(1) FUNERAL FOR CACHED WEBPAGES. Ars Technica says “Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead”. That will make reporting controversial social media – where people sometimes take down posts that have attracted attention — rather harder.
Google will no longer be keeping a backup of the entire Internet. Google Search’s “cached” links have long been an alternative way to load a website that was down or had changed, but now the company is killing them off. Google “Search Liaison” Danny Sullivan confirmed the feature removal in an X post, saying the feature “was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.”
The feature has been appearing and disappearing for some people since December, and currently, we don’t see any cache links in Google Search. For now, you can still build your own cache links even without the button, just by going to “https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:” plus a website URL, or by typing “cache:” plus a URL into Google Search. For now, the cached version of Ars Technica seems to still work. All of Google’s support pages about cached sites have been taken down….
(2) GERROLD Q&A. The Roddenberry Archive has released a two-part interview with David Gerrold.
The Roddenberry Archive presents an in-depth two-part conversation with award-winning science fiction novelist and screenwriter David Gerrold. During the conversation, Mr. Gerrold tells how, as a college student he broke into the television industry by writing a script for the original Star Trek, the classic episode, “Trouble With Tribbles.”. Mr. Gerrold speaks candidly of his sometimes-tumultuous relationship with Star Trek’s creator, the late Gene Roddenberry. He delves into his personal experiences in the making of the legendary series and of his pivotal role in the development of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
(3) DISCUSSING HUGO REFORM. Brad Templeton has distilled his comments about the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo problems and potential fixes into a single post: “The World Science Fiction convention/awards were attacked again. How can its unusual governance structure deal with this?” at Brad Ideas. Here are the final two sections:
Legal clarity
The organization also needs more legal clarity. The terms of the agreement between WSFS and the conventions it appoints need to be more explicit and clear. The current WSFS constitution says the WorldCon (the local convention entity) does most of what goes on at a convention, but the Hugos and Site Selection are officially the actions of WSFS, though it delegates the logistics and administration to the WorldCon. It’s a bit confusing and might not handle legal scrutiny well.
That WSFS is constitutionally the party that awards the Hugos, using the WorldCon as its agent, has many advantages for trademark law and also if WSFS wants to exercise authority over the Hugos and the people administering them. This should be made more clear.
Recommendations
- When all is done, there should at least be the appearance that they did not get away with it, to deter future corruption and censorship.
- The best solution is not a specific one, but a general one that allows the organization to respond quickly to problems and threats, without removing its intentional slow pace of change, and resistance to control by “SMOFs.”
- Auditing and more transparency are a good start, with an ethos of whistleblowing.
- Put term limits on all WSFS officials.
- Clarify and codify the structure of WSFS and the contracts.
- Pick one way or another to allow WSFS to respond immediately to threats. I like the idea of actions that can be reversed, but some path should be chosen.
- Do find some way to stop Hugo administration from being under the influence of censorship states, including China.
(4) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]
La Zi speaks again
Filers will recall that on January 24th, Mike ran an article by me that included an item about a bizarre Weibo post from Worldcon Vice-Chair and SFW editor La Zi. I did notice that that Weibo post disappeared not long after it was featured here, but I’d not checked on his account since then, thinking that he might understandably be taking a step back from social media, especially given all the ongoing Hugo stats report controversy.
Reader, I was sorely mistaken.
Amongst some fairly mundane reposts, a couple of his recent posts stood out to me. The most pertinent to File 770 is this short one from Wednesday January 31st, which is straightforward enough that I could just about understand it all, even with my meagre Chinese language skills. That text reads:
中国科幻迷应该永远记得本·亚洛这个名字。他是真正的好人，也是真正的国际主义者。
which Google Translate renders as follows (surname error corrected):
Chinese science fiction fans should always remember the name Ben Yalow. He is a truly good man and a true internationalist.
Here’s a screenshot of the Weibo post – including a similar translation from Alibaba Cloud – just in case it also disappears.
Note to readers: the censuring of Ben Yalow (and Chen Shi, and Dave McCarty) occurred on the previous day, the 30th – although obviously time zone differences make things a bit more complicated with regard to recording what happened when.
