What the fuck is wrong with you?

God you people really are amoral scum.

Who said anything about voters?

Great zinger. Still not voting for Genocide Joe.

And you wonder why you can’t convince people to vote for your ghoul.

Also easy to call for “harm reduction” when you’re not the one being exterminated as part of the remaining “harm”

Flipently equivocating people horrified with deliberately acts of mass genocide with being overly fussy about choice of icecream is not going to win you any support from people who refuse to vote Dem.

In fact it just makes me more disgusted with the “vote blue, no matter who” crowd.

I’m just going to go outside enjoy the freedom and prosperity that my evil liberal society has provided me.

Like I said, you don’t actually believe in any of the value or ideals you claim; you’re the beneficiary of a liberal order built on imperialism, exploitation, and genocide, and you hate anyone who threatens to take that from you. Ten million Palestinians, Ethiopians, Indians, Yemeni, and whoever else needs to can die horribly, but so long as you have your Costco, you’re happy.

Considerably less of them than under capitalism.

A superpower which doesn’t exist any more, it was torn apart by its own lack of productivity and internal contradictions.

Yeah, you’re right; it didn’t attain divinity and immortality, so it was basically a failure. Might as well have stayed feudal.

Meanwhile, rapid increases in lifespans and living standards aren’t exactly rare because it’s not actually that hard to get half-way decent when you start from a point of utter destitution.

Actually they are, you don’t see that kind of rapid increase in capitalist countries almost ever, while it’s the norm for communists.

The USSR did achieve nothing special in that regard

Lol, ok

and definitely nothing special enough to justify the abuses that come with their approach

K. Looking forwards to seeing you meet your own standards on this one.

and everything went to shit.

If lifespans doubling within a few decades, and a backwater, feudal failed state becoming a global super power constitutes “going to shit”, then I sure wouldn’t mind seeing some shit around here.

This entire discussion is about semantics, so I see no issue with getting fiddly with it.

My point is you are redefining words as you go, which is pointless.

for authoritarianism being illiberal, I don’t see how that is tautological

Because you have defined it tautologically.

Authoritarianism is when the government or ruler has absolute control and has no obligation to accept input from the populace over which they rule

Which doesn’t apply to any of these ‘far left extremist’ projects you’re talking about.

And yes, I do think there has never been a truly liberal society, just as there has never been a truly communist society or any other -ist or -ism based society. They are concepts we can strive for, but adhering perfectly to the academic definition of any of these concepts is not realistic. I think the USA is fundemantally illiberal in many regards, and we would do well to strive to correct those aspects.

Then how can you say you are anything but a leftwing extremist yourself?

As for the definitions of those specific aspects of liberalism, yes, of course it is those aspects defined under the framework of liberalism. It would just take thousands of words to provide the entire context and it’s not super important here.

It’s extremely important; it’s essentially you saying “It’s not authoritarianism when we do it!”

When I’m talking about the extremist sides of the spectrum, far left and far right, I am referring to those who tread into territory where their ideology becomes ostensibly dangerous. The most common version of this is directly supporting things like oppressive authoritarian rulers and population cleansing, There are absolutely people on both the left and the right who would see those as acceptable means to their end of implementing their preferred ideology. Right wingers who want to ethnically cleanse populations they see as problematic or inferior are no better than the far leftists who want to guillotine whoever they decide is the bourgeois.

And this is the crux of my point; you say this like the center of the spectrum, and liberals, aren’t dangerous; aren’t perfectly happy to support authoritarian rulers and populations cleansing, who see genocidal violence acceptable means to their ends of maintaining their preferred ideology. In fact, in our current world, the overwhelming majority of violence and suffering is caused by moderates and liberals. You need to examine your blind spot here, and stop acting like the moderate position is somehow pacifism.

And yes, I actually do have a lot of issues with the French and American revolutions, and I do not think Churchill was a particularly good guy.

So no, you don’t hold liberals to the same standard you hold leftists, you instead hold a massive, systematic double standard.

I don’t think they are the same as the Russian and Chinese revolutions.

And there it is, right here, the deep seated double standard. Like I said; you don’t hate authoritarianism, you hate political heterodoxy.

but the Chinese and Russian versions resulted in higher death tolls and much more unhealthy systems coming out the other side (in my subjective opinion).

Death tolls are not subject to “subjective opinions”; you’re just wrong

Which one of those guys is worse depends on your subjective values, but for me, I’d say Lenin is the worse guy.

And that says a fuckload about how fucking evil your subjective values are.

