Swastikas and Hammer and Sickles

While getting a glass of water at school today a schoolmate walked over. His shirt was colorful and it looked like it might have been from Firefly, so I looked at it.

It was a communist shirt.

After spending years of my life studying political economy at school and reading all of the great political philosophers I have come up with two major points on communism.

1. The only major issue Lenin and Marx disagreed on was whether communism would evolve naturally from society or whether it could be sped up and skip over the capitalist stage. Everything else is identical and the Soviet Union was an accurate implementation of Marxist thought.
2. The Communists and Fascists have one big difference between them in terms of how their countries function. Communists are more likely to kill you. (based on the death tolls of the Holocaust vs. Holodomor, Great Chinese Famine, Gulags, and multiple other artificial famines across the Eastern Bloc in the 20th century)

This is why when I see someone wearing a hammer and sickle I feel deeply offended. I have friends in the Soviet Union, and my older friends there were close to people who were murdered by the Soviet despots. The other thing is that the Soviet Union would have stayed allied with Hitler to the end of World War II if Hitler hadn't been the biggest tactical idiot of the 20th century with his decision to invade. They had no problem with the Holocaust and had a record of antisemitism themselves. That is why the Jewish Autonomous Oblast exists today. It is a legacy of extreme anti-semitism. Yet another similarity between Communism and Fascism.

The worst part of all is that this fool decided to wear a hammer and sickle on 4/20, the biggest holiday for Fascists.

Please don't wear Hammer and sickle shirts. This German American whose family lived through the Third Reich has friends in the Republic of Georgia and Russia. I find them highly offensive and just DON'T DO IT. Just throw on your Iron Cross and Swastika over your hood while brandishing the flag of ISIS if you feel like you have to display offensive imagery. Just DON'T DO IT without understanding the history of the imagery you are displaying in public.

Just DON'T DO IT.

Ideology of Trump

Donald Trump is new to American politics, and this has left a lot of people very confused on how to understand him, or unwilling. On my blog I really enjoy writing about political theory/philosophy and using those lenses to help understand the underlying intentions of candidates so that we can make better decisions as citizens.

Now, in political science there are several major schools of thought. Liberalism, Marxism, Mercantilism (economics only), Objectivism, and Fascism. These four schools are very easily defined against each other by breaking down policies into their social, economic, and foreign components.

	Social	Economic	Foreign
Liberalism	Socially left-wing. Believe in individual liberties, both positive and negative freedoms. (freedom to do things and freedom from harm) Minority rights. Feminism.	Economically free market. In favor of regulations as they benefit society. Greatest Good for the greatest number.	Believe that trade brings peace. In favor of global trade as a good for society.
Marxism	People are divided by class and the Bourgeois need to be torn down in order to build up a Communist utopia.	Economic control by the state.	Spread the Marxist ideology throughout the world.
Fascism	People are divided by race and we need to purify our country from all people who are not like us.	Economic control by the state or state-sponsored corporations.	Isolate ourselves from foreign goods. Go to war with other nations.
Mercantilism/Realism	N/A	Economic control by the state or state-sponsored corporations.	Isolate ourselves from foreign goods. The gain of another country is our loss.
Objectivism	Do not help other people, another person's gain is your loss. Altruism is bad.	Free market completely unfettered by government intervention.	Isolate ourselves from foreign goods.

Now that we have our definitions which are universally accepted among political economists, where do we place Trump?

Starting with economic policy, Trump is firmly anti-trade, placing him in either Mercantilism or Fascism. Trump proposes a social policy of deporting foreigners, he is anti-feminist and anti-immigrant. He has spoken out against hispanics and Muslims, making his foreign policy clearly in the fascism camp. He is clearly not liberal, and he is obviously not socialist. He is more extreme than Objectivism with his talk of actually deporting people. The full list of Trump's comments on what he would do which fit into this is listed on Reddit and provides enough examples to place him firmly in the fascist camp.

Being politically correct nowadays means to not call people out for what they actually claim. We are used to living in a free civilized country that when someone comes along who wants to destroy everything that makes America great we don't know what to do about it. For those of us who have close family who lived under Fascism, and those of us who are educated in political thought, the connection is obvious. For myself, I am part of a very small number of Americans who 1. Are trained political scientists, 2. Have family who survived the Drittes Reich, 3. are American. I don't know anyone else who fits this particular demographic, but there might be someone else out there. With this background knowledge I have every right to say that my professional diagnosis as a political economist of the thoughts and plans of Donald Trump put him firmly into the Fascist camp. I also believe that with my education it is the duty of my country to call politicians what they are, and the evidence is overwhelming.

I didn't earn a Political Science degree by misusing terms. I wasn't born onto this world in my family to allow history to be repeated. My background with Quaker and German ancestors (plus being a practicing UU) means I am in a very unique position to help people avoid human rights violations and I feel like it is my duty. We, the People of the United States in order to defend our imperfect union need to ensure Donald Trump never becomes President of the United States.