There has been outrage after a small town in eastern Germany banned the installation of new Holocaust memorial plaques that mark the last known residence or workplace of Jews and other victims of the genocide.

Crossposted from https://thebrainbin.org/m/germany@feddit.org/t/1945027

A small town in eastern Germany banned the installation of new Holocaust memorial plaques that mark the last known residence or workplace of Jews and other victims of the genocide.

The motion was proposed by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)…

  • Edie [it/it/its/its/itself, she/her/her/hers/herself]@lemmy.ml
    12·
    9 hours ago

    Do you not see the contradiction there?

    no

      We are sometimes inclined, I think unwisely, to treat democracy and dictatorship as two mutually exclusive terms, when in actual fact they may often represent two aspects of the same system of government. For example, if we turn to the Encyclopedia Britannica, to the article dealing with “Democracy,” we read: “Democracy is that form of government in which the people rules itself, either directly, as in the small city-states of Greece, or through representatives.”
      But the same writer goes on to say this: “All the people in the city-state did not have the right to participate in government, but only those who were citizens, in the legal and original sense. Outside this charmed circle of the privileged were the slaves, who had no voice whatever in the making of the laws under which they toiled. They had no political and hardly any civil rights; they were not ‘people.’ Thus the democracy of the Greek city-state was in the strict sense no democracy at all.”
      The Greek city-state has been cited time and again by historians as the birthplace of democracy. And yet, on reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, we find that in fact this was a democracy only for a “charmed circle of the privileged,” while the slaves, who did the work of the community, “had no voice whatever in the making of the laws under which they toiled.”
      The classical example of democracy was, then, a democracy only for certain people. For others, for those who did the hard work of the community, it was a dictatorship. At the very birthplace of democracy itself we find that democracy and dictatorship went hand in hand as two aspects of the same political system. To refer to the “democracy” of the Greek city-state without saying for whom this democracy existed is misleading. To describe the democracy of the Greek city-state without pointing out that it could only exist as a result of the toil of the slaves who “had no political and hardly any civil rights” falsifies the real history of the origin of democracy.
      Democracy, then, from its origin, has not precluded the simultaneous existence of dictatorship. The essential question which must be asked, when social systems appear to include elements both of democracy and dictatorship, is, “for whom is there democracy?” and “over whom is there a dictatorship?”

    —Pat Sloan, in the Introduction to Soviet Democracy

    • modem_down@thebrainbin.orgBanned from communityOP
      14·
      8 hours ago

      Cheers, but that doesn’t resolve the contradiction.

      “for whom is there democracy?” and “over whom is there a dictatorship?”

      Case 1: Sloan’s example

      Athenian citizens had democracy; non-citizens didn’t.

      Two separate groups: no contradiction. (Partial suffrage, as opp. universal suffrage.)

      Case 2: OurToothbrush

      “a proletarian democracy under dictatorship of the proletariat”.

      Same group (“proletarians”), so there is contradiction.

      • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
        6·
        4 hours ago

        There basically has never yet been a democracy for all residents of a state. The purpose of the state is to impose the will of the ruling class upon the other classes.

        Bourgeois democracy is a democracy for the bourgeoisie, to the exclusion of the proletariat.

        Proletarian democracy is a democracy for the proletariat, to the exclusion of the bourgeoisie.

        Until capitalism/imperialism has been nearly universally phased out, there will be competing economic classes. Once capitalism is gone, there will only be one economic class, the proletariat, allowing democracy to finally be for everyone. That’s what Marxists mean by a “stateless” society: one that is classless.

        Previously:

        The US government was never not captured by the bourgeoisie, because the US was born of a bourgeois revolution[1]. The wealthy, white, male, land-owning, largely slave-owning Founding Fathers constructed a bourgeois state with “checks and balances” against the “tyranny of the majority”. It was never meant to represent the majority—the working class—and it never has, despite eventually allowing women and non-whites (at least those not disenfranchised by the carceral system) to vote. BBC: [Princeton & Northwestern] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

        The game is rigged. The election cycle’s pomp and circumstance is to divert your energy and attention from the fact that it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.

        As you have already chosen to remain ignorant by blocking me, this is for the peanut gallery.

      • ghost_laptop@lemmy.ml
        7·
        5 hours ago

        no, in the dictatorship of the proletariat the majority of people, this means the working class, imposes a dictatorship upon the bourgeoisie, the minority group that lives by stealing other people’s work.

          • ghost_laptop@lemmy.ml
            5·
            4 hours ago

            didn’t you just read about it? it’s a democracy for us, its a dictatorship for you nazi trash. we’ll be ruling over the oppressors. of course you disagree with that because you’re a fascist.

              • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
                2·
                1 hour ago

                Ridiculous. Go back to Reddit. Capitalist “democracies” are objectively not democratic, but you claim they are without evidence, and also without defining your term: democracy. Athens had slaves, like the US used to, and still does under the 14th amendment, yet you call them democracies. Clean your room.

                • modem_down@thebrainbin.orgBanned from communityOP
                  15·
                  3 hours ago

                  Me: You’re scraping the bottom of Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement. You: You dumb ass gringo.

                  I rest my case.

      • ttayh@lemmy.zip
        6·
        6 hours ago

        The athenian citizens had a democracy under the male-citizen dictatorship. You are just using a different definition of dictatorship than the one that is used for “dictatorship of the proletariat”

        • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
          6·
          4 hours ago

          Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

          Somehow always remind me when people mention Athenian democracy

        • modem_down@thebrainbin.orgBanned from communityOP
          14·
          2 hours ago

          A citizen democracy under dicatorship of the citizen. The citizen had democracy and dictated over those that did not.

          If we assume your interpretation is correct, then it relies on the (true) premise that Athens had clear laws about who was a citizen.

          That premise does not hold true of “the proletariat”. So, the contradiction remains.

          Proof 1

          Was Stalin still “proletarian” in Nov 1907, when he was leader of an organised crime ring (he controlled their means of production)? In early 1912, as editor of Pravda (ditto)? In 1918, while directing death squads in Tsaritsyn (ditto)? In 1928 as General Secretary and de facto leader of the USSR (ditto)? From 1941-1953 as Premier (ditto)?

          As a kid, he was proletarian. During adulthood, he was increasingly bourgeois - but was still allowed by “Communists” to be a dictator.

          So, “dictatorship by the proletariat” is in fact not dictatorship by the proletariat.

          => “Dictatorship by the proletariat” is contradictory. QED.

          Proof 2

          If you define the proletariat as the disenfranchised, then as soon as the proletariat becomes enfranchised, it is no longer the proletariat.

          => “Dictatorship by the proletariat” is contradictory. QED.

          Proof 3

          If you define the bourgeoisie as those who ultimately control the means of production, and “dictatorship of the proletariat” as proletarians controlling the bourgeoisie, then in “dictatorship of the proletariat”, the bourgeoisie do not ultimately control the means of production and therefore are not bourgeoisie.

          => “Dictatorship by the proletariat” is contradictory. QED.