Liberal *slower death cult.
“Guys guys, lets work for the slow death instead of the fast death.”
Gives similar vibes to “capitalism is the least bad system”
Lol
I just want a little fascism … not a lot of fascism.
Just a little exploitation for my benefit, as long as it doesn’t happen near me.
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What have they ever done for us? /j
“So long as we’re exploiting the brown people in countries I don’t have to care about, it’s all good”
“How about half a genocide?”
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as long as your communication remains civil
Alternatively, you can just call anyone calling out the genocide “antisemitic”. /j
No, we prevented the genocide by not voting for Kamala. Problem is clearly solved.
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You can’t make an omlette without cracking a few eggs, therefore, a little genocide, as a treat is fine.
Let’s just go for the whole genocide, otherwise we might have to pay for bananas.
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As a treat!
Guys guys, lets work for the slow death instead of the fast death
i mean… yes?
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Well that’s called necromancy and is generally frowned upon (ofc i get what you mean, avoiding death is the goal)
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Interesting argument, planet destroying weapon of mass destruction
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we all are working for it but clearly aren’t there yet, to draw a parallel, we don’t have a cure for cancer YET but you can bet your ass i’m gonna do chemo if i end up with it
But how is liberalism [the slow death cult] going to get us there. Liberalism has been the dominant system for the past 70 years. And I’d say we’re worse off economically then we were in the 60s.
Liberalism is what USA is founded on
We could squabble about specifics for a long time. But using a broad definition. Yes, you are absolutely 100% correct. I was thinking with a narrow 20th century defintion.
Liberalism has been the dominant system for the past 70 years
8/14 presidents were republican. that’s the majority, for those of you that can’t do math
And I’d say we’re worse off economically then we were in the 60s.
doesnt take much for a billionaire-backed asshole to undo decades of progress cough trump
Republicans have been broadly economically liberal until Trump’s second term.
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The wee basic step we should strive for is to make the treatment available to all those suffering from cancer.
right. so the slow death. the one you were previously criticizing.
In politics, the first wee basic step we should strive for is not a complete revolution without the support of the masses, but to put in power someone who, if not better, doesn’t ruin more the already tragic and delicate system we have, to give us time to organize better.
And uhh yeah we kinda failed at that
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the slow death is accepting that the treatment should go to those who can afford it.
and how does that relate to politics, especially seeing as you are actively sabotaging the party that wants medicare/medicaid
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No. If there is any hope of actual survival, that comes before all else. Accepting the slow death of “voting blue no matter who” means that there is no possibility of averting fascism whatsoever. It is an inevitability that if the only side representing “the left” is associating itself with a declining status quo while refusing to do any of the things necessary to keep that status quo functional, them people will abandon it, and if the only ones offering an alternative are the far-right, then they are the ones who will win. There is no hope of survival whatsoever.
There are, however, two possibilities that do offer some slim hope of surviving. One is that the Democratic party can be pressured into doing the basic, minimal tasks of governance necessary to avert fascism - tasks that they will never simply choose to do of their own volition. The second is that the left can establish a credible alternative outside of the organization of the Democratic party, whether electorally or otherwise. Both of those objectives are furthered by voting third party when the Democrats are offering someone insultingly unacceptable, while “voting blue no matter who” flies directly contrary to both goals.
You’re thinking of it as doing chemo when there’s no cure. That’s not what this is. This is deciding to just take a nice little nap in the comfy snow because your legs are so tired and you’ll totally get up again in just a few minutes, rather than choosing to get up and push forward through the darkness in the hope, however slim, of finding an actual shelter.
This “buying time to organize” line is constantly thrown around, I don’t buy it as sincere at all, for starters. But regardless, time is not on our side, buying time only means allowing conditions to deteriorate further, it’s just procrastinating and kicking the can down the line. And how do you effectively organize an alternative to the status quo and present yourself as separate from it while simultaneously trying to rally around it and supporting it unconditionally? It’s nonsense.
This “buying time to organize” line is constantly thrown around, I don’t buy it as sincere at all, for starters.
I’ve heard that line for close to 30 years. So, when is that organizing supposed to start? When things get so uncomfortable that we have no choice? Not sure how that’s materially different than the accelerationist position, except that it means fighting the proverbial 800lb. silverback gorilla instead of an adolescent.
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Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
Blindly supporting means the party can start offering policies to entice those who don’t vote for them (conservatives).
Tell me again which moves the overton window?
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Focusing on nothing but voting enables neoliberalism in promoting fascism.
Well I’m right behind you bud. I’ll vote AND you let me know what you wanna do.
Vote if you want. But don’t waste too much time doing so and join a political org.
We can only ever have one message. Classic and so true /s
Electoralism doesn’t change shit and binds resources.
The amount of simping for electoralist politics in an anarchist sub is truly depressing.
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Voting changes things. See: every election that wasn’t rigged. Maybe some that were.
Ok, my bad: it doesn’t change shit in your favour.
Can we stop pretending like voting for the Democrats as they exist now stops the Republicans from winning? It only makes them win more slowly. It is literally why everyone is so disillusioned and why the Democrats were unable to sell their message to enough people. And can we also take for granted that me saying this doesn’t mean that I didn’t vote for Kamala Harris?
Maybe we could stop pretending that the shitty Democrats that have never learned their lesson suddenly will if Republicans win one more time
The Democrats exist as they do now because they can’t rely on the left to vote. So they have to pander to the center.
Take a marketing class. If you think that politics is about pandering and not about convincing people, then you’ve lost the game already
Yes, we already lost last election because of the exact reasons stated by the person you’re responding to
Except the person they were responding to phrased the situation poorly by leaving out important context.
In reality, the Democrats lost because they kept expecting leftists to vote against their working class interests in favor of right wing, pro corporate policies that only serve to maintain the capitalist system. You know, the very thing we are fundamentally against?
Maybe if the Democrats actually made strides for legitimate left wing policies, they would encourage more left wing individuals to throw their hat in with them.
Yet, time and time again, they have shown to throw the working class under the bus if it serves the whims of the capitalist market. Now, no one trusts them to uphold our interests when push comes to shove.
Ah I understand now. You took Marketing 101 and have it all figured out.
I definitely don’t have it all figured out, but I wanna know do you ever think about stuff like what it took for the civil rights movement of the 1960s to succeed? Do you think it was a matter of pandering to the interests of centrist liberals or do you think that a big part of it was criticizing status quo liberalism and refusing to settle? I really think that you should read theletter from Birmingham jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because the archetype that he addresses in that work is replayed out every single time somebody ever deigns to criticize the Democrats for their political strategy.
The centrist voter is a myth. There is not a human who will vote for “means-tested subsidies for a state-run employer-funded health insurance marketplace where you have no idea what it will cover or cost.” But wouldn’t vote for “free healthcare” when you move to the center by compromising your bills, you lose voters who suspect the policy won’t help them, you dont gain a bunch of “moderate Republicans” who want only half of immigrants subjected to inhumane conditions.
You’re not exactly wrong, but it’s even more fundamental than that. If leftists were a more reliable voting bloc, then Democrats couldn’t exist as they do today. They would be primaried by more leftist candidates. And then, if hard left policies were more popular with the general electorate, they would win.
The nightmare we’re all living in right now is proof. I don’t believe for an instant that The Powers That Be wanted Donald Trump to be president. Even by fascist standards he’s kind of a disaster. They wanted fucking Jeb! But Trump’s implicit message of “I’m going to fuck shit up and the establishment doesn’t want me” resonated with a lot of people. It just got the extra boost from being tied with fucked up racism, sexism, and ignorance, all of which are tied to pretty solid groups of voters.
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You’re confusing cause and effect; democrats need to promise policy that improves people’s material conditions if they want people to vote for them, and use every single power at their disposal to prevent further harm until then to prove they will do as they say if they win. Nobody is going to vote for a party that they dont believe will help them.
You cant win while telling your own base “eat shit, what are you gonna do, not vote?”
