[POLITICS] Right-Wing Hypocrisy

[Ravinoff]

Strom Thurmond was a left-winger?

Yes. Segregation was popular.

To be specific, Southern Democrats were pro-segregation because the south as a whole was pro-segregation. When the south as a whole turned against segregation, the vast majority of Democratic politicians turned against it following public opinion. Strom Thurmond himself was not a typical Democratic politician, he was actually a ideological segregationist, a coincidental ally of the left in that era, not particularly left himself. But he was a member of the left-wing party.

I think a better way to explain it is that up until the Southern Strategy in the '60s, you can essentially think of the Democrats as two separate parties ideologically fused by necessity into one very strange but functional coalition. The northern state Dems were the ones like FDR and Kennedy who you'd associate with the current DNC, relatively liberal (by the standards of their time), while in the south you had Strom Thurmond and George "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" Wallace, with the only real shared point being both factions didn't like Republicans.

Or to use one of my favourite oddities in military history for an example, sort of a Battle for Castle Itter [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwfJsKfCnaM] situation. Wherein an improbable motley assortment of US Army, Wehrmacht, local resistance fighters and a bunch of newly-freed French POWs fought together against several hundred Waffen-SS troops who were basically on a standard spree of looting and murdering.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Strom Thurmond was a left-winger?

Yes. Segregation was popular.

To be specific, Southern Democrats were pro-segregation because the south as a whole was pro-segregation. When the south as a whole turned against segregation, the vast majority of Democratic politicians turned against it following public opinion. Strom Thurmond himself was not a typical Democratic politician, he was actually a ideological segregationist, a coincidental ally of the left in that era, not particularly left himself. But he was a member of the left-wing party.

I think a better way to explain it is that up until the Southern Strategy in the '60s, you can essentially think of the Democrats as two separate parties ideologically fused by necessity into one very strange but functional coalition. The northern state Dems were the ones like FDR and Kennedy who you'd associate with the current DNC, relatively liberal (by the standards of their time), while in the south you had Strom Thurmond and George "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" Wallace, with the only real shared point being both factions didn't like Republicans.

Or to use one of my favourite oddities in military history for an example, sort of a Battle for Castle Itter [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwfJsKfCnaM] situation. Wherein an improbable motley assortment of US Army, Wehrmacht, local resistance fighters and a bunch of newly-freed French POWs fought together against several hundred Waffen-SS troops who were basically on a standard spree of looting and murdering.

You get an internet cookie for Sabaton.

 

[tstorm823]

I think a better way to explain it is that up until the Southern Strategy in the '60s, you can essentially think of the Democrats as two separate parties ideologically fused by necessity into one very strange but functional coalition. The northern state Dems were the ones like FDR and Kennedy who you'd associate with the current DNC, relatively liberal (by the standards of their time), while in the south you had Strom Thurmond and George "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" Wallace, with the only real shared point being both factions didn't like Republicans.

Or to use one of my favourite oddities in military history for an example, sort of a Battle for Castle Itter [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwfJsKfCnaM] situation. Wherein an improbable motley assortment of US Army, Wehrmacht, local resistance fighters and a bunch of newly-freed French POWs fought together against several hundred Waffen-SS troops who were basically on a standard spree of looting and murdering.

The Southern Strategy: still not real. Republicans had no exceptional success in the south in the 60s. The vast majority of southern democrats remained exactly that. State and local elections remained mostly blue until around the end of the 20th century.

 

[Saelune]

I think a better way to explain it is that up until the Southern Strategy in the '60s, you can essentially think of the Democrats as two separate parties ideologically fused by necessity into one very strange but functional coalition. The northern state Dems were the ones like FDR and Kennedy who you'd associate with the current DNC, relatively liberal (by the standards of their time), while in the south you had Strom Thurmond and George "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" Wallace, with the only real shared point being both factions didn't like Republicans.

Or to use one of my favourite oddities in military history for an example, sort of a Battle for Castle Itter [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwfJsKfCnaM] situation. Wherein an improbable motley assortment of US Army, Wehrmacht, local resistance fighters and a bunch of newly-freed French POWs fought together against several hundred Waffen-SS troops who were basically on a standard spree of looting and murdering.