The second post that I would like to bring to your attention is a couple of days older, published on Monday the 29th. The Chinese text reads:
应该要求美国尊重得克萨斯（孤星）共和国人民的民主诉求，承认其独立共和国身份。可以考虑签订《与得克萨斯（孤星）共和国关系法》，并提供防卫目的的武器贸易和军事援助，目的是保护得克萨斯不会因为强大北方邻国的觊觎而被掠夺珍贵的油气资源，任何企图以非和平方式来决定得克萨斯共和国前途之举——包括使用经济抵制及禁运手段在内，将被视为对东太平洋地区和平及安定的威胁，联合国应该介入。
Google Translate renders this as follows (text left unaltered):
The United States should be required to respect the democratic aspirations of the people of the Republic of Texas (Lone Star) and recognize its identity as an independent republic. Consider signing the “Relationships with the Republic of Texas (Lone Star) Act” and provide arms trade and military assistance for defense purposes. The purpose is to protect Texas from being plundered of precious oil and gas resources due to the covetousness of its powerful northern neighbors. Any attempt to use Non-peaceful measures to determine the future of the Republic of Texas, including the use of economic boycotts and embargoes, will be considered a threat to peace and stability in the Eastern Pacific region, and the United Nations should intervene.
Here’s another screenshot for posterity.
Whilst many may presume that this second post indirectly refers to some other place, please note that on January 30th, Newsweek reported that Chinese social media was full of stories about the US being in a state of civil war. A couple of extracts:
As the battle of wills over immigration continues between the White House and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a parallel debate is happening in China, where trending social media posts are backing the Lone Star State’s right to secede from the United States.
On China’s X-like microblogging site Weibo, accounts with more than a million followers were spreading misinformation this week claiming Texas had entered a “state of war” with the federal government. In the comment sections, Chinese netizens met the news with excitement and glee…
“If the U.S. really pushes Texas back, then it will be great fun,” the user said. “I hope both sides will not be cowardly and that they will fight to the end!”
In a follow-up post on Tuesday, the user said he was inspired to “definitely contribute money and effort” to support the cause against America’s “imperialist oppression” in Texas and elsewhere in the world.
There’s further discussion of this on Reddit’s /r/China, which is where I’d previously heard about this meme.
Note to readers: per Fancyclopedia:
Ben [Yalow] shocked most of fandom when he moved to Texas in 2021.
(5) GLOBETROTTER. Australian fan Robin Johnson has been writing posts for The Little Aviation Museum “Reading Room”. Here’s an example published in 2022: “1997 – A Year of Sightseeing and Science Fiction”.
I have been reminded by a Facebook post by astronomical artist Don Davis of the Hale-Bopp comet of 1997, a year that was a red-letter one for me. As a pensioner of BOAC (now British Airways) I was able to fly on a stand-by basis on their flights (and some other airlines). Flights from Australia to England were operating with one stop using the latest Boeing 747-400s.
I visited my father in England in January for his birthday, and on the way home to Tasmania attended two regional science fiction conventions in the U.S.A. and one in Perth – Arisia in Boston, Chattacon in Chattanooga, and Swancon in Perth.
In late March I set off to England again, attending a Con in Wellington, New Zealand en route, visited friends in the Los Angeles area, and took advantage of the fact that BOAC had recently taken over British Caledonian Airways to fly to London from Dallas-Ft Worth by DC-10.
Comet Hale-Bopp had not yet been easily visible in the Southern hemisphere when I left home, but was spectacular in the Northern Hemisphere. Sitting aboard the flight next to a flight crew member, we talked about the comet – and soon I was invited onto the flight deck. The DC-10 has spectacularly large windows, and standing behind the Captain as we overflew Greenland, on a moonless night: the view was unique. The comet had just passed its closest point to Earth, and the tail was prominently on view to the naked eye, and there could not have been a better viewpoint….
(6) CHRISTOPHER PRIEST OBITUARIES.
John Clute’s “Christopher Priest obituary” ran in the Guardian today.
The novelist Christopher Priest, who has died aged 80 after suffering from cancer, became eminent more than once over the nearly 60 years of his active working life. But while he relished success, he displayed a wry reserve about the ambiguities attending these moments in the limelight.