See, this is why I loath liberals, in some ways more than fascists; at least fascists are open about their evil. You don’t actually hold principles you apply consistently, you don’t actually believe in all that shit about autonomy and liberty. They’re all just a smoke screen to justify ruthlessly crushing any oppositions: martial law, torture, murder, genocide, chattel slavery; these are all perfectly forgivable in defense of liberalism, at worst they’ll get you called “not a great guy”, but you certainly won’t be called “a dangerous authoritarian in crazy land” and you will always, always, be certain that you will be considered better than any leftist leader.

I seriously cannot get over saying chattel slavery and genocide are better than Lenin, or that Churchhill; a man who genocided millions of people and proudly presided over the most brutal empire in history, is better than the Russian revolution.

Authoritarianism is by definition illiberal and anyone who is authoritarian or supports authoritarianism is not liberal no matter what they claim to be. Centrism is also a meme, anyone who claims to be a centrist is usually just a stan for authoritarians in disguise.

Ok, but now you’re just fiddling with semantics so that your thesis is tautologically true. Sure, if you redefine your terms in a circular way so that authoritarianism means iliberalism and iliberalism means authoritarianism, then obviously its true, but it’s not very meaningful. It also doesn’t really make sense in regards to your original argument that the extremes of left and right are authoritarian, because, by your definition of liberal there is not now and never as been a liberal society. The USA incarcerates a volume of people that dwarfs any of the called ‘authoritarian’ nations, comparable to the Soviet Gulag system at the height of the purges. It also summarily executes people for minor crimes all the time. It frequently overthrows governments and engages in mass killings, including currently committing a genocide. Beyond that, it unilaterally deprives its people of access to the Earths commons using unilateral and lethal force, as well as hording vast quantities of stolen wealth from its rightful owners and using that wealth to oppress them. Other ‘liberal’ countries may not go to the same level, but they all do the same things. They have all been authoritarian and thus not liberal, which would make liberalism an extremist left wing ideology.

The core tenant of liberalism is respect for the autonomy and civil liberties of the individual and consent of the governed to the rules of the government through the machinations of democracy.

That’s all the tenants of leftism, including the ‘extreme’ leftism you call ‘crazy land’. You’re also leaving out the important caveats: autonomy as defined by liberals (So not, for example, autonomy to freely roam the earth and make use of its commons without interruption), civil liberties as defined by liberals (so not, for example, the liberty to make use of the means of production as you like), and consent of the governed as defined by liberals (so not, for example, the ability to ignore the degrees of government that you do not consent to).

The same could be said of the “far left”. They claim to be leftists, and they might have started out as such, but they have stepped out into crazy land and end up supporting things antithetical to the ideologies they claim to subscribe to.

Are you willing to apply this standard to ‘moderate’ liberals; are you willing to extend it to yourself? Will you declare anyone who shows even critical support for existing failed attempts at liberalism (which is all of them, by your definition), as having “stepped out into crazy land and end up supporting things antithetical to the ideologies they claim to subscribe to.”? Do you condemn people who support George Washington the same way as you do people who support Lenin? Do you condemn people who support Lincoln the same way as you do people who support Castro? Do you condemn people who support Churchill the same as people who support Pol Pot? Do you condemn the French Revolution and the American Revolution the same as the Russian and Chinese?

Because if not, I can only conclude that it’s not ‘authoritarianism’ that you consider “crazy land”; it’s just political heterodoxy in general.

All leftists want the the stateless thing.

Liberals and centrists also do the “strongarm authoritarian” thing all the fucking time.

Let me help you out:

Proof by assertion, sometimes informally referred to as proof by repeated assertion, is an informal fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction and refutation.[1] The proposition can sometimes be repeated until any challenges or opposition cease, letting the proponent assert it as fact, and solely due to a lack of challengers (argumentum ad nauseam).[2] In other cases, its repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth, in a variant of the appeal to authority or appeal to belief fallacies.[3]

is simply dishonest.

You don’t have the authority to declare that, tankie

Anarchists never do

it is. since you seem opposed to learning anywhere but Lemmy, I’ll help you out. equivocation is an informal fallacy where you use one word in a certain context with a particular meaning, and then you use the same word in a different context with a different meaning, and then you claim that they’re the same thing.

Yeah ok, totally not a debate bro

If that’s how you want to do it, I’m happy to come to your level and just copy paste the Wikipedia definition of proof by assertion and fallacy fallacy while dropping smug lines like “I’ll help you out”

You can’t tell me what to do, tankie

Just as yours doesn’t change that you’re being a debate bro