The Southern Strategy: still not real. Republicans had no exceptional success in the south in the 60s. The vast majority of southern democrats remained exactly that. State and local elections remained mostly blue until around the end of the 20th century.

You're literally rejecting fact.

 

[Seanchaidh]

This sort of hypocrisy isn't limited to the United States by any means. And sometimes it's not just hypocrisy, but also false charges. Here we see an example from Brazil: https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-lula-operation-car-wash-sergio-moro/
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-car-wash-prosecutors-workers-party-lula/

The Intercept [https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-car-wash-prosecutors-workers-party-lula/]:
Overall, the documents depict a task force of prosecutors seemingly intent on exploiting its legal powers for blatantly political ends, led by its goal of preventing a return to power of the Workers' Party generally, and Lula specifically.

For those who don't like clicking things: Former President of Brazil Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva who, among other things, is Brazil's most popular politician was falsely accused by a group of "anti-corruption" investigators who are now revealed to have 1)doubted the strength of their evidence, and 2)illegally conspired and colluded with the judge that convicted him, and 3)oh by the way, that judge is now the current right-wing President's justice minister and has also been promised the earliest available seat on Brazil's Supreme Court. All this in order to prevent Lula from running in the last election (or saying anything publicly about it) which he would have handily won over the bargain basement Pinochet otherwise known as Jair Bolsonaro.

Trump likes Bolsonaro, though. "Drain the swamp" indeed.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

The Southern Strategy: still not real. Republicans had no exceptional success in the south in the 60s. The vast majority of southern democrats remained exactly that. State and local elections remained mostly blue until around the end of the 20th century.

"As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now you don't have to do that. All that you need to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues that he's campaigned on since 1964, and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.

[...]

You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-, n-, n-." By 1968 you can't say "n-"; that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N-, n-. So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the backbone."

-Lee Atwater, Republican strategists and member of Reagan administration in 1981

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Fuck it, I'll keep going.

"No exceptional success in the South in the '60s", you say?

In 1964, other than his home state of Arizona, the only states Goldwater, a Republican, carried against a Democratic incumbent from Texas were Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.

In 1968, no Southern state except Texas went Democratic, because Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia went for George Wallace. Nixon carried Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Oklahoma.

 

[tstorm823]

"As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now you don't have to do that. All that you need to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues that he's campaigned on since 1964, and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.

[...]

You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-, n-, n-." By 1968 you can't say "n-"; that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N-, n-. So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the backbone."

-Lee Atwater, Republican strategists and member of Reagan administration in 1981

There are two problems with your justification:

1) You're deferring to a retrospective statement by the 1980 equivalent of Steve Bannon. Not only is he a questionable source of information to begin with, he was also 3 years old in 1954 and a high schooler in a rock band in 1968. He had no more first hand experience with the presidential campaigns of the 60s than you or I do.

2) The overall message of that interview, the point Lee Atwater was attempting to make, was that race ceased to be the central issue for southern voters after the 60s. He declared his generation the first generation to not be racist in the south. I think that's grossly ambitious in retrospect, but I think if you look at how the region turned red over the 20 years after he did this interview, it's not a baseless statement to suggest that it took until his parents generation was dying off completely, people born in the 20s or 30s, before the political makeup of the south really flipped. To use an interview that's centrally claiming that racism wasn't a valuable campaign technique in the south after the 60s and use it as the key piece of evidence that Republicans flipped the south by courting the racists is blind to context.

Fuck it, I'll keep going.

"No exceptional success in the South in the '60s", you say?

In 1964, other than his home state of Arizona, the only states Goldwater, a Republican, carried against a Democratic incumbent from Texas were Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.

In 1968, no Southern state except Texas went Democratic, because Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia went for George Wallace. Nixon carried Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Oklahoma.

Barry Goldwater was not a racist. He voted for every piece of civil rights legislation he could up until the one he thought was beyond constitutional authority. Barry Goldwater did not court racists, he did not want racist support, he denounced those who did support him, and he avoided the topic of race whenever possible. His opponent, Lyndon Johnson, was super racist. He worked against civil rights legislation until Kennedy was assassinated and then it became politically advantageous to support it. He published downright offensive TV ads trying to connect Goldwater to the KKK in people's minds. Johnson ran likely the most shameless campaign in history, and as Kennedy's successor, he had almost no chance of losing, so he gleefully chased the racists toward Goldwater, beginning a string of propaganda that Republicans are racist that hasn't stopped to this day. To call any aspect of the 1964 campaign a Republican success is downright foolish. Additionally, this vote for Goldwater was only reflected in the presidential race, state and local races remained deep blue in the south.