In 1983 he was included in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists, a 20-strong cohort, most of them – such as Martin Amis, William Boyd, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift and AN Wilson – significantly younger than Priest, whose career had begun almost two decades earlier, and who had at least 15 books and 50 stories in print by the early 80s. He clearly felt that it was not so much the quality of his work that delayed his “promotion” to the literary establishment, but his reluctance to deny, when asked, that he wrote science fiction.
His large body of work never fitted easily into any mould. Only in recent years has it become widely understood that the sometimes baffling ingenuity and thrust of his fiction has been of a piece, no more detachable into convenient genres than, say, Amis’s or Ishiguro’s tales of the fantastic….
Paul Kincaid’s reminiscences about “Chris” appear at Through the dark labyrinth.
The 1976 Eastercon was held in the rather grim surroundings of Owen’s Park student accommodation, Manchester. It was my third convention and I still wasn’t used to the fact that mere mortals could mix freely with actual authors. So I was very nervous approaching a small group in the bar. My target was a tall, thin guy wearing blue denim jacket and jeans and smoking with a long cigarette holder (later in the convention, Lee Montgomerie would win the fancy dress for the best costume as an author; she was wearing almost exactly the same outfit). This was Christopher Priest and I had just bought the paperback of his latest novel, The Space Machine. I asked for an autograph. He pointed to someone at the other side of the bar. “See that guy? Andrew Stephenson. He did the illustrations. Why don’t you get him to sign it?” To this day, that paperback is one of the few Chris Priest novels I own that isn’t signed by the author.
Later that day I was standing at the back of a programme item. Chris was on the panel, smoking with that long holder, and I began to notice the wild figure of 8 shape that the glowing end of the cigarette was making, and I realised his hand was shaking. He was more nervous than I had been.
Years go by. A BSFA meeting in London at a pub near Hatton Garden. I’m propping up the bar with Chris. I mention that I’ve just reviewed his latest novel, The Glamour, and I thought it was really good except that the ending didn’t quite work. Two days later I receive a thick envelope in the post. It was the typescript for a revised ending of The Glamour, the first of countless revisions of the novel that was so good but so impossible to end….
(7) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
1940 — The Adventures of Superman on radio
The Adventures of Superman is a long-running radio serial. Initially, the show, which aired from 1940 through to 1951, was syndicated through the Mutual Broadcasting System’s cornerstone station, WOR in New York, subsequently taken up by the Mutual network, and finally by ABC. In the beginning there were three episodes a week of 15 minutes in length. When in 1941 they began making five episodes a week, some stations stayed with the three-a-week format. Late in the show’s run episodes ran 30 minutes.
The year after the comic strip debuted four audition radio programs were prepared to sell Superman as a syndicated radio series. It took very little time to have WOR sign the contract to do this, so it went on the air less two years after the comic strip launched.
The original pitch was that the audience was going to be predominantly juvenile so the scripts had to be lighthearted with the violence toned down. The performers were chosen with that mind, so they cast Bud Collyer in the Clark Kent / Superman role and Joan Alexander as Lois Lane. She also voiced that role in animated Fleischer Superman shorts.
The continuity of the series is significantly different than the series as Krypton is located on the far side of the sun, and on the journey to Earth, Kal-el becomes an adult before his ship lands on Earth., so he is never adopted by the Kents but immediately begins his superhero / reporter career.
This serial is responsible for the introduction of kryptonite to the Superman universe. Daily Planet editor Perry White and Jimmy Olsen who was a copy editor originated in the serial as well.
As a gimmick that paralleled the Superman comic and which the audience adored, they kept the identity of Collyer as the character a secret for the first six years, until when Superman became the character in a radio campaign for racial and religious tolerance and Collyer did a Time magazine interview about that campaign.
Kellog Company was the sponsor at least initially with the product being its Pep cereal. It was sponsored Tom Corbet, Space Cadet.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
- The Far Side captures a photo op with visitors who aren’t from around here.
- Pearls Before Swine finds an unexpected angle to library censorship.
- Six Chix meanwhile shows the challenges of a bookstore customer.
(9) EUROSTAR. The Guardian looks ahead to issues with cross-Channel train travel. “Eurostar may cap services due to post-Brexit biometric passport checks, says station owner”.
