History reveals how Authoritarianism usually develops and what one can do if facing it?

[Bootstrap]

What I take issue with is leftists who obsess over people like Pinochet or an incident like Grenada but are strangely mute about the much much worse atrocities that happened due to Communism.

It reveals that leftists really are just communists after all and would gladly kill any of us non communists given the chance.

When authoritarians get in power, they might gladly kill any one of us given the chance. If we are faithful to Christianity, we may be seen as a threat to them, no matter where they are on the political spectrum. True Christians have suffered under right-wing and left-wing authoritarianism. This is serious business.

Josh, suppose we asked you to prove, to our satisfaction, that you have adequately denounced Hitler or the racists who lynched American blacks. Could you do that? I doubt it. Not because you support Hitler, but because we don't spend most of our everyday lives proving that we don't. This is a terrible game to play. You have decided you get to decide what other people think and feel, paint vivid and false stories about them, and encourage people to denounce them along with you. Why not let people speak for themselves? If you want to know what anyone thinks, asks, don't make up ugly lies about them.

You are responding to Szdfan. It's not hard at all to find him denouncing Stalin (search.php?keywords=Stalin&terms=all&au ... mit=Search). He probably knows more about the history of Communist atrocities than you do. Like me, he has spent time in East Germany as a Christian.

And based on the stories you make up, you say that they are an existential threat - the kind of person who would kill you if they had a chance. Jazzman? Szdfan? Seriously? That's not remotely true of them, but there's probably nothing they could say that would stop you from talking this way about them.

Now look at the subject of this thread: Authoritarianism. How it usually develops. We have a list of authoritarian regimes across the political spectrum to learn from. I have direct experience with a few such regimes. And I find this way of talking alarming because of that experience.

When you start to paint other people as an existential threat, based on stories you make up about them, it's easy to lose compassion for them, to stop treating them as human beings, to not care if an authoritarian regime treats them badly. You might even kind of like to see someone take care of these people who you claim would gladly kill you. If Christians are persecuted one day, I'm fairly confident they would stand up for you. Would you stand up for them?

[Bootstrap]

I'm not sure Franco was much better than the Communists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Spain)

In the history of Spain, the White Terror (Spanish: Terror Blanco; also known as the Francoist Repression, la Represión franquista) describes the political repression, including executions and rapes, which were carried out by the Nationalist faction during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), as well as during the first nine years of the regime of General Francisco Franco. In the 1936–1975 period, Francoist Spain had many officially designated enemies: Loyalists to the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939), Liberals, socialists of different stripes, Protestants, intellectuals, homosexuals, Freemasons, Romanis, Jews, Basque, Catalan, Andalusian and Galician nationalists.

The Francoist Repression was motivated by the right-wing notion of a limpieza social, a cleansing of society. This meant that the killing of people viewed as enemies of the state began immediately upon the Nationalists' capture of a place. Ideologically, the Roman Catholic Church legitimized the killing by the Civil Guard (national police) and the Falange as the defense of Christendom.

In Spain, I think the White Terror (fascist / nationalist) and the Red Terror (Communist) were matching atrocities. I would hope true Christians would stand against both.

[ohio jones]

Josh, suppose we asked you to prove, to our satisfaction, that you have adequately denounced Hitler or the racists who lynched American blacks. Could you do that? I doubt it. Not because you support Hitler, but because we don't spend most of our everyday lives proving that we don't. This is a terrible game to play. You have decided you get to decide what other people think and feel, paint vivid and false stories about them, and encourage people to denounce them along with you. Why not let people speak for themselves? If you want to know what anyone thinks, asks, don't make up ugly lies about them.

“People that are the American Empire’s enemies are authoritarians”

First off, a request: I don't think it's helpful when you make things up, pretend that I said them even though you know or should know that I do not believe them, and mock me for your own words. And I think that's against board guidelines:

• Do not use extreme sarcasm to minimize another's comments or opinions.
• Do not take another's statement and distort it to an extreme.

And now you are the one forgetting the board guidelines:

Use I statements. Speak for yourself and don't decide what someone else is meaning to say or exaggerate what someone else posts.
Do not state that someone else is wrong. State your own thoughts and opinions.

Tone it down, both of you.

[Jazman]

It’s amazing how die-hard leftists are still griping about the places they didn’t win like Spain and Chile and endlessly whining about the “dictators” there.