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There is also the fact that democrats lost in 2024, and 2016, and the way the dems lost the house and senate in 2010 after bailing out the banks for stealing people’s houses and giving the health insurance companies subsidies instead of giving us healthcare. Turns out when you do the opposite of what your base wants, fewer people vote.
Blindly voting means the Right win.
Vote for the furthest left-wing candidate in the primary.
Vote the for furthest left-wong candidate in the general.
It’s not difficult.
You forgot a step. Short term vs long term planning.
The problem with voting with your method is you only get to vote once. Every vote you need to make the decision:
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I should vote based on the optimal outcome of this election.
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I should vote based on the optimal outcome over many elections.
It’s important that you first ask yourself this question. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And often by voting for (1) you’re hurting (2).
For example, everyone to the left of Republicans would have been better off if Trump had won in 2020. The primary process was rigged to keep progressive Democrats divided while forcing Biden through as the centrist compromise. People on the left tried to vote for progressive candidates, but the DNC rigged it so that all the centrists EXCEPT Biden dropped out early, while the progressive candidates had their vote divided. The DNC organized for Biden to win the primary. And then, in the general, everyone on the left held their nose and voted for him. They followed your advice to the letter, and everyone to the left of Republicans was massive harmed as the result of following your exact advice.
Those on the left followed your instructions exactly, but they ended up with an inferior option than if they had voted third party.
Biden winning in 2020 guaranteed a MAGA win in 2024. Biden was never going to make the changes needed to prevent MAGA from returning to power. This was predicted by many on the left before he was even sworn in.
Trump in 2020 would have been far less dangerous than a Trump in 2024. He wouldn’t have had 4 years to regroup and plan out his whole Project 2025. He would have been a lame duck from day one, and he wouldn’t have had the political capital he came in with in 2024.
Centrists, liberals, leftists, all of them did themselves a disservice by voting for Biden in 2020. Objectively, everyone EXCEPT Republicans would have had a better long-term outcome if Trump had won in 2020. But in your strategy, we’re not allowed to consider the long term effects of our decisions. We’re just supposed to myopically focus on this and only this election.
Trump winning in 2020 being better is a BIG assumption that fails to consider just how bad things could have gone.
Off the top of my head, would things be better right now if we’d had Turkey’s levels of inflation? How bad would poverty have gotten? How many people would’ve died from suicides and extra Covid deaths? Would he immediately have gone into revenge for BLM mode?
There is a level of death and destruction that you are failing to consider.
Also, really consider how this conspiracy to stop Bernie in 2020 is just the centrists making a strategic decision not to split the vote. In the French parliamentary elections, like 200 left-wing and centrist candidates withdrew from the second-round run-off races to avoid splitting the anti-far-right vote —Do you consider what they did to be unethical and a subversion of democracy?
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Ill vote in the primary, but 2020 showed us, if our guy doesn’t win, voting for a conservative in the general is still handing power to the Republicans
I would say not voting for the “conservative” in 2024 more directly handed power to the Republicans, no?
Voting for the conservative in 2020 gave us Trump in 2024.
The only way we could have avoided Trump in 2024 is if a conservative didn’t win the primary in 2020, and the only way that would have happened is if the DNC knew a conservative didn’t have a shot in hell.
If the DNC believes we will vote for whatever they give us, we will get no concessions. Our mistake in 2020 was compromising and voting for Biden in the hope we could get some concessions after the election.
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no one cares
no one will work for your interests
no one will overthrow the oppressive systems
no one has never taken a bribe
Blindly? I think it’s pretty fucking blind personally to see clearly that a train is coming but to stay the fuck on the tracks
Right, we’ve seen the train coming for decades as 2 right wing parties exploit a country and drain its people of wellbeing and as expected it enabled the rise of fascism.
Pretty stupid to stay on the track instead of hopping off and not supporting them.
You love that fucking track so goddamned much
You’re the one not wanting to change?
In hindsight, everyone on the left side of the spectrum would have been better off not voting in the 2020 presidential presidential election.
… Uh ok
That’s for the democrats to choose
Uh riiight
Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
No, it doesn’t. The pseudo-democratic spectacle liberals call “democracy” is completely immune to abstinence or boycotts.
The libs don’t lose when the fascists win. There’s a good reason they keep fascists around.
Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
Blindly supporting means the party can start offering policies to entice those who don’t vote for them (conservatives).
That’s true in a democratic system, sure. But what I think the electoral entryists lose sight of is the real incentive of a politician isn’t necessarily to win election. The real incentive of a politician is to build political capital within the party/government in order to pursue an objective. And that objective isn’t necessarily going to be a popular one.
Case in point, look at the UK Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour Right very deliberately and explicitly tanked their own chances to win in 2019, because they didn’t want the policies that Corbyn was championing. The fact that Corbyn had brought in an enormous number of new, enthusiastic left-liberal voters was considered a problem to solve not a benefit of his campaign strategy.
Consequently, when Corbyn lost to Johnson, New Labour spent the next years systematically weeding out all of the new left-liberals introduced to the party in the prior cycle. They consolidated support around Starmer by shrinking participation not by expanding it.
The modern Democratic Party is engaged in a similar project. The goal is not to entice anyone into the party. It is to establish the Dem Party as the only viable alternative to Trump and demand voters approach the liberal(ish) party on its own terms. The Dems exist to cater to the donors first and then to the corporate media and then to the celebrity class.
Tell me again which moves the overton window?
The only thing that moves the Overton Window is consolidation of control over the local media.
Leftists quite literally need to get control of the airwaves and democratize the engines of journalism and information commerce. Anything else is a fool’s errand.
You aren’t going to beat FOX News at a propaganda contest by being a Silent Majority. All you’re going to get is BlueMAGA blaming you when they lose, while MSNBC calls you a bunch of Putin Bots and TikTok degenerates.
Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
That’s an assumption. Another assumption is that they try to win over the voters who reliable show up and ignore the ones who don’t as unreachable.
How do you ensure the outcome you’re looking for happens? Hope is not a strategy.
Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
Leftists have been doing this strategy for a couple decades now. How successful has this been at moving the Overton window left?
Voting blue no matter who seems to have done the US wonders huh?
You can’t have it both ways. Either the progressives not voting had no change on the outcome on of the election thus their strategy has no merit, OR progressives not voting cost democrats the election and the democrat party were at fault for abandoning their base. Oh what’s that? The apathetic vote is not to blame for either scenario? No shit.
You’re getting confused because it doesn’t have anything to do with the outcome of the last election.
Leftists don’t vote, therefore no one caters to them, therefore the overton window moves right.
Leftists have been doing this strategy for a couple decades now.
No. The left hasn’t.
Yes it has. Voting turnout in the US is dreadful. Who do you think does reliably get out to vote? I’ll give you a hint: it’s right wingers.
Yes it has.
No, it hasn’t. That is, unless you want to claim that liberals lying themselves into a corner is (somehow) “leftist strategy.”
What? What does that mean in the context of this conversation?
This you?
Leftists have been doing this strategy for a couple decades now.
I could have sworn that was you.
And those right wingers have gotten momentum and a lot of what they have asked for. Dems are not as left as we want, but that is where the little progressive politics we have lives. Not voting for it or working to grow is is hurting us.
Probably be more successful if you stopped being rightists and joined them?
And I think you’ll find that blindly supporting blue no matter who has been done far more often for a couple of decades now. How successful has this been at moving the Overton window left?
Let’s compare leftist strategies of never turning out with the evangelical strategy of driving massive turnouts.
Who has had better success shifting their party?
What planet are you living on where either of those strategies are actually what’s being employed?
The right turns out because they’re getting what they want. Would they still turn out of the candidate was a RINO who was soft on things like guns, abortion, or immigration? Probably not! The party has been disciplined by the base for deviating on those issues often enough that they have kept moving to more extreme right positions and the right no longer has any reason to defect.