Eurostar could be forced to limit passenger numbers travelling from St Pancras each day under post-Brexit plans to bring in biometric border controls later this year, the owner of the station has warned.
HS1, the owner and operator of the line and stations between London and the Channel tunnel, has raised concerns that planning for new Entry/Exit System (EES) checks at the London rail station are “severely inadequate”, and would lead to long delays and potential capping of services and passenger numbers.
The EES requires citizens from outside the EU or Schengen area to register before entering the zone.
This will replace the stamping of passports for UK travellers, and instead require passengers to enter personal information and details about their trip, as well as submitting fingerprint and facial biometric data.
It has been mooted that the new checks will come into force in October but the implementation has been delayed several times in recent years because the infrastructure was not ready.
HS1 has now raised several concerns to MPs around St Pancras’s ability to accommodate the changes, predicting “unacceptable passenger delays”.
It said only 24 EES kiosks had been allocated by the French government, despite modelling suggesting that nearly 50 would be needed at peak times….
(10) WOULD YOU CARE FOR A BEVERAGE? Comics on Coffee has enlisted this couple to share their “Mad Love for Raspberry Coffee”.
DC & Comics On Coffee have joined forces to make your mornings more action packed with great tasting coffee! It’s time to get crazy in love with this Valentine’s Day Special Edition Coffee. A smooth, raspberry flavored coffee.
(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. George R.R. Martin shares as much as he can about the films they’re making based on the late Howard Waldrop’s stories in “Come to the Pulls” at Not A Blog.
…COOTERS was just the beginning, though. Only the first of a series of short films — and one full-length feature, we hope — we have been making, based on some of Howard’s astonishing, and unique, stories. He wrote so many, it was hard to know where to start, but start we did, and I am pleased to say that we have three more Waldrop movies filmed and in the can, in various stages of post production. Some of you — the lucky ones — will get a chance to see them this year, at a film festival near you. As with COOTERS, we’re taking them out on the festival circuit.
First one out of the chute will be MARY-MARGARET ROAD GRADER. We were able to screen a rough cut for Howard just a few days before his death. I am so so so glad we did. And I am thrilled to be able to report that he loved it.
We can’t show it to the world yet. But here’s a trailer, to give you all a taste.
[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Ersatz Culture, Daniel Dern, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff Warner.]
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First!!!
7) The Superman radio series is great fun, I have the entire surviving episodes and it’s a fun listen. There are a few cringe-worthy parts esp after Pearl Harbor when the word “Japs” is heard with some frequency.
And the commercials for Pep are a Hoot
“Kellog’s Pep, the Super Delicious Cereal that’s fired from guns…”
(4) Right, I think it was in the eighties that I realized that SMOFs Real Plans were to take over the world, and they were going to use fandom for a power base (due to the degrees of separation in fandom). So, Moshe’s controlling Abbot, bringing Chinese support…. (Take that, SMOFs, I’ve revealed your Secret Plan!)
(7) Yeah, based on a meme I’ve seen from the fifties, Superman was all in on equality, and against racism, etc. Makes sense, given he’s the ultimate alien.
(9) And will that be slow-walked, until the general elections in the UK, and Labour comes into power (I’m assuming folks here have been following that).
re: Templeton’s proposals
Whatever we come up with, please try not to gatekeep. We must keep fandom as a big tent. Arguably, the tent is too small currently, let’s not restrict it to “trufen” please.
re: TX
Yea, right. No.
(4) If Texas were currently out of the Union, and had been so since the 1950s, I for one would be perfectly happy for that situation to continue. Although “democratic aspirations” does not strike me as an accurate description of its current state politics.
How about we offer China a direct trade: we’ll take Taiwan and they can have Texas.
(1) I have noticied lack of “Cached” lately and held dark suspicions but wasn’t able to google (hah) any news. So thank you, File..
Damn indeed! In this time of disinformation, Google has become Eviler again.
The US should respect Texas’ right to leave the Union and Ben Yallow is a great internationalist.
This timeline is way too weird.
My Thanks to OGH!
(All in all I’m just another click in the Scroll)
(1) Bad news.
