Britain - The Official Thread

[Dotini]

Is that the YES we want independence or NO we don't want to be part of the UK vote?

It doesn't matter what you want. It is against the interests of the US for Scotland to be independent of the UK, and for the UK to be independent of the EU. So fuggedaboudit.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Is that the YES we want independence or NO we don't want to be part of the UK vote?

Do you even watch the news?

The question is "Should Scotland be an independent country?", surely the nature of the "Yes" manifesto speaks for itself?

 

[Roger the Horse]

This made me laugh. Scarily accurate, too.

 

[TenEightyOne]

I just won in the America Thread

 

[Spurgy 777]

This made me laugh. Scarily accurate, too.

Wouldn't it be easier to just replace "right" with "insert whatever you want here" and then replace all the boxes with *some random, stupid comment*

Also fail to see how it applies to Britain, but maybe I'm missing something?

 

[LancerEvo7]

I don't really understand the politics behind it, so I won't comment on it, but my main concern is how does bingo work with a 5x4 grid?

 

[Roger the Horse]

The politics are fairly simple. It takes recurring elements of neo-fascist fallacies (can't call it an argument when it's entirely fallacy) and then creates a bingo grid out of it, so you can play bingo, but with fallacies instead of numbers.

Simple as that.

I have no idea how Bingo works with a 5x4 grid. I don't play Bingo.

__________________________________________________________________________

'Vote for policies' an interesting website which presents various parties policies anonymously, so that the user can choose them without being biased by the party name attached.

An interesting article relating to said website to read after one has had a go with it.

I strongly suggest that you check out these links.

 

[TenEightyOne]

I don't really understand the politics behind it, so I won't comment on it, but my main concern is how does bingo work with a 5x4 grid?

You get your bingo card out for political TV and tick off the ones you hear.

In other variations of home bingo you put a shot on each square and knock it back... the phrases can be anything. This isn't related to hardcore gambling bingo like what old ladies do

 

[Spurgy 777]

The politics are fairly simple. It takes recurring elements of neo-fascist fallacies (can't call it an argument when it's entirely fallacy) and then creates a bingo grid out of it, so you can play bingo, but with fallacies instead of numbers.

Simple as that.

I have no idea how Bingo works with a 5x4 grid. I don't play Bingo.

__________________________________________________________________________

'Vote for policies' an interesting website which presents various parties policies anonymously, so that the user can choose them without being biased by the party name attached.

An interesting article relating to said website to read after one has had a go with it.

I strongly suggest that you check out these links.

I got 4/9 UKIP, 2/9 Labour and 1/9 for Green, Conservatives and Lib dems and tbh I didn't completely agree with any of their policies

 

[Carbonox]

I got 4/9 UKIP, 2/9 Labour and 1/9 for Green, Conservatives and Lib dems and tbh I didn't completely agree with any of their policies

Got 50% BNP, 25% UKIP and 25% Green... Only did the 4 policies I care about most though, you seem to have gone with a full 9

 

[Famine]

This made me laugh. Scarily accurate, too.

Not really. It confuses "right" with "fascist".

Fascism is the opposite of anarchism. "Right" is capitalism, the opposite of socialism.

I didn't completely agree with any of their policies

Yep. I quit on question 2 because I couldn't find a single set of four policies that didn't have something utterly objectionable in it.

 

[Spurgy 777]

Got 50% BNP, 25% UKIP and 25% Green... Only did the 4 policies I care about most though, you seem to have gone with a full 9

I did it first with only 4 (didn't realise you could do all of them), picking immigration, welfare, environment and Europe and got 100% UKIP.

 

[Roger the Horse]

Not really. It confuses "right" with "fascist".

While that is correct, it's kind of a nitpick, considering the general term used by the media (and thus familiar to the general public) to describe fascists is "far-right", despite the fact that fascists can fall pretty much anywhere on the economic spectrum.

As a joky image aimed at a general audience, I believe that is acceptable.

Anyway, on that test, I got Green for everything bar Europe, where Labour came out on top.

 

[Famine]

While that is correct, it's kind of a nitpick, considering the general term used by the media (and thus familiar to the general public) to describe fascists is "far-right", despite the fact that fascists can fall pretty much anywhere on the economic spectrum.

It's not a "nitpick" to be correct when the media dumb stuff down to make it wrong and Joe Q Public laps it up.

As a joky image aimed at a general audience, I believe that is acceptable.

Knowingly repeating ignorance is considerably more ignorant than being ignorant of why it's ignorance.

 

[Dotini]

As a joky image aimed at a general audience, I believe that is acceptable.

Smear and ridicule are in fact time-honored and effective bottom-line political tools. These are standards perfectly suited to the culture.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Not really. It confuses "right" with "fascist".

