• Shaggy0291@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    It’s an expression that nods to the tendency of liberals to empower, enable and ultimately align with fascists against socialists, communists and the labour movement generally. There are a great many historical examples of this phenomenon, but among the most prominent are:-

    1. The German SDP aligning with the remnants of the German Imperial Army and supporting the proto-fascistic Freikorps as it savagely suppressed the rising of communist revolutionaries at the end of WW1 in order to preserve German bourgeois rule

    2. The reintegration of the defeated Nazi and Imperial Japanese leadership into anti-communist organisations and state organs in the new west German and Japanese nations by the triumphant capitalist powers at the end of WW2, including leadership of NATO by a senior commander of the Nazi Wehrmacht and leadership of the rebuilt Japanese state by one of the most brutal colonial oppressors from Japan’s old regime.

    3. Unapologetic support for Augusto Pinochet’s murderous takeover of Chile by a wide range of liberal powers and voices, most ardently by figures such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the former of whom considered offering him political asylum in the 80s and the latter of whom publicly expressed outrage when Pinochet was arrested and subsequently subjected to justice in the international criminal court for the crimes he committed against his own people.

    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      It’s not that you are completely wrong in anything, but:

      at the end of WW1 in order to preserve German bourgeois rule

      I’ll just inform you here that German aristocracy and “bourgeoisie” are usually used as antonyms, not synonyms.

      Also Germany was starving, the logic was that they can’t afford more chaos, even if it means conservatives.

      Soviets did the similar thing with GDR and Hungary and what not in the Eastern block. Though of course they preferred their existing communist buddies who somehow survived the 30s and 40s.

      USA wouldn’t have such still already existent friendly factions, so they tried to grow some new ones, initially from people who’d be moderates in former regimes.

      I’d still prefer Pinochet to Khmer Rouge.