(7) I’ve listened to a bunch of those episodes. In several of them, Superman seems to be keeping his very existence little known (not just his secret identity).
@Thomas the Red: wasn’t that “Shot from Guns!”
(1) Gee, thanks, Google. 😐
(7) I listened to a couple of episodes of that radio show. It really is quite different from the comics. I should give it another try.
As a Texan with family here going back to the Battle of the Alamo, I encourage the federal government to occupy us and remove us from the attempted totalitarian dictatorship of our state “leaders.” And for the record, two of our 3 most problematic state leaders are NOT from Texas (indicted Atty Genl Ken Paxton and Lt. Gov Dan Patrick) and grandstanding narcissistic US Senator Ted Cruz is Canadian.
I can’t believe that I forgot to note that Mary Elizabeth Braddon died on January 4, 1915. While she is best known today for “Lady Audley’s Secret” (which I called “the “Gone Girl of Victorian times” in a Medium article), she also wrote plenty of ghost stories. Scholars also point out that she was a pioneering writer of detective fiction.
#1. More proof that if you don’t have physical control, you don’t have control.
What does this mean? Bill and I do vast amounts of research for our annotation projects. When we find something online, we’ve learned the hard way that we have to PRINT OUT HARD COPIES of the pertinent sections.
There are web sites he used for “Writers Gone Wild” back in 2009 that vanished long ago. His file copy is the only proof we have.
Expect more of this in the future. Make physical copies of critical information and keep it in your file cabinet.
Okay, TX can secede…but only within the borders of the Alamo Not the entire state.
@Teresa Peschel
I’ll save the page to my own computer. In one case, I did save all the pages – and the site has since disappeared (within the last year).
I think any country but in particular ones of a federated nature should have formal, legal process that would enable a region to separate from the union. That doesn’t mean they should separate but the capacity to do so should exist. This can be done with or without Ben Yalow.
@Maytree: Brilliant, and so apt for the situation.
My favorite tidbit of the tempest in a teapot so far: some Texas MAGA Boomer wondering on X or FB whether he’d be able to keep getting Social Security if Texass seceded. No, moron, that’s not how it works.
You’d also lose all the military bases and their attendant businesses, most of the big companies, NASA (Redstone or Cape Canaveral wouldn’t mind at all taking over for Houston), plus you’d need a passport to enter the US, you’d be the “illegal alien” if you left the state, and you’ve got a power grid that fails thanks to not being connected to the rest of the US and Canada. I guess you’d have fewer Mexicans trying to get in, since nobody would want to go to your shithole “country” for upward mobility.
I’d petition for farthest west Texas (El Paso and environs) to join New Mexico — they really have very little in common with Texas, and much more with NM. I think they might even still be interconnected with the power grid, and they’re much more blue. People in El Paso don’t even have any sort of Texas accent unless they’re from somewhere else! They sound just like NM and CO peeps.
Of course, a separate settlement will have to be negotiated with the exclave of Free Austin.
4) I don’t think this person understands that “internationalist” is an epithet and not a sobriquet.
An internationalist sees nothing wrong with nations like Sudan, Somalia, Cuba, Libya, or the Russian Federation sitting on the United Nations Human Rights Council. An internationalist sees nothing wrong with China sitting on the UNHRC while murderously oppressing Uyghurs.
An internationalist participates in an endless stream of dinner parties discussing serious problem at length while opposing serious, effective solutions.
also 4) And this is why people need to have a better sense or proportion when expressing legitimate concerns about civilized nations including the USA. Sure, we have issues. But they pale in comparison with places like China, North Korea, Cuba, Somalia, etc. Texas is in the midst of a disagreement with a federal government that is declining to obey and enforce laws established by our elected national representatives. The disagreement involves passionate exchanges, but no serious person wants this to devolve into a civil war.
Regards,
Dann
Every socialistic type of government… produces bad art, produces social inertia, produces really unhappy people, and it’s more repressive than any other kind of government. – Frank Zappa
Dann, we created Cuba. Our blockade of that country was a temper tantrum over the overthrow by Castro of a nasty dictator that we supported despite his willingness to cling to power at all costs. And I do mean at all costs.
