Does Greece have the highest percentage of Horrible People in the world?

[Antonio the Sixth]

4) Well yeah, "Eurocommunism" was largely a sham in general.

What the hell do you mean by that? A sham against whom? Was Berlinguer playing 12-dimensional chess when he went to Moscow and praised democracy in a speech (whose text had been rejected) to a bunch of Soviet apparatchiks? Tell me, what were his true goals?

[Antonio the Sixth]

4) Well yeah, "Eurocommunism" was largely a sham in general.

What the hell do you mean by that? A sham against whom? Was Berlinguer playing 12-dimensional chess when he went to Moscow and praised democracy in a speech (whose text had been rejected) to a bunch of Soviet apparatchiks? Tell me, what were his true goals?

Al kind of summarized it well here:

You'd figure Gustaf would at least be familiar with Eurocommunism.

Familiar enough to know that it was a sham? By the time the "idea" was dreamed up, the PCI was well on the (extremely long) road to becoming a standard-issue European Socialist/Social Democratic (use whatever term thee be more comfortable with) party, while the Iberian parties were slowly drifting away into irrelevence and the PCF (led by a man who would have made a better comedian than a politician) was busy sowing the seeds of it's own dramatic electoral destruction.
And I seem to recall reading that some Soviet money was used to help it on it's way, but that might just be libel.

The wiki article on it is sh*t, btw.

And he did make a point once that despite such window dressing as you describe above, such parties never really broke with the Soviet Union.

How the hell do you find these decades-old posts?

"Well on the (extremely long) road to becoming a standard-issue European Socialist/Social Democratic party" is a gross oversimplification of the PCI's history that I'm sure Al wouldn't stand by today. And even if that were the case I don't see how it makes its ideological project in the 1970s a "sham".

And I can't believe you think going unscripted at a Congress of the Soviet Communist Party is mere "window-dressing".

[Antonio the Sixth]

BRTD seems to be under the impression that individuals exist in a vacuum isolated from any kind of social influence (which, interestingly, is usually a right-wing assumption).

[Antonio the Sixth]

BRTD seems to be under the impression that individuals exist in a vacuum isolated from any kind of social influence (which, interestingly, is usually a right-wing assumption).

     The idea that individuals are fully culpable for their own political beliefs seems quite common among the left, actually. In almost any other sphere, it would be unequivocally right-wing to maintain such a position.

I don't consider Hagrid and his ilk of self-righteous elitists to be "left-wing" in any meaningful sense. They simply combine the surface of left-wing policy positions (although often just on "social" issues, as they're quite at peace with continued plutocracy) with this fundamentally right-wing attitude.

[Antonio the Sixth]

BRTD, I'm interested to know what about Greece, if not its historical, political, cultural, and economic circumstances, you think leads to these good results for extremist parties.

The point isn't so much those, but the fact you'd have to be pretty horrible to support such a party regardless of any circumstances.

Okay...? I don't know what you're trying to demonstrate. Why do you think Greece has such a high concentration of these people? Is it something in the water?

Greece having some reason for them being higher doesn't let them off the hook for being terrible though. That's my point. Some Trump supporter in a rural southern county that gave him ~80% isn't off the hook either for being terrible.

Middle-class hipster unwilling to let people who have been through sh*t all their lives "off the hook": ALL LIBERAL ALL THE TIME!

[Antonio the Sixth]

See: protests and picketing against and even vandalism of Mormon and Catholic churches after the passage of Prop 8 (for just one example)

...and you think that's a good thing?

[Antonio the Sixth]

BRTD seems to be under the impression that individuals exist in a vacuum isolated from any kind of social influence (which, interestingly, is usually a right-wing assumption).

     The idea that individuals are fully culpable for their own political beliefs seems quite common among the left, actually. In almost any other sphere, it would be unequivocally right-wing to maintain such a position.

I don't consider Hagrid and his ilk of self-righteous elitists to be "left-wing" in any meaningful sense. They simply combine the surface of left-wing policy positions (although often just on "social" issues, as they're quite at peace with continued plutocracy) with this fundamentally right-wing attitude.

     I see a lot of people on the left espousing this sort of notion in regards to the right. I won't accuse you of No True Scotsman here, because (even as someone who is not leftist) I agree that this type of attitude seems antithetical to left-wing principles. With that in mind, I wonder how much of a left-wing you have if you insist that these people are not genuine leftists.

Not much, and that's the whole problem. We live in a right-wing era in which the main conflict is between two segments of the right.