Fascism is a right-wing implementation of a philosophy that can also contain elements considered to be extra-sinister. I'm not aware of any actual implementation that hasn't been hard-right in nature.

In practical use it has (I believe, but as ever I'd be happy to consider a new example! ) always been characterised by the right-wing behaviour of the leader/party in question.

For that reason I think you're right in purely academic terms but that's not a real-world implementation of it so @Roger the Horse is kind of also correct.

Plus, this is BINGO, dude, get your tea, get your blotter, get yer eyes down

 

[Famine]

Fascism is a right-wing implementation of a philosophy that can also contain elements considered to be extra-sinister.

Fascism is an authoritarian implementation of any philosophy. Nothing to do with left or right.

I'm not aware of any actual implementation that hasn't been hard-right in nature.

Uhhh... communism? Communism is fascistic socialism...

 

[Roger the Horse]

Hmm... Communism is a utopian dream hat will never come to fruition due to the fact that it really isn't a very well thought out dream, and Stalinism is the inevitable fascist result of trying to put communism into effect on anything other than a very small scale. (Not that communism was ever intended to exist on a large scale...)

 

[Dotini]

It's the Corporate State, Stupid
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

The early twentieth century Italians, who invented the word fascism, also had a more descriptive term for the concept -- estato corporativo: the corporatist state. Unfortunately for Americans, we have come to equate fascism with its symptoms, not with its structure. The structure of fascism is corporatism, or the corporate state. The structure of fascism is the union, marriage, merger or fusion of corporate economic power with governmental power. Failing to understand fascism, as the consolidation of corporate economic and governmental power in the hands of a few, is to completely misunderstand what fascism is. It is the consolidation of this power that produces the demagogues and regimes we understand as fascist ones.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7260.htm

 

[Famine]

Fascism is state-enforced social collectivism, whether right (capitalist) or left (socialist) leaning. It's even more consistent with big-government socialism, but not out of the reaches of capitalists or, worse, crony capitalists.

Hmm... Communism is a utopian dream hat will never come to fruition due to the fact that it really isn't a very well thought out dream, and Stalinism is the inevitable fascist result of trying to put communism into effect on anything other than a very small scale. (Not that communism was ever intended to exist on a large scale...)

Nevertheless, both Communism in general and Josef Stalin's particular implementation of it are examples of extreme left-wing fascism - neither of which could exist if fascism was a condition of the far-right.

If we want more, there's Mugabe's Zimbabwe or even Pot's Kampuchea. Hitler was relatively centrist (National Socialist may have been mere branding, but his Keynesian economic policies were well to the left of even today's "socialist" parties) and quite fascist.

 

[TenEightyOne]

@Famine, you're splitting hairs now by subdividing the fascism part of certain governments' ideologies. Separated in that context fascism is left wing, but the same doesn't apply to fascist government as a whole.

 

[Roger the Horse]

I would argue that it was the "proletariat dictatorship" (is there a greater contradiction in terms?) that will always inevitably become fascist, and that "true communism" (which cannot exist on anything other than a very small scale) would actually be anything but.

 

[Famine]

@Famine, you're splitting hairs now by subdividing the fascism part of certain governments' ideologies. Separated in that context fascism is left wing, but the same doesn't apply to fascist government as a whole.

I never said fascism was left wing. I said it wasn't right wing. And it isn't. Fascism/anarchism is independent of left/right ideology...

Not really. It confuses "right" with "fascist".

Fascism is the opposite of anarchism. "Right" is capitalism, the opposite of socialism.

Fascism is an authoritarian implementation of any philosophy. Nothing to do with left or right.

Fascism is state-enforced social collectivism, whether right (capitalist) or left (socialist) leaning.

I would argue that it was the "proletariat dictatorship" (is there a greater contradiction in terms?) that will always inevitably become fascist, and that "true communism" (which cannot exist on anything other than a very small scale) would actually be anything but.

Communism is fascist by definition. It's authoritarian socialism - non-voluntary, state-enforced social and financial egalitarianism.

Unless you're defining communism as voluntary social cooperation - such as one would find on a commune - which is libertarian socialism.

 

[Roger the Horse]

That was my point, communist states have been invariably fascist in nature, but it is possible for people to participate voluntarily in small scale non-fascist co-operatives which actually follow the ideals of communism far more closely than a state would ever be able to.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Knowingly repeating ignorance is considerably more ignorant than being ignorant of why it's ignorance.

Woah, that seems a high-handed approach to frivolous comedy. I think most of the contributors to these threads have a higher understanding of real fact over popular belief... but I don't think they allow it to spoil momentary comedy.

If that Bingo post (and remember that bingo IS a gamble that's associated with the lower class) had claimed to sum up fascism then fair enough... but it was a silly bingo board presented as exactly that. Not as a diatribe on political anatomy. Some of your points about fascism are correct academically while others are misplaced practically but much of that is opinion (across both academia and this thread).

