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One thing I think everyone forgets about the excesses of the early Soviet Union was that this was a polity that already had a long history of severe political repression and extreme political violence. It wasn’t some paradisal democratic wonderland that was suddenly plunged into horror after the revolution. The gulag archipelago, the secret police hauling people off in the middle of the night, the mass executions, the periodic famines— that already existed under the Tsar and had existed for hundreds of years. Stalin was definitely worse than the Tsar, but it was a difference in degree not a difference in kind.
Nazi Germany is bit closer than Russia to the nightmare scenario these people are contemplating, but they forget that Germany had been a monarchy until about 15 years before the Nazis took power, and had about as many internalized democratic norms as post-2003 invasion Iraq. Also the Weimar Republic had been constantly under siege from various stripes of illiberal movements since it’s inception, the first occurring in 1919.
Probably the closest actual analog for democratic backsliding in the US is ancient Republican Rome, but they intentionally don’t want to think about that one because it would require meditating on uncomfortable truths. Yes, Caesar killed the Republic in the end, but he was only able to do that because the Optimate oligarchs had been slowly strangling it for the last 150 years, and had been turfing out the native labor force in favor of foreigners that had fewer legal rights and therefore cost less to work.
I disagree, I think there is a difference in kind between authoritarian and totalitarian governments, because they have different strategies of repression.
The ideal authoritarian regime has an ideal authoritarian citizen. One who is disinterested in politics, disinterested in ideology, disinterested in who rules them, and simply lives a normal, private life as a disengaged citizen. While those close to the regime, such as the military and bureaucracy, need to be kept specifically loyal, the wider public only needs to be kept not actively disloyal. They can even hate the regime if they want, as long as they don't actively threaten it.
The ideal totalitarian regime, however, has a different ideal totalitarian citizen. One who is actively interested in politics, ideology, and who rules them, all aligning with the current regime. It is not enough for you to be disinterested. You need to support the party. You need to actively promote it's beliefs. You need to hang the propaganda posters inside your home. And, eventually, you need to rearrange your entire private life in service to the regime and whatever ideals it believes in.
Republican Rome had very weak democratic institutions because the narrow franchise of the Centuriate had more power than the broader franchises of the Tribune of the Plebs. There is no equivalent to this stratification in the US. It's never going to be a good analogue for the US backsliding because the starting points are so dramatically different.
As for the other examples.
Tsarist Russia was heavily authoritarian, and the Bolsheviks made it totalitarian. It was no longer enough to be a disinterested peasant doing your own thing.
The German Empire was a hybrid regime, authoritarian compared to France or the UK but not as authoritarian as Russia. The Nazis also went totalitarian. So there was democratic backsliding here (or really, more of a yoyo, as it went down during WWI as the country became a de facto military dictatorship, up during the "Golden Twenties", then down again before diving off a cliff).
Japan is also an example worth listing, with the Taisho Democracy being undone mostly by the May 15 incident.
I agree this is important. For example, german and italian (and as far as I can tell, british) fascism were totalitarian, the hispanic and the austrian intermediary fascism were authoritarian. I disagree with your assesment of Soviet Russia as totalitarian, they never had the state capacity to do that. Unless youre counting land collectivisation per se, most peasants didnt have to actively participate. As far as I know, only the east german communism really was totalitarian.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_incident
Crazy.
Man, I kinda want an alt-historical fiction movie made out of this, where Charlie Chaplin has to outrun a bunch of assassins.
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Nitpick, this can be translated as 'if we talk (for a while), you'll understand'. It's not necessarily super-profound. It's basically just "listen to me, idiots!" to which the reply is "too late". This is why translating is hard.
(The absolutely literal meaning is "if speak, understand". Everything else is context.)
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...That will stick with me for a while.
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One of the things that really struck me about the article was that the authors introduced the concept of "competitive democracy" in a book that explained how, to the best of my understanding, Western ties and influence were a major distinguisher between autocracies that "fully" democratized, and autocracies that did not. Way in particular seems to have in mind exactly your points about Russian history. It was weird to read an article that appeared to be written by two scholars who knew substantially more about the 20th century history of other nations, than about the 21st century history of the nation they were writing about.