In 1968, after the south had voted for Goldwater, they chose instead to vote for a Democrat running an independent campaign rather than vote for a Republican. Nixon, supposedly courting southern racists on purpose (since that's the whole idea of the Southern Strategy) was so successful that he lost the entire south to a 3rd party candidate.

I repeat, the Republican Party had no exceptional success in the South in the 1960s. And, if you're so keen to listen to the wisdom of that interview with Atwater, Republicans made no real gains into the south until people stopped voting based on race issues.

 

[Seanchaidh]

You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-, n-, n-." By 1968 you can't say "n-"; that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N-, n-. So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the backbone."

I'm not proposing this as a counterexample because I think most of Joe Biden's career has been nearly indistinguishable from a Republican as it comes to policy, but... it's notable that Joe Biden also said "stuff like... forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff".

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/politics/joe-biden-busing-letters-2020/index.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/445832-joe-biden-in-2007-it-was-the-biden-crime-bill-that-became-the-clinton-crime
[tweet t="https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1125126624964431873"]

The Southern Strategy is absolutely a thing, and Third Way triangulation meant that Democrats (quite foolishly) tried to employ it too.

 

[TheIronRuler]

This sort of hypocrisy isn't limited to the United States by any means. And sometimes it's not just hypocrisy, but also false charges. Here we see an example from Brazil: https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-lula-operation-car-wash-sergio-moro/
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-car-wash-prosecutors-workers-party-lula/

The Intercept [https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-car-wash-prosecutors-workers-party-lula/]:
Overall, the documents depict a task force of prosecutors seemingly intent on exploiting its legal powers for blatantly political ends, led by its goal of preventing a return to power of the Workers' Party generally, and Lula specifically.

For those who don't like clicking things: Former President of Brazil Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva who, among other things, is Brazil's most popular politician was falsely accused by a group of "anti-corruption" investigators who are now revealed to have 1)doubted the strength of their evidence, and 2)illegally conspired and colluded with the judge that convicted him, and 3)oh by the way, that judge is now the current right-wing President's justice minister and has also been promised the earliest available seat on Brazil's Supreme Court. All this in order to prevent Lula from running in the last election (or saying anything publicly about it) which he would have handily won over the bargain basement Pinochet otherwise known as Jair Bolsonaro.

Trump likes Bolsonaro, though. "Drain the swamp" indeed.

.
Wasn't it easy to associate Lula with corruption because of what his heir (Roussof) did in her time at the ministry of energy and her presidency? She mismanaged the national energy company, getting charged with corruption in a big scandal. When she was president she also fudged the numbers on the budget...

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Final answer, locked in!

1) You're deferring to a retrospective statement by the 1980 equivalent of Steve Bannon. Not only is he a questionable source of information to begin with, he was also 3 years old in 1954 and a high schooler in a rock band in 1968. He had no more first hand experience with the presidential campaigns of the 60s than you or I do.

Okay, then.

"Still, the Goldwater movement, whether or not it can command a majority, remains an enormous one in the South and appears to be a racist movement and almost nothing else. On his tour, Goldwater seemed fully aware of this and not visibly distressed by it. He did not, to be sure, make any direct racist appeals. He covered the South and never, in any public gathering, mentioned ?race? or ?Negroes? or ?whites? or ?segregation? or ?civil rights.? But the fact that the words did not cross his lips does not mean that he ignored the realities they describe. He talked about those realities all the time, in an underground, or Aesopian, language?a kind of code that few in his audiences had any trouble deciphering. In the code, ?bullies and marauders? means ?Negroes.? ?Criminal defendants? means negroes. States rights means ?opposition to civil rights.? ?Women? means ?white women.? This much of the code is as easily understood by his Northern audiences as by his Southern ones, but there are also some words that have a more limited and specific meaning for the Southern crowds. Thus, in the Old Confederacy ?Lyndon Baines Johnson? and ?my opponent? means ?integrationist.? ?Hubert Horatio? (it somehow amuses Goldwater to drop the ?Humphrey?) means ?super-integrationist.? ?Federal judiciary? means ?integrationist judges.? It would be going too far to say that Goldwater touched Southern sensibilities on race when he brought up Bobby Baker, the TFX controversy, fiscal policy, or ?Yo-yo? McNamara, and he certainly was not arousing them when he talked of the T.V.A. in Knoxville and Medicare in Orlando...

