Bernie Sanders Is Running For POTUS!.....

[Lt. Fred]

So, my point is this.

Socialists will do harm to people, like an arsonist, incidentally. They want to help people, and they're willing to hurt people to do that. Mao is a great example. In the long run, he said, the Chinese will be better off in the long run if they live in a rich country. The way to do that is to industrialise. That means we export all our food to buy raw materials and machinery. Millions starved. It's a brutal kind of logic.
It is not the sort of logic of fascism. Fascists don't get into politics to help people. They're not like arsonists they're like serial killers. They want to hurt people. Hitler murdered Jews because he wanted to murder Jews; that was why he became Chancellor.
Quite, quite different, and a fairly easy point to understand if you are honest.
Are you?

I think it is dishonest to claim that Fascists in general want to hurt people and socialist don't.

There are fascist dictators that did so but I doubt it was their main motivation.

Which one wasn't?
Franco - the poor, unions, atheists, etc.
Hitler - duh.
Mussolini - the poor, unions, atheists, etc.
Horthy maybe?

[Lt. Fred]

Bullshit. The best you could argue is that they are so incompetent they weren't well aware their chosen policies would lead to disaster, and even that is well and truly a stretch.

Well do you have any evidence that they didn't?

The IMF condemned the same behaviour overseas that they support at home - ie, large stimulus expenditure, low interest rates, trying to deal with crisis rather than entrenching it.

All you need is a heavy dose of protectionism, an open consumer market and a butt-tonne of foreign aid. And a heavily subsidised heavy manufacturing sector.

Um... what point are you trying to make exactly? That their economic growth doesn't count?  That protectionism and open consumer markets are just as bad as mass famines?  [/quote]

That really the free market isn't a big deal when you're talking development.

I'm just saying fascism and socialism are quite, quite different.

Well I take more of a consequential stance.  Intent is not important, results are. 

Yep, that's fair enough.

[Art Vandelay]

Jesus, I've seen hair-splitting, but that hair just cannot take it any more. Give it up.

Words have specific meanings. Intentionally using a word wrong just makes you look like you have to resort to pulling our heartstrings because you don't have any actual facts to back up your arguments, or you're just dumb. Pretty simple, really.

Yes, Hitler wanted to do a lot of things. He didn't just want to kill Jews - he also wanted to beat up the French and avenge his defeat by their army! That seems to actually reinforce my point...

No, your point was that is sole motivation for getting into politics was to kill Jews (or "murder", as you would say, I suppose if he also enacted laws specifically against his own policies, then it may well qualify). What you're doing here is called shifting the goal posts.

Whether or not he wanted to murder them all from the start or just steal their stuff and force them to fuck off, he was motivated by hate. Which someone like, say, Ho Chi Minh was not, even if he was willing to use force to achieve his ends.

Sure, hatred of Jews is a large part of his motivations (not the whole thing, but part of it). An even bigger part was his fanatical German nationalism. I.E. Essentially his desire to help the German people (well, the right kind of Germans). If you're going to acknowledge Mao's misguided patriotism but not Hitlers, well, that's what we call a double standard.

[Skybison]

The IMF condemned the same behaviour overseas that they support at home - ie, large stimulus expenditure, low interest rates, trying to deal with crisis rather than entrenching it.

Hypocrisy doesn't prove they don't believe their ideology.  Ie is Ted Haggard not a homophobe?  Also someone can easily think that an economic policy is a good idea in one situation but a bad one in another.

That really the free market isn't a big deal when you're talking development.

...Well I never said it was in the first place, I said that Mao did way more harm then good and can't be defended.

Also you completely missed askold's point.

[Askold]

Which one wasn't?
Franco - the poor, unions, atheists, etc.
Hitler - duh.
Mussolini - the poor, unions, atheists, etc.
Horthy maybe?

