Shooting themselves in the foot??

[Vanni Fucci]

Here is the Hans Slom projection of European political spectrum...where do you see fascism?

This is after all the accepted standard for political pidgeonholing...

As well, where do you see social democracy (NDP) in relation to communism?

 

[Nuggler]

Well, Vanni, guess that pretty much nails it. Thanks.

No doubt bob will say your diagram is wrong and the commies are somewhere to the right of fascist.........whatever.

So, anyway, like I was saying, bob, you use your inaccurate method of pidgeonholing, and I'll use the Canadian one.........Con = fascist.

To be unsure of which Conservatives I'm talking about would paint you as patently (to use your word) stupid, as you know perfectly well the Cons in question are the Cons of Canada. But, since you're not stupid, what's your motivation?

Woops, looks like we've been "off topic".........We were talking about turfing the fascist Cons, and I still think that's a hell of a great idea.........no matter if the fascists aren't in fact fascists. If we can use the Hans Slom projection, they seem to fit; authoritarian and all.

But, should you wish to continue the pidgeonhole debate, meet me somewhere else.

 

[mit]

Harper did this on purpose

Harper knew in advance of the fiscal update that a coalition was being bantered about - Harper even tried it himself once - If Harper cared about making parliament work - he would not have put the 3 daggers in the fiscal update. He is no dummy - he knew what would happen - The opposition has played in to his trap - now he can dissolve parliament- govern without the naysayers from across the floor - bring in a whole bunch of fiscal initiatives to make his government look like they are doing what is best and then reopen the house - get another election going and become King.
If Harper had not played the tax cut and spend role during his last kick at governing - we would be in even better shape. We could probably buy Alaska from the USA - I am sure Obama would agree as long as we took Sarah with it.

 

[Scott Free]

I think any such deal would be ruined by including Sarah.

 

[scratch]

I will second that.

 

[bobnoorduyn]

The Hans Slom Projection is one of many charts or diagrams that try to put 3 dimentional reality into 2 dimentions, some more hamfisted than others. A bit of studying of the differences between communism and fascism reveals that they actually have more similarities. The following are a few excerpts easily accessed on the web:

The leftists were, for all practical purposes, ideologically similar to those of us who call ourselves “libertarians.” The rightists were ideological opposites: statists, interventionists, in short, authoritarians. “Left” and “right” in France, during 1789–90, had a semantic handiness and a high degree of accuracy. But “leftist” was soon expropriated by the authoritarian Jacobins and came to have an opposite meaning. “Leftist” became descriptive of egalitarians and was associated with Marxian socialism: communism, socialism, Fabianism. What, then, of “rightist”? Where did it fit in this semantic reversal of “leftist”? The staff of the Moscow apparatus has taken care of that for us, and to their advantage: Anything not communist or socialist they decreed and propagandized as “fascist.” This is by way of saying that any ideology that is not communist (left) is now popularly established as fascist (right).
By Leonard E. Read


It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of “Freedom or dictatorship?” into “Which kind of dictatorship?”—thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice—according to the proponents of that fraud—is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism).
That fraud collapsed in the 1940’s, in the aftermath of World War II. It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory—that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state—that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders—that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique—that fascism is not the product of the political “right,” but of the “left”—that the basic issue is not “rich versus poor,” but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government—which means: capitalism versus socialism.
Fascism and Communism/Socialism — Ayn Rand Lexicon



Most people today believe that Fascism is a "right wing" movement. I say "right wing" in quotes because I don't believe the left-right political spectrum is a very useful tool for political analysis, but that's another story already told; but to the extent that "left" and "right" have meaning, Fascism, a movement started by the Syndicalist-Socialist labor leader Benito Mussolini, certainly was a "left wing" movement. The successful deception to put it on the "right" was a tactic of the Communists, who tried to build an "anti-Fascist" coalition that would attract respectable people like J. Robert Oppenheimer. Of course the Communists were perfectly willing to make common cause with the Fascists in opposing the Socialists, but that's another matter.
Isegoria: Fascism on Pearl Harbor Day