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The truth really isn't that uncomfortable. If the problem is underpaid foreigners who have no rights... why not just grant them rights so they can't be paid less?
Open the borders! Stop having them be closed!
...I admit that I'm biased as a software engineer though. I'm not afraid of globalization because my field is already near-perfectly globalized. Anyone who wants software cheaper can already buy labor from the third world (aside from national-security sensitive domains, but natsec-relevant software engineering is only a tiny fraction of the market.) I don't see why I should be forced to pay for american carpenters if they're not going to be forced to pay for american software.
(Not that I want carpenters being forced to pay for american software. IP law is bullshit and knowledge should be free, etcetera etcetera.)
Also as a software engineer, I take the exact opposite approach; close the borders right up. Importing lots of people puts a strain on resources in the host country, and counteracts the will of the native population in favour of "GDP line go up" type thinking.
Indians in Canada are willing to live in situations that are a massive downgrade in QOL to the non-immigrant population - Brampton is famous for having slums with 20+ Indian individuals packed into a tiny apartment. It isn't rights that prevents them from doing better - it's that it is still an upgrade for them.
I know the will of the population isn't "open borders." But still-- the will of at least ~half the citizen (i.e., native) voting population is that "lots of people" should come in. There are some quibbles about the exact rates, and which immigrants are acceptable, but I don't think the median position is, "everyone except O-1A visas can fuck right off."
The example you give me about the Indians is illustrative. You mean to tell me that there's an entire population of hard workers who don't demand much in the way of resources and you want to keep them out? In the old days we used to have to round these people up with wooden ships! I can see how certain low-skilled segments of the populations are threatened by immigrant labor, but I'm not part of those segments. I'm sympathetic to appeals about helping the cultural ingroup-- but I'm catholic, and an urbanite, so rural southern heretics aren't really any culturally more similar to me than rural latin catholics or urban indian hindus. There's the issue of language barrier, but I find it non-salient. Our modern media environment is more effective at acculturating immigrants than at any prior point in history.
Finally, as per the question of resources: America has no shortage of land. We do have a shortage of buildings (houses), and services (healthcare, childcare)... but just take a guess at what I think the best way to remedy that is.
You are quite literally wrong about this. Looking at Canada, even the middle and upper classes are struggling, primarily because of a real estate bubble that is continously being inflated with a stream of as you would say "low-skilled" workers. Furthermore, wages in Canada are aenemic, partly because the bottom quartile drags compensation down. You are mistaken in assuming that changes in the "low-skilled" segment of the population do not propgate to the "higher-skilled" segment.
They're struggling because of anticonstruction nimbies. Their wages are anemic because they're unproductive lazy canadians. (\s a little bit but not really. I know the full explanation for the low wage growth is complex, but also canadian productivity growth is really not very high)
I can't rule out that immigration has an effect on high-skilled labor in general but I'm speaking for me, personally, as a software engineer. I personally am not threatened by immigration because my job is already perfectly globalized. If you actually want me to have an interest in supporting anti-immigration policies you're going to have to add "ban the use of foreign software" as a policy plank because otherwise its just a conspiracy to force me to pay more for lazy american carpenters while you all enjoy using cheap or free linux distros built partially by government-subsidized europeans.
The canadian construction sector is a greater proportion of its gdp than the US construction sector is. They are literally building as fast as possible.
Furthermore, the reason productivity growth is so bad is because of the complex interaction between the real eastate bubble and indian immigration. Why invest in capital when you can invest in the real state bubble? Why try to be more productive when you can import more low-wage low-skilled immigrants, who coincidentally also inflate the real estate bubble?
I can accept that your job is globalized. But everything else in your life isn't. Your house, your food, your health care, your social services, your assabiyah are all local; they aren't competing on a global level, with a global population. Your job might be fine despite it being globalized, but I can almost guarantee it that if everything else was globalized, you wouldn't enjoy it.
