Afghanistan

[Dill]

(08-24-2021, 03:51 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Quote:2. Of course "comparisons are fine." Because it matters very much "if some people share some facets of another ideology" and those facets happen to be values, behaviors, and policies critical to development of authoritarian control.  Discussion of such is important to the maintenance of liberal democracy--especially now. And ruling out comparisons/analogies to authoritarian regimes as invalid in principle is a kind of censorship, an anxious censorship at that because of what such analogies might reveal. So that is why I defend in principle the right to make  social scientific/historical comparisons between the 3rd Reich and current US adminstrations or another. Doing that is not just another way of calling people "Nazis"--at least for people operating social scientific discourse for social scientific purposes. 

Exactly, you engage in Nazi comparisons and you've done so on several occasions. 

That's what you conclude from "it matters very much 'if some people share some facets of another ideology' and those facets happen to be values, behaviors, and policies critical to development of authoritarian control"?  TL;DR? 

I have several times argued that Trump and Trumpists don't (yet) adequately meet social-scientific definitions of fascism, of which Nazism is usually regarded as a subset. That must be what you "remember" as me engaging in Nazi comparisons. Otherwise you have no examples. As with my above quote, you simply have not understood the motives and methods of such comparisons.

I'll restate the rationale for research into authoritarian regimes below, and its applicabiliity to current states, including the US.

(08-24-2021, 03:51 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Sorry, if you don't think Isis fighters were human scum then you've got far worse problems than can ever be addressed in this forum.  Josef Mengele was human scum and a person who sets prisoners on fire and engages in wholesale rape is as well.

Odd then that you find the need to make the comparison at all.  What you are apparently deliberately ignoring is that comparisons of any kind to such extreme groups always, I repeat always, has the effect of making the groups analogous, of linking them together.  Whether you do this deliberately, as I strongly suspect, or out of extreme ignorance, the effect is the same.

It's literally amazing to me the knots you have to tie yourself into to accept this as "logic".  You have an issue with labeling people as "scum" but have zero issue comparing Americans to the Taliban or Nazis.  I suppose I should be grateful in a way, your counter arguments on this topic only reinforce my points.  

As I write this, there are thousands of political scientists, sociologists and historians world wide studying authoritarian regimes past and present, and they are especially interested in how such regimes may emerge from liberal democratic states during economic/social crises. Do you dispute this? 

Those engaged do not call the objects of their study "human scum"--be they individuals, parties, or states. Not even Josef Mengele or ISIS. That doesn't mean they have "problems" or "support" Mengele and ISIS, but rather that such terms offer no descriptive or analytical precision. Demogogues use such language to express and arouse negative emotions, often to demonize minority ethnic groups, and they have no place in social scientific/historical description, where they simply mark the writer's own distortive bias. So this is not a dill quirk in this forum so much as an international standard. So they, as I do, have an "issue with labeling people as 'scum'." Or can you provide counter examples of social science researchers who embrace such language?

One goal of such research is to create a typology of behaviors and an archive of historical/policy knowledge that enables us to recognize the red flags of developing authoritarianism before it is too late--as it is now in states like Russia and Hungary. That means the research has to be applied, and the comparisons made, BEFORE "atrocities" are committed, before emerging groups are openly anti-democratic or "like Nazis." And so they have "zero issue" comparing Americans to the Taliban or Nazis," because the point is not to name-and-blame and they don't assum Americans are already Nazis or Taliban. These are the social-scientific "knots" which I, along with thousands of others, "tie [my]self into knots to accept."  Can you refute this summary of the research rationale by showing there is no such research, or that it is never intended to be applied as described? 

Can you actually counter argue that we should NOT be applying knowledge of authoritarian regimes to US politics during a time when a populist authoritarian leader has deployed anti-democratic means to retain power?

Perhaps the afore-mentioned reserachers are "deliberately ignoring" that " comparisons of any kind to such extreme groups always, I repeat always, has the effect of making the groups analogous, of linking them together," or perhaps that is just the worry of groups whose authoritarian tendencies might become public discussion as such because of the comparison. Hence the effort of so many right wing commentators in the US to block and resist such research, or to produce "alternative" versions linking Nazis and "radical Islam" to "the left."  

In any case, it is clear that if researchers can't make analogies between authoritarian regimes and current US politics, then the entire purpose of this international enterprise, its copious research results placed in service of maintaining democracy, are just fudge. Your quarrel is not with one individual with "problems," but with the enterprise of social science itself--its ethos, methods, and applicability to current politics.

There are others in this forum who also operate in this social-scientific mode when discussing political events. They focus on policy analysis and social causation. You never hear them going on about "human scum" or explaining opponents' motives in terms of personality defects.