Meanwhile, there are tons of people on (what passes for) the left who will readily agree that Biden and Harris were complicit in genocide, in some of the worst crimes imaginable, and yet, we should still fall in line behind them. Right wingers will be like, “Sure, this guy has an impeccable record on most of the issues I care about, but he accepted free federal Medicare expansion, which is socialism, so fuck that RINO piece of shit commie traitor I’m voting Libertarian!” And so the Libertarian Party is triple the size of the Greens. And yet, somehow, libs are constantly obsessed with this idea that somewhere out there, someone might be standing on leftist principles, and that’s the worst thing ever and they must immediately be lectured and shamed for it.
Try to pull that shit in some of their circles and you’re liable to get shot. I mean, can you imagine? “Look, I’m as upset as anybody that the only realistic candidates are anti-gun, but you just have to accept that guns are not on the ballot this time around, you’re going to have to vote for someone who wants to take your guns away, and if you don’t, it means you’re a bad person and I’ll constantly lecture you about it. Hey, where are pointing that- OK, OK, I’LL LEAVE”
As Lonergan and Blyth put it in Angrynomics, the right has better tribal enforcement along the boundaries they care about. Like a football team with more fired up and cohesive fans.
The democratic party has two major problems;
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Their leadership is technocratic and alienated along class lines from the voter base they’re trying to reach. Nobody trusts them to do anything more than run on focus group issues, then turn around the moment they get into power and fail to act on them. This is not isolated to American politics - France’s emmanuel macron is another really good example. The working-class voting base, more than any other group, has been burned too many times on this since clinton1 to get enthusiastic about a democrat candidate. They are almost immediately viewed - and rightly so - as being fundamentally untrustworthy. The DNC’s subsequent games with the 2016 primaries lost an entire generation of potential voters who now view themselves as disenfrachised party outsiders. Now that the senile party leadership is literally dropping dead in office, there is nobody left to replace them who have the blessing of those same aging party elites. From their perspective, they are under siege from without vs. the republicans, and within from the newbies. They well and truly did it to themselves by resisting the emerging organic self-interest of their replacements. Kronus ate his children.
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Funding sources come from billionaires and the top .01%. Normal people no longer have the disposable income, even at >$250kpa, to make significant enough contributions to run effective election campaigns. This is a form of capture by the ultra-wealthy, and therefore it makes it very difficult to run a campaign on small donations. The political process is entirely captured by the owner class, because nobody else has the $$$$$$ to own anything at all, and now gets charged rents to keep them in usury. Corporate donors can’t be relied upon because they are simple organisms who act in their own best interest of making more money. This needed to be corrected in the 2000’s, and the opportunity was lost. Instead we used QE to prop up a zombie economic system which did not provide appropriate investment in the next generation of the population, nor did it appropriately invest in infrastructure. So instead of flying taxis, vibrant broadband-enabled online fora, high speed trains, electric vehicles, stable rural communities and walkable cities, we got NFT’s, crypto scams, decaying suburbs harboring increasing deaths of despair, ludicrously oversized and inefficient vehicles and auto-enshittifying privacy-destroying cloud capital phone apps. It’s a paper tiger that is now falling to pieces vs. other emerging global competitors because it has extracted every drop of value from its feeder resource pools and is now well into the process of self-cannabalizing. It is a pest economy in the final stages of ecosystem collapse.
Basically, the triangulation game is already played out, the dam has disintegrated and there’s no longer any useful opposition to the rightwards move, because in order to even be an oppositional force, it would require selfless multi-billionaire unicorns (hah!) to effectively sacrifice their family fortunes in order to fund and animate such a movement- whilst somehow political candidates capable of rebuilding five decades of broken promises and tonedeaf social positions regards to the working class come out of the woodwork as a fully-formed well-oiled political machine that both offers and delivers enough Good Things to budge the needle. The technocratic so-called “Abundance Agenda” currently being circulated amongst DNC circles fails to do this - in typical democrat fashion - by attempting to lobotomize the working class out of the picture and reducing them to a mute “consumer of ideas”.
I guess stranger things have happened, but I’m pessimistic on the outlook at this point, because they’d have to win against an entrenched radical political insurgency, with full control of the government, and near unanimous support of the owner class, that legitimately doesn’t want democracy to succeed anymore.
As long as the democratic party elite fail to engage in good faith, they will continue to lose. Even if they do, they’ll also have an uphill battle until they have demonstrated in terms of lived experience to a chronically abused electorate that they have the will and capability to deliver on their promises.
I agree with most what you’re saying but I think you’re minconstruing the abundance book. Ezra has been clear and very vocal about wanting to execute the goals of the left. He’s just calling for a more fluid mechanism that doesn’t put up dozens of roadblocks throughout the process. No one ever addresses the elephant in the room: the upper echelon progressive home owner class. This group alone is blocking every progressive movement indirectly while also spouting the usual progressive rhetoric.
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The Tea Party, they obliterated the old GOP by not voting them and voting for their people instead. The DNC has kept their party under lock and key to avoid any of that happening.
You’re misremembering.
The Tea Party pushed more conservative candidates in primaries, but in general elections Tea Party voters never sat out in protest - instead, they either supported the GOP candidate or, in a few cases, backed third-party or independent runs, but there were never large-scale abstention.
Leftists have been doing this strategy for a couple decades now.
Wait, what? No they haven’t. They’ve been turning out in droves in both primaries and general elections.
If leftists are turning out in droves in the primary how are we getting Joe Biden?
Warren split the vote.
If you combine Sanders and Warren into one they still would have lost to Biden by a pretty wide margin.
Warren is to the right of Bernie anyway, and Bernie is barely left enough for many leftists; I can’t imagine it was leftists that Warren was splitting away.
If you combine Sanders and Warren into one they still would have lost to Biden by a pretty wide margin.
That’s incorrect
Leftists have been doing this strategy for a couple decades now
OBJECTION!
What actual
evidencedo you have of this claim?This gets thrown around all the time as “conventional wisdom,” but it’s never actually backed up by anything. In fact, the Libertarian Party typically gets roughly three times the number of votes as the Green Party, and the last major third party candidate, Ross Perot, split the Republican vote leading to Clinton’s election.
More recently, the 2016 election had two major “outsider” candidates. Of them, Trump refused to rule out a third party run, while Sanders went all out campaigning for Clinton, despite all the shenanigans with superdelegates.
Only in 2024 can I see a credible case that some of the left has begun using the stubborn, “my way or the highway” tactics that the right has been employing for decades - with a high degree of success, I might add! The Republican Party has shifted further and further right to accommodate the demands of their base, because they know that if they’re soft on things like guns or abortion, significant portions of their base will denounce them as RINOs and sit out or vote third party. The Democratic Party, by contrast, knows that they can always count on the left to flinch, to be “reasonable,” to accept the “lesser evil,” and so they have moved further right as well, taking those votes for granted.
Again, every piece of actual evidence contradicts this “conventional wisdom,” which only exists in the first place because liberals are so preoccupied with the idea that someone, somewhere, might choose to stand on principle rather than fall in line. Meanwhile, people on the right are constantly choosing to die on the dumbest, most petty hills imaginable.
I guess this means you don’t know what a “progressive” is, huh?
So that’s your idea of a “progressive,” huh? Two plutocratic racketeers in over-priced suits?
I grew up in a country that insisted these two guys were somewhere to the left of Fidel Castro.
Show me what a True Progressive American Politician looks like, please.
Sooooo… you don’t know who Bernie Sanders is? That’s a “progressive” - or, more accurately, an edgy liberal.
I’m going to go ahead and assume that even here, on a (supposedly) anarchist community, I will still have to waste my energy explaining to liberals how their own ideology actually works?
Sooooo… you don’t know who Bernie Sanders is?
He’s the guy who spent twelve years stumping for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, right?
waste my energy explaining to liberals how their own ideology actually works?
Does liberal ideology work? Seems like its in full collapse at the moment.
He’s the guy who spent twelve years stumping for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, right?
