Comment on There is significant evidence that Grok actually inserted information about “white genocide” in South Africa into prompts that didn't appear to be related to this topic.

• InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  libertarians and even some liberals as fascists and that just doesn’t hold up

  It’s fair. The entire word “libertarian” was created to distance themselves from liberals.

  Otherwise these ‘libertarians’ would have just been liberal and defended liberalism (human rights), and liberal society might have been able to fight off the mammon.

  If you aid conservatives/confederates and the corporate cause, it is not unnatural to be associated with them.

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  • kmacmartin@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Libertarianism is a traditionally left wing philosophy that started in the 1800s. They’re also typically pretty big on human rights and equality.

    The more modern America-centric “tea party” libertarians fit what you’re saying, but they didn’t create the term.

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    • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      The second paragraph is ultimately what libertarians are and as such how I engage them.

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  • Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Well yes, because liberals believe in state enforced equality while libertarians believe in equality as a moral prerogative but one that cannot be imposed through laws and regulations because the state should not have the right to impose any form of laws that dictate morality or way of living etc. At least that’s my interpretation of it from conversations with libertarians.

    So that means that libertarians will be against the use of state power to right systemic wrongs. Which I wouldn’t qualify as helping fascists but a lot of progressives do, which is imo a little bit intellectually dishonest.

    The real problem though is that the US only has two parties so you have to choose one that overlaps with most of your views and for libertarians that ends up being the GOP due to the fact that their own party is an insane clown show worst than the GOP. But at the same time I’d like to point out that libertarian adjacent members of the GOP in the past are the ones who have made the biggest strides for human rights in the US. The party it is today is unrecognizable from the one it was 60 years ago. Hell, even 20 years ago.

    But calling libertarian fascist just devalues the definition of the word, which the real fascist use to their advantage.

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    • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I wouldn’t qualify as helping fascists but a lot of progressives do, which is imo a little bit intellectually dishonest.

      We are just treating libertarians for what they are. Not by what they claim to be.

      libertarianism fertilizes right wing conservatism, is that it advocates against balancing systems of control (government). This means that since there is no entity intervening in affairs, there is nothing keeping a more excessively authoritarian entity from emerging. This is an oversimplification, but basically right-wing authoritarians want to weaken authority (even more benevolent ones) so that they can take additional power. (Again oversimplification, I also don’t like considering groups as monoliths)

      Basically proto rightwing forces, can march in lockstep with libertarians because they both initially advocate for the removal of governing,regulatory, and policing institutions.

      Thus I think this is what causes people to see libertarians and conservatives as overlapping, as both initially support the same goals and probably can be found in similar spaces. Once prevailing (more benevolent, or less malevolent) insutituions are removed, by joint action of libertarians and authoritarians, the authoritarins break with the libertarians and can now install their definately more malevolent instituion. (This malevolence may be incidental or the end goal, it depends)

      If libertarians don’t want to be seen as fascist, then they should stop welcoming them.

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      • Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        I hear what you say, but again that’s intellectually dishonest. Libertarians find themselves between a rock and a hard place, so they inevitably choose the side that overlaps most with them.

        What progressives want is also authoritarian, and libertarians are against authoritarianism on principle, whether it has noble or evil goals because the potential for abuse even with noble goals is too great.

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  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Well yeah, “liberal” has come to mean “progressive” or at least the Democratic Party establishment, which has drifted pretty far from OG liberals. Classical liberals restricted themselves to negative rights (freedom from), whereas modern liberals believe in positive rights (freedom to).

    I consider myself a libertarian and a classical liberal. I strongly disagree with both major parties, because neither prioritizes anything I care about.

    I think the issue is that the Libertarian Party does a terrible job representing libertarianism. They focus too much on the “less taxes” angle when it should be focusing on less protectionism. Here are some changes I’d like to see related to corporations:

    • eliminate corporate taxes - also tax stock options/grants above some level as income
    • eliminate corporate liability protections above a certain size (say, $100M?)
    • eliminate any explicit or implied criminal protections for corporate officers
    • eliminate any tax benefits for providing benefits, and combine corporate benefit programs (e.g. 401k) with non-corporate programs accessible to all (e.g. IRA); if they offer benefits, they must also offer the cash value if the employee declines

    Yet the LP focuses on the first and ignores the rest.

