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Leftists claiming Stalin was right wing.
I'd take them over the ones that think Stalin was a good guy any day tbh
It's an oversimplified anarchist talking point against authoritarianism and the state. It's noting the similarities between conservative talking points and auth-left socialist rhetoric. Basically, almost everything you criticize about capitalism can be applied to the state. And defenses for the state from auth-left socialists sounds an awful lot like right wing talking points in defense of capitalism/imperialism/insertotherismhere. Not to mention, the USSR was pretty socially conservative and that's a big mark against them imo. Liberatory politics should liberate people, after all
Leftists who think, if I don't subscribe to their narrow, personal definition of leftism, I must be an epistemically evil conservative maniac with no middle ground whatsoever.
what I hate is that when I say I'm not affiliated with a political party - people try to assume I must be a fucking centrist and therefor secretly conservative.
Those people have some kind of mental deficiency that prevents them from thinking outside of what they already know. It's sad really. It's like their brain can't comprehend anything outside of what they were told to think.
I can sort of see where they’re coming from, if they’re equating authoritarianism to conservatism and libertarianism to liberalism. But in reality, Stalin was a left wing authoritarian.
If we look at the rhetoric, the soviet state was certainly left wing, but the main policy was state capitalism. To my mind, state capitalism is not a right wing (favors private control of industry) nor a left wing (favors worker control of industry) policy.
This is definitely a case where pure left/right dichotomy doesn't serve to accurately describe the situation on the ground.
What was left wing about stalin?
His economic policies, specifically collectivism, particularly in agriculture.
The rhetoric.
Makes me wonder why we even still have wings. Nobody can seem to define them adequately.
Horseshoe theory.
TIL this is actually a thing and I'm not just an idiot speaking out of my ass (this time).
I remember only learning about it recently and being like "oh shit, so that's what's going on"
Cue the people downvoting horseshoe theory for no good reason
The fact that it's stupid is a perfectly good reason to downvote it.
Yes, that is a very good reason to downvote your comment.
It’s better than the alternative, though it does leave me with a second question. If the far left and the far right resemble each other, can they be hybridized to make a kind of antichthon version of the center?
Far Right + Far Left = Far Side?
Gary Larson is political extremist confirmed
I wanna know what we call the opposite of the left and right that are merging. Those two groups are now one - what's the group that goes up against them both?
They probably mistook right wing for auth
Good ol' conflating right/left and authoritarian/libertarian.