Let's start from the top:

Franco: He opposed the left-wing republic that his beloved monarchy had been turned into and wanted to return Spain to the old days of glory. In order to do this he and the others started a coup that lead to a civil war.
Hitler: How do you know that his hatred for jews and other "untermensch" was his main motivation? It seems to me that exterminating the "undesirables" was just a side effect of his main goal of creating a massive German Empire. In fact, you defended Mao and others by saying that the fact that they needed to kill some people to accomplish their goals is an acceptable excuse for killing millions so why is that not true when it comes to fascist dictators?
Mussolini: Same as Franco and Hitler. They all wanted power but they also wanted to make their country great.

What these three have in common is that they all found convenient "outsider" enemies that they could use as scapegoats, but their hatred for those groups, though important, was not the only motivator and I doubt it even was the biggest motivation for them (Personal power and by extension power to their country was the main motivation, I believe. Whether some of these people considered personal power to be less important of those two, at least in the beginning, is up to debate.) And by that count they seem similar to the communist dictators.

...Out of those listed I think Hitler is the only one who went as far as trying to completely exterminate those he hated by a genocide, but communist dictatorships have also done purges of "Kulaks and bourgeoisie." In fact, killing off the bourgeoisie used to be a pretty big deal in the communist manifesto.

[Ultimate Paragon]

So, my point is this.

Socialists will do harm to people, like an arsonist, incidentally. They want to help people, and they're willing to hurt people to do that. Mao is a great example. In the long run, he said, the Chinese will be better off in the long run if they live in a rich country. The way to do that is to industrialise. That means we export all our food to buy raw materials and machinery. Millions starved. It's a brutal kind of logic.
It is not the sort of logic of fascism. Fascists don't get into politics to help people. They're not like arsonists they're like serial killers. They want to hurt people. Hitler murdered Jews because he wanted to murder Jews; that was why he became Chancellor.
Quite, quite different, and a fairly easy point to understand if you are honest.
Are you?

I think it is dishonest to claim that Fascists in general want to hurt people and socialist don't.

There are fascist dictators that did so but I doubt it was their main motivation.

Which one wasn't?
Franco - the poor, unions, atheists, etc.
Hitler - duh.
Mussolini - the poor, unions, atheists, etc.
Horthy maybe?

Pedantic asshole powers, activate!

1.  Franco wasn't a fascist.  He was a far-right authoritarian, but that's not the same thing.  In fact, he actually suppressed fascist elements of the Falange. 

2.  Mussolini didn't hate atheists.  He was an atheist himself.  He didn't hate the poor, either.  They made up a lot of his support base.  And as for unions, he certainly deprived them of their independence, but he did the same to businesses.  If you claimed he hated liberals, gays and socialists, that would certainly be more accurate.

[mythbuster43]

While I was happy to find out that he was running, I was skeptical of his chances of winning the nomination because of his opposition to many special interest groups that often get involved in the election process. That, and his social democratic beliefs being too left-of-center for this country.

He's not a socialist in the old Marxist sense of the word, but in the modern Scandinavian sense. By that, I mean he advocates universal health care, free schools, wants to break up "too big to fail" banks, paid vacation, and opposes things like offshore tax havens, NAFTA, and the Trans Pacific Trade Agreement. He hasn't advocated any really hardcore socialist things, like nationalizing banks or businesses. His proposed economic model is closer to the Social Market Economy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy) than any purely socialist state like Cuba.

However, a large chunk of Americans have a negative knee-jerk reaction to the word, "socialism," which was why I didn't think Mr. Sanders would get that far. At least until a recent poll came out show that he was in "dead heat" with Hillary.

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/06/25/new-hampshire-poll-shows-bernie-sanders-in-dead-heat-with-hillary-clinton/?_r=1

[Vypernight]

That's why I'm wondering, what does he need to do to convince people that he is a version of socialist that they want?

For one thing, I think he needs to be specific in his plans.  If he wants universal health care and paid college, where will the money come from?  Also, people are already slamming his '90% tax' on the rich, though as far as I'm concerned, it's more of a back-tax since the people he wants to tax that much are paying way less than the 35% they are supposed to.

[mellenORL]

Unless you wiped out half the IRS codes, nobody will ever pay 90%. And they never really did in the early post WWII years either when that bracket first went into effect. Too many deductions and loopholes.