Our continued blockade of Cuba is why it’s a miserable mess today. There’s no excuse for us doing so. American politics has become so engrained to opposing the Castros that it is like a dog guarding a bone that no longer exists, just the memory of that bone.
Want to know a dirty little secret? We actually use Cuban oil says the petro brokers. Yes Cuban oil. It ends up here as part of oil that is bundled with oil from other sources. It’s supposed to be verified as to source but the system is so corrupt that no one can really be sure where crude comes from.
@LurkerType: That secessionist Boomer who was asking if they could secede and keep their social security payments is like the Brexit voters who bought retirement homes in sunny Spain and are genuinely surprised as well as angry that Spain is now treating them like any other foreigner and limiting how long they can stay in the country.
@Vicki: Stupid has no national or ethnic bias. It’s amply distributed worldwide.
Re: Dann, Cuba: CatE, you forgot to mention how the Mob owned Havana (all those folks traveling to Cuba during Prohibition? Remember that?), and I’ve heard reports of them grabbing everything and all money as Castro and the revolutionaries were on the outskirts of Havana.
But due to the votes of the supporters of the nasty dictator Batista, and the Mob, we keep up the blockade.
Oh, and I’ve seen some really cool posters, etc, from the USSR.
@Lurkertype: funny, as a New Mexican I want to kick the extreme (in more ways than one) southeastern [1] part of the state out. It can join Texas, it can drop into the sun, I don’t care which.
[1] Los Cruces is south, but not southeast.
West Texas, north of the Permian Basin, can join NM if it wants. They aren’t that different, as far as I can tell. Or they could join OK and be only slightly less connected to reality. (The area wasn’t “settled” by white people until the late 19th century.)
@ Cat Eldridge
“Our blockade of [Cuba] was a temper tantrum over the overthrow by Castro of a nasty dictator that we supported despite his willingness to cling to power at all costs.”
No, the blockade was in response to Cuba hosting Russian IRBMs. Castro had been dictator for almost four years at that point.
bill: I believe you and Cat are talking about two different things. The US economic embargo started in 1960 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_Cuba). During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the US imposed a naval blockade.
There’s a lot of people in Florida that are still angry that Castro took away their grandparents’ serfs, and they vote.
@mark
Batista was nasty.
Castro was worse.
In almost* every instance where a socialist/communist revolution displaced a dictator, the resulting socialist/communist government was worse. Those governments created more poverty, corruption, and murder of civilians in almost* every case.
*almost – because there might be an exception, I just haven’t seen it yet.
@Cat Eldridge
That’s the propaganda about the embargo. Would that it were true.
Cuba received billions in aid from the now-defunct Soviet Union for decades. If money were the problem, then Cuba had it in spades. The government just had no effective mechanism for knowing where it should be spent to improve conditions in the country. The government also didn’t have any incentive to spend money wisely. Ignorance and apathy are an awful combination.
The problem is that socialism/communism necessarily short circuits critical information regarding where resources are most needed. Also, it undermines the incentive that innovators normally have to try something new without some government commissar’s permission, not to mention the bribery needed to obtain that permission.
Of course, that’s just basic economics. That doesn’t account for the murder by Che Guevara and others of his ilk of civilians who were insufficiently supportive of “the revolution”. It also doesn’t account for the imprisonment of gays for…um being gay. Or a host of other human rights abuses by the Castro regime.
But sure. “Blame America First” is always popular on the jukebox. So is “The Candyman”, but I’m still sure he doesn’t take a sunrise, sprinkle it with dew, or cover it with chocolate and “miracles”.
Regards,
Dann
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome. – Isaac Asimov
@Dann:
It depends who you define socialist. We had a democratic revolution in Portugal and this is better in you don’t go by SH difinition.
Also counterpoint (remembered later) the DDR was not worse than that what came before, it was more stabile and murdered less people.
My viewpoint is that from my historical knowledge, no matter if right or left dictatorship are a bad place to live in. There are some that are easier to survive in than others, but this can chance depending on the dictator in power (Stalin was harder to survive than other rulers of the UDSSR). I still am more afraid if a dictatorship from the right but this is a) because of the history of my country and b) because I find the danger bigger that it can happen (both in Germany and the USA btw)
@StefanB
I agree. 100%.
