this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
43 points (77.9% liked)
Socialism
6022 readers
33 users here now
Rules TBD.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I agree that revolutions can always be bloody, but when people say authoritarian, they mean a state where dissent is surpressed by violent means. At least in modern times, most western states (and, in fact, most states) don't suppress discourse as much as the USSR often did.
@Aatube @yogthos @NoiseColor
1/3 [most western states (and, in fact, most states) don't suppress discourse as much as the USSR often did.]
I have to partially disagree. While it is likely true that the USSR was more outward with its suppression methods than most western states today, countries, like America for example, do suppress dissent on a regular scale (Campus protest, George Floyd protest are just two notable examples, but there are plenty of more).
Oops, yeah, I forgot about that. But you actually see livestreamed debate about whether suppressing these protests was good (oftentimes it's highly criticized), and you don't just get prosecuted if you just express opinions online. Also, the campus protests were suppressed because the owners of the private property being protested on didn't like it. They get substantial funding from the state, but there's still a difference from the state itself doing it. Like socialists and flat-earthers don't get straight-up stamped out by police, whereas Stalin actively prosecuted people who didn't support pseudobiology.
@Aatube @yogthos @NoiseColor
I'm not at all trying to suggest that Stalinist Russia was more free than modern-day America, just that many people think of America as a free country when it's actually closer to Stalinist Russia than they'd care to recognize.
My point is that the United States is indeed much less authoritarian. Saying that there's no such thing as a state that's more authoritarian or less authoritarian is denying reality.
US incarceration rate is higher than what USSR had during Stalin's purges. It's hard to think of a better measure of how authoritarian a state is than the percentage of the population it keeps behind bars.
https://lemmy.ml/post/17103219/11784747
@Aatube @yogthos @NoiseColor
[Saying that there's no such thing as a state that's more authoritarian or less authoritarian is denying reality.]
To clarify, that's not what I said. I said that there is no such thing as a non-authoritarian state because states are authoritarian by nature, not that there aren't varying degrees of the level of authoritarianism among different states. America is in many ways less authoritarian than the USSR, but it's still authoritarian nonetheless.
Hmm, I understand what you meant to say now. However, by all common discourse and even the term's very original definition, the United States isn't "authoritarian" enough to be considered authoritarian.