Comment by delaminator
5 hours ago
Yeah, here's some examples of all these fascists doing exactly that:
Soviet Union - The show trials of the 1930s were conducted with full legal apparatus: confessions, judges, verdicts. Stalin's purges operated through legally constituted troikas. Entirely "lawful" by Soviet law.
East Germany (DDR) - The Stasi's surveillance and harassment programmes were codified in law. When the wall fell, many Stasi officers genuinely argued their conduct was legal under GDR statute: a defence that West German courts largely rejected.
Castro's Cuba - Mass executions after the revolution were conducted by legally constituted revolutionary tribunals. Castro explicitly defended this on legality grounds when challenged by foreign press in 1959.
Chavez/Maduro's Venezuela - Suppression of opposition media, jailing of political opponents was consistently defended as operating within Venezuelan law, which was progressively rewritten to make it so. Classic self-referential legality.
Mao's Cultural Revolution - The revolutionary committees had legal standing. Persecution of intellectuals and landlords proceeded through formal (if kangaroo) legal processes.
You should ask the language model that output this text the definition of 'whataboutism,' and if the comment you've posted responds meaningfully to the discussion at hand.
I think similar to how AI-generated comments are frowned upon, "this comment was generated by Ai" comments should also be frowned upon. It's really annoying to see a well written comment and replies that don't address the comment but just accuse the poster of having used Ai to generate the comment.
you should ask the GP about his use of the word fascist on everything he doesn't like.
> if the comment you've posted responds meaningfully to the discussion at hand.
https://mirror.org/
Nothing deep going on there. Fascism in modern informal parlance is a synonym for authoritarianism. Those who object most loudly to Stalin being called a fascist are usually themselves actually fascists, or stalinists. Everybody else gets it.
> you should ask the GP about his use of the word fascist on everything he doesn't like.
If mirror dot org actually existed, you might want to look into it, because your long list of examples has one related to 1930s Germany, and the rest has nothing to do with the political definition of "fascism"?
Your point about legality was valid, but you're undermining it with the sarcasm.