That is always the issue. Speaking from a libertarian-to-conservative perspective, I routinely get the “that’s not socialist” response to my criticisms when pointing out failures that are patently socialist. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were in a unique class based on the tens of millions of people who were murdered by their governments. And they were all some flavor of “socialist”.
And of course, none of this is binary. We have plenty of reasonably functioning liberal and neoliberal western governments that include programs and perspectives that are somewhat socialist.
The DDR is an example of a right-wing socialist government* being replaced by a left-wing socialist government*. Like the rest of the eastern bloc countries, they experienced a great deal of oppression and poverty which were the (now predicatable) result of government policies. The murders performed by the DDR government were much fewer on an annual basis, but that government existed for decades.
I’m not sure if I want to identify which version was worse: the right-wing socialist government that murdered people by the millions for less than a decade or the left-wing socialist government that murdered tens of thousands for several decades.
I’m not passably familiar with Portuguese political history to offer much of an informed comment. I will suggest the possibility that they remained closer to the liberal/neoliberal model and retained multi-party participation to blunt the worst inclinations of the socialists. That’s generally how other nations successfully navigated periods of socialism and came out the other side without experiencing some sort of major pogrom.
*This is how Stalin described the difference between the USSR and Nazi Germany. I figure if anyone understood socialism, it has to have been Stalin.
Regards,
Dann
I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature. – Sidney Hook (1987). “Out of step: an unquiet life in the 20th century”
(I very rarely select a tagline. I think it is worth using in this discussion.)
If you call rightwing dictatorships socalist, this word loses all meaning, btw you have to give a Danndefinition, because this is not the normal one. (And please nobody says but the name)
The problem is if you define socialist like many americans do, you get to german Partys like SPD and probably even CDU (which sisterparty has even sozial= social in ther name, which the SPD also has), both parties that had chancellors in Germany (the democratic one).
I am careful because I don’t want to trivalise any dictatorship, but the question how dificult it is to survive plays a role how much it would suck to live in it. It may play a personal role, that my family is not quite sure if I would have been murdered for who I am in one of the dictatorship, so there is a personal bias.
@StefanB
I also do not want to trivialize any dictatorship. IMO, the modern socialist-leaning parties are only restrained from imposing dire consequences on their nations by their willingness to participate in a multi-party polity. That arrangement allows other parties to offer a safe refuge that counters the worst tendencies of socialism.
Quite frankly, I reject the right/left dichotomy that misassigns the Nazis as the extreme version of a political party that advocates for free markets and adherence to a Constitution that purposefully limits the authority of the central government. Both mice and elephants have large ears, long noses, tails, and four feet. No sane person would consider them to be the same animal.
I put this piece out several years ago as I thought it was a reasonable assessment. IMO, the Nazis, the USSR, the PRC, Cuba, and their many imitators exist somewhere in the red quadrant; mostly towards an outer edge.
The R/L axis measures economic freedom with the right end being more free market. The vertical axis measures personal freedom with moving upwards means less personal/social freedom.
IMO, few governments have ever survived in the magical green quadrant before succumbing to the sort of social restrictions needed to restrain the natural economic desires that all people possess. As a government moves left of center on this graph, it generally wanders into the red quadrant, eventually.
I think I’ve consumed enough of Mike’s bandwidth at this point. The last word is yours.
[FWIW, I retook the quiz. The change in my position was minimal]
[Also, FWIW, I think there are some fair criticisms to be pointed at the quiz. It isn’t perfect. But it is good enough.]
Regards,
Dann
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Dann: The Problem is that based on this post, you have no clue about European (I can say this with certainty about German) politics. Yes we define left of center and right of center diferent than the USA.
Complete freemdom can’t exist. You have the problem that their are conflicts between rights, conflicts between more powerful people and those without power, the balance between a bigger group and individuals.
That in many countrys young children are restricted from work is not seen as a bad thing.
I conquer that comunism where nobody has anythink has failed.
Also has extreme nationalism and a politik that is using scapegods for easy answers.
Not failed social nets and a staate that is more than completly minimalistic.
I could tell you certain people that imho are near in idiology to rightwingdictators but we don’t see anyone who is against them from the rightside, I don’t see a powerful danger from the left in either the USA or Germany.