My food is imported from across the world, and I definitely don't want to pay a 25% tarriff on Columbian coffee because some Hawaiian producers wanted to rent-seek.
As for services-- if I concede that immigration depresses wages in the long run (and so far, I don't) then for that exact reason I want my services to be more global. I don't want a tyrranical government forcing me to pay more for american services.
Housing is the closest you get to a winning argument, but only in the short run. Cheap labor leads to more construction in the long run. And in particular, it leads to denser construction, and as someone that likes living in a city I view that as intrinsically desirable. Kowloon walled city WAS real neoliberalism and it was a GOOD THING.
I can understand all the americans making a cynical, oppressive power-grab by forcing me to buy their goods and services. That doesn't mean I have to like it-- and it definitely doesn't mean I have to shut up and take it like a good little paypig. I WILL use cryptocurrency to dodge tariffs. I WILL fly to latin america to buy over-the-counter drugs and get elective medical procedures done. I WILL hire illegal immigrants to get construction work done. (In minecraft.) And no lazy, blood-sucking protectionists are going to stop me.
By food i mean in general. Increased population leads to an increase in food demand, driving up prices.
We've reached a terminal end in values here. There's no point in arguing this further, since I consider Kowloon walled city (and situations like it) to be the closest thing to hell that humanity has voluntarily created.
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(Writing carefully here. I do have an opinion on this topic; this post is intended to be about understanding the conflict as opposed to my particular view.)
You may make better progress if you understand the other side's actual typical arguments more. Let me lay out the more common complaints I have heard:
Said side sees ~all discussion along these lines as a motte-and-bailey argument:
Motte -> "unrestricted immigration prioritizing other places undesirables"
Bailey -> "restricted immigration of skilled workers we cannot get replacements for at any price"
Convince them otherwise and you'd make far more progress.
Initial language barrier is not the issue here! Said side sees a perceived trend of immigrants that make no attempt to integrate, instead forming and maintaining foreign-language & foreign-culture clumps.
In much the same sense as the world has no shortage of water.
I don't think I can convince Zephr (or the median trump voter) that immigration isn't against their interests. Frankly, I agree with them that it probably is. It's just that by the same token, there's no way that they can convince me (or the median Harris voter) that immigration is against our interests. That's why I'm speaking in terms of the median american here-- or rather, of the compromise position that we get when we calculate a weighted average of every american's preferences via democracy. Some of the immigrants some of the time makes everyone unhappy, but it's worth recognizing that neither extreme is ever going to be a viable option (though of course us radicals will keep pulling on our end of the overton window.)
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If it helps, I'm Canadian, and the Indians we get are not considered to be very hard workers.
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/indians-abroad/story/indian-origin-canada-td-bank-free-food-data-scientist-video-fired-students-food-bank-university-2531178-2024-04-24
I'm not gonna lie, that sounds like a skill issue on the part of the canadian culture and government. I mean, it definitely confirms my priors to hear about canadians failing at things because I'm convinced that you're a fake country, to the point where it's the one thing I agree with donald trump on. (That and the need to annex greenland and panama). But anglophones have been successfully exploiting immigrant labor for literally a thousand years. Fix your shit, canada, or we'll come in and fix it for you.
I'm being a little facetious here. Not entirely facetious, but I can see how america is vulnerable to similar attacks. That being said, the very article you linked is an example of a culture successfully punishing someone who's violated a social norm. I know you're making a point along the lines of, "this is the one we caught-- just think about all the other fish out there!" But my response is still going to be, "then make a better net instead of nuking the pond."
I don't disagree with you in that it is definitely a skill issue; I just don't trust a government to ever do better.
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Since when does anglophone society have any tradition of immigrant labour whatsoever? Britain had no significant (relative to population) immigration until the latter half of the 1900s, which coincided with our total collapse as a world power. Australia and NZ didn't have immigration until the same period, they just had transfers from the homeland. And America's endless racial struggle with the black labourers they imported and then the Ellis Islanders and the resultant machine politics forms a cautionary tale for the rest of the world. Canada I'm not sure about.
