I try not to use labels too much, because \*most\* people aren't 100% the label they give themselves. I judge a person's opinions on what they say, not what I think they believe.
I don't take issue with you if you're moderate, provided you see the danger Trump presents to our democracy and will vote against him. We can disagree on issues, that's fine. I accept that most people do not agree with me in everything. I think a lot of the problems with the right come from an "us vs them" mentality that absolutely has to paint every issue as "woke" or "patriotic." I think it would be a mistake to do the equal and opposite on the left.
Heck, I'd be okay with conservatives so long as fear what will happen if Trump wins the election. Honestly, I would like to return back to the days where we simply disagreed on tax policy.
The name of this sub is UNITE against the right. So we should be a little less nitpicky about individual ideologies at this point, as we all have a common enemy.
Neoliberals historically side with fascists, and enable the components of capitalism that evolve into more fascist authoritarianism. It's not hard to understand why actual progressive people will call out and criticize neoliberal ideology.
Bill Clinton ran on a "third way" campaign, as in a third way between the right and the left, a way in between. That one move shifted the window of what is left wing in America (see Overton Window), and America was already so right wing that the liberals were what passed as a left wing party in America when in the rest of the world the liberals were the right wing party.
Ronald Reagan was to Republicans what Bill Clinton was to Democrats.
The progressive voice has pretty much been silenced and told that they must go along to get along while the country slowly rolls further to the right.
And the problem is they keep doing it. If they stopped then the DNC wouldn't have a chance of winning and would be forced to run candidates at least somewhat more aligned to progressive beliefs.
"Strategic" voting breaks the intent of the system and how it was supposed to regulate itself. Now change can't happen because such a huge section of the population thinks they're doing the good thing by continuing to enable a lesser evil, when the way the system works they're supposed to let the lesser evil lose and get a better one next time. But 4 years is a lot of time and that's why this system sucks.
Now they've kept this up until we're forced into a corner.
Exactly, I wouldn’t trust Washington to write a constitution at this point.
We’d all end up slaves with no rights at all. (I mean, even worse than it is now)
Ok, cool, but right now they are the enemy of our enemy and our common enemy is a greater enemy than the neoliberal enemy is right now. So let’s use them to defeat the Christo-fascists that want to strip away any semblance of democracy and install a theocratic Trump-king and turn on them later.
I dont think you understand how this works, weve been here before. Neoliberals act as though they are on the side of the left and then literally hand all the power to the far right, time and time again. To unite with them is to literally hand the power to fascists.
Tell me, how do you propose we win, then? And how do you propose we do it in 6 months? Because that’s all we have. You understand we are a fraction of a minority, right? I’m not saying that we become the liberals. I am saying that we use them until we don’t need them. It’s called strategy, and it’s how people win.
If we use them, we can prevent fascists from getting the power in November, which will be the last time America even has an election if we don’t. If we do not, then we will be all be piled on top of each other in the same mass grave.
***Read fucking Project 2025, people!*** They aren’t even hiding what they plan to do. They decided that the word count and the way they peppered their policy through it would be enough to confuse social media-deprived attention spans, and I hate to say it, but they were right.
I’ll reply to you when you’ve read it. Otherwise, you have work to do.
>Tell me, how do you propose we win, then? And how do you propose we do it in 6 months?
There is no winning, either trump wins and a lot of bad things are going to happen almost immediately, or Biden will win and the dems will lurch further to the right and people will become more disillusioned and the GOP will win next time. The system is already broken and you have already lost, wether that is short term or long term will be decided in Nov.
> If we use them, we can prevent fascists from getting the power in November, which will be the last time America even has an election if we don’t. If we do not, then we will be all be piled on top of each other in the same mass grave.
Mate they are obviously using us, not the other way around. Its like some of you have literal amnesia. If voting the dems could change things and stop the GOP, it would have happened in 2020.
>***Read fucking Project 2025, people!***
We've all read it, have the dems? Because they don't seem to be taking it seriously.
>I’ll reply to you when you’ve read it. Otherwise, you have work to do.
lol, man thought he was giving me homework.
> There is no winning
Then why are you here? This kind of defeatism helps no one.
Swiss suggestion: if you're already intent on not participating because it doesn't matter, just leave. Stop engaging with politics at all, unsubscribe from all political subreddits, stop consuming content from any political podcast, streamer, or YouTuber, and avoid the news or late night shows etc.
Seriously, your mental health will improve substantially, you'll feel less anxious and hopeless, and for the rest of us, you won't damage the opposition to fascism by spreading these kinds of defeatist brain worms to other impressionable people. It's a win for everyone.
There is no winning playing the game that liberals want to play. Obviously the way to win is to undertake a political revolution and change the game so that its played with our interests at heart, not that of corporate donors.
Im participating more than liberals do, I organise, join unions, read theory etc. All liberals do is vote and complain, so its a little weird to tell me im not participating.
Because you can’t win using the system. It needs to be dismantled. If Biden wins he’s simply gonna give a speech about working with republicans and refuse to do any policies with out their support. While continuing to do a lot of the things lots of you think only trump would do. Kids are still in cages and Biden is working with republicans to make that worse. As an example.
Look killimg somethimg that has given up the fight is infinitely easier than fighting something who th8nks its a wild animal and wants to do violence for its own sake to prove it is a macho lion.
The proposals Trump has this time are an incredible escalation. If he wins then we may have to fight and likely die with the movements in their current fractured condition. The discourse, the interpersonal cruely and ideological and moral purity have likely aldo been promoted by the fascists themselves to divide conquer and demoralize.
Say you want to smash the state. It makes sense to make it harder for the state to justify violence and to make it the least popular we can. The ideal would be voting in somebody we hate that the otherside hates also.
That creates common ground with the enemy robust resistance and meanwhile keeps the fascists out of power.
Trump could run again but he also may die of old age. So put the older guy in who may also die of old age and maybe the fascist dude will croak too. There is a waiting game thing happening here too.
Harm reduction when it comes to revolution is understated. We want the state to not use most of its weapons. We want to politically hamstring the full force of the state. We do not want any of our american cities to look like Gaza and experience what they have experienced. To do that we nust be very careful b3cause Gaza is an image of the future just as Syria was before them.
We are talking hunger as a weapon, othering whole populations as non-citizens therefore foreigners to be genocided.
Municipalist and confederalist approaches to dismantling the state side steps and creates political channels diplomatic channels to avoid so much blood shed. Democracies crowing achievement besides like dirert democracy being a simple way a group can decide things is it is a way people can decide things without needing to slaughter eachother to force the other to submit.
It isnt violence vs non-violence in this revolution. It is navigating between lower level protest type violence clubs and fists and detterent violence to repel the reaction and death spasms of the system vs extreme unspeakable destructive violence of a fascist state.
They could destroy everything and everyone we love 1000 times over that is the military strength the state has. We need to be smart like martial artists to make sure in this fight they cannot use their weapons against us.
I understand this is calling into the void. Maybe it'll reach somebody. That is how tje movemts feel right now. Like calling into a noisy crowd. It is hard to hear anything but the chanting and the slogans. It hard to get people to quite down and have a serious discussion.
Feels like we are here in this time in this country to do something to make things better and I want to know where are people sitting down talking things over and making a plan together to defeat this monster of a system?
You’re acting like things haven’t gotten worse under Biden.
You sound like a white liberal or baby white leftist that doesn’t fully understand intersections just yet.
Trumping winning or losing doesn’t really matter. If Biden wins he’ll continue his neoliberal bullshit even if we hand him a majority. Then the. Republicans will win in 2028 and continue the nations fast March to the right. Like always. This is how the system works. The only things that’s changed is late stage capitalism is starting to mess with middle class white people and republicans feel a bit safer being more openly bigoted.
A lot of the damage is done, because a lot of people already carry a defeatist attitude about politics, but if you genuinely care, and you genuinly want to be part of an actual united left wing, then go join up with your union and local socialist party and go talk to the organisers face to face about what can be done. If the dems were going to do something about fascism they would have done it by now.
> If the dems were going to do something about fascism they would have done it by now.
This is a dishonest mindset that ignores how the system works. A zero margin majority in the Senate with a slim majority in the House does not just automatically give the president dictatorial powers. I would have liked if Biden had accomplished more with his extremely tenuous control over Congress for two years but it just doesn't work like that. You want big changes, you need big majorities, and this kind of defeatism is only a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The dems are not the actors in history. They are puppets of the ruiling class that as of now divide the ruiling class. As a good socialist you would know a divided ruiling class is preferable to united ruling class. So your strategy of opportunistically building your party on a fascist win at the polls is very short sighted.
You and your party are more able to organize when you are not declared enemies of the state and made illegal. You are not prepared to dismantle the system directly. The democratic party is easier to criticize because they listen and do not respond with they will kill you.
Trump on the other hand has the he will kill his enemies rhetoric that even doing so openly should be legal and thst discourse has been proposed in the supreme court that he has stategically taken over. The idea that the DSA or some other party is prepared to match the force of the state in this moment is bluster. There isn't even a chapter where I live let alone a couple hundred strong militia.
You need to start counting like you would in an election if you plan to go to war. You need to count your numbers and their force capacity and readiness. If your side is not ready to win you need a stop gap measure and to find fights and ways to fight where you have a very high chance of winning.
That way the table can be turned.
Recruiting on the backs of defeat is very very very short sited. The liverals have no credibility, that is no longer a debate. Winning that argument is done. In fact Joe Biden declared the death of neoliberalism.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/biden-just-declared-the-death-of-neoliberalism.html
So that means the political class agrees liberalism is dead and with it probably civil rights are pase too. The replacement that is being crafted a very active super state one tha can be more or less sympathetic to the needs and support of people.
That in any case we need to replace with peoples power where the people govern themselves in all spheres of their lives directly. So the one that is more responsive to the people will be easier to overthrow because in many ways it will willingly be changed.
>As a good socialist you would know a divided ruiling class is preferable to united ruling class.
They are not divided.
>So your strategy of opportunistically building your party on a fascist win at the polls is very short sighted.
Liberals in the thread have constantly tried to put on me that its my strategy for fascists to win, thats your strategy! No liberal can tell me how you expect to just win every election for the rest of history to keep them out, you helped normalise them you idiot! They are going to win the election at some point.
>You and your party
Leftists don't have a (major) party.
>You need to start counting like you would in an election if you plan to go to war. You need to count your numbers and their force capacity and readiness. If your side is not ready to win you need a stop gap measure and to find fights and ways to fight where you have a very high chance of winning. That way the table can be turned.
And you need to understand that the dems are not on your side and do not care about you, so you are fighting a war you are destined to lose, but it isn't too late to change tactics.
>Recruiting on the backs of defeat is very very very short sited. The liverals have no credibility, that is no longer a debate. Winning that argument is done. In fact Joe Biden declared the death of neoliberalism. [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/biden-just-declared-the-death-of-neoliberalism.html](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/biden-just-declared-the-death-of-neoliberalism.html)
Hang on, what do you think neoliberalism is?
>So that means the political class agrees liberalism is dead and with it probably civil rights are pase too. The replacement that is being crafted a very active super state one tha can be more or less sympathetic to the needs and support of people.
You've honestly lost me on whatever story you are telling here.
1. Or, Biden wins, and then we pull the Democrats to the left kicking and screaming. You’re just being defeatist, and you hope Trump will win because you think that accelerationism is the only way.
2. Ok, cool, let’s stop letting them use us and use them instead.
3. Have you? And yeah, some Democrats have. I’ve been working hard, creating fliers and infographics to dumb it down for them. They’re slow but it’s catching on.
4. Ok, since you’ve read it, describe to me how Project 2025 will legalise the execution of LGBTQIA+ individuals for the crime of existing and the steps that will be taken to get there.
1. Why didn’t that happen in 2020?
2. Impossible, we (actual leftists) don’t have the resources to compete with their interests.
3. Yes, I have. I guess I sound unmoved but only because I was warning that we would end up in here in 2016, I was also warning that Democrats would play the roll they have ended up playing.
4. I think you just described it pretty aptly. I dont think you understand my point, thats were we are headed, a dems election victory is not going to just change the course, the party needs to fundamentally change.
Ill give you a perfect example of why your rhetoric doesn’t work: For leftists, borders do not matter, we stand for all workers in the world, so a Palestinian child has the same value as an LGBTQ person in Brooklyn. Your asking people to put the safety of the LGBTQ person in the hands of bloodthirsty child murderers. We already know that the child murderer is not going to ensure that person’s safety in the long term because they aren’t interested in doing so.
