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by rootusrootus 254 days ago
Can't help but notice the reliable pattern of right-wing naming conventions. German Democratic Republic, not at all democratic. Democratic People's Republic of Korea, again not even remotely democratic. Make America Great Again, not in fact trying to make America great. I get it, slogans work and are more important than the reality behind them. But it is depressing nonetheless, to imagine all the nice things and prosperity we could create if we actually did try.
2 comments

Truth social (or similarly Pravda)
Is totalitarian communism (first two examples) considered right-wing now?
Bad naming from OP, but the meaning holds: totalitarianism has no political color, when your liberties are ignored the fact that it comes from left or right becomes irrelevant. Abusive governments just love playing with words to make their actions sound gentler.
You can definitely quibble that totalitarianism is not left- or right-wing by the conventions we are most familiar with, which makes the comparison a little bit of a stretch. But it is certainly closer to present-day right wing authoritarianism that we are experiencing a surge of across the world than it is to left-wing. To be sure, left-wing authoritarianism absolutely is a thing, it's just that the left wing largely doesn't exist any more and certainly doesn't have enough power to implement any authoritarian policies.