The reality is that fascists don’t need to win a popular majority to take power. German nazis never won more than 37% of the vote while there were still democratic elections in place. Once these people get in power they leverage the existing state apparatus to repress the rest of the population. As long as the regime has the support of the police and military, then it can wield power through force.

After World War I, Italy had settled into a pattern of parliamen­tary democracy. The low pay scales were improving, and the trains were already running on time. But the capitalist economy was in a postwar recession. Investments stagnated, heavy industry operated far below capacity, and corporate profits and agribusiness exports were declining.

To maintain profit levels, the large landowners and industrialists would have to slash wages and raise prices. The state in turn would have to provide them with massive subsidies and tax exemptions. To finance this corporate welfarism, the populace would have to be taxed more heavily, and social services and welfare expenditures would have to be drastically cut - measures that might sound familiar to us today. But the government was not completely free to pursue this course. By 1921 , many Italian workers and peasants were unionized and had their own political organizations. With demonstrations, strikes, boy­cotts, factory takeovers, and the forceable occupation of farmlands, they had won the right to organize, along with concessions in wages and work conditions.

To impose a full measure of austerity upon workers and peasants, the ruling economic interests would have to abolish the democratic rights that helped the masses defend their modest living standards. The solution was to smash their unions, political organizations, and civil liberties. Industrialists and big landowners wanted someone at the helm who could break the power of organized workers and farm laborers and impose a stern order on the masses. For this task Benito Mussolini, armed with his gangs of Blackshirts, seemed the likely candidate.

In 1922, the Federazione Industriale, composed of the leaders of industry, along with representatives from the banking and agribusi­ness associations, met with Mussolini to plan the “March on Rome,” contributing 20 million lire to the undertaking. With the additional backing of Italy’s top military officers and police chiefs, the fascist “revolution”- really a coup d’etat - took place.

In Germany, a similar pattern of complicity between fascists and capitalists emerged. German workers and farm laborers had won the right to unionize, the eight-hour day, and unemployment insurance. But to revive profit levels, heavy industry and big finance wanted wage cuts for their workers and massive state subsidies and tax cuts for themselves.

During the 1920s, the Nazi Sturmabteilung or SA, the brown­ shirted storm troopers, subsidized by business, were used mostly as an antilabor paramilitary force whose function was to terrorize workers and farm laborers. By 1930, most of the tycoons had con­cluded that the Weimar Republic no longer served their needs and was too accommodating to the working class. They greatly increased their subsidies to Hitler, propelling the Nazi party onto the national stage. Business tycoons supplied the Nazis with gener­ous funds for fleets of motor cars and loudspeakers to saturate the cities and villages of Germany, along with funds for Nazi party organizations, youth groups, and paramilitary forces. In the July 1932 campaign, Hitler had sufficient funds to fly to fifty cities in the last two weeks alone.

In that same campaign the Nazis received 37.3 percent of the vote, the highest they ever won in a democratic national election. They never had a majority of the people on their side. To the extent that they had any kind of reliable base, it generally was among the more affluent members of society. In addition, elements of the petty bour­geoisie and many lumpenproletariats served as strong-arm party thugs, organized into the SA storm troopers. But the great majority of the organized working class supported the Communists or Social Democrats to the very end.

https://valleysunderground.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf

Ah yes, the HuMaN NaturE argument, how very original! It’s hilarious how liberals recycle the same handful of talking points, demonstrating a severe lack of originality.

The gradual dawning upon liberals that their cherished notion of living in a functioning democracy is nothing but an illusion is a perpetually amusing spectacle, providing endless entertainment for those who have long recognized the harsh realities of political power structures of capitalist society.

What’s more German than trying to achieve peace through genocide.

Americans right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_4jrMwvZ2A

and if even those people are running out, I imagine the rest of the people are far worse off now

“Let us have some of what we stole” isn’t a solution for a peace that lasts. You should be allowed to know better than this.

Wait until you find out what the alternative is.

That’s completely and utterly false. The west is a belligerent party in the conflict, and the only reason the war can continue is because the west continues to fuel the conflict. The west is not changing the outcome of the war, simply ensuring that more people die and more of Ukraine is destroyed.

I just hope something hilarious happens when two clowns go at it for 90 minutes.

