☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

  • 203 Posts
  • 305 Comments
Joined 5 years ago
Cake day: January 18th, 2020
  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mltoProgrammer Humor@programming.dev•IT Manager
    12·
    10 days ago

    The term authoritarianism is utterly meaningless because all governments rely on coercion to maintain their authority. The state is fundamentally an instrument that’s used by the ruling class to maintain its dominance. The whole notion that political systems can be neatly categorized into authoritarian or democratic binaries is deeply infantile.

    The reality is that every government derives its authority from its monopoly on legal violence. The ability to enforce laws, suppress dissent, and maintain order is derived from control over police, military, and judicial systems. Whether a government is labelled authoritarian or democratic, the fundamental basis of its power lies here. Therefore, the only meaningful questions to ask are which class interests it represents, and to what extent can it be held accountable to them.

    What ultimately matters is which class controls the institutions of state violence. In capitalist democracies, the government represent the interests of the economic elites who fund political campaigns, own media outlets, and control key industries. Western public lacks the mechanisms necessary to hold the government to account, and the ruling class is disconnected from the broader population. That’s precisely what’s driving political discontent all across western sphere today. Meanwhile, in so-called authoritarian regimes, the ruling party serves the working class as seen in countries like China, Cuba, or Vietnam. Hence why there is widespread public trust in these government and they enjoy broad support from the masses.

    Anybody who uses the term authoritarian can be safely dismissed.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOPtoMemes@lemmy.ml•Echochambers
    5·
    17 days ago

    It’s worth noting that Lemmy has plenty of different instances where opinion varies widely, including heavily liberal ones. I also don’t believe in free speech absolutism because some views, like fascism, are objectively harmful. The way I look at it is the real issue with echo chambers comes from people becoming divorced from reality because they only interact with people who hold identical views. I don’t see this being a major problem on Lemmy instances I frequent.