I have yet to see any of y’all put forth the same dedication to the atrocities that happened under Stalin, Lenin, and Mao, to name a few, not to mentioned the complete disaster of Poland, Hungary and other countries under communism. I cannot fathom why anyone would think adding Spain to the list would somehow be better.

Well, I guess we should look at what the (Second) Republic, pre-Franco, actually was. Was it a communist regime like those real communists places you list (nobody here would defend those, including me... so just because I/we don't mention them the way you want us to, somehow means we're 'soft' on them? Feels a bit ad hominem... rather than addressing the substance of this discussion of authoritarianism / Franco, etc)
If it wasn't and wasn't given much if any time to actually develop into whatever (maybe communist?), then your whole, "they Were communist and therefore needed to be destroyed" is moot...

Can you point to any place that the Communists won that didn't turn into a state like Vietnam, North Korea, P.R. China, The U.S.S.R, the G.D.R., etc.?

Well, I'm not going to argue that they're "great", or that the trail since Communist take-over is defendable or preferred. Huge mistakes made in the past and huge problems now - but they are also not all equal... I have a high school friend who lives in Vietnam, married someone there and seems to be living a pretty nice life; evidently vastly different than North Korea. He and his wife come and go between there and the US regularly - so the communists won but evidently doesn't mean they all end up at the same place. I've had friends who lived in Russia in the last 10-20 yrs and again, not anything like NK and for some time seemed headed out of the dark age (until Putin and what looks to be a right-wing turn...) So it's a mixed bag. I very much doubt that if Franco had lost, and the 'communists'-er democratically elected Republic had won and continued on, that it would have turned out to be anything close to China, the USSR, NK etc. The culture was vastly different... it was Western! Would have had a Catholic social teaching sensibility in play, which would seemed to mitigate (Poland?) Geographically, it would have been a stretch for the USSR to exert much influence. I find it pretty implausible that its 'communism' / even socialism would have developed into anything like the places you mention. So to really get what might be under your question?. Yes, I wish Franco had lost and the Republic (Second) continued. Possible thousands, if not tens of thousands of innocent lives saved. I prefer pro-life possibility/outcomes.

But, aside from all of that, can you show that the Second Republic gov that Franco, via civil war, overthrew/replaced - was indeed wholly Communist? (Existing at the time Communist party, maybe or maybe not a part of a parliamentary coalition government? doesn't count in my opinion. There's a Communist party in the USA now, constitutionally protected btw... but that doesn't make us a communist country... all the European parliamentary system gov then and now have fringe parties. Says little about the actual ruling government)

Was the communist party of pre-Franco Spain the majority party, a middling entity partnering with others or was it fringe? (Like some current extremists on both sides today, it seems to me that extremist Franco also ignored nuance and complexity and declared All his enemies 'communist / marxist' whether they really were or not... it worked as an easy, one-size-fits-all, memorable, devious marketing tool to dehumanize everyone who opposed him. All extremists / authoritarians, regardless of ideology do this. To credit some that I usually disagree with, maybe the shorthand "MAGA" term might fall into this territory at times?)

[HondurasKeiser]

We’re the Jacobins, bolsheviks or nazis the majority or were they a very vocal, violent and committed minority? Your parameter, that the communists need to be a majority to be seen as a real threat, is belied by history.

[Jazman]

I was expressing my opinion on what chatgpt said. It seemed to have a list of people who had one thing in common (except for the very last); they’ve been enemies of the USA (although Stalin was an ally for a while).

Both Franco and Pinochet are on that list. Were they enemies of the US? As you pointed out, they were both anti-Communists. You were even hand-waving away their atrocities because they were anti-Communist ("What's the matter with Franco?") You argued that these brutal authoritarian regimes were preferable to Communism. As I pointed out, the CIA sponsored and supported the coup that installed Pinochet. Both Spain and Chile seem to be part of the same US empire building that you're decrying.

And most of us condemn them all... they all represent an observation that politics/ideology tend to represent a horseshoe with the extreme ends bending towards each other. Personally, this is why maintaining a centrist/disconnect from any one political party/ideology is desired (albeit not always attained as I am a flawed human)

In this whole discussion, I think it's important to keep the details / nuances of the historical situations in mind and out in the open. Before Pinochet or Franco seized power, what was the gov/culture actually like and with what did Franco/Pinochet replace it?
It's my understanding that in both cases the governments were some form of multi-party, elected/representative/republican democracy. Surely not perfect, but trying. Were there socialist/communist parties, maybe even part of the coalition? Probably, but that doesn't mean the Whole thing was Communist! (No more than the presence of Neo-Nazis in the Trumpism coalition make the whole a fascist/Nazi movement, as some mistakenly try to claim.)