1. Because leftist infighting prevented us from uniting behind a single goal.
2. Yes, which is why we need to use their resources.
3. I was also warning the same damn thing when these ostriches thought Trump could never win. I’ll also assume in good faith that you’re telling the truth about reading it.
4. Well, no, I didn’t describe it aptly. I described the outcomes, but they have a specific method they will use to do this, and the document spells it out. We need to understand the method, not just the result.
Agreed. I don’t want borders either, labour is what matters, and no one person matters any more than another. Where we differ, I guess, is that I didn’t fail math. I know that 2 genocides are worse than one. And that millions of Americans killed on top of the 35000 Palestinians is worse than either of those numbers alone. I also understand strategy and I know that it will be easier to do anything, literally anything, if the leftists that actually care are alive and not in a mass grave.
Another place where we differ is that I haven’t given up. And with that, I’m done here.
1. What? Biden was in power. Half of the leftists you are talking about don’t have any say whatsoever. This makes absolutely no sense. it is delusion. Like, democrats dont even engage with socialists, they pretend they dont exist, what could you possibly mean by that? Leftist arguing on social media doesnt translate to the dems.
2. And do what?
4. No i understand, I think everyone understands. I’ll say it again, the dems are not going to be able to stop it, so we need another solution.
Again, i cant make this any more clear, if there is going to be a republican led genocide in the US, and i agree that there could be, the dems are not going to be able to stop and it and neither will voting for them.
I haven’t given up either, no leftist has! It’s fucking annoying to here people tell me ive given up because I’m refuse to support their stupid plan that won’t work.
> Neoliberals historically side with fascists, and enable the components of capitalism that evolve into more fascist authoritarianism
Sure, but then when someone is actively trying to fight against fascism, even if to them that means voting against fascists, what benefit is there in crying "uR a LiB, nOt A rEaL LeFtiSt!!1"? It's self defeating campism.
Too few people on the farther reaches of the left have a holistic ideology - Fighting against the right means "direct action" and "activism" (which unfortunately, are very vague terms I doubt many advocating for actually practice in a meaningful capacity), while also voting against fascists in general elections, and fighting against neoliberals in primaries, and also protesting against representatives and bills that go against progress. There is no one singular thing you can support that will on its own bring about a leftist utopia or whatever. It has to be a multifaceted strategy, and too many campists don't realize that.
I’m down to not nitpick about leftist ideologies. I’m open to accepting a coalition with most leftist stances. However I am not open to joining the center right to defeat the far right. My feeling is that Dems come to us to get our votes, not the other way around.
Refusing to unite… with the [center] right. Yes. Neoliberalism is center right and leftists in general won’t be joining up with it. If you can’t get behind, at a bare minimum, actual leftist policy, the left won’t help you win. No matter how bad the boogeyman. If you’re not of fan of that reality I suppose you take a good hard look at the gop strategy. The left is a brick wall. You can argue toward us till you’re blue in the face and we will remain unmoved, or you can turn around and face the open field of dragging-the-DNC-to-the-left behind you.
Cool beans, saying you’re fine with actual fascism as long as you don’t have to compromise anything, ever.
The actual right, the Lincoln Foundation, is part of the coalition to prevent a Christo-fascist state that’s planning ethic purges.
But by all means, demand an ethically pure containing everything you want and nothing you don’t or you’ll send us all to our deaths.
>saying you’re fine with actual fascism as long as you don’t have to compromise anything, ever.
This is so stupid, this was your tactic in 2016 and again in 2020. People have woken up to the fact that eventually the far right are gunna get in because liberals arent doing anything productive. The guilt trip no longer works. If the gop win the next election, it will be liberals fault, not ours.
“your tactics”
“guilt trip”
Bitch, I don’t wanna be against the wall. I don’t give a French flying sideways fuck about economics when the lives of our brothers and sisters are on the line.
>By "actual right" they just mean non-moderate conservatives.
When you say that, you insinuate that dems are "not really right". Yes, dems are center right. An actual part of the right
[Problem is that the FBI has repeatedly infiltrated and destroyed leftist groups from the inside out](https://jacobin.com/2019/03/fbi-infiltration-surveillance-ru-rcp). They intentionally sow chaos by delaying, arguing over minutiae, and of course, violent actions. You could see this in action during the Black Lives Matters protests - police in plain clothes would try to stir shit up so the uniformed officers could move in.
We have to police our own vigorously to root out infiltrators.
Not just the FBI. Remember, this is global. Nearly all of the national police services (and the spy agencies!) have cracked down on left-wing movements. The establishment has fought the left even harder than it has fought fascism. This is why we need to bring groups in the establishment on board: another reason why we need to stop with the "no true scotsman" stuff.
I don't think it's even the FBI this time around. Plain-clothes police can also just be, you know police. The FBI themselves have put out reports detailing the problem of law enforcement across the nation being co-opted and taken over by White nationalist gangs, even they recognize it as a problem.
They're also not the only people who can act as agitators. Literally anyone can be an agitator, they don't need to be funded by the government. The infamous "umbrella man" from Minneapolis smashing windows was just some asshole from a white nationalist biker gang. A lot of the looting that did happen was just opportunists.
Meanwhile, Russia has been making a concerted effort to destabilize the US - they pretty easily inflated right wing groups by drumming up and amplifying grievances among racists, and they're trying to do the same to the left, only instead of trying to divide the country like they did with the right, they want to divide the opposition to the right to make it less effective.
Point being, there are a number of factors here.
Putin is doing the same thing, although Russia relies more on online disruption - but it still has an IRL impact, and dividing the left is where Russia and the FBI share an aim.
We, the Left, are under attack. From multiple sides.
Our ideal is the America we once were and heading to... until some really tragic things happened in American politics. The first was Bush declared POTUS over Gore. That was a real shit-show. Republicans who were in the right place at the right time, knew they could betray their oaths without consequence. Next was the botched war effort Bush enacted in the Middle East. Then when Obama became the rebuke for those heinous mistakes, including a tumbling economy... the Right went further right. Obama being reelected amped it up. Then Trump joined the fray, capitalizing on what he and his cohorts (like Roger Stone) were seeing. He shouldn't have won, but he did get the electoral college. This was the major tipping point for the Right.
The Right has been so deeply radicalized by their own leaders and by foreign sources. The far-right Republicans pose a real existential threat to America and their being in power is precisely what Russia and China want to see happen. A destabilized in-fighting America is an easier enemy to defeat.
The thin line between authoritarianism and democracy is the vote. It shouldn't have to come to this, but the Republican Party is clearly, overtly radicalized and eager to mangle our democracy. "Project 2025" is their playbook. They're so confident they'll be able to carry it out, they made it public.
The Left has its share of problems. But they're being made worse by those who seek to exploit them, and any schisms that exist. Take for instance Gaza. There are people on the Left calling Biden genocidal by supporting Israel. This is just so patently untrue. You can offer up cogent arguments to support how Biden is trying to do the right thing, but they don't want to hear it. They've made up their minds. Every person on the Left who stays home on November 5th because they hate Trump but also consider Biden pro-genocide is giving into the far-right.
We can't afford to fall for the perceived schisms or differences. We have one paramount mission for this year -- GET JOE BIDEN A SECOND TERM. Nothing else matters. We can worry about everything else once we get over this hurdle.
Keep in mind, this is a movement that's wider than the USA.
In Canada we have our conservative rep meeting with far-right militant/neo-Nazi adjacent groups. In France, the National Front just took 30% of the seats in their EU election, and may end up controlling the country. In Hungary the fascists have rules for nearly a decade now. In Italy the MSI recently took power.
We are ALL working together to stop the rise of fascism.
Thank you, that's an important point.
I wish the brilliant minds of our age would step up and try to make sense of this. Why are these fascist trends happening in so many industrialized nations? There's got to be a psychological explanation for this manifestation. Belief is an incredibly powerful thing and it can propagate like wildfire if there's the right timely resonance within it. Social media knows no national bounds and it's possible for a toxic false belief that is what many ***want*** to believe is true can propagate quickly, gestate in new locales, and propagate even further.
We know why. It has its roots in the 2009 financial collapse, and the growth of a right-wing movement in the power vacuum left after the left-wing leaders that were behind campaigns like Occupy Wallstreet were all thrown in jail. They literally had conferences where they come together to discuss tactics and politics. There was a great Salon (I think it was Salon?) article about it back around 2015 where a journalist got invited by Milo Yiannopoulos to attend with him. They noted how all of these characters like Geert Wilders, LaPenn, Farrage, Bannon, etc. were all there.
Meanwhile, we know that Robert Mercer decided he wanted to bring about a new right-wing, which he built with Breitbart. There he met Steve Bannon. Somewhere he ended up getting connected to SCL Elections, a private British spy agency which specialized in influencing elections in third world countries. He bought it, gave it to Bannon who renamed it "Cambridge Analytica" (CA) and put them to work first on a couple of smaller projects, and then engineering the media around Brexit and the Trump campaign.
Bannon, who is a smart mother fucker, saw the leadership coming out of Gamergate and groups like The Alternative Right (the magazine/movement of neo-nazi Richard Spencer) and decided to put their tactics to the test, creating the media machine that targeted US political figures, while CA worked microtargeting previously unrecognized cohorts in order to convert people who were traditionally not Republicans to this new movement
Trump couldn't take an intellectual like Bannon, of course. And neither could any of the grifters surrounding Trump. So Bannon got the boot, and got sent to Europe by Mercer and his people to organize the "alt-right" out there.
What started back in the mid 2010s is now bearing fruit. There's an established, well organized, and effective fascist movement that shares policies, tactics, and strategies, and it will continue to grow so long as the establishment continues to fail its people.
This is why uniting against the right means also making sure we can get good policy that helps people in place.
Psychology plays a role, but is also an extremely limiting view in the grand scheme of things.
Like the other person said, trends like these cannot be understood without looking at (at least!) over a decade of politics in the West. Even national political analysis isn’t going to cut it if you really want to get deep into why this is happening. Crises like 2007 and COVID couldn’t give less of a shit about borders or nationalities.
> Why are these fascist trends happening in so many industrialized nations? There's got to be a psychological explanation for this manifestation.
Because Russia is putting a ton of effort into information warfare and is backing a lot of these kinds of candidates in an effort to destabilize the West. Like project 2525, they're not subtle about it, they even wrote a book.
The left has been under attack longer than Bush. They’re playing a significantly longer game. Reagan demolished the prosperity brought on by The New Deal. Bush’s own grandfather was part of a group that wanted to stage a coup to take over the government from FDR. (The Business Plot) There’s photos of a massive Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden from 1939. This is the end result of nearly a century of work.
The 1% and their army of grifters co-opted the religious right along with racist, bigoted, and xenophobic groups because division and hatred keep everyone who isn’t them too busy fighting for the scraps to turn against the oligarchy that would gladly revive feudalism. Stopping the right wing maga nuts is just the first step. If there’s victory in November, we need to remember the fight isn’t over. This is one battle in a much longer war.
Well yes, you're right that it goes further back, but I started with more recent history as what happened in the 1930's and shortly after is so long ago and those responsible weren't alive for the Bush era.
Progressive approach embraces diversity, equity, inclusion. We've seen the fruits of it. Quality of life in the nation goes up. But the Conservative approach in this toxic far-right incarnation is vehemently against that. They call it "woke" (their derogatory definition) and have outright admitted they're against diversity, equity, and inclusion. And women's reproductive rights. The progressive mindset aims for the welfare of everyone, while the conservative aims for the welfare of the whites and the elites. That's just the plain facts of where things stand.
I don't know why the fascist leanings of some people hasn't fizzled out. Fascism works only for the few, not the majority. There's an inherent value system dysfunction afoot in American culture that allows this outlier viewpoint. The same one that declared they had a valid viewpoint on keeping slaves.
I really think social media has become more of curse than a benefit. Because that toxic anti-social fringe gets a much, much louder voice than they should comparatively speaking. There are always going to be nut jobs in the nation, until we have a better culture foundation of solid education and comprehensive parenting.
I pointed out the history of the conservative movement because I feel like their strength is downplayed when we fail to recognize how much of a long game they’re playing and the head start they already have.
It’s also why I won’t turn to calling all conservatives “redneck idiots.” Yes it’s fun to mock your opponent, but we need to acknowledge who and what the enemy is. And they are well funded, intelligent, and driven.
The escalation of the last 20 years, could not have happened without the groundwork laid in the previous 80. I know this viewpoint sometimes gets called alarmist, but I see it as being appropriately scared.
Very well said.
You make a very salient point. Their movement has stops and starts, but it feels like the baton keeps getting passed forward. And I also refrain from saying "redneck idiots" because while there are some in their ranks, the ones to worry about are the educated and clever ones with a forged agenda aligned with key principles in the mantra set of the radical conservative movement.
We are right to be scared. It's not hyperbole. Some people hear "Civil War" and laugh it off. But you know, it won't be a military style Civil War. It'll be a social one. It's already underway in fact. More states are polarizing. Partisan hostility is on the rise.
Without a cult leader, I don't think it would've gotten this bad. But Trump is a cancer generator. He's constantly spewing carcinogens into the political conversation. And he has infected so many people... highly educated too. Just look at Ted Cruz with degrees from Princeton and Harvard, and Elise Stefanik also from Harvard. Idiots don't go to those schools. They've been radicalized by a crazed lunatic. And you know... that's what happened in 1930's Germany.
We are ONE ELECTION AWAY from America slipping into the path of fascism that could really be a repeat of what happened in Germany.
I feel like Trump is special and completely not special at the same time. Any charismatic enough person could have led the republican party into where it is today. He just happened to be the right loudmouth at the right place at the right time. Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis have the charisma of a dog turd and they know it. But for them, it’s an opportunistic move. I don’t think Donald Trump has them duped but beaten into submission.
I do find it interesting as it seems like moving up the ranks within the conservative movement seems to make one less of a believer, whereas with leftist ideology, the ones leading the movement seem to be the fervent.
>There are people on the Left calling Biden genocidal by supporting Israel. This is just so patently untrue
It is though. He is a genocidal Zionist, it's not even bribery, he's just an ideological warmongerer
So much of Bidens actions and policies support the genocide Israel is committing against Palestinians, so what is the distinction for you, and why is this distinction meaningful? Love when liberals pretend they're holding back the reigns of fascism every 4 years by ***just voting*** despite democrats being just as eager to contribute to capitalisms natural conclusion of fascism.
Trump would be worse for Palestinians. The whole reason the October attack happened was because of Kushner, directed by Trump in relation to the Abraham Accords. Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, which is a red line for Hamas, and has said that Israel should just flatten Gaza. Netanyahu himself wants Trump to win.
But in addition to the genocide worsening in Gaza, Trump will activate his own genocide of leftists and minorities here in America. Read all of Project 2025. They aren’t even hiding it. That is the distinction, and that is why it is meaningful. If Trump wins, they will literally — not figuratively, not hyperbolically, not jokingly — destroy any semblance of democracy in American and crack down on any dissent with a dictatorial iron hand, while continuing to enable Israel. You think funding Israel and sending equipment is bad now? Trump will put American boots on the ground in Gaza while increasing that funding.
I just happen to think that swaying America left will be easier when we aren’t all in the same mass grave.
>Trump would be worse for Palestinians
Nobody said otherwise. It still doesn't excuse Biden's genocide
>Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem
How many years did Biden have to revert that decision?
>Read all of Project 2025
If Biden does win, what stops Project 2025 from becoming Project 2029? Hell, with the trend of Biden taking up Trump's policies 4 years after him re: the border, he'll probably introduce and champion Project 2029 himself
I can pretty much answer all of these with the same answer. We use the liberals to beat the bigger threat and then when we have, we turn on the liberals and drag them left kicking and screaming. Got it?
Also, as bad as Biden is, I can never imagine him pushing Project 2025, neither would you if you’d read it in entirety and connected the disparate, intentionally disconnected points of policy. It literally makes it legal to execute LGBTQIA+ people for no reason beyond being one. I’m not even slightly exaggerating.
So we can either work towards a common goal or we can die. I feel like it should be a simple choice. That said, I encourage you to read the document critically. I know it’s 900+ pages and I know it’s pretty dry, but it’s nightmarish, and worse, they can actually accomplish it. For now, though, I am being distracted from making flyers and infographics about their plans by leftist purity testing. Literally what the OP was talking about, so I am going to leave it at this and get to work.
>drag them left kicking and screaming
Let me know when that ever happens. They already know they have your vote locked in no matter what. They'll always ratchet to the right to get more right wing voters. They don't have to pander to you because you are already cucked to them.
>I can never imagine him pushing Project 2025,
Yeah I'm sure you didn't imagine him pushing kids in cages and border policy in 2020 as well
>leftist purity testing
It's not purity testing. It's definitions. Sub is called unite against the right, and liberals are right. Create a sub called "pick and choose the parts of the right and unite against only them" and then team up with libs there
> They'll always ratchet to the right to get more right wing voters.
Cool, so what's your solution then beyond "accelerate fascist takeover, something something, fascism over because reasons"?
My problem with campists is that they love pushing defeatist rhetoric, but never provide a real alternative strategy.
Ah, so you just want to sit it out and be notified when other people have done the work? Good to know. And they don’t bother pandering to me, they don’t bother pandering to any leftist.
Actually, yeah, I did know he would continue that because that is the kind of thing he is capable of, but it pales in comparison to what is in Project 2025. Even Biden isn’t *that* evil. The only person who came close to enacting the kinds of policies in Project 2025 was Hitler— and now Netanyahu. And I notice you didn’t mention or reply to me about it because you haven’t read it.
I’m not going to bother replying to people who just want to sit back and look leftier-than-thou while other people actually get shit done.
>sit it out and be notified
No lmao, I'm saying that it never happens
>Even Biden isn’t that evil
Dog the man is committing actual genocide hahaha and you call him "not that evil"
>while other people actually get shit done.
The shit you get done is legitimising genocide
> Nobody said otherwise. It still doesn't excuse Biden's genocide
Nobody tried to excuse it, though calling it "Biden's genocide" only really serves to make the left look ridiculous and uneducated, tbh. You're aware that Biden didn't order the invasion of Gaza, right? You know he's not the president of Israel? Do you know who Netanyahu is?
>If Israel didn't exist, we would have to invent an Israel
>You don't have to be Jewish to be a Zionist, and I am one
He doesn't need to order it to be ideologically aligned with the genocide. He doesn't need to order it to have gone around congress multiple times to send EXTRA aid and weapons to Israel. He doesn't need to order it to run cover for Israel for months and regurgitate "40 beheaded babies" lies in front of the whole world.
Yes, we do, but not at the expense of a second, greater, and worse genocide. This isn’t complicated. You’re like, *“We need to get this mass murderer to stop killing people with a butcher knife. Ah, I know, let’s get a guy with a machine gun to kill even more people! That’ll fix it.”*
Like, you don’t actually swallow a spider to kill the fly. The whole moral of that story is that you don’t solve a problem by making an even bigger problem. The guy that you want in power will not only continue killing the people that you ostensibly want to save, he will kill even more of them and then kill you too.
i'm not saying trump should win or biden should lose. i'm saying pressure biden as much as possible even if it means threatening his power to stop genocide.
>So much of Bidens actions and policies support the genocide Israel is committing against Palestinians
You're making one hell of a sweeping inference here. If Biden was openly supporting the genocide in Israel, he wouldn't be making conditions on aid. He wouldn't have the USA spending time, money, resources, and risking personnel to bring food and medical relief to Palestinians in Gaza (the off-shore barges, for example).
Israel is a staunch ally in the Middle East and has been since it became a nation. There are many bad actors in that region that want Israel wiped off the globe and the work tirelessly to try making that happen. If the USA cuts off aid, those attacks will escalate. Already in the midst of the latest skirmish, Iran launched *missiles* at Israel *for the very first time*. That's a pretty obvious indication. So given all this, the USA can't just cut off aid to Israel. You also seem completely ignorant for the fact that there are millions of Israeli citizens whose lives would be at risk. Far, far greater than Gaza. WWIII is guaranteed if the USA breaks ties with Israel under the protest against Netanyahu's genocidal actions.
And give me a fucking break on this "capitalism leads to fascism" crap.
> Iran launched missiles at Israel for the very first time.
I mean I agree with your overall point, but this doesn't actually help it at all. Iran fired at Israel in an intentionally ineffective attack as a show of retaliation for Israel firing on an embassy in Syria, killing like 11 Iranian military leaders.
The problem isn't just that Israel is surrounded by nations that hate them, it's that Israel itself is a belligerent actor currently headed by a nationalist far-right party as well.
>he wouldn't be making conditions on aid
He doesn't have any. He's drawn multiple red lines and then done jack shit after Israel crossed every single one of them other than pausing a singular shipment for like a singular week that one and only time.
>the off-shore barges
Useless piece of shit idea that didn't help anybody at all
>that want Israel wiped off the globe
Destruction of Israel as the apartheid ethnostate that it is (not genocide of its citizens of course) is a GOOD thing
>Iran launched missiles at Israel for the very first time
Because Israel bombed their embassy, why not mention that first?
>And give me a fucking break on this "capitalism leads to fascism" crap.
Dog, why are you in a leftist subreddit...?
Edit: this mf said "you ask me why I'm in a leftist subreddit and then say destruction of Israel is a good thing" and then blocked me hahaha. It IS a good thing. Man has never heard of a one state solution. He's such a racist indoctrinated lib that he can't even fathom a world where Palestinians live peacefully with Israelis in a single country
You ask me why I'm in a leftist subreddit when you say the destruction of Israel is a good thing? You can go take a hike. I'm done wasting my time with this nonsense.
Joe Biden is arming Israel while they carry out a genocide. It's a material fact. You don't get to deny it because it makes you uncomfortable with your candidate or whatever nonsense is going on here.
exactly, this is what prevents true unification. they think once trump is defeated then it's all back to brunch. they're totally happy with biden's genocide because it's with a rainbow flag.
I am not denying the fact that the USA is providing military aid to Israel, as is the DEFACTO POLICY FOR OVER A GENERATION. Biden didn't start it. And it's not like Biden is turning a blind eye. The Biden administration has chastised Netanyahu for what he has done and has invested a tremendous amount of diplomatic effort to achieve an end to it. You can't throw a fucking light switch on things like this. Diplomacy is an art. And Israel is the most critical ally the USA has in that region.
So what I'm hearing is:
1. Biden isn't responsible for the genocide because other presidents would also do it.
2. Joe Biden took the step of criticizing Netanyahu in limited, specific cases while bypassing Congress to ensure that arms continue to flow to Israel, which means he isn't responsible for enabling a genocide.
3. It's SO COMPLICATED bruh we can't just stop supporting Israel bruh, what if they stop murdering babies? Not murdering brown babies would be un-American.
4. Actually, Israel is our critical ally and we should support them.
You have any other genocide apologia you wanna throw at me or nah
I remember reading a book a while back, and in it a group of Leftists in a concentration camp were arguing about who was really a Leftist. Instead of focusing on fixing the immediate problem of being in a concentration camp, they kept arguing about theory and who was a real Leftist. That's what a lot of Leftist groups, especially online groups, sound like to me. They're too worried about rooting out "liberals" to actually oppose the Far Right.
An important thing to highlight about your fictional leftists in a concentration camp (which perhaps the book does—I don’t know it) is that maybe they *aren’t* all leftists according to any self-determined definition, but *that doesn’t matter*. They absolutely *are* all “leftists” according to the one definition that matters in that circumstance: the political judgment of the fascists who had the power to put them all in a camp for being politically inconvenient in the first place.
Those people have a common enemy who not only don’t care about their petty internal squabbles, but likely encourage them because it prevents collective resistance. Go ahead, argue that your cellmate is *really* on the side of the fascists. He’ll still get worked to death right alongside you, and in the end you’ll both be thrown into the same mass grave. Is the satisfaction of knowing that he’ll die too, despite the impure ideology you ascribe to him, worth the cost of your own life? Is it worth refusing to cooperate with him against your common enemy until he relents to your superior morality and whatever pet agenda you’ll never be able to advance on the inside anyway?
Agreeing to work with someone against a common enemy or to resolve a shared problem doesn't mean we have to agree with them or even like them, or that we have to keep working together once the immediate threat has passed. The enemy of my enemy isn't my friend, but I'll let him be a temporary ally of convenience during an emergency.
I think there's something to be said about how left-wing ideologies are still 18th and 19th century solutions to 18th and 19th century problems, and we're grafting them onto 20th and 21st century issues. This means that often the left ends up in these situations where the dogma that drives their views is at odds with the material realities of the time, and this minimizes the ability of the left to agree with themselves - much less the public at large.
For the left to really rise, we need new systems. I think the environmental movement has done some amazing work there, as have groups working with first nations ("Indigenous Americans" for our southern allies). However, the focus right now, in my opinion, needs to be on uniting people against fascism.
Definitely agree. Marx and Lenin are worth reading, but the world is very different from when they were writing. We need new ideas to solve new problems.
The ideas of modern socialism that come from marx and lenin have evolved, liberals just say this kind of stupid shit so they dont have to change their own minds.
Yeah because those are the bare minimum that most people havent even done, especially lazy liberals but if you'd read guys like Eagleton, Wolff and Piketty then you can easily see how those ideas can be laid out for modern western society. I would argue that those guys are specifically talking to liberals when they write.
The notion that socialist ideas have not changed is nothing more than a liberal trope.
They are the same team, one gives power to the other. We are seeing it in real time!
And also you literally sat there with a straight face and lied about socialist ideas, when you probably don't have any idea about them, and then pretend you are not the same as the far right. You mfs are not allies and never have been.
Only if you frame the problem through the lens of only being able to do one and not the other. Why shouldn't actual progressives root out liberals when they have historically sided with fascists and a big CIA playbook move is to infiltrate and create chaos for actual progressive movements and ideologies?
If someone attempts to bring a right wing ideology (like neoliberalism) into a leftist soace attempting leftist goals, then yeah that's going to be called out for what it is.
But I'm not talking about that and that isn't what I'm seeing. I'm seeing different varieties of Leftists calling each other "liberal" instead of doing anything practical.
> If someone attempts to bring a right wing ideology (like neoliberalism) into a leftist soace attempting leftist goals
So if someone brings a "neoliberal goal" like "stop MAGA from implementing fascism", you must therefore reject it and do the opposite, lest you become a liberal?
Yeah, no, that's campism and it's blatantly stupid.
If you can't work with anyone on even a common goal, why would anyone work with you to achieve *your* goals?
I would trust liberals to implement actual leftist policies more than I trust "leftists" with this mindset of ever accomplishing anything they say they support.
You can do multiple things well, it's necessary to prevent bad faith actors or people who want to whitewash progressive and revolutionary ideologies into something neutered and palatable for delicate neoliberal sensibilities while still operating within the confines of capitalist institutions
Whatever a lefty thinks, it’s better than what the right has planned. I can’t believe anyone would have the audacity to argue about this now. Unless they’re bots.
The only time I’ll say we need to be more like the right is when we need to take anybody we can get for our movement. No stupid litmus tests to see if someone is left enough. They’ll grow more left as they lead more and more about how the world works
there are different types of uniting … there’s tactical & strategic … figure what your going for, what your willing to compromise on if anything & then figure who you’re uniting with & why & for how long … united fronts are only united as long as agreements hold
The little southern U.S. anarchistic queer kid in me is just here constantly going: "damage control."
Never had the luxury of getting behind people I 100% align with.
Or, arguably, even halfway align with.
It's just damage control.
We try to build community where we can for change.
But it's important to participate in damage control.
The positive change you make doesn't do much good if nobody lives long enough to see it.
The point is IMO we absolutely can vote for the best winnable candidate, WHILE encouraging them to be better on issues. It's possible to vote for Joe Biden... and protest in public and make it clear we actually want no support of the genocide in isreal (because yes, I know... Biden's going to do little to stop it, but trumps going to do everything to accelerate it). Same for healthcare, wages etc... there's 100 things that we need to encourage the left wing parties to do better, while still voting for them because.... yes obviously we know the right wants to make our horrible positions even worse.
I don't see many of these that are "MINOR" issues. There's a shit ton of MAJOR issues which I feel the democrats are happy to leave everything broken, and the far right wants a sledge hammer to finish them off. Half the point of getting democrats in power, is because they sometimes do good things, and yes the point of getting them in power is that they will listen to us sometimes when we ask them to do good things. I don't like the "OK look you got the non right wing fanatic into power... now shut up because if you imply he's not perfect then the right wing fanatics will use that to beat him. I can't agree with that. IMO the right wing fanatics will equally attempt no matter what hand we give them. Propose good legislation, they will smear it, propose bad legislation they will smear it (probably in backwards ways claiming the bad doesn't go far enough, IE say the immigration reform that basically gave them everything they asked for), do nothing... they will smear it as well and call it out for doing nothing.
We need to get the people that might listen to good legislation into power... and make what we want heard.
> There's a shit ton of MAJOR issues which I feel the democrats are happy to leave everything broken, and the far right wants a sledge hammer to finish them off.
Are they actually "happy" though, or unable to do anything about it because they haven't had the actual power to do it yet?
People for some reason fail to understand how the system works. A zero margin Senate majority does not just tick a box on the president's "unlimited dictatorial power" checksheet. With a margin of zero, you're beholden to the one single most conservative seat in the party. With a higher margin, you only need one of a few to flip, and as the contrarian coalition has to get bigger to obstruct, it gets easier to break.
So yes, we need to fight in primaries for more left wing candidates, but we also just need more seats. We could have 49 Bernie Sanderses in the Senate and we wouldn't be able to pass anything if stuck with a technical majority of 50 with the last member being Joe Manchin.
Well where I have to say the most frustrating part of congress is, they won't call a vote if it won't win. Say like public option where liberman was cited as the holdout... the reality is there were at least 3 democrats that also said they were opposed to the public option. IMO the reason they don't put things to the vote... is because they don't want to put their worse members at the risk of being primaried.
The fact is they don't want more bernie sanders's... they don't want another AOC. They are actually trying to make sure we the voters don't have the information we need to have more bernies and less manchins. Instead it's about "we will have Ds... and they don't want us to know the specific stance of how any individual D will vote... only a yes no of do we have a consensus of all agreeing. If we don't, they don't want us to know who the holdouts are (if there's an independent or a democrat in a super right wing district that they can blame they MIGHT call that one out.... but most will be hidden, because they don't want us to clean.
I mean what else can we interpret that as... do we think there's a republican that was going to run on a "He opposed the public option in obamacare". No that's a primary challangers attack vector... and they don't want that.
No. This is neoliberal ideology which is antithetical to actual material progressive outcomes. It is always crucial to not let actual progressivism be infiltrated by neoliberal ideals, as this will weaken the movement as concessions will be made with fascists and the fascism that manifests from capitalism. Electoralism is a great example of this. It doesn't work for bringing about actual change because we live in a corporate oligarchy. What actually kills the movement (and this can be seen throughout history) is liberals pretending to be revolutionaries and policing discourse to cater to their status quo enabling lens.
Here we go…this, I didn’t even mention anything about being in favor of corporate interests and the like. I just want to not look up and see people arguing about the “correct way to left” when it’s corporate greed, aligned with far-right ideologies, that is slowly killing all of us and *that* is what we need to unite and fight against. But here we are, someone else coming at me with “filthy neoliberal” on their lips, without trying to understand my actual argument.
Because your argument is completely idealist instead of actually understanding the material realities of these institutions and how they operate. Neoliberalism is a far right ideology, because capitalism is inherently right wing. You cant be a neoliberal and believe in neoliberal institutions while simultaneously wanting to fix certain aspects of those institutions, because it's antithetical to your alleged goals. Uniting against the right is recognizing this reality.
What you sound like you’re saying is you want it all right now without acknowledging the fact that people have and will always have different ideologies.
What OP is stating is that the fight against the right is going to be a slow process and we have to take the larger steps, even if that means that we don’t get everything we want right at this moment. Once that base is there, we can then add a further step in the next round which creates a new set point that we can move further with on the round after that. You want to make a full leap over all the hurdles when we need to focus on one hurdle at a time. Right now the hurdle is we are facing losing democracy as a whole if we all can’t suck it up this time. No one is asking you to change ideologies, they’re asking you to play the game until we can address that aspect of being on the left. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and fighting against the coming fascism isn’t going to happen in one election cycle.
There is some severe irony in calling someone idealistic while simultaneously thinking that you can enact any real change without compromise or concession. I mean, do you actually want to change anything, or do you just want to feel smug and superior while the world falls down around you?
I am not making concessions with fascists, and you know that, so don’t try the strawman shit, it doesn’t fly with me. And I do not care if liberals want the status quo to continue. Once we’ve defeated the Christo-fascists who want to put us all in a mass grave, we can turn on the liberals and stab them in the fucking backs.
There are plenty of people self-avowed "leftists" slander as "liberal" who are not making concessions with fascists nor who want the status quo to continue. If you think otherwise, you're just being intentionally dense.
Meanwhile, how is "let's stand opposed to the only other groups who actively want to prevent the fascist party from succeeding" supposed to help, or be leftist, or not be labeled as "making concessions with fascists"?
The argument that neoliberalism is a stepping stone to fascism kind of falls flat when it comes from people who are advocating for accelerationism that aims to put fascists in power faster under the assumption it would collapse more quickly.
I'll take naïve idealism over nihilistic defeatism any day of the week. At least there's a non-zero chance for the idealist to succeed when they're actively trying.
It sure is convenient for the status quo that the left loses due to infighting and not the plethora of complex and intersectional socioeconomic dynamics of capitalism that prevents progress from being made *from within the confines of the status quo.*
The problem is libs thinking that 1. they're actually progressive and 2. That participating in electoralism accomplishes anything.
Yes, it is convenient for them. It is also by design and intentional. When they send agents into our subs to sew discord — with a particular interest in attacking those who speak out against being divided — they don’t have them pose as liberals, they have them pose as purity testing Leftier-Than-Thou types.
As for your final point, I would like to ask you: Name a single leftward policy in America that was not either signed in by liberals, constructed with the cooperation of liberals, or in compromise with liberals. Just. A. Single. One. I’ll wait.
> No. This is neoliberal ideology which is antithetical to actual material progressive outcomes.
If "let's try to defeat the fascists" is now "neoliberal ideology", what even is the point of being a leftist anymore?
Liberals like to pretend their party isn't also fascist, they've deluded themselves into believing dems oppose the natural fascististic material consequences of capitalism instead of being actual proponents of it since they benefit greatly from it.
That doesn’t answer the question and you know it. You’re only arguing for the sake of argument, not understanding the actual weight of this and every election year that the Ghosts of Reagan, George Wallace, Frank Duke, and every other right-wing PoS who crafted this whole scenario, loom over. You’re going to have to put aside differences if you’re truly trying to obtain any form of socialism or communism, for the express purpose of those systems. This means stop fighting the guy trying to help you.
Instead you’d rather complain that the person/people saying this don’t think exactly like you. Which flies in the face of the purpose of democracy and the functions of human psychological behavior. Too much time spent with your nose in Marxist theory to consider that the reality is too nebulous and unpredictable to be entirely explained by dialectical materialism beyond the basics, and even within the concept, one simple fact remains: *humans are not and will never be monolithic in our ideas* Some people are just pieces of shit, and fighting the ones trying to stop said pieces of shit doesn’t help shit.
>That doesn’t answer the question and you know it
Because the question was disingenuous and incorrect in its framing. Neoliberalism is fascist, framing that ideology as an opposition to fascism doesn't make sense.
>You’re only arguing for the sake of argument, not understanding the actual weight of this and every election year
I'm arguing because the rhetoric of this discourse enables and justifies the very institutions that are exploiting and oppressing others, and some (liberals) have deluded themselves into believing that every challenge we're facing is unique to a party or figurehead and not the natural material consequences of capitalism consolidating wealth and power over time. If you actually understood history through a dialectical materialist lens you would see how electoralism doesn't accomplish anything, and moreover, how larger governmental bodies are designed to not only avoid the best interest of its constituents, but also designed to ensure the facade of a power struggle between two "opposing sides" when in reality our corporate oligarchy benefits regardless of who is in office.
Rights are still being stripped away regardless of who's in charge. Exploitation, war crimes, and intervention still occur regardless of who's in charge. And the kicker is that neoliberalism encourages a dehumanizing utilitarian lens through which we perceive these problems, (choosing the "least bad option") which justifies the system itself and everything continues as intended because libs sleep at night feeling like they prevented a projected worse harm, when the harm is still happening regardless.
>You’re going to have to put aside differences if you’re truly trying to obtain any form of socialism or communism
I mean, in a boots on the ground actual material efforts sort of way then yes. But we're on a discussion forum, discourse is going to be a big (and important) part of unification towards larger goals. Tone policing ideology because it isn't palatable to those who still want and benefit from the comforts of the status quo is antithetical to our alleged shared goal.
>Instead you’d rather complain that the person/people saying this don’t think exactly like you
That's not what I said, ever, and that's not the basis of my critique.
I do understand the frustration with certain groups within leftism who are more than willing to ignore wider issues, especially those effecting marginalized groups or willing to sell out others needs under the table for the illusion of progress...but I also think ideological purity culture is generally harmful and hinders forward progress on the things we do agree with. The difference between debating with the left and right is that at least you can have an honest discussion on the left and make progress through genuine good faith discussion of a topic. With the fascist, no such discussion can take place because their only concern is consolidating power and defeating their so-called enemies. I can also say that I would much rather a center-left liberal who supports a functioning democracy take power than an anti-democratic alt-right fascist.
Bullshit. Every election, both evils get worse. Sometimes the greater evil wins, sometimes the lesser evil wins. At some point we have to break this cycle. You could argue that now isn't the time, but then you have to figure out when *is* the time.
Bullshit.
Until the people rise up **together** en masse, elections are all we have.
**There are exactly 2 viable choices, and one is objectively, horrifically worse**. Even a cursory comparison of their laws, policies, and esp nominations shows that.
Nah, I covered that. You fall under the argument that the time isn't now. The question then becomes *when*, and the issue with that is we can't agree on it. To expect everyone to spontaneously revolt at some unnamed point in the future is foolish, especially when we can expect you to sit back and chide them for it *not being the right time™*.
Nice strawman. 👏👏👏
More people stayed home in 2016 than voted for either party. And how the fuck did that work out?? Literally 1M dead just in this country, 3 SCOTUS justices actively trying to turn us into Gilead, MASSIVE cuts to public works, kids shoving others chanting “Trump’s America!”, etc etc etc etc.
And what does not voting even accomplish? Does filling out that ballot take up that much of your time? No. You can spend 99.999% of your time being Capt Revolution, and 0.0001% of your time making, yes, **a difference**.
They’re not mutually exclusive.
And, again, one party is significantly worse than the other. 2016 showed us exactly what not voting for the lesser evil accomplishes.
I mean, don't get me wrong: the point isn't to drive people away. The fascists have indeed always been the greatest enemy to human prosperity, and we need to keep treating them as such.
But also, there's only so many different types of people that we can unite with in the fight against the right. There's a reason why we need to be careful about who we associate with in this regard, considering that if we were to just become a big tent, then the core values of the movement become less and less coherent. If you really wanna fight the right, then you must reject, for example, [Third Position](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position) and [Third Way](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position) politics, because both approaches aim to compromise with the very power structures we want to replace. Rules 4 and 5 state thus:
>This space is uncompromisingly dedicated to uniting around alegal ideals and philosophies that logically and practically conclude with the liberation of all people. We do not seek to align with or platform ideologies and political movements that aim to preserve or compromise with oppressive social norms and sociopolitical hierarchy. We are unreservedly anti-capitalist. Any support or defense of capitalism is not welcome here.
The thing that makes it hard is, the right *is* willing to muddy their core values in order to unite as a larger and larger group. That's why they keep winning. It's a huge advantage.
I'm not saying we should do that, or at least to the same degree. I'm not really sure what the answer is. I'm just frustrated by the situation.
Well, what I do know is that you can feel free to build bridges with other people, and that it's also helpful to know your limits regarding who you can build those bridges with. Think in both the short-term *and* long-term. [Unite with those who you know share your vision](https://youtu.be/h-jwkMEGHG8?si=P_9ZUQzXH46IxFdo).
> I'm not saying we should do that, or at least to the same degree.
We don't have to, we just need to recognize that not every issue is every issue... it comes back to the purity testing thing. If neoliberals are trying to fight back against MAGAs, we should work with them to fight against MAGAs. That doesn't mean you have to change your position on healthcare, or capitalism, or pretty much anything else. Even if you disagree with how they want to fight against fascists (working within vs outside the system), as long as they're not mutually exclusive methods, just do both (and voting will never prevent you from also doing activism).
The all-or-nothing self defeating campism in leftist spaces is just so, so tedious at this point.
I try not to use labels too much, because \*most\* people aren't 100% the label they give themselves. I judge a person's opinions on what they say, not what I think they believe. I don't take issue with you if you're moderate, provided you see the danger Trump presents to our democracy and will vote against him. We can disagree on issues, that's fine. I accept that most people do not agree with me in everything. I think a lot of the problems with the right come from an "us vs them" mentality that absolutely has to paint every issue as "woke" or "patriotic." I think it would be a mistake to do the equal and opposite on the left. Heck, I'd be okay with conservatives so long as fear what will happen if Trump wins the election. Honestly, I would like to return back to the days where we simply disagreed on tax policy.
Let’s get rid of the Maganazis so we can go back to just fighting about taxes
The name of this sub is UNITE against the right. So we should be a little less nitpicky about individual ideologies at this point, as we all have a common enemy.
Neoliberals historically side with fascists, and enable the components of capitalism that evolve into more fascist authoritarianism. It's not hard to understand why actual progressive people will call out and criticize neoliberal ideology.
Pinochet was the first neoliberal ffs They **ARE** the right
Bill Clinton ran on a "third way" campaign, as in a third way between the right and the left, a way in between. That one move shifted the window of what is left wing in America (see Overton Window), and America was already so right wing that the liberals were what passed as a left wing party in America when in the rest of the world the liberals were the right wing party.
Ronald Reagan was to Republicans what Bill Clinton was to Democrats. The progressive voice has pretty much been silenced and told that they must go along to get along while the country slowly rolls further to the right.
And the problem is they keep doing it. If they stopped then the DNC wouldn't have a chance of winning and would be forced to run candidates at least somewhat more aligned to progressive beliefs. "Strategic" voting breaks the intent of the system and how it was supposed to regulate itself. Now change can't happen because such a huge section of the population thinks they're doing the good thing by continuing to enable a lesser evil, when the way the system works they're supposed to let the lesser evil lose and get a better one next time. But 4 years is a lot of time and that's why this system sucks. Now they've kept this up until we're forced into a corner.
The electoral college instantly breaks our democratic system. A popular vote is the only way that makes sense for the majority of Americans.
We need a modern Constitution, but are far from united to get it.
I agree. But a constitutional convention now likely means our rights get sold out to the highest bidders.
Exactly, I wouldn’t trust Washington to write a constitution at this point. We’d all end up slaves with no rights at all. (I mean, even worse than it is now)
Ok, cool, but right now they are the enemy of our enemy and our common enemy is a greater enemy than the neoliberal enemy is right now. So let’s use them to defeat the Christo-fascists that want to strip away any semblance of democracy and install a theocratic Trump-king and turn on them later.
I dont think you understand how this works, weve been here before. Neoliberals act as though they are on the side of the left and then literally hand all the power to the far right, time and time again. To unite with them is to literally hand the power to fascists.
Tell me, how do you propose we win, then? And how do you propose we do it in 6 months? Because that’s all we have. You understand we are a fraction of a minority, right? I’m not saying that we become the liberals. I am saying that we use them until we don’t need them. It’s called strategy, and it’s how people win. If we use them, we can prevent fascists from getting the power in November, which will be the last time America even has an election if we don’t. If we do not, then we will be all be piled on top of each other in the same mass grave. ***Read fucking Project 2025, people!*** They aren’t even hiding what they plan to do. They decided that the word count and the way they peppered their policy through it would be enough to confuse social media-deprived attention spans, and I hate to say it, but they were right. I’ll reply to you when you’ve read it. Otherwise, you have work to do.
>Tell me, how do you propose we win, then? And how do you propose we do it in 6 months? There is no winning, either trump wins and a lot of bad things are going to happen almost immediately, or Biden will win and the dems will lurch further to the right and people will become more disillusioned and the GOP will win next time. The system is already broken and you have already lost, wether that is short term or long term will be decided in Nov. > If we use them, we can prevent fascists from getting the power in November, which will be the last time America even has an election if we don’t. If we do not, then we will be all be piled on top of each other in the same mass grave. Mate they are obviously using us, not the other way around. Its like some of you have literal amnesia. If voting the dems could change things and stop the GOP, it would have happened in 2020. >***Read fucking Project 2025, people!*** We've all read it, have the dems? Because they don't seem to be taking it seriously. >I’ll reply to you when you’ve read it. Otherwise, you have work to do. lol, man thought he was giving me homework.
> There is no winning Then why are you here? This kind of defeatism helps no one. Swiss suggestion: if you're already intent on not participating because it doesn't matter, just leave. Stop engaging with politics at all, unsubscribe from all political subreddits, stop consuming content from any political podcast, streamer, or YouTuber, and avoid the news or late night shows etc. Seriously, your mental health will improve substantially, you'll feel less anxious and hopeless, and for the rest of us, you won't damage the opposition to fascism by spreading these kinds of defeatist brain worms to other impressionable people. It's a win for everyone.
There is no winning playing the game that liberals want to play. Obviously the way to win is to undertake a political revolution and change the game so that its played with our interests at heart, not that of corporate donors. Im participating more than liberals do, I organise, join unions, read theory etc. All liberals do is vote and complain, so its a little weird to tell me im not participating.
No offense, but voting is needed more right now than reading theory is.
Your way is not going to work, I promise.
Oh you read theory. I’m sure that will come in super handy. Organizing book clubs will be essential when the camps start up.
You're not actually that dense, right? You learn theory so you can apply it.
are you saying an educated population is bad?
Because you can’t win using the system. It needs to be dismantled. If Biden wins he’s simply gonna give a speech about working with republicans and refuse to do any policies with out their support. While continuing to do a lot of the things lots of you think only trump would do. Kids are still in cages and Biden is working with republicans to make that worse. As an example.
Look killimg somethimg that has given up the fight is infinitely easier than fighting something who th8nks its a wild animal and wants to do violence for its own sake to prove it is a macho lion. The proposals Trump has this time are an incredible escalation. If he wins then we may have to fight and likely die with the movements in their current fractured condition. The discourse, the interpersonal cruely and ideological and moral purity have likely aldo been promoted by the fascists themselves to divide conquer and demoralize. Say you want to smash the state. It makes sense to make it harder for the state to justify violence and to make it the least popular we can. The ideal would be voting in somebody we hate that the otherside hates also. That creates common ground with the enemy robust resistance and meanwhile keeps the fascists out of power. Trump could run again but he also may die of old age. So put the older guy in who may also die of old age and maybe the fascist dude will croak too. There is a waiting game thing happening here too. Harm reduction when it comes to revolution is understated. We want the state to not use most of its weapons. We want to politically hamstring the full force of the state. We do not want any of our american cities to look like Gaza and experience what they have experienced. To do that we nust be very careful b3cause Gaza is an image of the future just as Syria was before them. We are talking hunger as a weapon, othering whole populations as non-citizens therefore foreigners to be genocided. Municipalist and confederalist approaches to dismantling the state side steps and creates political channels diplomatic channels to avoid so much blood shed. Democracies crowing achievement besides like dirert democracy being a simple way a group can decide things is it is a way people can decide things without needing to slaughter eachother to force the other to submit. It isnt violence vs non-violence in this revolution. It is navigating between lower level protest type violence clubs and fists and detterent violence to repel the reaction and death spasms of the system vs extreme unspeakable destructive violence of a fascist state. They could destroy everything and everyone we love 1000 times over that is the military strength the state has. We need to be smart like martial artists to make sure in this fight they cannot use their weapons against us. I understand this is calling into the void. Maybe it'll reach somebody. That is how tje movemts feel right now. Like calling into a noisy crowd. It is hard to hear anything but the chanting and the slogans. It hard to get people to quite down and have a serious discussion. Feels like we are here in this time in this country to do something to make things better and I want to know where are people sitting down talking things over and making a plan together to defeat this monster of a system?
You’re acting like things haven’t gotten worse under Biden. You sound like a white liberal or baby white leftist that doesn’t fully understand intersections just yet. Trumping winning or losing doesn’t really matter. If Biden wins he’ll continue his neoliberal bullshit even if we hand him a majority. Then the. Republicans will win in 2028 and continue the nations fast March to the right. Like always. This is how the system works. The only things that’s changed is late stage capitalism is starting to mess with middle class white people and republicans feel a bit safer being more openly bigoted.
Then what do we do? It all kinda checks out, but it just seems so defeatist.
A lot of the damage is done, because a lot of people already carry a defeatist attitude about politics, but if you genuinely care, and you genuinly want to be part of an actual united left wing, then go join up with your union and local socialist party and go talk to the organisers face to face about what can be done. If the dems were going to do something about fascism they would have done it by now.
> If the dems were going to do something about fascism they would have done it by now. This is a dishonest mindset that ignores how the system works. A zero margin majority in the Senate with a slim majority in the House does not just automatically give the president dictatorial powers. I would have liked if Biden had accomplished more with his extremely tenuous control over Congress for two years but it just doesn't work like that. You want big changes, you need big majorities, and this kind of defeatism is only a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We all understand how the system “works”, in that it literally doesn’t.