Yeah… you know that thing “progressives” were doing right up to the election?
Does liberal ideology work?
You’ll know when it stops working - you’ll see liberals roll out the red carpet for fascists while pretending they cannot do anything to stop them. Do you see anything like that happening now, perhaps?
Instead of a politician, what about a civil revolutionary?
Martin Luther King Jr. was a leftist.
He was a socialist, not an American leftist. He was a goddamn dirty commie that the FBI tried to get him to commit suicide. And libturds like to whitewash’s ass. Martin Luther King was killed by the FBI. Then he was paraded around as a mascot for neoliberalism and the libturds. The Empire made him a mascot and gave him a holiday. In Empire, you have many holidays, gladiator games, and idols to worship.
Socialism falls under leftism.
Ah, the United States (ca. 2016)
I grew up in a country that insisted these two guys were somewhere to the left of Fidel Castro.
Your post makes me think you somehow believed them…
Oh snap.hahahah
Let me be clear, we’re occupying Afghanistan, but we’re going to be doing it the right way this time.
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Progressives are Neoliberal 2.0. In the corporate sector, this is called getting ahead of the problem. co-op the left before the left can even learn to walk again. There are billionaires on both sides supporting this pseudo world aka left and Right paradigm. We are all just watching Shadows dance on the walls. We are not going to vote our way out of these bigger problems. And if you keep it real and you see how the sausage is made, you can pretty much predict how this is all eventually gonna go. The Ratchet effect. We move further and further to the right. And clearly this has something to do with fiscal realities and the suffering of the working class. Like guns aren’t the problem. The problem is fiscal. And those fiscal problems lead to interpersonal issues. The guns don’t help though. We don’t like to deal with the root causes because it questions the very nature of our existence. Ultimately, I am victorious because we will destroy ourselves. We are literally in the process of destroying all life on Earth. It’s kind of awesome being right about everything. Unfortunately, I am mortal and I suffer just like all the other slobs.
There are billionaires on both sides supporting this pseudo world aka left and Right paradigm.
Really? Do tell… which billionaire parasites are (supposedly) funding the left?
It’s kind of awesome being right about everything.
That just tells me you’ve never been right about anything.
I think they’re confusing “progressive” with “Performative Discord Leftists Who want to have intellectual arguments but are afraid of real conservatives so they just infight and purity test all day” or “Lemmy users”
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but are afraid of real conservatives
Why should they be afraid of something that hasn’t existed since the end of WW2?
Join a Union? Feed the homeless? Organize your fellow tenants? Actually attend a city council meeting?
You’re smugly confirming your allegiance to the liberal death cult, because your only conception of “political engagement” is voting in a system that is crumbling before our very eyes.
And no, just voting wouldn’t have stopped that decay. Nothing in the world is static, and 1000 years of Obama wouldn’t stop the larger political-economic factors that are fueling fascism, political polarization, and civil unrest.
Cool, go vote, especially if it’s in your local and state elections that no one actually pays attention to. But disengage from the rat race, and do something with an actual impact in your community.
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Aaaaaaand moderators have nuked my comments. Awesome. Any explanation as to why, besides not liking the points I was making?
it’s in the mod log.
rule 7
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you can leave
Blocking the community now. Enjoy your very correct views that aren’t allowed to ever be challenged for very good reasons.
bye
Progressives aren’t quite the same as infighting discord leftists and socially isolated teenagers who think we’re going to topple capitalism aaannnny day now.
There are millions and millions of people who we would consider “progressive” and they tend to do things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmwvHyJJr50
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The thread has made it to /all, lord help us.
We gotta bunker down, its time for the whatabout people.
Oh fuck the liberals found us 😂
oh lord help us! not the accountability!
The accountability of “making fun of things that suck”?
But have you considered that a system that leads to fascism is still better than actually manifested fascism?? And yea, maybe we should fix it before it gets there, but if it can’t be fixed with voting now then we should have voted harder before, and vote harder next time
Voting gives the illusion of choice and power. If it really made a difference we wouldn’t be allowed to do it.
Voting gives choice and power. If it didn’t make a difference they wouldn’t try to stop you from voting
Roger Stone got Bush elected by swarming a court house
Trump has harassed the authenticity of voting, voting laws and registration rolls to prevent people from voting.
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it’s not, actually, any better to be falling off a cliff that to have finished the fall.
Of course it is, you’re only panicking, not panicking while in incredible pain.
the pain is inevitable. it’s no better.
Might as well kill everybody since everybody eventually dies
not the takeaway you should have had there. how about you do something besides jump off the cliff, like oppose liberal democracy
Are you a god damned child?
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Pretty sure the implication is that you’ll be dead at the end of the fall
Darnittt and I’m already voting against who I want in charge rather than who I actually want to have a majority. 😩 Is there like a fascist lite party I can vote for or something?? Obviously, I’d prefer no fascism but as we all no, it’s that kind of talk that leads to the fascists taking over!
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As a soc dem, capitalism is only slightly better but the system needs heavy regulations. But with the burgeoning AI and automation, I am starting to lean more towards socialism. I mean, after AI “companies” stole our data to train their AI with, isn’t it only right that WE should actually take rightful ownership of that? At some point, AI and automation will become advanced enough that most jobs will be gone and humans would not be needed anymore. When that time comes, the ordinary folks should take their rightful stake in that automation revolution by taxing robots or take communal ownership of AI to fund universal basic income and services. That is the best socialism we can get. Not only we can finally rid of social ails that plague humanity due to unbridled capitalism, but also we are taking away full power from oligarchs who stole our own data to begin with. They would not be there if it weren’t for us to begin with.
Have you considered that this is a false dichotomy?
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… if you’re dead set on maintaining a liberal democracy, where “maintaining” refers to what you’re seeing in the US with Trump right now. Also, it’s not restricted to two party systems. Look at Europe.
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Nope the only choice is fascism and that which leads there
This is some Marxist nonsense my dude. Societies don’t have inevitable endpoints.
Have all the western countries that have had rising fascist dictatorship movements in the past few years come about through some other unrelated means?
We’re clearly in a trend of rising authoritarianism, but that doesn’t mean it’s inevitable. Such waves have receded in the past and they likely will again.
I just don’t like these inevitability narratives because they deprive people of agency in shaping society. Sure, maybe liberalism has a tendency to creep towards fascism, at least under some conditions. But this happens through the actions of the people that make up those societies and it can be resisted.
Capitalism inevitably results in fascism. It’s just the end result. The choice there is people maintaining a system that’s results in fascism.
Capitalism has existed for centuries and usually did not end in fascism. There’s no historical support for this claim. It’s simply an invention of authoritarian leftists because it’s useful to convince people they need to choose one brand of authoritarianism or the other.
Fascism at its core is a way for a minority of the population to say, “we deserve wealth and power over everyone else regardless of merit. We’re going to take away rights and opportunity from everyone in order to give ourselves an unfair advantage. We’ll make it so only our group counts a fully legally human, and we’ll dominate society and the economy accordingly.” In this general sense, capitalism for the vast majority of its history has been some flavor of fascist, in the general sense. Obviously as a specific political system, fascism is more particular. But in the general sense of its mechanism, where one group tries to take control by stripping the rights from everyone else? That is the norm in capitalist societies, not the exception.
For the vast, vast majority of capitalism’s history, it’s been built on defining a certain in group who have rights, and an out group who have no rights and can be exploited. Western countries didn’t even give economic freedom to the majority of their population until the last 50 years or so. Women were legal property and couldn’t have bank accounts. They were legally not considered fully human in the same way men were. Men didn’t want to compete with women, so they took away women’s freedom and didn’t allow them to compete in the marketplace. The majority of the population, completely excluded from economic life, in the most capitalist societies on Earth.
Or you could look it from a racial lens. De jure discrimination was written into the law until the 1960s or so. And de facto racial discrimination never went away. You say that capitalism doesn’t usually end in fascism, yet the US kept a substantial portion of its population in a nightmare system of fascist apartheid. White people didn’t want to compete with black people in the market, so they stripped black people of their civil rights.