(And this is my last word, if someone doesn’t respond where I think I should answer to it)
I think there are multiple ways of designing taxonomies of ideologies and you certainly can come up with rational schemes that lump some ideologies together that normally seem separate.
Also, I concur that at least superficially it seems not ‘sane’ for pro-business, pro-rule of law centre-right parties to somehow seem ideologically connected with fascism or Nazism. Surely, any such political alliance would be fatal for a centre-right party?
Yet, here we are.
Again.
It keeps happening and happens repeatedly and at different levels. It happens even though conservative parties can see it happening either in the past or in other countries. Sooner or later that tempting alliance of playing up militarism, nationalism and bigotry against some unpopular minority is seen as a way of getting a populist edge in an election and whooops before you know it a supposedly rational centre-right pro-business party is a gibbering mess of brain worms.
Test your hypothesis empirically. A pro-business, free-market party should be very much in favour of immigration, sure with some limits, but still ideologically its default setting should be towards reducing regulation on immigration and very much against demonising immigrants or immigration. The most strongly pro-immigrant mainstream parties should be found on the centre-right rather than on the centre-left.
In the UK, the current Conservative Party now advocates anti-immigration policies that, when I last lived in the UK, were primarily advocated by the far-right, Nazi-adjacent British National Party.
It is not in the rational interest of a party that ostensibly “advocates for free markets and adherence to a Constitution that purposefully limits the authority of the central government” to shift ideologically towards the far right but it demonstrably keeps happening, again and again and again.
If we look at the rise of the NSDAP as an historical phenomenon, it was able to come to power by creating alliances with center right parties with investments in business and the ‘rule of law.’ Hitler was appointed by Hindenberg. The powers of the state of exception that allow for the NSDAP take over were in part created by those conservatives in their antagonism to democratic rule and expanded by them to allow for presidential governance. The Nazis were able to do that by appealing to both the qualities listed above and to present themselves as the ones that will take care of the communists.
When we go to the Republican Party, its important to remember that its a coalition. I think that its entirely fair to argue that there is quite a bit of distance between a figure like Mitt Romney, a staunch conservative and a republican in both senses of the word, but the coalition also brings in figures such as Steve King, who had fairly unambiguous commitments to a kind of authoritarian, white nationalist politics. That can be seen throughout the history of the party as a conservative coalition. There have been linkages to militia groups and secretive authoritarian groups such as the John Birch society.
I could even push that farther to point out that even those ‘moderate’ members have played a role in limiting the access to the ballot and other democratic rights, at times through legislation at the state level and at times through bringing in conservative members of the supreme court who have rolled back those rights in many regards. Another point where you might see this is in the unitary vision of the executive developed by figures in the Bush administration such as Dick Cheney, who is both opposed to Trump, but who also provided the logic behind many of Trump’s claims to interfere in the election and avoid responsibility. (If you are interested in this, you might look at something like the 5-4 pod, which is a critique of the supreme court. I’d a;so recommend Quinn Slobodian’s Globalists, which is critical analysis of neoliberalism as a governance project designed to protect the market from the demos.)
As I understand it from my reading of history, the reason that you tend to get center-right pro-business parties slipping into an alliance with the far right death cults is that the center right tends to be overconfident and believe that they can use the far right to get into power, and then disavow or control them. This was expressly why the center right in Germany got behind Hitler. They thought he would be controllable. They were wrong. The center right in the US thought that it could ride the tiger of populism into power, and then the tiger would meekly go back into its cage. They were wrong.
I wonder if the fact that the center right tends to be wealthy and in a dominant position in society is what leads them to believe that once they start the avalanche, they’ll be able to stop it whenever they like. They’re not used to not having control over things.
@Camestros: I’m visiting this alternative universe (in mine, you have a hazel ocelot, and a Welsh apatosaurus named Bran runs the salon); in my home, you can’t even propose restrictions on immigration without fundamentalists trotting out Exodus 23:9 “You shall not oppress an alien, for you know the heart of an alien, seeing you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (back in the 1930s they also pushed through the 18th amendment which established equal rights for all genders based on the motto from Paul: “there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Sadly, we’ve still got troubles with medical bills…