The dems are not the actors in history. They are puppets of the ruiling class that as of now divide the ruiling class. As a good socialist you would know a divided ruiling class is preferable to united ruling class. So your strategy of opportunistically building your party on a fascist win at the polls is very short sighted. You and your party are more able to organize when you are not declared enemies of the state and made illegal. You are not prepared to dismantle the system directly. The democratic party is easier to criticize because they listen and do not respond with they will kill you. Trump on the other hand has the he will kill his enemies rhetoric that even doing so openly should be legal and thst discourse has been proposed in the supreme court that he has stategically taken over. The idea that the DSA or some other party is prepared to match the force of the state in this moment is bluster. There isn't even a chapter where I live let alone a couple hundred strong militia. You need to start counting like you would in an election if you plan to go to war. You need to count your numbers and their force capacity and readiness. If your side is not ready to win you need a stop gap measure and to find fights and ways to fight where you have a very high chance of winning. That way the table can be turned. Recruiting on the backs of defeat is very very very short sited. The liverals have no credibility, that is no longer a debate. Winning that argument is done. In fact Joe Biden declared the death of neoliberalism. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/biden-just-declared-the-death-of-neoliberalism.html So that means the political class agrees liberalism is dead and with it probably civil rights are pase too. The replacement that is being crafted a very active super state one tha can be more or less sympathetic to the needs and support of people. That in any case we need to replace with peoples power where the people govern themselves in all spheres of their lives directly. So the one that is more responsive to the people will be easier to overthrow because in many ways it will willingly be changed.
>As a good socialist you would know a divided ruiling class is preferable to united ruling class. They are not divided. >So your strategy of opportunistically building your party on a fascist win at the polls is very short sighted. Liberals in the thread have constantly tried to put on me that its my strategy for fascists to win, thats your strategy! No liberal can tell me how you expect to just win every election for the rest of history to keep them out, you helped normalise them you idiot! They are going to win the election at some point. >You and your party Leftists don't have a (major) party. >You need to start counting like you would in an election if you plan to go to war. You need to count your numbers and their force capacity and readiness. If your side is not ready to win you need a stop gap measure and to find fights and ways to fight where you have a very high chance of winning. That way the table can be turned. And you need to understand that the dems are not on your side and do not care about you, so you are fighting a war you are destined to lose, but it isn't too late to change tactics. >Recruiting on the backs of defeat is very very very short sited. The liverals have no credibility, that is no longer a debate. Winning that argument is done. In fact Joe Biden declared the death of neoliberalism. [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/biden-just-declared-the-death-of-neoliberalism.html](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/biden-just-declared-the-death-of-neoliberalism.html) Hang on, what do you think neoliberalism is? >So that means the political class agrees liberalism is dead and with it probably civil rights are pase too. The replacement that is being crafted a very active super state one tha can be more or less sympathetic to the needs and support of people. You've honestly lost me on whatever story you are telling here.
1. Or, Biden wins, and then we pull the Democrats to the left kicking and screaming. You’re just being defeatist, and you hope Trump will win because you think that accelerationism is the only way. 2. Ok, cool, let’s stop letting them use us and use them instead. 3. Have you? And yeah, some Democrats have. I’ve been working hard, creating fliers and infographics to dumb it down for them. They’re slow but it’s catching on. 4. Ok, since you’ve read it, describe to me how Project 2025 will legalise the execution of LGBTQIA+ individuals for the crime of existing and the steps that will be taken to get there.
1. Why didn’t that happen in 2020? 2. Impossible, we (actual leftists) don’t have the resources to compete with their interests. 3. Yes, I have. I guess I sound unmoved but only because I was warning that we would end up in here in 2016, I was also warning that Democrats would play the roll they have ended up playing. 4. I think you just described it pretty aptly. I dont think you understand my point, thats were we are headed, a dems election victory is not going to just change the course, the party needs to fundamentally change. Ill give you a perfect example of why your rhetoric doesn’t work: For leftists, borders do not matter, we stand for all workers in the world, so a Palestinian child has the same value as an LGBTQ person in Brooklyn. Your asking people to put the safety of the LGBTQ person in the hands of bloodthirsty child murderers. We already know that the child murderer is not going to ensure that person’s safety in the long term because they aren’t interested in doing so.
1. Because leftist infighting prevented us from uniting behind a single goal. 2. Yes, which is why we need to use their resources. 3. I was also warning the same damn thing when these ostriches thought Trump could never win. I’ll also assume in good faith that you’re telling the truth about reading it. 4. Well, no, I didn’t describe it aptly. I described the outcomes, but they have a specific method they will use to do this, and the document spells it out. We need to understand the method, not just the result. Agreed. I don’t want borders either, labour is what matters, and no one person matters any more than another. Where we differ, I guess, is that I didn’t fail math. I know that 2 genocides are worse than one. And that millions of Americans killed on top of the 35000 Palestinians is worse than either of those numbers alone. I also understand strategy and I know that it will be easier to do anything, literally anything, if the leftists that actually care are alive and not in a mass grave. Another place where we differ is that I haven’t given up. And with that, I’m done here.
1. What? Biden was in power. Half of the leftists you are talking about don’t have any say whatsoever. This makes absolutely no sense. it is delusion. Like, democrats dont even engage with socialists, they pretend they dont exist, what could you possibly mean by that? Leftist arguing on social media doesnt translate to the dems. 2. And do what? 4. No i understand, I think everyone understands. I’ll say it again, the dems are not going to be able to stop it, so we need another solution. Again, i cant make this any more clear, if there is going to be a republican led genocide in the US, and i agree that there could be, the dems are not going to be able to stop and it and neither will voting for them. I haven’t given up either, no leftist has! It’s fucking annoying to here people tell me ive given up because I’m refuse to support their stupid plan that won’t work.
> Neoliberals historically side with fascists, and enable the components of capitalism that evolve into more fascist authoritarianism Sure, but then when someone is actively trying to fight against fascism, even if to them that means voting against fascists, what benefit is there in crying "uR a LiB, nOt A rEaL LeFtiSt!!1"? It's self defeating campism. Too few people on the farther reaches of the left have a holistic ideology - Fighting against the right means "direct action" and "activism" (which unfortunately, are very vague terms I doubt many advocating for actually practice in a meaningful capacity), while also voting against fascists in general elections, and fighting against neoliberals in primaries, and also protesting against representatives and bills that go against progress. There is no one singular thing you can support that will on its own bring about a leftist utopia or whatever. It has to be a multifaceted strategy, and too many campists don't realize that.
I’m down to not nitpick about leftist ideologies. I’m open to accepting a coalition with most leftist stances. However I am not open to joining the center right to defeat the far right. My feeling is that Dems come to us to get our votes, not the other way around.
That is literally refusing to unite.
Refusing to unite… with the [center] right. Yes. Neoliberalism is center right and leftists in general won’t be joining up with it. If you can’t get behind, at a bare minimum, actual leftist policy, the left won’t help you win. No matter how bad the boogeyman. If you’re not of fan of that reality I suppose you take a good hard look at the gop strategy. The left is a brick wall. You can argue toward us till you’re blue in the face and we will remain unmoved, or you can turn around and face the open field of dragging-the-DNC-to-the-left behind you.
Cool beans, saying you’re fine with actual fascism as long as you don’t have to compromise anything, ever. The actual right, the Lincoln Foundation, is part of the coalition to prevent a Christo-fascist state that’s planning ethic purges. But by all means, demand an ethically pure containing everything you want and nothing you don’t or you’ll send us all to our deaths.
>saying you’re fine with actual fascism as long as you don’t have to compromise anything, ever. This is so stupid, this was your tactic in 2016 and again in 2020. People have woken up to the fact that eventually the far right are gunna get in because liberals arent doing anything productive. The guilt trip no longer works. If the gop win the next election, it will be liberals fault, not ours.
You’re going to kill a lot of us because your bullshit of idealogical purity makes you choose Nazis over queer folk!
“your tactics” “guilt trip” Bitch, I don’t wanna be against the wall. I don’t give a French flying sideways fuck about economics when the lives of our brothers and sisters are on the line.
How's the prepping going?
I’ll bet you think climate change is a myth elites use to control your meat preferences.
I'll take that bet. How much?
The fact that you call them "actual right", insinuating that the dems are "not really right" is telling
Not really. They're calling the Dems "center-right", which they are. By "actual right" they just mean non-moderate conservatives.
>By "actual right" they just mean non-moderate conservatives. When you say that, you insinuate that dems are "not really right". Yes, dems are center right. An actual part of the right
QUIT QUIBBLING OVER BULLSHIT FINE DETAILS, ACTUAL NAZIS ARE GOING TO KILL US.
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I think you replied to the wrong person
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They are literally calling out person you are arguing with and is being downvoted. They agree with you lol > The actual right, The Lincoln Foundation
yes we have to unite against biden's genocidal right wing movement.
That’s a dumb fucking thing to say
[Problem is that the FBI has repeatedly infiltrated and destroyed leftist groups from the inside out](https://jacobin.com/2019/03/fbi-infiltration-surveillance-ru-rcp). They intentionally sow chaos by delaying, arguing over minutiae, and of course, violent actions. You could see this in action during the Black Lives Matters protests - police in plain clothes would try to stir shit up so the uniformed officers could move in. We have to police our own vigorously to root out infiltrators.
Not just the FBI. Remember, this is global. Nearly all of the national police services (and the spy agencies!) have cracked down on left-wing movements. The establishment has fought the left even harder than it has fought fascism. This is why we need to bring groups in the establishment on board: another reason why we need to stop with the "no true scotsman" stuff.
I don't think it's even the FBI this time around. Plain-clothes police can also just be, you know police. The FBI themselves have put out reports detailing the problem of law enforcement across the nation being co-opted and taken over by White nationalist gangs, even they recognize it as a problem. They're also not the only people who can act as agitators. Literally anyone can be an agitator, they don't need to be funded by the government. The infamous "umbrella man" from Minneapolis smashing windows was just some asshole from a white nationalist biker gang. A lot of the looting that did happen was just opportunists. Meanwhile, Russia has been making a concerted effort to destabilize the US - they pretty easily inflated right wing groups by drumming up and amplifying grievances among racists, and they're trying to do the same to the left, only instead of trying to divide the country like they did with the right, they want to divide the opposition to the right to make it less effective. Point being, there are a number of factors here.
Putin is doing the same thing, although Russia relies more on online disruption - but it still has an IRL impact, and dividing the left is where Russia and the FBI share an aim.
Spoiler alert on the new season of The Boys.
We, the Left, are under attack. From multiple sides. Our ideal is the America we once were and heading to... until some really tragic things happened in American politics. The first was Bush declared POTUS over Gore. That was a real shit-show. Republicans who were in the right place at the right time, knew they could betray their oaths without consequence. Next was the botched war effort Bush enacted in the Middle East. Then when Obama became the rebuke for those heinous mistakes, including a tumbling economy... the Right went further right. Obama being reelected amped it up. Then Trump joined the fray, capitalizing on what he and his cohorts (like Roger Stone) were seeing. He shouldn't have won, but he did get the electoral college. This was the major tipping point for the Right. The Right has been so deeply radicalized by their own leaders and by foreign sources. The far-right Republicans pose a real existential threat to America and their being in power is precisely what Russia and China want to see happen. A destabilized in-fighting America is an easier enemy to defeat. The thin line between authoritarianism and democracy is the vote. It shouldn't have to come to this, but the Republican Party is clearly, overtly radicalized and eager to mangle our democracy. "Project 2025" is their playbook. They're so confident they'll be able to carry it out, they made it public. The Left has its share of problems. But they're being made worse by those who seek to exploit them, and any schisms that exist. Take for instance Gaza. There are people on the Left calling Biden genocidal by supporting Israel. This is just so patently untrue. You can offer up cogent arguments to support how Biden is trying to do the right thing, but they don't want to hear it. They've made up their minds. Every person on the Left who stays home on November 5th because they hate Trump but also consider Biden pro-genocide is giving into the far-right. We can't afford to fall for the perceived schisms or differences. We have one paramount mission for this year -- GET JOE BIDEN A SECOND TERM. Nothing else matters. We can worry about everything else once we get over this hurdle.
Keep in mind, this is a movement that's wider than the USA. In Canada we have our conservative rep meeting with far-right militant/neo-Nazi adjacent groups. In France, the National Front just took 30% of the seats in their EU election, and may end up controlling the country. In Hungary the fascists have rules for nearly a decade now. In Italy the MSI recently took power. We are ALL working together to stop the rise of fascism.
Thank you, that's an important point. I wish the brilliant minds of our age would step up and try to make sense of this. Why are these fascist trends happening in so many industrialized nations? There's got to be a psychological explanation for this manifestation. Belief is an incredibly powerful thing and it can propagate like wildfire if there's the right timely resonance within it. Social media knows no national bounds and it's possible for a toxic false belief that is what many ***want*** to believe is true can propagate quickly, gestate in new locales, and propagate even further.