The key thing to keep in mind about capitalism is that in a true free market, no one earns any profits. If there were no barriers to entry, starting competitors would be easy, and profit margins for all businesses would be razor thin. But that’s not how capitalism works in the real world. There are barriers to entry, and in capitalist countries, owners and those in power do everything they can to give themselves unfair advantages so they don’t have to compete in the market. And one of the easiest ways to make sure your group doesn’t have to compete freely in the market is to simply declare large swaths of the population as not fully human and thus undeserving of economic freedom.
Interesting points but I think you’re conflating fascism with what I would call authoritarianism. If you define fascism as any system where a minority clique takes control of society then you’re going to have to call nations like the USSR or China fascist. Which, while I agree they have similar features, are getting pretty far from the colloquial and academic definitions of fascism.
But you’re absolutely right that no modern society has had universally equal rights. We still have many groups that don’t have much legal protection including felons, children, immigrants, even animals could be viewed through this lens as well. But I don’t think that makes any societies that don’t meet this very high standard fascist.
The last waves of fascism this advanced in America were in the 1930s. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century outright Nazis were generally associated with skinheads and were almost universally hated by mainstream culture. There are now actual Nazi movements in control of western nations. And even where they aren’t, they are winning over sizable percentages of the population.
This isnt going to pass as easily as you seem to think. Genocide has been live streamed around the world for almost 2 years and resistance to it has been relatively minor in terms of what you would actually expect. White western Christians (men especially) are actually mostly very down with white supremacy and neofascism. It benefits them specifically. And they represent the largest voting block in most western nations.
Liberalism could have prevented this by preventing Nazis from ever coming into positions of economic / cultural / political power in the first place. Liberalism is primarily concerned with countering revolutionary politics, moreso even than preventing fascist uprisings. It’s more important to them that pro capitalist values are the dominant ones in politics and culture than whether anti fascist values are. The ruling class almost entirely stands to benefit either way, they’re ambivalent towards fascism.
I didn’t say it would be easy, just that fascism is not inevitable.
Can you elaborate on how liberalism could have prevented this? This seems in contradiction to your overall point that fascism is inevitable under liberal governments.
Support working class politics. Support public ownership. Essentially, become a working class state. Outlaw fascist rhetoric. Redistribute wealth from billionaires to the working class. The main reason that fascist media organizations exist is because billionaires do. They wouldn’t be able to mass indoctrinate if they did not have essentially boundless economic power. Fascists won in Germany and America both because of media dominance and manipulation of the western liberal political system. In very comparable ways honestly.
The German democracy failed to respond in any way to the rise of the fascists. The only political party attempting any actual resistance of the fascists was the communists. The conservative and liberal parties were more interested in combating the communists than they were about combating the fascists. It was more important to them that the institutions of capital remains unaffected than fascism being stopped. They could have never let Hitler step foot out of a jail cell again. They honestly could’ve shot him, and a fair number of his nazi party upper echelon. People were calling for it, literally. Most people believe that Hitler mass indoctrinated all of Germany and won a landslide election and from there dismantled German democracy. That actually isnt true though. The final fair and democratic elections in Weimar Germany resulted in an extremely slim victory for the Nazi party. The communists were very close behind them. And in turn were conservatives and social democrats close behind the communists. On the whole, the majority of the nation voted for other parties. Once a bad actor was chancellor, all he had to do was find an excuse to enact emergency powers. He was handed the best possible opportunity on a silver platter by a young communist who was doing his part to fight back. If only others had followed his example, maybe history wouldve ended differently. As it was, Hitler enacted emergency powers to suspend all civil liberties in Germany. He banned the communists from any political organization and started literally rounding up communists and communist politicians and putting them in concentration camps. This was in 1933. The first camps were for communists. Then when Hindenburg died a short while later there was literally nothing standing between him and pure absolute dictatorship.
He could’ve been stopped at many points if liberal democracy was an ideology that prioritized the rights of the working class. If they had had an aim whatsoever of stopping fascism, it was preventable. Much like the democratic party though, their primary aims were to protect the ruling class of capitalists and the institutions that allow them to steal working class labor.
Support working class politics. Support public ownership. Essentially, become a working class state. Outlaw fascist rhetoric. Redistribute wealth from billionaires to the working class
Literally all of this is in opposition to liberalism, there’s a reason why the trend is the opposite in quite literally all liberal democracies
Yes, i very much agree. Liberalism will never present a legitimate defense against fascism, and will never prioritize working class rights.
I agree. But I also think capitalist systems make facism easy. And naturally trend towards it.
I agree “inevitability” is too strong and a little too marxist oversimplification of history for me.
I largely agree. Authoritarian systems tend to support one another over the long term, even as they compete in other ways. So capitalism, being a system where economic power is concentrated in the hands of the few can also encourage the establishment of similar state structures. But this is not necessarily fascism. We can see similar trends happening in historically socialist countries today. But fascism is one possible manifestation of this process.
So how many countries have failed due to authoritarian power control? It’s a consistent through all time and cultures. Power corrupts, and the people in power want more of it.
Fascism is a recent political invention, but authoritarian power that is unstable as soon as the wrong person is in control is a time honored tradition, from Rome to the dynasties of China. Even stable democracies have power grasps, limits of freedoms overtime, and so on.
History does not repeat but it does rhyme.
I completely agree. But to be clear, not all nations go down this path of increasing authoritarianism, and not all of those who do end up at fascism.
It might seem like a small distinction but this idea of the inevitable course of history is such a common thought terminating cliche and it leads to all sorts of wrong ideas and wrong political strategies that I feel a need to call it out. Even though my own position is not completely dissimilar.
Societies don’t have inevitable endpoints, in the same way that you can’t predict with 100% certainty that an individual will die of old age.
Old age isn’t even a thing you can die from. This analogy fails on multiple fronts.
Pedantry is the last refuge of fools.
It’s just a hilariously apt example of the overly simplistic narratives I’m criticizing. If you’re willing to label all capitalism as fascism then perhaps the narrative becomes true, just as falsely labeling all causes of death in the elderly old age makes your analogy work.
Historically, “conquered by neighbors” or “environmental collapse” are both strong contenders for “where societies inevitably go.”
Well I guess if you have a long enough timeline everything possible becomes inevitable. But I don’t think that’s quite what the meme is saying.
Well, to address the meme in particular then, it’s a fairly common saying that fascism is either capitalism in decline/crisis or is the end-game/final-form of capitalism. The first form is a direct quote from Vladimir Lenin: “Fascism is capitalism in decay.” The latter arises from statements by Mussolini, though it does seem the commonly cited “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism” may be a misquote or misinterpretation of his meaning.
I would actually lean into your rebuke somewhat, fascism is a form of authoritarianism and can make use of capitalism as a tool, but ultimately the totalitarian has as much interest in truly free markets as they do in truly free societies. I would say the inevitability is after allowing the market to centralize through unregulated monopolizing, the fascist would then nationalize the industry or otherwise bring it under their own personal control.
Fascism is fundamentally a cult devoted to power: they’ll ally with whichever power currently holds non-government sway, be that capitalists, feudal lords, or gang leaders. What fascists are deeply against is any form of distributed power: be that a truly free and well-regulated market, a trade union, or anarchism of any stripe.
Historically though, capitalist societies have been built on fascist techniques of stripping broad swaths of the population of their civil rights. The most infamously capitalist society in history - the US - cares so little about actually living up to the ideals of “the free market” that up until the 60s or so, only about a third of the population was actually allowed to participate in the free market. A third of the population was legally allowed to operate independently, start businesses, etc. The rest were denied equal protection under the law, a legal regime intentionally designed to force the majority of the population into precarious wage slavery.
That is in the most capitalist country on Earth. The most capitalist nation on Earth hated free markets so much that they had to exclude the majority of the population from the free market in order to maintain a pool of easily exploitable labor.
