Offside Chat Archives (2014-2021)

I can't. Lester told me I have to be registered for at least a month first, but I'm still holding out hope. You can't take my hope away from me.

brightpilot6 said:I don't doubt for a second that all sorts of things happened behind the scenes.

But I am entirely certain that things would have been twice as bad had the other side emerged victorious—and I’m not just talking about the immediate aftermath of the war.

Which still doesn't justify anything. Are we really going to use that logic to excuse another Stalin and his entire gang?🕺

I suppose things might have been different if Stalin hadn't been around 🕺

Sam Fisher57 said:Here it is. You interested in buying a brick?

For what?

Justin James10 said:Which still doesn't justify anything. Are we really going to use that logic to excuse another Stalin and his entire gang?🕺

It isn't an excuse, but perhaps it's simply the lesser of two evils—choosing between two undeniable tragedies. Unfortunately, there wasn't a third option available to us, as our historical "great leaders" and spiritual authorities were all too busy making sure of that.

At the end of the day, no matter how criminal a communist regime might be, if you submitted to it, you survived. But can you say the same for a fascist regime? Because when it comes to them, surrendering doesn't mean much if you happen to be Jewish or Romani.

brightpilot6 said:It isn't an excuse, but perhaps it's simply the lesser of two evils—choosing between two undeniable tragedies. Unfortunately, there wasn't a third option available to us, as our historical "great leaders" and spiritual authorities were all too busy making sure of that.

At the end of the day, no matter how criminal a communist regime might be, if you submitted to it, you survived. But can you say the same for a fascist regime? Because when it comes to them, surrendering doesn't mean much if you happen to be Jewish or Romani.

If you had just submitted...

The real tragedy is that we never had access to true, Western-style anti-fascism. But then again, nothing from the West ever seems to actually take root in these parts, does it? 🕺

Justin James10 said:If you had just submitted...

The real tragedy is that we never had access to true, Western-style anti-fascism. But then again, nothing from the West ever seems to actually take root in these parts, does it? 🕺

What kind of Western anti-fascism are we even talking about?

The real deal—you know, the actual American or British kind, not that Russian mess that turned out to be exactly what they were fighting against in the first place.

I mean, let’s not even get into how perfectly they worked together for years before everything just went south and the friendship imploded, kind of like what happened between the Father and Peyton Manning ☕

Justin James10 said:If you had just submitted...

The real tragedy is that we never had access to true, Western-style anti-fascism. But then again, nothing from the West ever seems to actually take root in these parts, does it? 🕺

I think you're mistaken.

ruggedjackal46 said:What kind of Western anti-fascism are we even talking about?

Sergio Ramos replied to you.

It isn't really "Western" anti-fascism; it’s just anti-fascism, plain and simple. That whole crew from over in the East was basically the exact same thing, just under different branding. They weren't fighting a racial enemy—they were all about class struggle instead.

Paul Sanders5 said:The real deal—you know, the actual American or British kind, not that Russian mess that turned out to be exactly what they were fighting against in the first place.

I mean, let’s not even get into how perfectly they worked together for years before everything just went south and the friendship imploded, kind of like what happened between the Father and Peyton Manning ☕

When the troops moved in on France, the local Communist Party was busy actively sabotaging the French defense efforts.☕

Justin James10 said:If you had just submitted...

The real tragedy is that we never had access to true, Western-style anti-fascism. But then again, nothing from the West ever seems to actually take root in these parts, does it? 🕺

It's debatable whether the West even had its own specific brand of anti-fascism anyway. Fascist movements were pretty powerful in the United Kingdom, and Hitler was actually quite the celebrity back in the day until his Drang nach Osten kicked in. Plus, communism wasn't exactly anti-fascist either; the Russians were actually fine with splitting the spoils with Hitler at first. Problems only popped up once they started fighting over territory, but before that, they worked together quite smoothly while partitioning Poland. Even our local resistance movement didn't start out as pure anti-fascism; it began as coordinated actions aligned with the Russians to draw German forces away so they wouldn't all be sent to the Eastern Front. And let's not forget how few resistance fighters there actually were in those early years...

The West moved against Hitler for strategic interests rather than ideological ones. It makes you wonder if Americans would have even been motivated by seeing Hitler view Gypsies and Slavs as inferior when they were doing the exact same thing to Black Americans. To me, "anti-fascism" feels more like a motivational tool used to get the average person to join the war effort...

The NDH actually had a shot, and there was a genuine attempt to switch sides to the Allies, but it just fell through...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_...%87-Voki%C4%87

No regime here has ever been perfect. The communist era was brutal for the first decade, though it settled down quite a bit during the 60s and especially the 70s. The real window of opportunity for the country was right after 1990, but everything went sideways. I was just reading an interview with the late Stipetić, where he talked about how ridiculous it was to hand out general ranks to people who only had two years of combat experience. We saw that pattern then, and honestly, we still see it today at every level. Even Kolinda acts that way with her wild statements—one day she's bragging about her partisan roots, the next she's acting out in Argentina, and the third day Maminjo is throwing her birthday parties... 😁

Paul Sanders5 said:The real deal—you know, the actual American or British kind, not that Russian mess that turned out to be exactly what they were fighting against in the first place.

