triangle.128k and I were discussing this in the incorrect grammar and spelling thread, and I didn't want to derail it.
Conversation history:
triangle.128k: Add fascism as a political ideologyCastin: You probably understand why an admin might not be too eager to do that.triangle.128k: Why not? Communism is added as a political ideology.Castin: That's true. But I think even communism doesn't have as many bad associations as fascism. My guess would be that D doesn't want it to look like he's supporting fascism (or National Socialism, as you also requested) by offering them as legitimate options on his site. I could be dumbass wrong, though.triangle.128k: How are you suppoorting any specific ideology to include it? Your feelings toward an ideology don't matter, it's still legitimate and deserves a place in an ideology drop-down. Is DebateArt supporting Communism to include it in an ideological drop down? That same logic would apply. Fascism may have bad associations, but this is a debate website.Castin: I think it's that if you include fascism or Nazism in the dropdown menu, you're saying, "These are all valid choices. Pick." It is indeed a debate site. I don't know, maybe you can talk to D and get him to think about it. It's his call.triangle.128k: Maybe not Nazism, but if you're going to include the ideology of Pol "Crush Baby skulls for Fertilizer" Pot, why is Fascism so big and scary to add?
@trian:
I get where you're coming from. And by raw kill count, communism beats fascism. But this is how I see it:
- Communism is a much larger and more varied overarching ideology with many more branches and forms, all of varying degrees of merit, some of which even have opposing ideas.
- While communist regimes have often become monstrous, communism as an ideology originally focused on the values of equality, liberation for the working class, and sharing without discrimination. Fascism focused on the values of totalitarian power and fanatic nationalism.
- There are over 1 billion communists in the world today. How many fascists are there? Policy decisions are based on how many people can be a pain in the ass for you right now.
Again, just how I see it. I have no idea what Michael's reasons are. Maybe you could ask him to replace the dropdown list with a blank input field we can type anything into. Although that would probably lead to a lot of users with ideologies like "bewbs" and "420".