Double Standard That I've Noticed

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If you insist that all black power activists hate white people, people will think that you hate black people.
If you insist that all feminists hate men, people will think that you are a misogynist.
If you insist that all socialists are totalitarian, people will just think that you are a conservative. Hardly anyone will accuse you of hating all poor people. Why?

This is just something that I've noticed. Making blanket generalisations about feminists and black power activists is no longer socially acceptable, but it is still acceptable to make cruel generalisations about socialists, despite the tremendous diversity in the international socialist movement.

It's almost as if our society values wealthy women and wealthy non-whites more than it values poor people in general.

Discuss.

<analytical mode activated>

Gross generalisation...
Some people might...
Some people might not...

Perhaps some would simply think you are threatened by the premise of their activism? <shrug>

Poor start to the discussion if your premise is fallacious...

I don't really think the left or right of politics are any "worse" about this than either are, when it all comes down to it.

The difference is, both sides tend to flip their own script of oppression on one vs. the other.

Well, firstly I'd disagree with this entirely:

My experience is that socialists are often very quick to accuse people who ideologically oppose them of "hating the poor"; I even think it's implicit in your post here.

Non-socialists don't fall for that, because socialism isn't the only or even the most successful anti-poverty ideology. The evidence shows us that countries tend to experience dramatic reductions in poverty when they abandon socialism. It also isn't even primarily an anti-poverty ideology. Socialist parties these days seem to focus on middle-class handouts above everything else. In the UK, for example, the Labour Party opposed proposals to take low-earners out of income tax, and in its 2017 manifesto prioritised the expensive nationalisation of train companies (with the aim of giving train users, who are usually rich, a 3% price cut) and reducing taxes on high-earning graduates ahead of raising benefits or doing anything substantial to tackle poverty.

Furthermore, historically it's absolutely true that socialism is, in practice, a philosophy which only leads to government if it plays hard and fast with our rights, and not just in an anarcho-capitalist "property rights of the ultra-rich to not have to pay tax" sense. I know and appreciate that historical socialist regimes repulse most modern socialists, but I am unaware of a hard-left philosophy which has been implemented for a significant period of time that didn't breach basic human rights. There are lots of theoretical alternative models, but these are rarely (if ever) able to explain how this system will determine how much bread people get, let alone assemble and distribute pencils.

Agreed...
And look what hard left governments provided:

The U.S.S.R. collapsed largely because of economic impoverishment...
Who hasn't seen on the media the lines of people waiting at the supermarket with shelves almost empty?
There were incidences of their army killing their own and cannibalising them because the government wasn't paying them due to lack of funds...

Should I mention Pol Pot?
Should I mention Venezuela?

If there are no funds for welfare, there is no welfare...

Communism/hardcore-socialism = a big fail!

<activate learning mode>
I don't know much about international socialism and want to learn more...
Can someone give examples where socialism has been a definitive success, particularly in modern times?

Also, what is China these days?
I heard this morning that there are another 200 billionairs in China this year...
WTF?

I'm not a misogynist, but I do believe that feminists hate men. The idea that a man could be a feminist (like Justin Trudeau, apparently) makes as much sense to me as someone being Jewish becoming a Nazi, or a black person a Klansman. It just does not compute, as the robot from 'Lost in Space' used to say.

Well because blacks and women didn't kill millions of people for a start.

Black activists and Women protest for rights.

Socialists want to take away rights that is the big difference.

No, I never saw those lines. Well, apart from on mainstream television back in the 1980's when yet another of those interminable stories would appear to show us all just how incompetent, corrupt, evil, et cetera the "Soviets" were in order to justify to the gullible public yet another massive increase in 'defence' spending.

It's really odd that they would tell people that the Soviet economic system was corrupt, inefficient, everyone was poor, and it was nowhere near as reliable as capitalism, but at the same time would insist that they were technologically ahead of the West and a real danger militarily. You can't have it both ways, and believing both narratives involved quite a lot of double-think, as Orwell might put it.



No.



You don't know anything about socialism!



1. Sweden.
2. Australia in the 1970's, when we had Gough Whitlam.
3. Cuba, in spite of an economic blockade imposed by the United States.
4. The USSR before Gorbachev destroyed it with his stupid 'glasnost' and 'perestroika' programmes.

Is four enough?



You really are confused, aren't you?

The reason they posed a threat is the prioritised military expansion over feeding their people. In a free society could not behave the way the soviets did whilst millions of their people starved.

Socialism come in many forms....I realize that.

I've been to Trotskyite meetings. I happen to like Trotsky himself---but I found Trotskyites to be doctrinaire, and almost cultish in their devotion to their precepts. Any evidence to the contrary was dismissed as what Trump would call "Fake News."

I would not want to live under such an ideology as manifested by the Trotskyites, though not necessarily manifested by Trotsky himself.

Sweden is not a socialist country. It is one of the most capitalist countries in the world. It also has a strong welfare state, but that's not socialism.

Gough Whitlam was Prime Minister of Australia for only three years, and was not a socialist. He was a social democrat. Socialism isn't free healthcare and legal aid.

Cuba I'll grant you as a genuine case of socialism, but not something to be envied or imitated. Many thousands of people risked their lives escaping from Castro's reign of terror, and the economy experienced deep recessions that its neighbours did not (e.g. a 14.9% drop in GDP in 1993).

The USSR was left behind by the USA, and its problems started long before Gorbachev. Look at how that country suffered under Lenin and Stalin.

Some other places you might want to look:

1) Compare East Germany with West Germany
2) Compare North Korea with South Korea
3) Compare the People's Republic of China with the Republic of China

Gough Whitlam was the second worst PM in Australian political history and was dismissed with extreme prejudice for trying to implement an unlawful loan through Kemlani to counter the destructive, irresponsible spending spree of Labor...



Whitlam damaged the strength of the Australian economy enormously...
Before Whitlam, Australia was considered to have a living standard in the top 5 of the world...
After Whitlam we dropped to 26th...

Yes, they helped a lot of people in need at that time but destroyed the economic viability of Australia as a result, jeopardising future welfare funding...
Could someone tell Gough Whitlam that everyone has to spend within their means...
And this also means countries...
Not rocket surgery...<sigh>

The Hawk/Keating government was one of the best governments Australia ever had, but this was primarily due to the Labor Party "stealing" Liberal Party policies to the point where the Howard government refused to declare their policies until the election was on the doorstep...
At that time, Labor was as Liberal (conservative) as the Liberal Party...

Regarding Cuba?
Bwahahaha...

Regarding U.S.S.R.:
They tried and failed in a spectacular way to match the arms race ...
Reagan was battling "The Evil Empire" through the SDI


I don't know anything about Sweden and haven't the time/desire/energy to research...

Communism/socialism has an extremely poor success rate...
Perhaps this is an understatement...

You might have to fight the Australian "Terminator" on that one, though he is talking about modern politics here:


Many people here consider Labor to have a socialistic leaning...

Maybe I shouldn't have put Sweden in that list. I haven't been there myself, so I can only base what I believe about the place on what others have told me about it, and that's not always accurate and objective.

"Second"? I'm curious to know who, in your opinion, was THE worst. Julia Guillard? I simply could not stand her! Listening to that utterly horrible, nasal bogan slang voice of hers was like hearing someone scrape their nails on a blackboard (or listening to bagpipes).

No, he was actually the BEST we've had thus far (at least in my own living memory). Your belief that he was one of the worst is simply not true, if only because he did so much for so many who had, up until his time, been seriously disadvantaged. He introduced FREE tertiary education! He got us OUT of Vietnam, abolished conscription, and so many other things in his very short, single term, that forever changed the country for the better.