[sdwa]

>I am loving people who don't understand that they are literally supporting billionaires while claiming to be anti-corporate resistance.

The billionaire in question is Trump, isn't it?

>Definition of Liberal used to be: "Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas. Relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise."

Well this just comes back to the paradox of tolerance. I consider myself a liberal (in the British or non-American sense) and in my opinion fascism should not be tolerated.

[nec4b]

Only fascism or any other collectivist ideology?

[sdwa]

Sure, but the threat of fascism in any given Western nation that I know of is far greater than the threat of communism, which is rather dead.

[busterarm]

> than the threat of communism, which is rather dead.

Huh? The largest nation on the planet is literally a Communist nation and has its eyes set on being the global seat of power while simulatenously bribing half the world to look the other way.

The internment camps should be a clue.

[azernik]

"in any given Western nation"

[sdwa]

Well China isn't really communist any more, it sort of began to abandon that with Deng Xiaoping, but regardless, my point is there's truly minimal risk of communists coming to power in any Western country that I know of. I perceive the thread of fascists gaining power in the West as far greater. I should have been clearer, my mistake.

[busterarm]

It's still a single-party state guided by a Marxist-Leninist philosophy.

Also, given the not even guarded political opinions of my overwhelmingly-Marxist peers who work in federal civil service jobs in the DC area, I think that we're far closer than you think.

But I will certainly agree the danger is in any collectivist-utopian promise for a government. They all rely on the same brutal methods like ethnic cleansing and tend to look the same other than what's written on their red armbands.

[sdwa]

I don't think there's any remotely plausible prospect of America becoming a Marxist state. Your paranoia is noted, however, and it is typical of Americans, and probably in part why your society is so often so unwell (at least, that's my pet theory).

[nec4b]

I think people from at least some countries of the world would disagree with you about communism being dead. Is there any major fascist political party in the west that has any kind of msm support? On the other hand, almost every western country has a socialist party in their respective parliament. As liberal doesn't it bother you that ideas which were the cause of so much misery in the world when implemented in communist countries are still being recycled over and over in parliaments of western countries at least as much as a few fascists do?

[sdwa]

> I think people from at least some countries of the world would disagree with you about communism being dead

Possibly, but to me in the West I don't feel like there's any remotely plausible threat of communists coming to power in my country or any Western country that I know of.

> On the other hand, almost every western country has a socialist party in their respective parliament

I know I'm probably talking to an American here so I guess there's a reasonable chance that everything that isn't libertarian hyper-capitalism is literally Juche communism, but in reality, these mainstream so-called "socialist parties" in the West are overwhelmingly liberal in character. There are exceptions, such as Die Linke in Germany, and yeah I find them pretty vile, but they're mostly irrelevant. For example, I am British and our mainstream opposition party is nominally "socialist" but in actual fact fundamentally liberal and not at all about the overthrow of capitalism.

> As liberal doesn't it bother you that ideas which were the cause of so much misery in the world when implemented in communist countries are still being recycled over and over in parliaments of western countries

For the aforementioned reasons, where European "socialist" parties are more about making capitalism a little bit less American/cutthroat/fuck-you-I-got-mine, rather than literal democratic ownership of the means of production, no, not really. Europe is fundamentally capitalist and liberal.

[nec4b]

In the UK you don't have an iota of a "fascist" party to be worried about. I agree that the labour party is only "nominally socialist", but at least from Corbyn forward I would not call them liberal. And they have lost touch with the working people about at the same time as well.