authoritarian /ə-thôr″ĭ-târ′ē-ən, ə-thŏr″-, ô-/ adjective
Characterized by or favoring absolute obedience to authority, as against individual freedom.
“an authoritarian regime.”
Look, it’s right there in the example even.
If you would like to argue definitions I encourage you to spend some quality time with a dictionary. Google can point you to several.
I meant backpedaling in the journalistic way of ‘Oh you seem to actually know more about what you’re talking about than I do and have a lot to say on the subject, I should, uh, redirect to a different topic where I can catch you out for that sick sound bite’ or whatever. Maybe that’s not what was going on in that interview, Iono, I haven’t seen it.
Thus my skepticism that she had anything useful to say in response.
Since the Stasi were one arm of an authoritarian government and the Nazis were the whole-ass authoritarian government, including Stasi-like arms, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. But I mean if you’re just here to conflate fascism and communism then you are probably immune to nuance and subtlety anyway, so by all means, don’t let me stop you.
I’m gonna guess a whole lot of flustered backpedaling amounting to not a lot of anything, but I’m willing to be surprised if someone wants to dig up the video.
Capitalism’s Invisible Army often acts as the propaganda arm of the US hegemony, so it is in a very real sense a part of their job to make sure this doesn’t come to pass. Sadly they seem pretty good at it.
Heh, I worked in IT for many years, I remember the days of obsessive wipes of Windows machines to restore ghosted drive images because users couldn’t keep from installing malware or other bullshit on their system. One guy I had to wipe it every day for a fucking week straight to get the message across, and only then because he came whining to me about resetting his machine again and I got fed up and gave him what-for.
Yes, I too am aware that people often misuse words. It might be safe to assume that the guy who just demonstrated that he knows how to operate a dictionary probably isn’t one of them though. Especially if you had read my comment that they were replying to, because then you would have seen that the nation I was calling an authoritarian regime (in fact, a ‘whole-ass authoritarian regime’) was Nazi Germany, so I don’t think we were in any danger of not labeling Western colonial powers as authoritarian in this thread.