Thank you, this is very well said. Any socio-economic structure that centralizes power in the hands of a few is vulnerable to fascism.
Kinda true. Didnt some liberal democracies also turn (partially) anarchist or socialist?
Liberals: best I can do is tittering at the edges.
If i sit on the fence, I will never be on the wrong side.
If you could have voted, didn’t vote for Harris, and aren’t actively out in the streets hucking bricks at ICE and trumpers, then I have no respect for you.
You played the game and you played to lose. You played to lose when we had everything to lose, and nothing to gain. You made the 4th worst choice I can think of in the last 30 years.
Harris would have abolished ICE and gotten rid of the cages that Trump set up and Biden ignored, right?
…Right?
Nah you’re right. Good thing trump is getting rid of them…OH WAIT.
“What about Trump being evil?”
Yeah he’s fucking evil, good going dodging my question.
It’s all liberals know how to do. Cannot for the life of them take responsibility. Blame the left for their failure while using the right as a boogeyman to force compliance.
No cages is obviously the ideal case. Fewer cages is obviously better than more cages, which was the choice at the polls.
“I don’t believe in voting” fine, enjoy the more cages option.
But the cages didn’t go down with Biden. COVID was ignored under Biden. Trump wanted these things and Biden kept them. It’s not lesser evil, its incremental evil.
I also didn’t say anything about not voting. I voted for Harris. I’ve proven it before and I will proven it again if needed. It was useless here in California but I did it anyways.
Sorry, couldn’t answer your question because I don’t live in an alternate reality where trump didn’t win. Maybe ask some of the other people here?
So Harris would have kept ICE then, got it.
Probably, since ICE was created by Congress as part of the 2002 Homeland Security Act. The President oversees it, but funding and removing the organization is a power of congress and not the president. You would know that if you bothered to learn a little bit before forming opinions.
“You see we need to keep the Gastapo, parliament passed it so why stop it?”
I understand Harris can’t write bills as president, you dingus. A president has sway over their party. What Biden wanted, Dems pushed. What Trump wants, Republicans demand.
If Harris, a brown woman said “Hey ICE is a racist police organization made post-9/11 to go after brown people, let’s push to get rid of it” that would spark movement in Congress.
Ignored? Biden did try to reunite with their families the migrant children who were caged under Trump’s first term. Some couldn’t be found because of the Trump administration’s lax recordkeeping, but they didn’t just ignore them. That’s just a lie.
So everyone was freed form the cages and they were removed, making it harder for Trump to keep doing it? Zero people in there by the end of 2024?
If we’re talking about the cells that were built during the Obama administration as temporary holding cells, which Trump then used to permanently hold migrant children who were separated from their guardians by his inhumane policy, then yes, there were no children being held in those cells by the end of 2024.
Perfect example of the lib thinking that just voting means they actually did something so they don’t have to do any direct action. Which is of course why your country inevitably goes to shit.
Shouldn’t you be spending your gaslighting budget on your fellow liberals who actually understand what the term genocide means, liberal?
They have to proselytize and guilt trip for a politician failing at their job of winning over voters.
It’s not just a politican they are proselytising for… they are proselytising for an entire ideology that has hit rock-bottom. Liberalism’s lies have come crashing down - and it’s adherents will happily consign colonised peoples to the abyss if it means they can pretend it hasn’t.
They will keep talking to themselves as how voting the only thing that matters, everyone has to vote for the 2nd most evil candidature, and then fail at earning votes.
And then blame people for not being interested in “I will have as strong as a border as Trump, I will have the strongest military ever, I will abide by rules for anti-trans states, and I will do nothing about Gaza.”
They will keep talking to themselves as how voting the only thing that matters, everyone has to vote for the 2nd most evil candidature
I think you need to re-read my original comment. To summarize it here though…
You are either working within the system (voting/or abstaining from voting) or working outside the system (overthrowing by force), but I have no respect for people who work within while intending to fail, knowingly risking everything for that failure, for no possible gain, and then have the audacity to think that other people are the deluded ones making poor choices.
If you didn’t vote for Harris, and you aren’t burning shit, then you’re either a trumper who is fine with all the shit that is going on, or you’re a spineless imbecile who was willing to ruin everything for everyone, but unwilling actually make a meaningful attack on the system.
It’s not gaslighting if it’s the truth.
By voting (or just not voting) you participated in the system. If you want to be against the system, then you need to overthrow it.
You played to lose, which was dumb, and you played to lose when there was nothing to gain, and everything to lose (which is even more dumb). If you aren’t burning shit, then you never actually cared enough to be against it, you’re an apathetic asshole who squandered their only voice to say “I don’t care if the facists win, Kamala isn’t perfect and I can’t stand that”. You may not have voted for trump, but you sure as fuck voted for all of this. I have no respect for the people that lack neither the intelligence to make the right decisions, nor the conviction to live with the consequences of making the wrong one.
It’s not gaslighting if it’s the truth.
So you admit to gaslighting, then. Plus one for honesty, I guess.
By voting (or just not voting) you participated in the system.
Soooo… neither participating nor not participating means anything - is that correct?
and everything to lose
LOL! Lose what, genius? Did you really think that glorified pig was going to actually protect you from the fascists? I guess you don’t understand why the libs institutionalised that very thing we call “fascism” today in the first place, huh?
Wake the fuck up.
By voting (or just not voting) you participated in the system.
Soooo… neither participating nor not participating means anything - is that correct?
Couldn’t be more wrong. You are either playing to win, not playing to win, or not playing. In a 2 party system, a non-vote is the same decision as a vote. If you want to not play, then you need to be hostile to the system.
LOL! Lose what, genius?
Well, let’s see… My grandparents Medicare, my LGBTQ friends and family members rights, retirement savings, what little healthcare we actually had before, literally climate and the ability to live at or near the equator and coasts… Didn’t even have to google any of that. I guess if you want the full list, you can read project 2025, and the also draw conclusions from related activities. Oh, vaccine availability and herd immunity. 1st Amendment rights. Habeas corpus just to tack on a few more there.
You wake the fuck up and look and the fucking mess you made because a perfect person wasn’t put up against Orange Hitler.
You are either playing to win
Win what, liberal? Four more years of liberals doing absolutely everything in their power to make life easier for fascists?
Well, let’s see…
Oh… you mean those things your precious liberal racketeers haven’t lifted a finger to protect in any way whatsoever? Do tell, genius - what did your “good cop” overlords do when the fascists took away Roe vs. Wade? What did they do when Trump sicced a white supremacist lynch mob on the US capitol?
Except tell you to “vote harder,” that is?
Again… wake the fuck up.
Your plan is working so well right now!
Palestine is doing great! Economy has never been better and inflation is under control! People aren’t being rounded up and sent to extra-national torture prisons without a trial. The world you’ve heralded in is just doing so fucking great!
Palestine is doing great!
About that… how is that lie - oops, sorry, I meant to say “prediction your ilk peddled” - that Trump was going to be (supposedly) “worse” for Palestine turn out?
Your liberal-funded genocide - which the people you voted for enabled, of course - now looks pretty much the exact same as it did under Genocide Joe.
Do tell… will you be peddling this same lie again in four years’ time?
It honestly made fuck all difference how I voted. My state went for Harris. My state was always going to go for Harris.
Matter of fact? My state is the only state that actually went MORE for Harris than it did for Biden.
How many trumpers have you hit with a brick?
You need to re-read the comment.
You voted, so you excuse yourself from the violence you demand of others, I get it. I just see a lot of people saying if you don’t do x,y, and z violent thing to stop american fascism you are the problem, coming from people who have likely never been in a fight.
They are saying if people couldn’t atleast put forth the effort of slowing facism down, and not now putting their life in peril to stop it, then they are actively allowing it to happen. We had a chance to stop it with civility, but were pretty much pass that point.
We had a chance to stop it with civility, but were pretty much pass that point.
When? Like, sometime in the 70’s, perhaps?
