Half the country voted for Trump, do you really want to tell all of them they're in the same group as the Nazis? They might just take you at your word.
Saying somebody is a fascist is not the same as saying they're a Nazi. Fascism has a few competing definitions, including Umberto Eco's 14 points and "palingenetic ultranationalism". Both of these definitions match Trump very well. The latter essentially means national rebirth by returning to the old ways, of which "make america great again" is a perfect example.
Also, the classic alt-right threat of "if you keep calling us fascists then I guess we'll become fascists" is... Basically just an admission of being a fascist, or at least proto-fascist? It's not the "gotcha" you think it is.
[edit] also, voting for Trump doesn't make you a fascist. Plenty of different interest groups voted for him and most of them, I would say, aren't fascistic.
edit: so people told you you were a fascist and, to own the libs, you decided to abandon what you believed in? must've been a pretty tenuous belief for you to switch from pro-liberty to pro-authoritarianism so easily, but so many libertarians do so that it's unsurprising. it's almost like capitalism is inherently authoritarian...
I just assume you fell down the alt-right pipeline and had conservative talking heads like Tucker Carlson convince you into becoming fascist.
No, the libertarian-to-fascist pipeline is a little more nuanced than that.
It happens due to accepting the impossibility of a free society, and it goes something like this:
1. I want to be left alone and leave others alone, and freely contract and associate with whomever I want.
2. The left won't let me do this, and they're willing to use force to ensure it.
3. The far-right also advocates using force, which I'm against, but the society they envision much more closely aligns with my own vision, and I would enjoy greater freedom under their regime than I would working to death in Gulag Part Deux.
4. If voluntaryism is literally impossible due to the authoritarians, my best gamble here is to align with the least-bad authoritarians and hope we can dismantle the worst parts of it when the dust settles.
The maths is basically "I'd rather help build death camps than (tolerate minorities/reduce worker exploitation)
Ironically, with your claim that voluntarily agreed to employment contracts are "exploitation", you turned out to support Communism, which is the ideology used by privileged unions to legitimize their privilege, and which has led to the creation of the most totalitarian states in history, while you falsely accuse any one who opposes Communism of being a genocidal fascist.
I'm not going to dive into the whole theory side, but suffice to say as a libertarian socialist, no, I'm not a communist in the sense you're thinking. I also don't accuse "anyone who opposes communism" as being a genocidal fascist, so I'm not sure where you got that from. Libertarians have a tendency to backslide into fascism when confronted with left wing pushback, but libertarianism itself isn't a fascist ideology.
You're framing this as libertarians versus Stalinism or something like that, I was thinking more unionisation, social-democratic movements, that sort of thing. Fascists pop up in the face of some pretty milquetoast leftist agitation - see the parent commenter who decided to become a fascist because leftists were mean to them.
I do believe that voluntary contracts can be exploitative (because they can by definition), but that didn't come up in this thread at all so I'm not sure where you're bringing that in from.
You very much are a Communist, your denials notwithstanding. Communism is a theoretical stateless anarchy, which means it is, in theory, libertarian socialism.
It is also the most destructive ideology in history, that has created the most totalitarian states that man has been subjected to.
Those who believe in your ideology will always side with anti-libertarians, and advocate centralization of power to stifle the individual, because Communism deems man, in his natural state, as evil, and glorifies efforts to stifle him as good.
>>I do believe that voluntary contracts can be exploitative (because they can by definition),
By definition, they cannot. If both parties choose to engage in the trade, no one was exploited. Marxism claims otherwise, in order to villify a free society and those who champion it, and legitimize anti-libertarian ideologies like Communism.
>>I was thinking more unionisation, social-democratic movements
You framed it as death camp supporting fascists versus your political camp, implying libertarians are in the former, and now you take issue with me calling your camp Communists.
Edit: since your account has clearly been using HN primarily (maybe even exclusively) for ideological battle, and that's the line at which we ban accounts, I've banned this one.
For past explanations about why we draw the line this way, see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
We do this regardless of which ideology an account is battling for or against—it's tedious and destructive of what HN is for, irrespective of which side people are on.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
This is just bad polemics. I wasn't even talking about my own positions here, so I don't think it's important to try to explain them to you.
I framed fascists as the death camp ones and a variety of left wing causes from outright revolutionary communism to social democratic positions as the opposition, and said that libertarians often pick the former over the latter. I'm not sure what about my argument you are struggling to follow - it's a widely acknowledged historical tendency. Yknow, IBM's holocaust computers and all that.
Please stop using HN for ideological battle. It's repetitive, tedious, not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
We've also had to ask you this multiple times before. Also not cool.
Since it doesn't look like you've been using HN primarily for this, I haven't banned your account, but if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the intended spirit—regardless of how wrong other commenters are or you feel they are—we'd appreciate it.
I do try to remain more tone-neutral on the political threads, but it seems like no matter the degree to which you try to be well reasoned or diplomatic it just draws angry responses. But at the same time, the status quo of startup politics goes unchallenged under the rules (ie, neoliberal or libertarian perspectives) - so it's a matter of just let those perspectives go unchallenged even when there are level headed arguments to be made, or make the argument and risk people getting mad and then me getting banned for "flaming". I'm genuinely unsure what good answer there is, because this isn't an un-political forum (at least, not so much nowadays it would seem). Do we just ignore Thiel's fascistic tendencies in a thread surrounding one of his political projects?
I'm not expecting a reply because I know moderating this place must keep you busy, but it's a legitimate bind and the guidelines aren't very instructive. From an intent perspective, I'm not trying to sling mud, I think legitimate discussion of political perspectives is interesting and important.