You seem like you might be one of those Pub Blokes who asks which junction you came off at then spends all night telling you that you should have come of at Leighton Buzzard to miss the roadworks

 

[Famine]

That was my point, communist states have been invariably fascist in nature, but it is possible for people to participate voluntarily in small scale non-fascist co-operatives which actually follow the ideals of communism far more closely than a state would ever be able to.

I'm not aware of any small scale libertarian socialist community.

Even communes (and similar - kibbutzes and religious compounds/communities) are fascistic in nature, with the population themselves acting as the police (which is true communism, with no one citizen having more power than any other and less than any community of citizens) and en masse ostracising, excommunicating, imprisoning or ejecting dissenters.

That's not to say they're not possible - fascism and anarchism are opposite sides of one scale and socialism (left) and capitalism (right) are opposite sides of another. The two are independent.

Woah, that seems a high-handed approach to frivolous comedy. I think most of the contributors to these threads have a higher understanding of real fact over popular belief... but I don't think they allow it to spoil momentary comedy.

While you're reading back several hours to posts you've already replied to, go back a bit further. Roger's point was that it's okay to say "fascist" was "right" because that's what's commonly understood by it. I'm pointing out that that it's not because it's wrong to do so, whatever the common understanding is.

Plenty of comedy manages to be accurate and funny. Misrepresented nonsense isn't.

If that Bingo post (and remember that bingo IS a gamble that's associated with the lower class) had claimed to sum up fascism then fair enough... but it was a silly bingo board presented as exactly that.

No. You cannot misrepresent things and claim it's satire.

Some of your points about fascism are correct academically

No, they all are. Except the ones you assign to me and I already corrected you on.

while others are misplaced practically

No.

but much of that is opinion (across both academia and this thread).

Also no.

You seem like you might be one of those...

Irrelevant. Discuss the points not the people.

Fascism is not right wing. Fascism is fascism and can be left or right wing. Fascism is independent of the left/right ideology. You have been shown examples of left-wing fascism (Stalinism, Communism) - and centrist fascism (Nazism) - despite your protestations that fascism is a right-wing implementation of policy and your unawareness of any non-right fascists. This is not opinion and you do not get to brush it away as such.

Do you have any content to add or can we expect more of the usual?

 

[TenEightyOne]

I take your opinion as expressed and note it. I disagree as I think the academic sources I presented also do and I don't think you can make a fully factual argument that reconciles academia and actual implementation.

Do you have any content to add or can we expect more of the usual?

Sigh, if we're at patronage already then it's not much fun. Who are "we" and what's the "usual"? Dare I ask.

 

[Famine]

I take your opinion as expressed and note it. I disagree

You are as free to do so as the individuals in the evolution thread who disagree that evolution is a reality are.

as I think the academic sources I presented also do

Perhaps you are looking at a different site as I see no sources presented by you on this page.

and I don't think you can make a fully factual argument that reconciles academia and actual implementation.

Great. That's meaningless.

Sigh, if we're at patronage already then it's not much fun.

It stopped being fun when you started misrepresenting things and arguing, for the sake of arguing, against my wholly reasonable point that fascism isn't the same as right-wingness. Devil's advocate doesn't work with facts.

Who are "we" and what's the "usual"? Dare I ask.

I'll take that - and the rest of your wholly empty response - as a "no".

 

[TenEightyOne]

@Famine, meaningless?

And damn... I posted some great sources! I thought... have to fix that one, that IS my mistake.

Will you answer the questions or leave an equally 'empty' response?

 

[Famine]

@Famine, meaningless?

Yes. Meaningless. Both the content of the sentence and the concept that describing real world political ideologies upon two independent scales of social freedom and economic freedom is somehow not possible while being very easy in the classroom. To say nothing of the relevance to anything I've said.

Will you answer the questions or leave an equally 'empty' response?

As I said before, playing Devil's Advocate does not work on facts.

Now, apparently you forgot that communism existed when you said that fascism absolutely is the preserve of the right-wing only and there'd never been any non right-wing implementations of fascism:

Fascism is a right-wing implementation of a philosophy that can also contain elements considered to be extra-sinister. I'm not aware of any actual implementation that hasn't been hard-right in nature.

and that's fine, but you were corrected. You clearly now remember that communism exists and that fascism can be left-wing too:

Separated in that context fascism is left wing

Which, I'll note again, is neither what I said nor accurate.

Since you now accept that fascism is neither intrinsically left nor right wing, why you keep insisting that my statement that fascism is independent of left/right ideology is not a fact and mere opinion?

What are you even arguing against? And why did you decide to abandon that and start taking character measurements on what sort of tavern patron I'd be?