I'm confused.

How?

I am also confused. Specifically about "there's no such thing". Is the meme saying (among other things) that authoritarianism doesn't exist or isn't real? That seems obviously untrue on the face of it? Unless we're redefining it so as to be meaningless.

Help me out here.

It's multi-layered and tedious to write down on the phone. Prolly easier to ask you some questions:
How do you think this meme's formula works?
Do you beleive it to be factual that China isn't authoritarian and that North Korea is not andictatorship? If not, do you know anybody who has ever claimed this?

"Authoritarian" is ALL states. "Authoritarian" as we know it today was just made up by the CIA to slander actually existing socialism states like China and the DPRK

"Authoritarian" is ALL states. "Authoritarian" as we know it today was just made up by the CIA to slander actually existing socialism states like China and the DPRK

The DPRK has gotten a particularly HEAVY dose of slander from the empire because of its proximity to its puppet gov of SK

Well.. in that case, the meme is at least correctly used.
That was my main concern anyways :')

You must realise you're holding a very fringe position that's more a conspiracy theory and will be considered trolling, right?

which was and is developed by communists

Is that so? I didn't find any information on that from a quick search. Not an "attack", genuinely curious.

Cheers!
I should have really found that when looking on github, my bad.

A State is supposed to exercise authority, so by saying X country (enemy of the Usonian Empire) is authoritarian you're basically saying "There is a State". Basically doublespeak Usonian propaganda.

You must realise you’re holding a very fringe position that’s more a conspiracy theory and will be considered trolling, right?

This is seemingly paradoxical when a real deal conspiracy theory is being mainstream. DPRK being hell on Earth is a conspiracy theory not supported by facts, but it's not fringe, it's held by the entire collective western media (though that is more of a 5 corpos in a trenchcoat) and it's constantly fed to their populations. Information bubbles are real.

And there are many such cases in topic of communism.

this ought to be amusing

“Authoritarian” is ALL states.

do go on, you almost got it 🤣

A state necessarily exercising authority changes nothing about how violently and uncompromisingly any particular state goes about it. So I'm guessing calling a state plainly authoritarian is essentially saying nothing at all, but if I say your country is as authoritarian as North Korea, you know exactly what I'm saying and that I'm certainly saying something that is neither doublespeak or propaganda, right?

youre describing different quantitative levels of authority , but too much or too little authority it is. autoritarism means authority is present. water is wet. furthermore there is a lack of semantics. is this authorit exercised against the zionists or the palestinians and so on?

i am from the global south so yes, i know what it is when you call my korean brothers authoritarian. it means enemy of the usonian empire

No yeah good point, we should simply impose no limits on the kinds of people currently fucking the world, that definitely won't lead us to exactly where we are now.

Almost getting it, but instead Marx famously said "Communism can only be done by tranfering all political and capital to the state, where it will willingly give away all this power." Silly us for not knowing Marx works more.

I think we are conflating two different things: the state's foreign policy stance and its domestic structure.

You are correct that 'authoritarian' is often a propaganda label used to justify sanctions or invasion. However, refusing to use the word to describe any state in the Global South implies that the only form of oppression that matters is Western imperialism. That effectively erases the lived experience of people in those nations who might be jailed or disappeared by their own government.

The term 'authoritarian' shouldn't mean 'enemy of the US.' It should mean a system where the people have no mechanism to hold their leaders accountable. By that definition, a state can be anti-Zionist and still be authoritarian toward its own citizens. Do you believe there is any word we should use to describe a government that silences its own working class, or should we just stay silent about that to avoid sounding like the US State Department?

In most instances, "authoritarianism" is a more rigidly defined term than simply meaning "exercises authority."

E.g. Wikipedia defines it as

a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.

the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo

That's every country

reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.

Reductions from what? The USSR was an increase in all of those things from Tsarist Russia.

What does AES stand for ? I mean the letters, not those states

Picking apart the single definition used by one entity doesn't mean the term itself is completely meaningless.

But fine, I'll bite, just for fun:

the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo

That’s every country

That's "whataboutism." Or alternatively, it's "authoritarian realism"—a term I just made up which refers to any view that assumes a nation has to centralize powers to exist because that's how the world under capitalism currently operates.

Reductions from what? The USSR was an increase in all of those things from Tsarist Russia.

So 1. You just gave a counterexample to your first point, and 2. I guess the metric depends on who you ask. It could be reductions from a historical state (as we could say of e.g. the current USA compared to North America's political systems prior to european colonization), or compared to some standard of liberty (e.g. your use of USSR).

I can agree with your first point and still posit that the term is meaningful: e.g. authoritarianism isn't a binary state of extistence, but rather a spectrum that different states can be compared on; all states can be authoritarian to some degree, but some states are more or less authoritarian than others.

Or to put it another way, saying "authoritarianism" is meaningless because all states exercise authority is like saying "conservativism" is meaningless because all living creatures seek to conserve resources (to some degree).

I agree that language is an imperfect map for the real world we inhabit—and I especially agree that the language (as with any social tool) gets abused to manipulate people—but I don't agree that those facts make the terms completely useless in communication.

That’s “whataboutism.”

Lol. No it isn't, it's not even fucking close. You think I'm going to read the rest of that when you're already starting off with straight nonsense like this? Fuck I hate whoever trained shitlibs to just bleat "Whataboutism!" At any and all arguments, like a magic spell from Harry Potter (which is basically what you think it is)

So there are words I can say that get you to immediately stop listening to anything else I say and make broad assumptions about me and my beliefs?

Talk about being trained

When a shitlib starts their sentence with "so" you can guarantee that they're about to try and attribute to you something that doesn't remotely resemble anything you actually said, lol.

Thank you for proving my point

Lol. Now you're just copy-pasting random phrases from the book of reddit debatebro cliches.

If my responses are as stimulating to you as yours are to me, why tf do you keep responding?

Go back to reddit

No thankss, I got tired of being surrounded by people like you

You thought that was good enough to come back twelve days later for?

Is keeping time one of the services you provide, or do you just get bent out of shape if people don't respond to you immediately?