authoritarian or democratic binaries is deeply infantile.

      The reality is that every government derives its authority from its monopoly on legal violence. The ability to enforce laws, suppress dissent, and maintain order is derived from control over police, military, and judicial systems. Whether a government is labelled authoritarian or democratic, the fundamental basis of its power lies here. Therefore, the only meaningful questions to ask are which class interests it represents, and to what extent can it be held accountable to them.

      What ultimately matters is which class controls the institutions of state violence. In capitalist democracies, the government represent the interests of the economic elites who fund political campaigns, own media outlets, and control key industries. Western public lacks the mechanisms necessary to hold the government to account, and the ruling class is disconnected from the broader population. That’s precisely what’s driving political discontent all across western sphere today.

      Ask yourself is guzzling western propaganda uncritically good, on the whole no is bad.

      • XiJinpingStanAccount@lemmy.ml
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        1 hour ago

        The term authoritarianism is utterly meaningless because all governments rely on coercion to maintain their authority. The state is fundamentally an instrument that’s used by the ruling class to maintain its dominance. The whole notion that political systems can be neatly categorized into authoritarian or democratic binaries is deeply infantile.

        The reality is that every government derives its authority from its monopoly on legal violence. The ability to enforce laws, suppress dissent, and maintain order is derived from control over police, military, and judicial systems. Whether a government is labelled authoritarian or democratic, the fundamental basis of its power lies here. Therefore, the only meaningful questions to ask are which class interests it represents, and to what extent can it be held accountable to them.

        I honestly think we should have a bot where anytime someone says the word authoritarian it just spits this out at them.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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          14 minutes ago

          Seriously, I find there are just a handful of tropes libs regurgitate like trained parrots. You really can just have a templated response to them.

        • XiJinpingStanAccount@lemmy.ml
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          2 hours ago

          Step 1: Abolish Government

          Step 2: Establish absolutely no institutional infrastucture to ensure nobody else makes a new government. Because that would be authoritatian.

          Step 3: Someone makes another government by establishing a monopoly on violence.

          Step 4: Abolish Government… wait what?

          • Default Username@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            44 minutes ago

            Straw man
            noun

            • An argument or opponent set up so as to be easily refuted or defeated.
            • A doll or scarecrow (particularly one stuffed with straw).
            • An insubstantial concept, idea, endeavor or argument, particularly one deliberately set up to be weakly supported, so that it can be easily knocked down; especially to impugn the strength of any related thing or idea.
            • XiJinpingStanAccount@lemmy.ml
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              30 minutes ago

              Specify how what I described is different than what you’d do then. What mechanisms or institutions would you put in place to prevent step 3?

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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          18 hours ago

          Capitalists aren’t going to let you abolish their rule without an organized violence that they will tell others is “authoritarian”.

          • Default Username@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            17 hours ago

            You mean a revolution? In that case, I can agree with all but the very last word.

            “Authoritarian” is (generally speaking) a word used to describe governments’ usage of violence or other means to either establish or maintain rule over their populace.

            The capitalist class (or, more generally speaking speaking, the powerful elite) will more often use terms like “barbarians,” “rioters,” or similar language. They will reserve the word “authoritarian” as a separate method of propaganda to go to war with countries they want to steal natural resources from or to otherwise invade to expand their empire, though I’m not a historian by any means, so the idea of “regieme change” might be a bit newer than I’m thinking.

            • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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              6 hours ago

              “Authoritarian” is (generally speaking) a word used to describe governments’ usage of violence or other means to either establish or maintain rule over their populace.

              So all governments

            • BanMeFromPosting@lemmy.ml
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              5 hours ago

              “Authoritarian” is (generally speaking) a word used to describe governments’ usage of violence or other means to either establish or maintain rule over their populace.

              That’s just every government. The word is completely meaningless using your definition, you can just say “state” or “government” or “regime”.

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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              15 hours ago

              “A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?”

              ― Frederick Engels

                • BanMeFromPosting@lemmy.ml
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                  5 hours ago

                  Cuba, China, Vietnam, USSR, DPRK, Soviet Afghanistan (The one where women weren’t slaves, which the US overthrew in favour of poppy-growing pedophiles), East Germany, Nelson Mandela, Venezuela, Chile, the list goes on. Similarly: Countries that do not have governments, they have “regimes”. They do not have Vice-presidents or deputies, they have “hand-picked successors”.

                  • Default Username@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    14 hours ago

                    Those are governments/countries and not at all what I’m talking about. I’m talking about an organization of people attempting a revolution on their own government.

        • SirSmoothAES@lemmygrad.ml
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          19 hours ago

          Abolishing the government with a hostile world order that seeks to overthrow you is equally moronic as it is suicidal.

    • AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml
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      19 hours ago

      Why are you writing like that? I looked at your profile; you’ve shown in other places you can write a coherent sentence. So is this some kind of affectation? What are you trying to convey by pretending to be illiterate?

    • EmmiLime@lemmy.ml
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      20 hours ago

      Ask self, authoritarianism good, on whole no is bad. Ask self, shit posting on lemmy good, depends.

      name a non-authoritarian country