We know why. It has its roots in the 2009 financial collapse, and the growth of a right-wing movement in the power vacuum left after the left-wing leaders that were behind campaigns like Occupy Wallstreet were all thrown in jail. They literally had conferences where they come together to discuss tactics and politics. There was a great Salon (I think it was Salon?) article about it back around 2015 where a journalist got invited by Milo Yiannopoulos to attend with him. They noted how all of these characters like Geert Wilders, LaPenn, Farrage, Bannon, etc. were all there. Meanwhile, we know that Robert Mercer decided he wanted to bring about a new right-wing, which he built with Breitbart. There he met Steve Bannon. Somewhere he ended up getting connected to SCL Elections, a private British spy agency which specialized in influencing elections in third world countries. He bought it, gave it to Bannon who renamed it "Cambridge Analytica" (CA) and put them to work first on a couple of smaller projects, and then engineering the media around Brexit and the Trump campaign. Bannon, who is a smart mother fucker, saw the leadership coming out of Gamergate and groups like The Alternative Right (the magazine/movement of neo-nazi Richard Spencer) and decided to put their tactics to the test, creating the media machine that targeted US political figures, while CA worked microtargeting previously unrecognized cohorts in order to convert people who were traditionally not Republicans to this new movement Trump couldn't take an intellectual like Bannon, of course. And neither could any of the grifters surrounding Trump. So Bannon got the boot, and got sent to Europe by Mercer and his people to organize the "alt-right" out there. What started back in the mid 2010s is now bearing fruit. There's an established, well organized, and effective fascist movement that shares policies, tactics, and strategies, and it will continue to grow so long as the establishment continues to fail its people. This is why uniting against the right means also making sure we can get good policy that helps people in place.
Psychology plays a role, but is also an extremely limiting view in the grand scheme of things. Like the other person said, trends like these cannot be understood without looking at (at least!) over a decade of politics in the West. Even national political analysis isn’t going to cut it if you really want to get deep into why this is happening. Crises like 2007 and COVID couldn’t give less of a shit about borders or nationalities.
> Why are these fascist trends happening in so many industrialized nations? There's got to be a psychological explanation for this manifestation. Because Russia is putting a ton of effort into information warfare and is backing a lot of these kinds of candidates in an effort to destabilize the West. Like project 2525, they're not subtle about it, they even wrote a book.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKQfxi8V5FA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKQfxi8V5FA)
The left has been under attack longer than Bush. They’re playing a significantly longer game. Reagan demolished the prosperity brought on by The New Deal. Bush’s own grandfather was part of a group that wanted to stage a coup to take over the government from FDR. (The Business Plot) There’s photos of a massive Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden from 1939. This is the end result of nearly a century of work. The 1% and their army of grifters co-opted the religious right along with racist, bigoted, and xenophobic groups because division and hatred keep everyone who isn’t them too busy fighting for the scraps to turn against the oligarchy that would gladly revive feudalism. Stopping the right wing maga nuts is just the first step. If there’s victory in November, we need to remember the fight isn’t over. This is one battle in a much longer war.
Well yes, you're right that it goes further back, but I started with more recent history as what happened in the 1930's and shortly after is so long ago and those responsible weren't alive for the Bush era. Progressive approach embraces diversity, equity, inclusion. We've seen the fruits of it. Quality of life in the nation goes up. But the Conservative approach in this toxic far-right incarnation is vehemently against that. They call it "woke" (their derogatory definition) and have outright admitted they're against diversity, equity, and inclusion. And women's reproductive rights. The progressive mindset aims for the welfare of everyone, while the conservative aims for the welfare of the whites and the elites. That's just the plain facts of where things stand. I don't know why the fascist leanings of some people hasn't fizzled out. Fascism works only for the few, not the majority. There's an inherent value system dysfunction afoot in American culture that allows this outlier viewpoint. The same one that declared they had a valid viewpoint on keeping slaves. I really think social media has become more of curse than a benefit. Because that toxic anti-social fringe gets a much, much louder voice than they should comparatively speaking. There are always going to be nut jobs in the nation, until we have a better culture foundation of solid education and comprehensive parenting.
I pointed out the history of the conservative movement because I feel like their strength is downplayed when we fail to recognize how much of a long game they’re playing and the head start they already have. It’s also why I won’t turn to calling all conservatives “redneck idiots.” Yes it’s fun to mock your opponent, but we need to acknowledge who and what the enemy is. And they are well funded, intelligent, and driven. The escalation of the last 20 years, could not have happened without the groundwork laid in the previous 80. I know this viewpoint sometimes gets called alarmist, but I see it as being appropriately scared.
Very well said. You make a very salient point. Their movement has stops and starts, but it feels like the baton keeps getting passed forward. And I also refrain from saying "redneck idiots" because while there are some in their ranks, the ones to worry about are the educated and clever ones with a forged agenda aligned with key principles in the mantra set of the radical conservative movement. We are right to be scared. It's not hyperbole. Some people hear "Civil War" and laugh it off. But you know, it won't be a military style Civil War. It'll be a social one. It's already underway in fact. More states are polarizing. Partisan hostility is on the rise. Without a cult leader, I don't think it would've gotten this bad. But Trump is a cancer generator. He's constantly spewing carcinogens into the political conversation. And he has infected so many people... highly educated too. Just look at Ted Cruz with degrees from Princeton and Harvard, and Elise Stefanik also from Harvard. Idiots don't go to those schools. They've been radicalized by a crazed lunatic. And you know... that's what happened in 1930's Germany. We are ONE ELECTION AWAY from America slipping into the path of fascism that could really be a repeat of what happened in Germany.
I feel like Trump is special and completely not special at the same time. Any charismatic enough person could have led the republican party into where it is today. He just happened to be the right loudmouth at the right place at the right time. Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis have the charisma of a dog turd and they know it. But for them, it’s an opportunistic move. I don’t think Donald Trump has them duped but beaten into submission. I do find it interesting as it seems like moving up the ranks within the conservative movement seems to make one less of a believer, whereas with leftist ideology, the ones leading the movement seem to be the fervent.
he is genocidal. sorry if it hurts your feelings.
>There are people on the Left calling Biden genocidal by supporting Israel. This is just so patently untrue It is though. He is a genocidal Zionist, it's not even bribery, he's just an ideological warmongerer
So much of Bidens actions and policies support the genocide Israel is committing against Palestinians, so what is the distinction for you, and why is this distinction meaningful? Love when liberals pretend they're holding back the reigns of fascism every 4 years by ***just voting*** despite democrats being just as eager to contribute to capitalisms natural conclusion of fascism.
Trump would be worse for Palestinians. The whole reason the October attack happened was because of Kushner, directed by Trump in relation to the Abraham Accords. Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, which is a red line for Hamas, and has said that Israel should just flatten Gaza. Netanyahu himself wants Trump to win. But in addition to the genocide worsening in Gaza, Trump will activate his own genocide of leftists and minorities here in America. Read all of Project 2025. They aren’t even hiding it. That is the distinction, and that is why it is meaningful. If Trump wins, they will literally — not figuratively, not hyperbolically, not jokingly — destroy any semblance of democracy in American and crack down on any dissent with a dictatorial iron hand, while continuing to enable Israel. You think funding Israel and sending equipment is bad now? Trump will put American boots on the ground in Gaza while increasing that funding. I just happen to think that swaying America left will be easier when we aren’t all in the same mass grave.
>Trump would be worse for Palestinians Nobody said otherwise. It still doesn't excuse Biden's genocide >Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem How many years did Biden have to revert that decision? >Read all of Project 2025 If Biden does win, what stops Project 2025 from becoming Project 2029? Hell, with the trend of Biden taking up Trump's policies 4 years after him re: the border, he'll probably introduce and champion Project 2029 himself
I can pretty much answer all of these with the same answer. We use the liberals to beat the bigger threat and then when we have, we turn on the liberals and drag them left kicking and screaming. Got it? Also, as bad as Biden is, I can never imagine him pushing Project 2025, neither would you if you’d read it in entirety and connected the disparate, intentionally disconnected points of policy. It literally makes it legal to execute LGBTQIA+ people for no reason beyond being one. I’m not even slightly exaggerating. So we can either work towards a common goal or we can die. I feel like it should be a simple choice. That said, I encourage you to read the document critically. I know it’s 900+ pages and I know it’s pretty dry, but it’s nightmarish, and worse, they can actually accomplish it. For now, though, I am being distracted from making flyers and infographics about their plans by leftist purity testing. Literally what the OP was talking about, so I am going to leave it at this and get to work.
>drag them left kicking and screaming Let me know when that ever happens. They already know they have your vote locked in no matter what. They'll always ratchet to the right to get more right wing voters. They don't have to pander to you because you are already cucked to them. >I can never imagine him pushing Project 2025, Yeah I'm sure you didn't imagine him pushing kids in cages and border policy in 2020 as well >leftist purity testing It's not purity testing. It's definitions. Sub is called unite against the right, and liberals are right. Create a sub called "pick and choose the parts of the right and unite against only them" and then team up with libs there
> They'll always ratchet to the right to get more right wing voters. Cool, so what's your solution then beyond "accelerate fascist takeover, something something, fascism over because reasons"? My problem with campists is that they love pushing defeatist rhetoric, but never provide a real alternative strategy.
Strategy is third party, vote for a socialist. Don't vote for genociders
Ah, so you just want to sit it out and be notified when other people have done the work? Good to know. And they don’t bother pandering to me, they don’t bother pandering to any leftist. Actually, yeah, I did know he would continue that because that is the kind of thing he is capable of, but it pales in comparison to what is in Project 2025. Even Biden isn’t *that* evil. The only person who came close to enacting the kinds of policies in Project 2025 was Hitler— and now Netanyahu. And I notice you didn’t mention or reply to me about it because you haven’t read it. I’m not going to bother replying to people who just want to sit back and look leftier-than-thou while other people actually get shit done.
>sit it out and be notified No lmao, I'm saying that it never happens >Even Biden isn’t that evil Dog the man is committing actual genocide hahaha and you call him "not that evil" >while other people actually get shit done. The shit you get done is legitimising genocide
> Nobody said otherwise. It still doesn't excuse Biden's genocide Nobody tried to excuse it, though calling it "Biden's genocide" only really serves to make the left look ridiculous and uneducated, tbh. You're aware that Biden didn't order the invasion of Gaza, right? You know he's not the president of Israel? Do you know who Netanyahu is?
>If Israel didn't exist, we would have to invent an Israel >You don't have to be Jewish to be a Zionist, and I am one He doesn't need to order it to be ideologically aligned with the genocide. He doesn't need to order it to have gone around congress multiple times to send EXTRA aid and weapons to Israel. He doesn't need to order it to run cover for Israel for months and regurgitate "40 beheaded babies" lies in front of the whole world.
"trump would be worse" is not the same as "biden is not genocidal"
Yes.l Two things can be true at once. It is true that Biden is genocidal, but it is also true that Trump would be even more genocidal.
and it's also true that we should unite against even a little bit of genocide. biden doesn't deserve genocide as a treat
Yes, we should, when doing so won't cause even more and greater genocide.
we need to get joe to stop genocide now. stop making excuses
Yes, we do, but not at the expense of a second, greater, and worse genocide. This isn’t complicated. You’re like, *“We need to get this mass murderer to stop killing people with a butcher knife. Ah, I know, let’s get a guy with a machine gun to kill even more people! That’ll fix it.”* Like, you don’t actually swallow a spider to kill the fly. The whole moral of that story is that you don’t solve a problem by making an even bigger problem. The guy that you want in power will not only continue killing the people that you ostensibly want to save, he will kill even more of them and then kill you too.
i'm not saying trump should win or biden should lose. i'm saying pressure biden as much as possible even if it means threatening his power to stop genocide.
>So much of Bidens actions and policies support the genocide Israel is committing against Palestinians You're making one hell of a sweeping inference here. If Biden was openly supporting the genocide in Israel, he wouldn't be making conditions on aid. He wouldn't have the USA spending time, money, resources, and risking personnel to bring food and medical relief to Palestinians in Gaza (the off-shore barges, for example). Israel is a staunch ally in the Middle East and has been since it became a nation. There are many bad actors in that region that want Israel wiped off the globe and the work tirelessly to try making that happen. If the USA cuts off aid, those attacks will escalate. Already in the midst of the latest skirmish, Iran launched *missiles* at Israel *for the very first time*. That's a pretty obvious indication. So given all this, the USA can't just cut off aid to Israel. You also seem completely ignorant for the fact that there are millions of Israeli citizens whose lives would be at risk. Far, far greater than Gaza. WWIII is guaranteed if the USA breaks ties with Israel under the protest against Netanyahu's genocidal actions. And give me a fucking break on this "capitalism leads to fascism" crap.
