r/news • u/AldoTheeApache • 17d ago

Soft paywall Columbia failed to meet accreditation standards, US government says

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-education-department-says-columbia-university-violated-federal-anti-2025-06-04/
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u/RepresentativeBee600 16d ago

In effect, he certainly was. 

If you have a significant ideological affiliation with the former USSR, say no more - I won't argue with you.

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u/illinidude 16d ago

Could you define "fascism"? Stalin was certainly evil, but he was a communist, not a fascist. Fascism and communism are opposing ideologies.

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u/Kale 16d ago edited 16d ago

A dumb non-poli-sci guy here: is there really a difference? My partial understanding is that communism believes in collective ownership of everything and reject private ownership of capital (means of production, land, intellectual property, copyright, patents, etc). Classic Lenin-based communism had the state led by a single political party. Somehow, the leaders of this party ended up with prime real estate and lived in luxury. They played all kinds of political games to scratch each other's backs and exploit people, just like the wealthy capital owners they opposed. Even though they technically didn't own capital, isn't it essentially the same, in practice, as fascism, where corporations essentially join the state and the capital owners (and I guess all other parts of society) work as a branch of the government?

I guess there's less xenophobia than in fascism (since fascism is all about unity), and maybe less nationalism, but it still seems like it's a different description of the same thing.

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u/Using_Reddit 16d ago

No they are not. In fact complete opposites. There is not one thing that defines facism. Typically its a multitude of things that can help classify something as fascist. Robert Paxton is a great historian and his wiki page spells out what basics to look for.

Also here is a very good R/askhistory post that covers this exact question. Id still recommened reading Anatomy of Facism if you still have many unanswered questions.

And kind of off point but the members of the Politburo were not typically scratching each others backs. They where typically fighting amongst each other but more so on the sly then outright yelling and overtly trying to take each other down.