    Don’t willy nilly lump libertarians with corporate hacks. Yes, we align on a few issues, but the principles behind where we align are very different, and a libertarian would also push for a bunch of changes the corporate hacks don’t want.

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• squid_slime@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I agree—fascism, as I see it, is capitalism in a death spiral. Capitalist economies aren’t able to offer stability or continuous growth. Once things start hitting the upper end of the bell curve, we will see corporations and the managers of capital (politicians) pulling and pressing all the buttons and levers in a frantic effort to maintain course. This won’t work. As a last-ditch effort, fascism is employed by the ruling class as a means to strong-arm agents of revolution, as workers see wages become incapable of maintaining pace with inflation.

  All this is to say: capitalism is deeply flawed. The corporations would prefer a muted underclass over the revolutionary type we can expect in the coming years. And to repress a revolutionary workforce, fascism will be used.

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  • Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I don’t know if he came up with the thought himself or if he’s repeating someone else but Zizek has said various times that capitalism is in constant crisis, and that’s how it reinvents itself in order to stay functional. I have no doubt that we are in such a crisis and in the midst of its reinvention. And look I know socialists and Marxists get accused of being deterministic but if we look at history, through the decades capitalism is integrating socialism into it. I think at some point it will simply be socialism. We’re just not there yet, I think that won’t happen until human labor has no value.

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    • squid_slime@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      socialists and Marxists get accused of being deterministic but if we look at history, through the decades capitalism is integrating socialism into it. I think at some point it will simply be socialism. We’re just not there yet, I think that won’t happen until human labor has no value.

      A few points: Capitalism hasn’t freely integrated socialist ideas. Each idea has been won through workers’ struggle. Even after the fact, those wins are clawed back by the capitalist class. They will capitulate as a means to defend against revolution—which flows back into your Zizek quote: capitalism’s way of reinventing itself. But capitalism, as a political philosophy, will always maintain a ruling class and an underclass to exploit.

      This is why we must continue to struggle, and why we should not see these small capitulations as proof that socialism will evolve naturally from capitalism.

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      • Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Of course it hasn’t done it freely, I think it’s part of the process. It’s not clear to me that even if somehow everyone tomorrow woke up as a socialist that there would be no dominant class that “exploits” the other. I’m not even fully convinced that that is possible at all, hierarchy forms naturally in our species and even in a post scarcity society those who are smarter and more charismatic would have more influence than those who are not. It would maybe lead to true meritocracy, but I do not know that there will ever be a human society without hierarchy nor am I convinced that’s necessarily desireable.

        However I do think that even though in sheer numbers the wealth disparity is enormous and disgusting, when you remove stuff like being able to influence politics and buying planes or ships and other unnecessary and wasteful stuff, the difference between the elite and the lower classes is not that great. By that I mean, that both middle and low income people have access to stuff as cars, phones, entertainment etc at the same basic level as the rich, which was not the case in the past. Of course in other parts of the world things are different , and the reason for that is that we exploit them (one reason I was in favor with Trumps tariffs), but you can still see that worldwide quality of life is trending up. And by this what I mean is that I think there will be no huge revolution that changes the world order. We tend to frame and crave history in terms of huge one of a lifetime events but in reality most things happen gradually and I think we are gradually moving towards the direction of socialism thanks to the struggle and there pressures that you mention which yes, force capitalism to adapt in order to survive.

        And thanks for the rec will be sure to check it out once I’m done with my current reading. I’ve heard a lot about Trotsky but have yet to read him.

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• Kichae@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  The reasons why the wealthy like liberalisation matters, though. The reasom the wralthy want more wealth matters.

  Money is power. The wealthy are competing to have the most power. Eventually, that turns to taking control of the state. So, the wealthy will back free trade and deregulation right up until they, personally, are in a position to attempt a coup. After that, regulation and trade barriers work for the particular rich folk who have taken control over the state.

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  • Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I don’t think history agrees with what you are saying. From what patterns I notice , dictators rise because they become popular with the masses thanks to the exploitation of grievances both real and perceived, and only when it seems inevitable that they will wrest power from the established order do capitalists align with themselves with the fascists in order to protect their interests and their own heads. The wealthy tend to be one of the first targets for any dictator, as they are the ones who have the means to unravel their power.

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