I know that, now throw the first stone, go ahead, do it
Speaking as someone who’s had cops intervene at a protest… I threw that first rock a while ago. Some soccer moms in San Diego yesterday ran an ICE squad out of town. Consider your excuse null and void.
Like I said. No respect.
And you have no idea what I have done. Ohh, you went to a protest that the cops intervened on, I was doing that 25 years ago.
There are other parties. There was Jill Stein. If you could have voted, didn’t vote for Stein and aren’t actively out in the streets chucking bricks at ICE and trumpers, than I have no respect for you.
You played the game and played to win. Exactly what both right wing parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, want you to do. You’re easily set up to blame your fellow people instead of a system that has made you a tool to their disposal. You’re a spineless husk that listens to a leader that supports bombing children on the other side of the world just because the other party is “more evil”.
Stop voting for evil, vote for good. Because voting for the lesser evil will still end in evil.
Stein barely got 100k more votes than Kennedy, who had dropped out of the race and endorsed trump.
I understand your satire, but clearly you did not understand what “Playing to lose” meant.
I see 862.049 people who voted for a better world.
I see 862,049 people who went all in and bet their house while holding an 8 and a 2.
There is a word for that kind of behavior…
People who want change instead of more of the same wars, murder, anti-consumerism and billionaires. I agree, although it’s a little more than one word.
Nope. The word is “Stupid”.
I can jump off a building using a parachute in hopes it will open and generate enough drag to save me in time. A miracle, but it can happen.
Or I can board the skydiving plane everyone is boarding and reduce the risk of above happening.
If you don’t want change, that’s okay. There’s people who do, though.
I do want change. Unfortunate for you, I am not in the US. I am from the rest of the world that was affected by your selfish decisions and ‘moral high ground’ decisions. Thanks for voting for some 3rd party that wouldn’t have any realistic chance in today’s US of winning. Instead of, you know, helping the rest of the US push for Harris. Under Harris you had all the time in the world to get people in the millions if you wanted to vote for Jill or whoever else. You must have slept so well that night knowing you didn’t help everyone pushing to stop Trump with a lesser evil.
But sure, preach to me how you want change by doing no realistic action contributing to it. You were on a sinking ship and you put a plaster over a breached hull. Congrats.
Next time, if you want to take down any system, you must first partake in the system. Everyone has hopes & dreams of a 3rd party winning in the U.S. but it was very. Very fucking vital to give that idea up with Trump on the ballot.
What made you think I’m from the US? I’m from the Netherlands, a country that, thank god, hadn’t americanized to the point of only having 2 parties to vote on.
I’m active in my local politics, work in the social field, I’m spending most of my live making the world a better place. I’m active in resistance communities in support of immigrants, repressed students, and the current cost-of-living crisis here. What are you on about.
You make so many assumptions it’s fucking hilarious.
The way to fix the fasiscm is not by playing the fascism game. It’s by acting and showing that there’s a social alternative. And that alternative has fuck all to do with liberalist like the dems.
Go seethe in your corner while the rest of us try to make the world a better place for everyone.
What are the top 3?
Trump 2024, Trump 2020, and Trump 2016.
My issue with this is that Dale and Boomhauer aren’t in the back of the truck then they are.
Total immersion break. Unplayable.
Participating in democracy doesn’t lead to fascism, capitalism does. Protest non-voters are idiots that gave away the one best power our system offers. Congratulations on your new fascist overlords, dummies. Anarchism is about power to the people and power to communities, you vote for the best thing for your community regardless of your personal feelings. Do I wish there was a better candidate than Kamala Harris? Hell yeah I do, but she is lightyears better than Trump for my people so she got my vote. You have to start where you are, not in some fantasy land where leftists have a viable alternative. You want change? Go find a milquetoast liberal running uncontested and primary against them. Ask hard questions and make them accountable. Sitting on your high horse while the world burns is not only useless, but an insult to the people who are actually suffering because of your choices. Fuck off.
Anarchism is about power to the people and power to communities, you vote for the best thing for your community regardless of your personal feelings
Yes, we anarchists famously believe that liberation from repressive structures can be achieved first-and-foremost through voting.
I get that this is your perspective, but I think you’ve missed the point of anarchism if this is what you think it entails.
My perspective is that you fight on ALL fronts and you don’t leave power on the table for fascists to grab just because it doesn’t fit in with your revolution fantasy narrative to do so. I never said nor implied that voting is enough. It isn’t. But it is a simple way to keep dangerous people away from power.
That’s dandy, but that’s not an anarchist perspective. Fascism arises from capitalism under threat - if you’re not ready to defend yourself against the state abusing it’s monopoly on violence, then you’re not an anarchist.
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
It’s the people’s house. We built it. It’s been stolen and you let them. Who’s the anarchist?
The state, something that anarchists famously believe is made by and for the people.
If the house of government was ever truly the people’s, it was stolen from us the moment it was done being built.
Democracy is only a small measure of power, and in a liberal democracy, most of that power is ceded to capital.
Hey look, it’s someone who still hasn’t noticed that the Dems and repubs have the same bosses
Participating in democracy doesn’t lead to fascism, capitalism does.
Democrats are Capitalists. The entire rest of your rant doesn’t follow from the first sentence.
democracy, the act of people voting for one outcome over another. is not inherently linked to any monetary system.
if i vote to grow potatoes in my garden lot, and others in my group vote for tomatoes, and they win, so we grow tomatoes, thats democracy. what we want to do with the crop afterwards, and why, is what links it to another system.
democracy by itself is not capitalist. its just used in capitalist systems, and various others.
It’s obvious from context that by “Democrats” I meant the Democratic Party. The post I replied to was ranting about how protest voters who refused to vote for Kamala are to blame for fascism.
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If an army is attacking your enemy you dont send your military in against both sides just because you dont like either. You will either sit and watch it play out (not a real option) or join the side you hate the least knowing that I the end they will need to go.
Modern Democrats are just old-school 1980s Republicans.
Modern Democrats are just old-school 1980s Republicans.
Is that why they love Reagan and Reaganomics so much?
/s
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So do socialist governments.
Unless you love tinkle-down economics and gays dying of AIDS you’re not an 80s republican.
inevitably
Yes, “inevitably.” What the fuck do you think is going to happen when one side is “A declining status quo that we refuse to fix as it gets worse and worse,” and the other is, “Let’s see what’s behind door #2! (hint: It’s fascism!)”
Inevitably people will grow dissatisfied with the status quo, and look for any alternative. Inevitably. 100% chance. What part of that is so hard to understand?
This is actually how it goes. Capitalism in Decline leads to some kind of fascism. Just think in terms of the interest of the capitalist class and how they guide the herd. Liberals are neoliberals and neoliberals are fascist. America is an imperialist, empire, and Nazis are the useful idiots of empire. You know, you could look at it like the Imperial Boomerang. It’s not like we’ve changed. It’s just the veil’s been removed and the ruling elite is dealing with blowback as they continue to march forward towards their selfish goals. We are just keeping it real nowadays, living in the world of the lowest common denominator. First world nations usually turn towards fascism while countries that are more collectivist culturally turn to socialism. And we gotta go fash to the extreme before eventually anything changes because the herd does not recognize what they’re stepping into. The herd does not know where it came from, where it’s going, so it’s only through collective suffering that anything will ever change, and it might even take a lifetime.
So if “the status quo” inevitably leads to fascism, the only way to avoid fascism would be a society that is in constant change? Well, for one thing, every society is in constant change unless you install some kind of religious dogmatic dictatorship, and even those break after some time under the stress of sociological pressures.
Fascism, or things very much like it, happen whenever you let fear mongering powerhungry fools who deny reality in favor of some kind of nostalgia infused “greater” image of your society get away with their bullshit.
Human leadership leads to fascism at some point, because humans love their fears and their tribal behavior.
The liberal status quo inevitably leads to fascism. This shit doesn’t happen in Cuba, Vietnam, or China because they dont let capitalism stop them from addressing societal problems.