Source [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1964/10/03/the-campaign-goldwater].

The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class. It is tempting and convenient to block the progress of a minority whose services, as menials, are economically useful. Let the South never permit itself to do this. So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function.

- William F. Buckley, "Why the South Must Prevail", 1957 [Full text] [https://adamgomez.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/whythesouthmustprevail-1957.pdf].

...the point Lee Atwater was attempting to make, was that race ceased to be the central issue for southern voters after the 60s. He declared his generation the first generation to not be racist in the south.

lol ok

His opponent, Lyndon Johnson, was super racist. He worked against civil rights legislation until Kennedy was assassinated and then it became politically advantageous to support it. He published downright offensive TV ads trying to connect Goldwater to the KKK in people's minds. Johnson ran likely the most shameless campaign in history, and as Kennedy's successor, he had almost no chance of losing, so he gleefully chased the racists toward Goldwater...

We can talk about LBJ when there's a discussion to be had about LBJ. We're talking about Goldwater. No red herring for you.

Insert quote from Billy Madison here.

Yep, the Totally Not Racists in the Deep South flipped after a century and a half of consistent and unified Democratic support, up to and including starting a fucking civil war over Totally Not Racist Causes, to not vote for The Real Racist, All Along. They voted instead for the Not Racist Guy who Didn't Run a Racist Campaign, Really, and four years later the South split for a Democrat By Another Name [What was that salient issue in the campaign, again?], and the Totally Not a Crook, Nixon. And Civil Rights Totally had Nothing to Do with This.

 

[Trunkage]

snip

I wouldn't bother with Storm. They are very anti-political switching

Its a very prominent Alt-right and Republican talking point for many years that Democrats are just as racist as they used to be.

While I can see dog whistle in Bill Clinton's rhetoric, which is to be expected as the Dems are Right Wing, he's not as Bush (either), meaning their more Right wing

Plus, I dont hold Lincoln in that high regard and African Americans are probably lucky he was assassinated. Lincoln might have done worse based on his rhetoric while in power

 

[Saelune]

snip

I wouldn't bother with Storm. They are very anti-political switching

Its a very prominent Alt-right and Republican talking point for many years that Democrats are just as racist as they used to be.

While I can see dog whistle in Bill Clinton's rhetoric, which is to be expected as the Dems are Right Wing, he's not as Bush (either), meaning their more Right wing

Plus, I dont hold Lincoln in that high regard and African Americans are probably lucky he was assassinated. Lincoln might have done worse based on his rhetoric while in power

Here is the thing, Republicans cant oppose the idea that the parties switched AND celebrate the Confederacy. Its got to be one or the other. Either the parties switched, or they are celebrating their historical enemies.

 

[Seanchaidh]

This sort of hypocrisy isn't limited to the United States by any means. And sometimes it's not just hypocrisy, but also false charges. Here we see an example from Brazil: https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-lula-operation-car-wash-sergio-moro/
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-car-wash-prosecutors-workers-party-lula/

The Intercept [https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-car-wash-prosecutors-workers-party-lula/]:
Overall, the documents depict a task force of prosecutors seemingly intent on exploiting its legal powers for blatantly political ends, led by its goal of preventing a return to power of the Workers' Party generally, and Lula specifically.

For those who don't like clicking things: Former President of Brazil Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva who, among other things, is Brazil's most popular politician was falsely accused by a group of "anti-corruption" investigators who are now revealed to have 1)doubted the strength of their evidence, and 2)illegally conspired and colluded with the judge that convicted him, and 3)oh by the way, that judge is now the current right-wing President's justice minister and has also been promised the earliest available seat on Brazil's Supreme Court. All this in order to prevent Lula from running in the last election (or saying anything publicly about it) which he would have handily won over the bargain basement Pinochet otherwise known as Jair Bolsonaro.

Trump likes Bolsonaro, though. "Drain the swamp" indeed.