The economic war with Russia very obviously contributed to the economic problems in Europe. This is a well documented fact. The war had a significant impact on energy prices, led to industry shut downs that created mass unemployment, and raised the cost of living for the people. This is all on top of the problems that stemmed from the pandemic.

I also have no idea what you mean by the current government being opposed to ending the war. They don’t want to invade Russia to defeat Putin, no one here wants to try that.

Russia literally made a realistic proposal for a ceasefire just a few days ago. Germany along with the rest of the west immediately rejected it.

But unlike the far right, they are in favor of supporting Ukraine to hold Putin off.

The only thing they’ve accomplished was to ensure that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians died, and millions more had their lives ruined. Russia will very obviously win this war, and it’s absolutely incredible that after two years there are still people who can’t understand this. The west was responsible for sabotaging Istanbul peace deal two months into the war, and now it’s rejected a second peace deal. People who support continuation of the war are utterly deplorable.

If your idea of ending the war is giving Putin half of Ukraine and hoping he’s then satiated, I do not see how that should work.

Ukraine will be in a worse position with each and every day going forward. Western support peaked during the disastrous offensive Ukraine tried to do last year. Ukrainian army is now continuously becoming weaker while Russian army strengthens. The end result might very well be that there is no Ukraine left. People who do not see how making a realistic peace makes sense are the ones who will be responsible for that.

Putin started this war, because he’s mentally ill. He will start another war in a few years, if this one is “ended” by sacrificing Ukraine, because he will still be mentally ill.

Putin did not start the war because he is mentally ill. The reasons for the war are well understood, and many experts have warned about it for decades. Here is a lecture from John Mearsheimer back from 2015 where he accurately predicts that Russia would be forced to intervene in Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

Here’s a study from RAND from 2019 that explains why US may want to goad Russia into a war in Ukraine https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html

Here’s the chief of NATO openly admitting why the war started

The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.

So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_218172.htm

The fact that people keep pretending the war started because Putin is a mad czar, shows utter lack of intellectual integrity on their part.

ugh that sucks :(

indeed

A government that doesn’t care about the plight of its own people obviously cares about people in Ukraine even less. The solution would indeed be to start addressing the cost of living crisis that was caused by the war, and the first step towards that is to end the war which the current government is vehemently opposed to doing. Of course, when right wingers ultimately get in power, nothing is going to get better, so dark times ahead for Germany.

yeah masks in hot weather are very unpleasant

the fact that he changed his position in light of the upcoming election is a strong indication of where public opinion is headed.

It seems self-evident that political power resides in possessing leverage within the system. Society is not monolithic with everyone sharing identical aspirations. Given our economic framework, there are two distinct classes with competing interests - business owners strive to maximize profits and minimize expenses, while workers want to secure higher pay and benefits. These classes have inherently conflicting objectives. Meanwhile, private ownership creates a power imbalance where wealthy individuals who control businesses exert substantial influence over politics due to their ability to fund campaigns, lobbying efforts, and media coverage. As such, politicians are incentivized to cater to the interests of the capital-owning class for electoral success.

Furthermore, workers lack any tangible leverage in this system. The extent of our influence is limited to casting votes, but when all viable candidates are backed by wealthy interests, we’re left with a false choice. As Marx famously observed, “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.” This reflects the harsh reality that workers face in an economic system where their voices often go unheard and interests are consistently overshadowed by those of capital owners.

Historically, workers have sought to establish leverage through collective action such as unionizing, engaging in strikes, protests, and other forms of direct action. However, today the rate of unionization is dismally low, and many existing unions struggle with issues like poor leadership and a lack of principled direction. This diminishes their capacity to effectively advocate for workers’ rights and negotiate fair wages and benefits in an environment where capital owners continue to hold significant political sway.

that’s gonna be one heck of a torrent :)

Right, it’s where the funding is going towards that’s the real issue.

The key part there is that even people who should be financially stable are living at the limit of their means. As the cost of living continues to climb, most people are going to start finding themselves in financial trouble regardless of their income. Like say somebody is making 250k and they’re just barely able to pay their mortgage. Once they’re no longer able to pay they have to sell their house, but if nobody can afford to buy it then they’re fucked. And that’s what leads to crises like in 2008.

If by right you mean unable to use the archive then yes. I love how you complain that people haven’t chewed things up for you. My source is correct, it is available in the archive, and two of you were incapable of pasting the link into archive. That’s what happened.