Well you could say they start with an authoritarian regime that doesn’t do well with things like human rights to begin with if they don’t go to fascism it’s because they have a system that has, for a large part, most of the same downsides.
lmao talking about human rights when we have the highest prison population in the world. Have you ever felt like you had influence on the state’s actions? The average cuban has, in their lifetime, been able to help write their own constitution, and then vote for it by referendum. The average Chinese feels their government represents their interests.
We, do not. I’m not American. The US to me is an absurd place where wealth gets way too much power and respect.
Society is constantly changing, yes. The problem is our institutions have not kept up.
A given institution (or complex of institutions) incentivize a certain set of behaviors. Not everyone adopts those behaviors, but enough do that the effect accumulates. Eventually something will break, some set of behavioral interactions start negatively interacting with the system (like, say, a for-profit healthcare system that incentivizes not treating the sick and wounded).
In a functioning system, this would be where you study what happened, and use what you’ve learned about the problem to try adapt the institution. This will create a new set of incentives for a new set of behaviors… and inevitably a new problem will grow out of it and the process starts over again.
I can’t speak for other places, but in the US that is very much NOT what happens. Our status quo is stagnant. We’ve had the same problems for decades now. That is what creates fertile ground for fascism - when the guy saying, “We’ll burn the rot and go back to when it was better” sounds more appealing than, “Nothing will fundamentally change”.
Yes, problem is that there often is gradual change that is not seen enough. I don’t live in the US, the healthcare system there that bleeds the state and the population spectacularly is incomprehensible to me. I don’t understand how there is not a new Nintendo character doing his thing every week, given the cruelty combined with the amount of desperate people who have guns.
I live in a country in the EU that has institutions that rather constantly get updated and change to try and keep up with the needs of society (and the need for politicians to show how useful they are).
The constant change is somewhat exhausting to be honest as the agency where you apply for something today might not exist next year, the requirements for applying for the same thing might be different next month…
Yet even here right wing gains every election because they present a world view with simple solutions to complex problems.
So if “the status quo” inevitably leads to fascism, the only way to avoid fascism would be a society that is in constant change?
No, that doesn’t follow at all from what I said. The present, declining status quo is leading towards people losing faith in it, and in the present conditions, the far right are the only ones capable of offering the convincing appearance of an alternative. Not every status quo is declining, in some cases, it may be possible to address such decline, and in other cases, the left is able to present a realistic alternative to both the right and the status quo, and so the rise of fascism would no longer be an inevitability - if there are more doors than door #2, people may pick another door.
Fascism, or things very much like it, happen whenever you let fear mongering powerhungry fools who deny reality in favor of some kind of nostalgia infused “greater” image of your society get away with their bullshit.
No, Fascism is not some random aberration, it is capitalism’s rational solution the problem of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. When there is no room for the economy to grow, society is divided into an gradually shrinking in group and an ever expanding out group, by seizing the assets of the out group and feeding them into the in group, artificial growth can be maintained, for a time. A more permanent and viable solution is to nationalize developed industries, removing the profit motive once it is no longer useful, that is, socialism.
This is the fundamental difference in worldviews between liberals and leftists regarding the present situation. Liberals see Trump and the alt-right as this sort of bizarre fluke that seemingly came out of nowhere, and may well return to nowhere just as spontaneously. Leftists actually study the material reasons that caused them to come into political relevance, and thereby understand that even if you cut the weeds, the roots are still there and will regrow, that the material reasons that created them in the first place must be addressed.
Congrats, you’ve discovered Maoist continuous revolution theory.
Almost ready for that great leap forward!
Why so aggressive? I interpreted the post as being about liberalism in general, not the two current US parties.
Weird to see a pro authoritarian post in an anarchy community
it’s not pro-authoritarianism
Liberal is anti authoritarian
Anti liberal = anti anti authoritarian = pro authoritarian
liberals are fine with authority: cops, judges, bosses, and landlords… don’t lie
That’s just because they’re dumb enough to think not doing anything with their own authority is enough
Though Laissez-faire that it derives from felt only landlords should pay taxes because they don’t provide anything to society
so you can see how anti-authoritarians take issue with liberals
Color me surprised - a liberal who doesn’t know what authority is
Not a liberal, just not using the term incorrectly
Well you’re certainly using one of those terms wrong.
liberal is center right; and liberalism completely fine with authority, maybe less with authoritarianism per se, but that’s what the “inevitably leads to” part is about. an anti-authoritarian but pro-authority stance will inevitably lead to authoritarianism. just like how cops and military keep getting more and more ridiculous funding despite not demonstrating anything of worth that they contribute to society.
We are looking at the north south axis not the left right axis
north south
left rightoh no I was looking at the up down and east west axis
Liberalism exists on both east west
The more liberal (free) a person is, the less authoritarian they are
There is no reason for you to be looking east west because it’s shared across that
Sorry, I forgot my compass i’m all turned around
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Removed by mod
I will stop participating in liberal democracy. I will stop voting for any of the candidates because they all contribute to the status quo.
Please. Tell me: what ought we do? Do you have a roadmap or an effective strategy to achieve anything? I’d really like to know if there’s a better way. I’m here to learn.
What ought we do to achieve any of the goals of the left?
Thanks! <3
Ever heard of prefiguration
I’m well familiar with anarchist theory. One of my best professors in college was heavily into anarchist philosophy and we’ve had many in depth conversations. I don’t want to sit around and do high brow discourse. I want concrete actionable plans. What’s the plan?
Prefiguration?
Again, these are all nice in theory. I love councils. I love cooperatives. Where’s the practice, though? I need more. I need a concrete actionable plan. Not high level discussion of structure. Not more conversations about frameworks. I need a plan. I’m a hands on learner.
Also, none of this is mutually exclusive with harm reduction. You can work towards building a classless, stateless society etc while also reducing harm in the now. They are not at odds and anyone that says otherwise is talking from privilege in my opinion.
Where’s the practice, though?
These are the practice! Join/Start cooperatives. Join/Start worker’s unions!. Join/Start neighborhood communes and so on! Anarchism is all about action right now!
Also, none of this is mutually exclusive with harm reduction.
First of all, elections are not “harm reduction”. Actual harm reduction is actually doing what I wrote above.
Second of all, yes it is. You cannot put your effort into direct action for mutual aid, AND waste your time electioneering as well.
I agree that building more coops and councils is a good start. I do want us to be politically effective too, though. When I say “politically”, I’m not talking about electioneering or participating in liberal democracy. I’m talking abeut building power. Expanding the message. Growing coalitions. Growing the movement. That can’t be done if all were focused on is endless gatekeeping and purity testing 24/7.
For example: I’m having another conversation with someone else in this thread and all they’re fixated on is labels and tags. No thoughtful discussion about strategy. And this is my main frustration with the cause (not you in particular): If we spent 1% of the energy we do gatekeeping and alienating everyone on actual meaningful implementation the world would have turned into an anarchist utopia decades ago. Also, I disagree that taking one day to cast a vote ballot is asking too much. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. If casting a vote helps my Latino or Vietnamese brothers from landing in an ICE detention facility I’ll do that while also campaigning and inviting more people to join the anarchist movement. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
Thanks for listening to my Ted talk, I’m done.
I agree that building more coops and councils is a good start. I do want us to be politically effective too, though. When I say “politically”, I’m not talking about electioneering or participating in liberal democracy. I’m talking abeut building power. Expanding the message. Growing coalitions. Growing the movement. That can’t be done if all were focused on is endless gatekeeping and purity testing 24/7.
All that is done naturally by taking part in horizontal orgs.
Also, I disagree that taking one day to cast a vote ballot is asking too much.
Then you’re missing the forest for the trees. Elections is not “one day to cast a vote”, it’s years long process wasting millions of volunteer work hours, mental health and goodwill.
But you response shows me you were just wasting my time. You weren’t trying to learn, you were trying to prove a point to some imaginary audience.
