Leftists claiming Stalin was right wing.
It’s an oversimplified anarchist talking point against authoritarianism and the state. It’s noting the similarities between conservative talking points and auth-left socialist rhetoric. Basically, almost everything you criticize about capitalism can be applied to the state. And defenses for the state from auth-left socialists sounds an awful lot like right wing talking points in defense of capitalism/imperialism/insertotherismhere. Not to mention, the USSR was pretty socially conservative and that’s a big mark against them imo. Liberatory politics should liberate people, after all
Leftists who think, if I don’t subscribe to their narrow, personal definition of leftism, I must be an epistemically evil conservative maniac with no middle ground whatsoever.
what I hate is that when I say I’m not affiliated with a political party - people try to assume I must be a fucking centrist and therefor secretly conservative.
Those people have some kind of mental deficiency that prevents them from thinking outside of what they already know. It’s sad really. It’s like their brain can’t comprehend anything outside of what they were told to think.
I can sort of see where they’re coming from, if they’re equating authoritarianism to conservatism and libertarianism to liberalism. But in reality, Stalin was a left wing authoritarian.
If we look at the rhetoric, the soviet state was certainly left wing, but the main policy was state capitalism. To my mind, state capitalism is not a right wing (favors private control of industry) nor a left wing (favors worker control of industry) policy.
This is definitely a case where pure left/right dichotomy doesn’t serve to accurately describe the situation on the ground.
Makes me wonder why we even still have wings. Nobody can seem to define them adequately.
TIL this is actually a thing and I’m not just an idiot speaking out of my ass (this time).
