A new screw up by the Republican party put’s their plan to exploit Obama fear in their voter base under a microscope. Of course anyone that pays any attention to politics knows that both sides use such tactics. The difference is that usually what the left side is saying is mostly true, the right has never had a problem with making shit up, cause they know their voter base will eat up pretty much any boollshite they feed them.
The thing about this is that it is a document stating very clearly their plans to use Obama socialist fear in the next election.
Honestly the stupidity of the right wing voters astounds me. Do they even understand what socialism is? Or is this just another convenient “big scary political word” that’s being thrown around without anyone actually taking 10 seconds to look up what it means on wikipedia (anywhere, but wiki is fast and usually is good enough for a quick read up).
Here is the Wiki definition of Socialism. I will add comments for those who have a hard time understanding.
Socialism refers to the various theories of economic organization (ideas about the economy, not really society as a whole, which is something the right winger lie about) which advocate either public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources. (They think the people should own and control things instead of a few super rich dudes).
A more comprehensive definition of socialism is an economic system that has transcended commodity production and wage labor, where economic activity is carried out to maximize use-value as opposed to exchange-value and thus a corresponding change in social and economic relations, including the organization of economic institutions and resource allocation; often implying advocacy for a method of compensation based on the amount of labor expended.
(The current economy is based on how high a company can price it’s goods, regardless of how valuable they actually are, workers are paid based on time spent working, rather than the quality of their work.
Socialist economic ideals are workers being paid based on how valuable they are, and how hard they work, and products having price tags that reflect how useful and valuable they actually are.
That is probably what scares corporations more than anything. They would no longer be able to charge you 20 dollars for a CD that cost less than 1, and that is only a very simple example.
Right wing speakers will try to scare people by saying this form of economy will make the country poor(er). Comparatively, this is true, but only on paper. Compared to only a few decades ago the average person in the USA is already poorer. The current economy only looks rich for those benefiting from the high prices and inflation. The business people sitting in their high rise offices.
My mother has oft told me of a burger place where she and her siblings could go and get 10 burgers or 10 fries for $1, now you can’t even get one for that price (fuck dollar menus, you still have to pay sales tax!).
The Minimum wage yearly earnings and the annual cost of living have not been balanced since the 50-60s. The majority of people in this country work for minimum wage, or not much more.
So, to repeat my point, we are already a poor county in every way that counts.)
Most socialists share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through exploitation, creates an unequal society, does not provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximize their potential, and does not utilize technology and resources to their maximum potential nor in the interests of the public.
(our current economic type is capitalist, which trys to sell the dream that anyone can become a rich person if they try hard enough, while at the same time concentrating as much wealth as possible in as few hands as possible, thus keeping the majority of people reliant on them for everything.
They take advantage of the fact they pay everyone by keeping their prices high, and the wages low. Making sure as much of the money keeps coming back into their pockets as possible.
They also ignore advances in technology that improve quality of product, send jobs that are needed here to other countries where they can produce more product for less, and generally do whatever they can to keep their profits high, even when what they are doing is harmful to the economy and the general public.)
Hmmm, more power to the people, and less to corp-rat fat cats that don’t care what happens to us as long as they maintain their profit margins. Sounds pretty good to me. I see nothing scary here at all.
Now lets look at the other side.
Fascists seek to organize a nation on corporatist perspectives; values; and systems such as the political system and the economy.
(The republicans are a party of rich people, for rich people.)
Fascists identify violence and war as actions that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality.
(While I will not try to say the left never sends us to war, the republicans seem unable to have someone in office that isn’t either sending us to war, or trying to.)
Fascists claim that culture is created by collective national society and its state, that cultural ideas are what give individuals identity, and thus rejects individualism.
(They think being part of ‘the group’ is more important than being yourself. If they can control what ‘the group’ is, all the better.)
(1)Fascism rejects and resists autonomy of cultural or ethnic groups who are not considered part of the fascists’ nation and who refuse to assimilate or are unable to be assimilated.
(2)Fascists consider attempts to create such autonomy as an affront and threat to the nation.
(Similar to the last point, but more dangerous. This is the ‘with us or you’ll be visited by people in black clothes at 3am and never be heard from again’ mentality.
I will do this one as a point-by-point.
1- autonomy means ‘by yourself’, or individual. In this case it means any kind of attempt to be different from ‘the group’. Music, art, religion, sexuality, and anything else that does not fit the view of ‘the group’ is looked at as wrong. Which leads to…
Point -2 Anyone trying to maintain any of those things is considered a threat to ‘the group’.
Currently this takes the form of the right wing creating fear of anything that threatens their views. Unfortunately, their aren’t that many steps from media generated fear, to those 3am visits from people in black clothes.)
In viewing the nation as an integrated collective community, fascists claim that pluralism is a dysfunctional aspect of society, and justify a totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety.
(Since they think the nation should be the focus of everyone, they have no problem with the idea of getting rid of competing political parties, and even doing away with voting all together)
Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of an official all-embracing ideology and propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that controls the state, personality cults, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of state terrorism.
( This is Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia. One government to rule them all and in the darkness bind them, if you will. One government, one nation controlled media (fox news is an example of a “news” agency controlled by a single political view), they tell you what to do, what to think, what to feel, and anyone that disagrees, disappears. To bring the whole post full circle, a trademark of the fascist/totalitarian method is using fear to lead and control people. Which is what the republicans have been caught red-handed doing.)
Now that we have actually looked at what socialism is, and looked at what the republican party actually is, which is really scary?
Obama may be spending a lot, but it was Bush that took us from the largest surplus in history to the largest deficit in history.
The republicans are the ones that let the corp-rats control everything.
Capitalism may have worked in the past, but their greed has outstripped their sense. They are willing to destroy us all in the name of profit margins.
Times have changed. What used to work obviously isn’t any more.
Time to try something different, and people need to get used to it, or we really will lose it all.
Of course, I’m an anarchist. I would be quite happy to see a world without a need for government and religion to keep the sheep in line.
I say quite a bit more in the video version:
