Fernanda DeCastleAug 10, 2023
Dan Wentzel 🏳️‍🌈

Growing up Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher told us that capitalism went hand in hand with freedom and democracy.

Today we can see that capitalists can quite comfortably walk hand in hand with authoritarianism and fascism to maintain and consolidate their wealth and power.

Aug 10, 2023 at 2:44pmWeb
Show threadCarlGAug 10, 2023

@danwentzel Sadly, the ability to co-exist comfortably with democracy or autocracy is not limited to capitalists - it was socialists in Orwell's "1984", and much of the real world.

But the mantra that capitalism would cure all that ails the world was much overblown.

Show threadAntonio Páez 🇲🇽🇨🇦Aug 10, 2023

@danwentzel @the_blackwell_ninja

Reagan and Thatcher lied then, it is just glaringly evident today that all along it was a lie.

Show threadDavid FetterAug 10, 2023
@paezha @danwentzel @the_blackwell_ninja it was glaringly obvious back then, too.
Show threadAntonio Páez 🇲🇽🇨🇦Aug 10, 2023

@davidfetter @danwentzel @the_blackwell_ninja

I was only seven or eight, it was not obvious to me then 😅

Show threadStumpy The MuttAug 12, 2023
@paezha @danwentzel @the_blackwell_ninja Iran-Contra (among others) made that clear.
Show threadPrinceoflonelymtAug 10, 2023
@danwentzel my brother in Christ, you can't have capitalism without fascism, among many other isms. They legit invented race as a concept just to get people to support it because it was the only way to get them to act outside their own interest. The lie they sold you wasn't that capitalism brings democracy and freedom, it was that it was in your interest to accept being ruled over by money and the people that have it. And for the record, lots of people recognized the lie right away.
Show threadVoronAug 10, 2023
@danwentzel hell they prefer authoritarianism and fascism
Show threadMostlyTatoAug 10, 2023
@danwentzel
I grew up at the same time. Your post reminded me of this article in The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems

Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?

The Guardian
Show threadPMTrioxAug 10, 2023
@danwentzel they did back then too, just didn't want to admit it.
Show threadLord Caramac the Clueless, KSCAug 10, 2023
@danwentzel I grew up in a family of members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Federal Republic of Germany, everybody in my family hated Thatcher, Reagan, and Kohl, and nobody believed their bullshit. However, when Schröder became chancellor, all of the neoliberal bullshit of the SPD/Green coalition government was forgiven because they were "our" team.
Show threadFlaming CheetoAug 10, 2023
@danwentzel seems to be in the US, Italy, Brazil and some others.
In China and Russia, you can become wealthy if you stay silent. But even if you go along to get along, once you make generational wealth the party comes for it.
Show threadBaron VonskinnbackAug 10, 2023
@danwentzel capitalism works best under an authoritarian regime, look at China...
Show threadDan Kloke Aug 10, 2023

@danwentzel

The power of wealth is commercial not political.

Show threaddibi58Aug 10, 2023

@danwentzel

they lied ...

both kkkristians, both liars ...

Show threadMelissa BAug 10, 2023
@danwentzel And I think it was when the capitalists themselves stopped believing this Reagan/Thatcher argument that things really started spiralling out of control.
Show threadDavid FetterAug 10, 2023
@MelissaBenyon @danwentzel they never started believing those things, so they couldn't really stop.
Show threadMelissa BAug 10, 2023
@davidfetter Ha, I guess. I think some did believe, the rest pretended to. Now they don't even pretend.
Show threadLett OspreyAug 10, 2023
@danwentzel Margaret Thatcher praised Augusto Pinochet, so it was pretty dang clear that freedom was not something she was too concerned about... "Today, we can see", no seriously, we saw it well back then too.
Show threadDavid FetterAug 10, 2023
@danwentzel they were lying. Some of us, even as children, had already noticed back then that capitalism is always imposed on people to the exclusion of freedom and democracy.
Show threadBasilAug 10, 2023
@danwentzel indeed. It looks (to my untrained eye) like all it took was the authoritarians to accept that capitalism was the unstoppable force that could make a good bedfellow after all, and they could embrace it instead of fighting it.
Show threadaethervisionAug 10, 2023
@danwentzel Anything Capitalism can get into a harness and lead into an abattoir works for Capitalism.
Show threadJamie MasonAug 10, 2023

@danwentzel

It was a total lie. All of it. I can remember being taught in school about capitalism and the benefits of it. Success was tied to capitalism.

Come to find out, 40 years later, capitalism is used to eliminate the middle class and make the rich richer.

Jamie

Show threadJoachim FrankAug 11, 2023
@danwentzel they were wrong to start with
Show threadHermey GAug 11, 2023

@danwentzel
Was this the same Reagan whose testimony led to blacklisting free thinking actors and writers back in the 1950s?

Sounds like fascism to me.

Show threadneoludditeAug 11, 2023
@danwentzel @Taco_lad They never really tried to hide it... https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/john-pilger-how-thatcher-helped-pol-pot
John Pilger: How Thatcher helped Pol Pot

The corporate media will eulogise Margaret Thatcher, and criticise those who dare use her death to point out her many terrible crimes. But among her many crimes that will go unmentioned was the support her government gave in the 1980s to the genocidal Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge. Below is an article by independent journalist John Pilger on the support the West, including Thatcher, gave the Khmer Rouge. It was first published on April 17, 2000 in the New Statesman. Visit www.johnpilger.com for more articles. * * *

Green Left
Show threadMaybeMyMonkeysAug 11, 2023
@danwentzel capitalism has no morals
Show threadErwin Ernst eest9 SteinhammerAug 11, 2023
@danwentzel As Hayek told us ages ago. He even toughed Democracy and Capitalism fight each other (The one and only time I quote this guy)
Show threadHoward Chu @ SymasAug 11, 2023
@danwentzel the first venture capitalists came about under monarchies, didn't they?
Show threadArtemisia VulgarisAug 11, 2023
@danwentzel I suspect that by “freedom” they meant the free market and by “democracy” they meant consumer choice.
Show thread🇺🇦 Ehren Werner 🏴‍☠️Aug 11, 2023
@danwentzel
Capitalism works much better with authoritarianism than it does with freedom and democracy
Show threadDatarainbow Privacy Assistant✅Aug 14, 2023
@danwentzel what is the ‘freedom and democracy’ in countries with national health patients have to be on a waiting list for months - even with urgent cancer situations- while private health is available to the more healthy ones? Same could be said about the education sector. Poor have the privilege of an extra tax when driving an older car as their cars is polluting. It would be progress if the government had invested in public transport.
Show threadDan Wentzel 🏳️‍🌈Aug 14, 2023
@clarinette As if we don't have to wait for months in America. I had to wait for months to see a specialist and that is with what is called "good" health insurance.