I think it's also, especially in the case of Franco, good to know and learn what ideas / things he really idolized and how he wanted to socially engineer in Spain before, during and after leading his movement/army against the other half of his own countrymen...
I learned this from the Real Dictators series...

• He wanted to restore the monarchy. He loathed democratic elections. He loathed the kind of ideas/ideals that Thomas Jefferson/John Adams et al set up in this country.

• He loved the martial, imperialist subjugation of "lessers" (as he believed) in other places other than Spain. He mourned the loss of Spanish colonies and "greatness" He wanted to reclaim the glory days when Spain ruled South/Central America, the Philippines etc... USA had a hand in that diminishment, but Spain's ineptness and brutality probably hastened its imperial demise as well. But did Franco learn anything from that? No, he wanted more brutality, more enslavement - whatever it took to get the "glory" back. His early army career in Morocco and his reign/campaigns of terror there reveals much in this regard. (His belief that a military junta gov should be running Spain, reminded me of a recent "christian" candidate from my own state... who wrote similar sentiments in his war college dissertation

• He loved the church/state coalition of bygone eras and fervently believed the Catholic Church should have a large role in civil/gov/military life. He despised pluralism and religious freedom for other faiths/denominations or none.

• He loathed all the trends/things that were either beginning or maturing in all western heritage nations including the USA. The egalitarian trend (women voting etc), more rights for workers/minorities, division-separation of powers, separation of church/state, corruption-busting, a fairer judicial system & rule of law rather than arbitrary monarchy/aristocrat rule, urban, cosmopolitan, industrial/techno (excepting war machinery I guess), educated, intellectualism world. A number of these things we now take for granted and are actually quite grateful for! (Ok, some of that entailed some problematic things too... but not necessarily wholly communism or atheism, etc. Imo the tares in that wheat were less problematic than his war/brutality...) Overall, Franco/Nationalist at their core wanted to take Spain back to the good ole days of hero kings, knights and bishops (and their Inquisitors) and the martial iron-fist, bloody rule by those few and everyone else groveling at their feet... They believed that kind of society would make Spain "great again" and they were willing to kill tens of thousands to try to get back to that.

• He loved what Hitler and Mussolini were doing and wanted to join that coalition and would have aided that cause if not for various factors (some luck, some Allied diplomacy/pay-off, etc??? Need more study on that front)

So what's wrong with Franco... hmmm. Probably leaving some things out, but not a place I'd want to live or raise a family. Very thankful for the pluralistic freedom of religion we have here and the freedom from a Franco-style 'christian' country...
Thankfully it sounds like Spain is beginning to reckon with some of that legacy and shake off some of the cover-up/propaganda induced reverence of him. And thankfully the Catholic Church is vastly diminished there and there's more pluralism and more separation of church/state and multiple political parties including communist/socialist ones...

[Josh]

multiple political parties including communist/socialist ones...

In what way is this a good thing?

To paraphrase the title of this thread:

[Bootstrap]

And now you are the one forgetting the board guidelines:

Use I statements. Speak for yourself and don't decide what someone else is meaning to say or exaggerate what someone else posts.
Do not state that someone else is wrong. State your own thoughts and opinions.

Tone it down, both of you.

I apologize. Thanks for stepping in.

[Bootstrap]

Josh is right - Trotsky and Stalin and other Russian autocrats promised to save Russia from the existential threat of fascism.

And Hitler promised to save Germany from the existential threat of Communism.

So what do we learn from that? I think we learn that an authoritarian who promises to save us from "them" if we give them a place of power and glory is a danger to all of us. No matter what the political orientation of that authoritarian is.

Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free them from the snares of this international serpent, and to stop the inner contamination of our blood, in order that the forces of the nation thus set free can be thrown in to safeguard our nationality, and thus can prevent a repetition of the recent catastrophes down to the most distant future.

If we pursue this aim, it is sheer lunacy to ally ourselves with a power whose master is the mortal enemy of our future. How can we expect to free our own people from the fetters of this poisonous embrace if we walk right into it? How shall we explain Bolshevism to the German worker as an accursed crime against humanity if we ally ourselves with the organizations of this spawn of hell, thus recognising it in the larger sense?”

[MaxPC]

multiple political parties including communist/socialist ones...

In what way is this a good thing?

To paraphrase the title of this thread:

Spot on. Interesting how today’s political kibitzers have forgotten about Trotsky.