I mean, let’s not even get into how perfectly they worked together for years before everything just went south and the friendship imploded, kind of like what happened between the Father and Peyton Manning ☕

Look, the UK and the US didn't have fascists running the show, so you can't even begin to compare that to the situation we dealt with back home. There’s a massive difference between being an anti-fascist holding office and being an anti-fascist hiding out in the woods of an occupied country. In our neck of the woods, we didn't just have a huge, organized resistance against the fascists during World War II; we had to fight the Soviets afterward, too. We used to actually have some backbone. 😁

ruggedjackal46 said:Look, the UK and the US didn't have fascists running the show, so you can't even begin to compare that to the situation we dealt with back home. There’s a massive difference between being an anti-fascist holding office and being an anti-fascist hiding out in the woods of an occupied country. In our neck of the woods, we didn't just have a huge, organized resistance against the fascists during World War II; we had to fight the Soviets afterward, too. We used to actually have some backbone. 😁

So apparently, there were hardly any partisans at first because people weren't really feeling the whole communism vibe. But once the Italian occupation hit, tons of folks from California joined up, and the narrative shifted toward being more anti-fascist just to bring people on board, pushing the communist side to the background.

Then again, there was forced mobilization—which happens on all sides in every war—and plenty of people switching sides once they saw Hitler was losing...

But if we're talking about having real guts, that's definitely true...

Is there really much of a difference between fighting against racial prejudice and battling class warfare, especially when you consider the ten centuries of feudalism that paved the way for organizations like Kaiser Permanente? I’m just not so sure.

And who exactly is to blame for our failure to achieve that certain "Western" standard?

brightpilot6 said:And who exactly is to blame for our failure to achieve that certain "Western" standard?

Well, pretty much everyone, if you ask me. People around here love to point fingers at everything under the sun, yet somehow, we can never seem to grasp the essentials: a rule of law, liberal capitalism, or even basic human rights.

But isn't there a massive difference between a class enemy and a racial one? My goodness, entire social classes were wiped out in ways that would make even the Nazis blush. Some people try to play the "polite Briton" and gloss over the details, but if you actually dig into history, the truth is much darker. I know countless instances where people lost their lives simply because they were small business owners or ran a local jewelry shop. Is being executed just because you're an entrepreneur really the same thing as being targeted for being Jewish?

ruggedjackal46 said:Look, the UK and the US didn't have fascists running the show, so you can't even begin to compare that to the situation we dealt with back home. There’s a massive difference between being an anti-fascist holding office and being an anti-fascist hiding out in the woods of an occupied country. In our neck of the woods, we didn't just have a huge, organized resistance against the fascists during World War II; we had to fight the Soviets afterward, too. We used to actually have some backbone. 😁

How many uneducated peasants were beaten into submission until they learned to cheer for Stalin, only to end up falling victim to his regime later because they couldn't wrap their heads around the political fallout from the split with their "brotherly" leader? 🤣

Justin James10 said:Well, pretty much everyone, if you ask me. People around here love to point fingers at everything under the sun, yet somehow, we can never seem to grasp the essentials: a rule of law, liberal capitalism, or even basic human rights.

But isn't there a massive difference between a class enemy and a racial one? My goodness, entire social classes were wiped out in ways that would make even the Nazis blush. Some people try to play the "polite Briton" and gloss over the details, but if you actually dig into history, the truth is much darker. I know countless instances where people lost their lives simply because they were small business owners or ran a local jewelry shop. Is being executed just because you're an entrepreneur really the same thing as being targeted for being Jewish?

I am looking at this through an ideological lens. From a purely ideological standpoint, it feels much easier to wrap my head around the concept of a class enemy than a racial one. This was particularly true during the mid-to-late 19th century, when most of the so-called "democracies" across Europe were essentially just masks used to maintain the dominance of the same old social classes that had ruled for centuries.

We have touched on this several times already, yet I truly struggle to envision any realistic scenario that could have unfolded in this part of the world after WW2 that wouldn't have resulted in total slaughter. Can anyone actually see a path where mass carnage wasn't inevitable?

Of course, acknowledging this doesn't diminish anyone's suffering, and we are all painfully aware of how much tragedy occurred, from the massacres at Bleiburg to the fate of the ethnic Germans and the horrors of Gol Island.

Justin James10 said:Well, pretty much everyone, if you ask me. People around here love to point fingers at everything under the sun, yet somehow, we can never seem to grasp the essentials: a rule of law, liberal capitalism, or even basic human rights.

But isn't there a massive difference between a class enemy and a racial one? My goodness, entire social classes were wiped out in ways that would make even the Nazis blush. Some people try to play the "polite Briton" and gloss over the details, but if you actually dig into history, the truth is much darker. I know countless instances where people lost their lives simply because they were small business owners or ran a local jewelry shop. Is being executed just because you're an entrepreneur really the same thing as being targeted for being Jewish?

Marshall was never Stalin, and attempting to pin Stalin's specific crimes on him is an interesting, if somewhat flawed, intellectual exercise. One has to wonder how other political figures on the global stage would fare if subjected to that same level of scrutiny.

It seems easier for you to accept someone being executed for one reason over another. Look, that might be how you feel, but I don't see how that makes it a fact. Imagine if we had to rank whether someone was shot because of their race versus their social class? Does that even make sense? 🙄

And since you want to bring up one class dominating another... what actually changed after the fall of America? It’s just the same story: a small minority of "approved" people dominated society all over again. Families with the wrong background—people who weren't members of the Party—were treated like second-class citizens rather than first-class. Are they supposed to just stay silent about the terror they endured? Should they just listen to fairy tales about a better life now? 🙄

I never said Marshall was Stalin. My point is simply this: I find the cult of personality in the 21st century baffling. You'd think we would have outgrown that kind of thing by now, wouldn't you?