.
Wasn't it easy to associate Lula with corruption because of what his heir (Roussof) did in her time at the ministry of energy and her presidency? She mismanaged the national energy company, getting charged with corruption in a big scandal. When she was president she also fudged the numbers on the budget...

Imagine if the US President got impeached over a questionable CBO report.

 

[Trunkage]

snip

I wouldn't bother with Storm. They are very anti-political switching

Its a very prominent Alt-right and Republican talking point for many years that Democrats are just as racist as they used to be.

While I can see dog whistle in Bill Clinton's rhetoric, which is to be expected as the Dems are Right Wing, he's not as Bush (either), meaning their more Right wing

Plus, I dont hold Lincoln in that high regard and African Americans are probably lucky he was assassinated. Lincoln might have done worse based on his rhetoric while in power

Here is the thing, Republicans cant oppose the idea that the parties switched AND celebrate the Confederacy. Its got to be one or the other. Either the parties switched, or they are celebrating their historical enemies.

I mean, only if you going to use logic

 

[Agema]

"Libetarian socialism" is a whole thing, for example.

Left-wing. That's literally just being left-wing. That is to say, once you cut the shit and look at the theories at play, as opposed to propaganda and pundits' incessant stream of verbal diarrhea.

Government as a guarantor of civil liberties, employing mixed economic policies to maximize equality.

Until the 1990s across most of the world outside of the USA, "libertarian" would primarily have been seen as synonymous with "Anarchist": libertarian socialists as per Mikhail Bakunin etc. Since, with the cultural dominance of the USA, increased global communications and the annihilation of Anarchists as significant political force, "libertarian" has increasingly been dominated by the American perception of the word as classical liberals and small government conservatives.

 

[Agema]

Wasn't it easy to associate Lula with corruption because of what his heir (Roussof) did in her time at the ministry of energy and her presidency? She mismanaged the national energy company, getting charged with corruption in a big scandal. When she was president she also fudged the numbers on the budget...

Brazil is endemically corrupt - I would assume virtually any random Brazilian politician is likely to have done something dodgy.

Roussef was no angel, but that's not really about why she went. She was politically weak at the time as Brazil was having a rough patch economically, but she was really removed for refusing to use her executive powers to can the "lava jato" corruption case. Plenty of those who voted to impeach Roussef were accused in the "lava jato" corruption case (and later found guilty), leaving us with the unedifying spectacle of the corrupt removing a president in large part for not protecting them from corruption investigations. Wow.

Broadly, from what I have read, the case against Lula was by no means a strong one. The fact that the presiding judge took a political role as Minister of Justice in the new government looked terrible, and this new evidence that he may have been colluding with prosecutors... sheesh. It looks more and more like an ugly stitch-up to remove Lula from the election.

 

[Saelune]

"Libetarian socialism" is a whole thing, for example.

Left-wing. That's literally just being left-wing. That is to say, once you cut the shit and look at the theories at play, as opposed to propaganda and pundits' incessant stream of verbal diarrhea.

Government as a guarantor of civil liberties, employing mixed economic policies to maximize equality.

Until the 1990s across most of the world outside of the USA, "libertarian" would primarily have been seen as synonymous with "Anarchist": libertarian socialists as per Mikhail Bakunin etc. Since, with the cultural dominance of the USA, increased global communications and the annihilation of Anarchists as significant political force, "libertarian" has increasingly been dominated by the American perception of the word as classical liberals and small government conservatives.

US Libertarian = Corporate shill. They don't want a small government, they want a corporate government. They want Presidential Candidates stickered up like NASCAR drivers.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Until the 1990s across most of the world outside of the USA, "libertarian" would primarily have been seen as synonymous with "Anarchist": libertarian socialists as per Mikhail Bakunin etc. Since, with the cultural dominance of the USA, increased global communications and the annihilation of Anarchists as significant political force, "libertarian" has increasingly been dominated by the American perception of the word as classical liberals and small government conservatives.

Bear in mind the American and continental conceptions of liberty fundamentally differ, in being a question of negative versus positive rights (Isaiah Berlin's two concepts of liberty). But, absent further exploration into the definitions and ramifications of forms of rights and liberties, I should likely take a step back and contextualize my statements, so there's a basis for comparison here. My arguments on this topic are very much influenced by David Nolan's work -- his actual work, not the bastardized version pundits vomit forth -- and, to a lesser degree, Hannah Arendt's.