(Colonising foreign countries is not the same thing, and doesn't produce the same issues, since you don't have to interact with your labourers and their native taskmasters except to extract money and resources from them.)
If you don't count Irish workers in the mainland as immigrants, this turns into an argument about the definition of "significant" (Hugenots were something like 2% of the population of England in 1700, more in London) - clearly the immigrant percentage now is an order of magnitude higher than any of the precedents wokists love to point to. But if we arguing about the social consequences of immigration, I don't see why the Irish don't count. They had a wildly unpopular foreign religion that made them hard to assimilate, were generally considered to be prone to drunkenness and criminality, and were openly and notoriously used by employers to bid down wages.
I wasn’t deliberately excluding them, the thought never crossed my mind. With apologies to our Irish posters, I think of Britain as ‘two islands north of the Channel’. It would be like thinking of Lancastrians as immigrants. I also didn’t think that many of them crossed over - presumably like English peasants, they mostly stayed put?
I was thinking of the Hugenots as being the only real precedent, and as you say the movement was much smaller.
Food for thought.
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Canada’s population was 10% of Ukrainian descent before the recent immigration wave. They definitely had mass immigration before the iron curtain.
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In a perfect world a commoner of one ethnicity wouldn't even know about the existence of other ethnicities at all.
I see no way to accomplish this other than restricting people to never contact or travel beyond their immediate physical neighborhood. Is that what you consider a perfect world, or are you intending a different method of accomplishing this? If so, what?
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I don't understand the thrust of this comment. And anyways, groups divide fractally so I disagree that it's even possible to create a society without cultural-linguistic-historical divisions.
Little pupil: But Mrs. Teacher, what is there beyond the borders of our $ethnostate? Whom do we trade with?
Mrs. Teacher: An excellent question, please see the headmaster after hours.
Headmaster: *loads his shotgun*
I would have been so much happier without any contact with other races and ethnicities and the other sex.
Wait are you an actual honest-to-god homofascist?
There are in fact good arguments for sex segregation in education, if that's what he means.
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"Is there a gay Nazi brigade I don't know about!?" - Jon Pinette
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Okay, you seem to be on some kind of spree with this comment and this one and this one. All of which seem to be testing the limits of what you can get away with. Given that the common theme is "I hate a lot of people (and fantasize about violence a lot)" paired with the obvious fact that you are a returning alt who we probably banned not long ago, and I would suggest you cool it.
A lot? Literally everybody. I can't even remember what it feels like to like somebody. And by calling it testing the limits you ascribe too much intentionality for it to be supported by my level of intoxication at the time.
I would promise to cool it, but it's equivalent to promising to stay sober, and I know that's not happening. I wish it was viable to have a locally hosted LLMotte, it would have been better for everyone.
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A common complaint about illegal immigration today. Who will our Caesar be?
Tiberius Gracchus
Giaus Gracchus <——— you are here
Marius
Sulla
Pompey
Caesar
Who is the Tiberius Gracchus here? First term Trump?
Trump 45, yes. Pre assassination attempt.
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Tiberius Gracchus was the one they killed/tried to prosecute, for disturbing their hold on the levers of powers. I think he most maps to Trump.
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Just a random thing, Pompey has to be one of the most egregious exonyms ever. We are talking about Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, one of the most powerful and famous Romans in history. Pompey sounds more like a name of your neighbor's chihuahua.
I think of Pompeii, the city that got burned and buried under ash by Mount Vesuvius.
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I mean, anglophone people used to call Marcus Tullius Cicero "Tully" - leading to his most famous book, De Officiis, being known as "Tully's Offices", so there's plenty of underwhelming exonyms to go around.
We still do it with Mark Antony (Marcus Antonius), Livy (Titus Livius), and Pliny (Gaius Plinius Secundus).
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It sounds even more like a football team. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_F.C.
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