To explain why, I'd point out the Nolan chart and what I refer to as the most pernicious 45-degree turn in American politics. The original Nolan chart was a "diamond" very much purposefully -- to highlight that conflicts in policy positions don't solely occur along one axis or the other, and should never be contextualized to reflect one's position along one axis alone. Even a question as facially-simple as "should individuals have the right to protest government action?" is highly subjective and can be conceptualized on near-limitless levels.

Put simply, redesigning the Nolan chart to be a "square" is a device for othering, demonizing, and propagandizing against non-preferred ideologies. In reality, there is no such thing as a "far left" or "far right" authoritarian or totalitarian. There may be left- or right-leaning authoritarians, but the idea totalitarianism is or can be left or right is complete nonsense. Likewise for every other point on the chart.

That's where Arendt comes in, to illustrate the point: the only difference between Nazi Germany and Stalinist USSR was rhetoric; the two states were functionally and organizationally identical. Totalitarianism cannot be defined in terms of left or right, because totalitarianism prioritizes state and party power predominantly and exclusively, and all else is instrument. The reason this happens is precisely because as one approaches an "extreme" -- left, right, totalitarian, anarchist -- more competing interests conflict with the chosen ideology.

 

[tstorm823]

snip

That's a whole long quote of nothing. That article makes a fine point that Goldwater was not a segregationist. It makes a fine point that he was a straightforward man who followed straightforward logic to wherever it led. And then it makes claims, with absolutely zero evidence, that this straightforward man wasn't really for law and order, but rather was using coded language for institutional racism. It's a ridiculous suggestion completely out of nowhere.

Like, they have a story near the top of the article where a principle of a segregated school said "why don't you have medals for my school like you do for the whites." He responded that he didn't want to make segregated awards and support segregation. The principle points out that the white schools are just as segregated, and Barry Goldwater agrees and gets his school the same medal after all. If you look into Barry Goldwater further, you'll find that this is the character of that man. He was an honest de-segregationist, and the suggestion he was a dog-whistling racist fell directly in line with the already existing smear campaign that Johnson had enacted against him. You're just believing the history told by Lyndon Johnson's propaganda.

...the point Lee Atwater was attempting to make, was that race ceased to be the central issue for southern voters after the 60s. He declared his generation the first generation to not be racist in the south.

lol ok

What the hell is this crap? I explain to you what the person you were quoting was saying, say that what he was saying was wrong, you cut out the part where I call him wrong, and then say "lol ok". Like, what the hell.

You quote someone without knowing the context, I tell you the context, and you laugh as though I'm being foolish. Get out of here!

Yep, the Totally Not Racists in the Deep South flipped after a century and a half of consistent and unified Democratic support, up to and including starting a fucking civil war over Totally Not Racist Causes, to not vote for The Real Racist, All Along. They voted instead for the Not Racist Guy who Didn't Run a Racist Campaign, Really, and four years later the South split for a Democrat By Another Name [What was that salient issue in the campaign, again?], and the Totally Not a Crook, Nixon. And Civil Rights Totally had Nothing to Do with This.

Civil rights has everything to do with it. The South in 1964 absolutely voted the way they did in an effort to vote against desegregation. But they weren't voting for Barry Goldwater because he was a segregationist that was courting them (like George Wallace did in 1968), they were voting against Lyndon Johnson for signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In retrospect, it didn't matter what Goldwater said or did, he could have not spent 1 second in the south for the whole campaign, and the southern segregationists would have still voted against Lyndon Johnson. It's not a bad thing that Johnson signed that, and it's not a bad thing that he chased those people away from him, but it was malicious and evil that he then advertised the KKK preferring Goldwater so that fools like you would misunderstand what was going on and think the Republicans courted the racists.

Its a very prominent Alt-right and Republican talking point for many years that Democrats are just as racist as they used to be.

That's not true. I mean, it's true for some of them, because some of the super racist segregationist Democrats were still in office for decades after the "switch", but Republicans very much do not claim the Democrats are as racist as before. Republicans make the audacious suggestion that Americans are less racist than the used to be rather than the idiotic prevailing wisdom that the Democrats only got less racist because the racists all flipped parties.