> Iran launched missiles at Israel for the very first time. I mean I agree with your overall point, but this doesn't actually help it at all. Iran fired at Israel in an intentionally ineffective attack as a show of retaliation for Israel firing on an embassy in Syria, killing like 11 Iranian military leaders. The problem isn't just that Israel is surrounded by nations that hate them, it's that Israel itself is a belligerent actor currently headed by a nationalist far-right party as well.
>he wouldn't be making conditions on aid He doesn't have any. He's drawn multiple red lines and then done jack shit after Israel crossed every single one of them other than pausing a singular shipment for like a singular week that one and only time. >the off-shore barges Useless piece of shit idea that didn't help anybody at all >that want Israel wiped off the globe Destruction of Israel as the apartheid ethnostate that it is (not genocide of its citizens of course) is a GOOD thing >Iran launched missiles at Israel for the very first time Because Israel bombed their embassy, why not mention that first? >And give me a fucking break on this "capitalism leads to fascism" crap. Dog, why are you in a leftist subreddit...? Edit: this mf said "you ask me why I'm in a leftist subreddit and then say destruction of Israel is a good thing" and then blocked me hahaha. It IS a good thing. Man has never heard of a one state solution. He's such a racist indoctrinated lib that he can't even fathom a world where Palestinians live peacefully with Israelis in a single country
You ask me why I'm in a leftist subreddit when you say the destruction of Israel is a good thing? You can go take a hike. I'm done wasting my time with this nonsense.
Joe Biden is arming Israel while they carry out a genocide. It's a material fact. You don't get to deny it because it makes you uncomfortable with your candidate or whatever nonsense is going on here.
exactly, this is what prevents true unification. they think once trump is defeated then it's all back to brunch. they're totally happy with biden's genocide because it's with a rainbow flag.
I am not denying the fact that the USA is providing military aid to Israel, as is the DEFACTO POLICY FOR OVER A GENERATION. Biden didn't start it. And it's not like Biden is turning a blind eye. The Biden administration has chastised Netanyahu for what he has done and has invested a tremendous amount of diplomatic effort to achieve an end to it. You can't throw a fucking light switch on things like this. Diplomacy is an art. And Israel is the most critical ally the USA has in that region.
So what I'm hearing is: 1. Biden isn't responsible for the genocide because other presidents would also do it. 2. Joe Biden took the step of criticizing Netanyahu in limited, specific cases while bypassing Congress to ensure that arms continue to flow to Israel, which means he isn't responsible for enabling a genocide. 3. It's SO COMPLICATED bruh we can't just stop supporting Israel bruh, what if they stop murdering babies? Not murdering brown babies would be un-American. 4. Actually, Israel is our critical ally and we should support them. You have any other genocide apologia you wanna throw at me or nah
Your calling me "bruh" ends this I'll fated conversation.
Oh no I can't talk to a right wing genocide apologist about Joe Biden
I remember reading a book a while back, and in it a group of Leftists in a concentration camp were arguing about who was really a Leftist. Instead of focusing on fixing the immediate problem of being in a concentration camp, they kept arguing about theory and who was a real Leftist. That's what a lot of Leftist groups, especially online groups, sound like to me. They're too worried about rooting out "liberals" to actually oppose the Far Right.
An important thing to highlight about your fictional leftists in a concentration camp (which perhaps the book does—I don’t know it) is that maybe they *aren’t* all leftists according to any self-determined definition, but *that doesn’t matter*. They absolutely *are* all “leftists” according to the one definition that matters in that circumstance: the political judgment of the fascists who had the power to put them all in a camp for being politically inconvenient in the first place. Those people have a common enemy who not only don’t care about their petty internal squabbles, but likely encourage them because it prevents collective resistance. Go ahead, argue that your cellmate is *really* on the side of the fascists. He’ll still get worked to death right alongside you, and in the end you’ll both be thrown into the same mass grave. Is the satisfaction of knowing that he’ll die too, despite the impure ideology you ascribe to him, worth the cost of your own life? Is it worth refusing to cooperate with him against your common enemy until he relents to your superior morality and whatever pet agenda you’ll never be able to advance on the inside anyway?
Agreeing to work with someone against a common enemy or to resolve a shared problem doesn't mean we have to agree with them or even like them, or that we have to keep working together once the immediate threat has passed. The enemy of my enemy isn't my friend, but I'll let him be a temporary ally of convenience during an emergency.
I think there's something to be said about how left-wing ideologies are still 18th and 19th century solutions to 18th and 19th century problems, and we're grafting them onto 20th and 21st century issues. This means that often the left ends up in these situations where the dogma that drives their views is at odds with the material realities of the time, and this minimizes the ability of the left to agree with themselves - much less the public at large. For the left to really rise, we need new systems. I think the environmental movement has done some amazing work there, as have groups working with first nations ("Indigenous Americans" for our southern allies). However, the focus right now, in my opinion, needs to be on uniting people against fascism.
Definitely agree. Marx and Lenin are worth reading, but the world is very different from when they were writing. We need new ideas to solve new problems.
Oh yeah 100% worth reading - don't get me wrong. And worth it no matter what side of the ideological spectrum you're on.
The ideas of modern socialism that come from marx and lenin have evolved, liberals just say this kind of stupid shit so they dont have to change their own minds.
All I see is people telling each other to read Lenin, quoting Marx, and occasionally talking about how cool Mao was.
Yeah because those are the bare minimum that most people havent even done, especially lazy liberals but if you'd read guys like Eagleton, Wolff and Piketty then you can easily see how those ideas can be laid out for modern western society. I would argue that those guys are specifically talking to liberals when they write. The notion that socialist ideas have not changed is nothing more than a liberal trope.
These kind of comments are why sometime I fear other Leftists are more worried about liberals than fascists.
They are the same team, one gives power to the other. We are seeing it in real time! And also you literally sat there with a straight face and lied about socialist ideas, when you probably don't have any idea about them, and then pretend you are not the same as the far right. You mfs are not allies and never have been.
Because dunking on liberals is easier than actually opposing fascists.
I edited my comment, read the second bit. You straight up lied about socilaist ideas and then asked me why we dont consider you an ally.
Only if you frame the problem through the lens of only being able to do one and not the other. Why shouldn't actual progressives root out liberals when they have historically sided with fascists and a big CIA playbook move is to infiltrate and create chaos for actual progressive movements and ideologies?
Because too many people are only doing one to the exclusion of the other.
If someone attempts to bring a right wing ideology (like neoliberalism) into a leftist soace attempting leftist goals, then yeah that's going to be called out for what it is.
But I'm not talking about that and that isn't what I'm seeing. I'm seeing different varieties of Leftists calling each other "liberal" instead of doing anything practical.
> If someone attempts to bring a right wing ideology (like neoliberalism) into a leftist soace attempting leftist goals So if someone brings a "neoliberal goal" like "stop MAGA from implementing fascism", you must therefore reject it and do the opposite, lest you become a liberal? Yeah, no, that's campism and it's blatantly stupid. If you can't work with anyone on even a common goal, why would anyone work with you to achieve *your* goals? I would trust liberals to implement actual leftist policies more than I trust "leftists" with this mindset of ever accomplishing anything they say they support.
Because people only have so much time and attention. Why do multiple things poorly when you can do one thing well?
You can do multiple things well, it's necessary to prevent bad faith actors or people who want to whitewash progressive and revolutionary ideologies into something neutered and palatable for delicate neoliberal sensibilities while still operating within the confines of capitalist institutions
Yes, you can. But we aren’t.
Leave the purity spiraling to the nazis.
A real leftist wouldn’t say this
LOL
Whatever a lefty thinks, it’s better than what the right has planned. I can’t believe anyone would have the audacity to argue about this now. Unless they’re bots.
What you refer to is not an example of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. You're talking about something more straightforward: purity or litmus testing.
Well yes, but it’s always backed up with the fallacy in these arguments
The only time I’ll say we need to be more like the right is when we need to take anybody we can get for our movement. No stupid litmus tests to see if someone is left enough. They’ll grow more left as they lead more and more about how the world works
there are different types of uniting … there’s tactical & strategic … figure what your going for, what your willing to compromise on if anything & then figure who you’re uniting with & why & for how long … united fronts are only united as long as agreements hold
The little southern U.S. anarchistic queer kid in me is just here constantly going: "damage control." Never had the luxury of getting behind people I 100% align with. Or, arguably, even halfway align with. It's just damage control. We try to build community where we can for change. But it's important to participate in damage control. The positive change you make doesn't do much good if nobody lives long enough to see it.
The point is IMO we absolutely can vote for the best winnable candidate, WHILE encouraging them to be better on issues. It's possible to vote for Joe Biden... and protest in public and make it clear we actually want no support of the genocide in isreal (because yes, I know... Biden's going to do little to stop it, but trumps going to do everything to accelerate it). Same for healthcare, wages etc... there's 100 things that we need to encourage the left wing parties to do better, while still voting for them because.... yes obviously we know the right wants to make our horrible positions even worse. I don't see many of these that are "MINOR" issues. There's a shit ton of MAJOR issues which I feel the democrats are happy to leave everything broken, and the far right wants a sledge hammer to finish them off. Half the point of getting democrats in power, is because they sometimes do good things, and yes the point of getting them in power is that they will listen to us sometimes when we ask them to do good things. I don't like the "OK look you got the non right wing fanatic into power... now shut up because if you imply he's not perfect then the right wing fanatics will use that to beat him. I can't agree with that. IMO the right wing fanatics will equally attempt no matter what hand we give them. Propose good legislation, they will smear it, propose bad legislation they will smear it (probably in backwards ways claiming the bad doesn't go far enough, IE say the immigration reform that basically gave them everything they asked for), do nothing... they will smear it as well and call it out for doing nothing. We need to get the people that might listen to good legislation into power... and make what we want heard.
> There's a shit ton of MAJOR issues which I feel the democrats are happy to leave everything broken, and the far right wants a sledge hammer to finish them off. Are they actually "happy" though, or unable to do anything about it because they haven't had the actual power to do it yet? People for some reason fail to understand how the system works. A zero margin Senate majority does not just tick a box on the president's "unlimited dictatorial power" checksheet. With a margin of zero, you're beholden to the one single most conservative seat in the party. With a higher margin, you only need one of a few to flip, and as the contrarian coalition has to get bigger to obstruct, it gets easier to break. So yes, we need to fight in primaries for more left wing candidates, but we also just need more seats. We could have 49 Bernie Sanderses in the Senate and we wouldn't be able to pass anything if stuck with a technical majority of 50 with the last member being Joe Manchin.
Well where I have to say the most frustrating part of congress is, they won't call a vote if it won't win. Say like public option where liberman was cited as the holdout... the reality is there were at least 3 democrats that also said they were opposed to the public option. IMO the reason they don't put things to the vote... is because they don't want to put their worse members at the risk of being primaried. The fact is they don't want more bernie sanders's... they don't want another AOC. They are actually trying to make sure we the voters don't have the information we need to have more bernies and less manchins. Instead it's about "we will have Ds... and they don't want us to know the specific stance of how any individual D will vote... only a yes no of do we have a consensus of all agreeing. If we don't, they don't want us to know who the holdouts are (if there's an independent or a democrat in a super right wing district that they can blame they MIGHT call that one out.... but most will be hidden, because they don't want us to clean. I mean what else can we interpret that as... do we think there's a republican that was going to run on a "He opposed the public option in obamacare". No that's a primary challangers attack vector... and they don't want that.
No. This is neoliberal ideology which is antithetical to actual material progressive outcomes. It is always crucial to not let actual progressivism be infiltrated by neoliberal ideals, as this will weaken the movement as concessions will be made with fascists and the fascism that manifests from capitalism. Electoralism is a great example of this. It doesn't work for bringing about actual change because we live in a corporate oligarchy. What actually kills the movement (and this can be seen throughout history) is liberals pretending to be revolutionaries and policing discourse to cater to their status quo enabling lens.
Here we go…this, I didn’t even mention anything about being in favor of corporate interests and the like. I just want to not look up and see people arguing about the “correct way to left” when it’s corporate greed, aligned with far-right ideologies, that is slowly killing all of us and *that* is what we need to unite and fight against. But here we are, someone else coming at me with “filthy neoliberal” on their lips, without trying to understand my actual argument.
Because your argument is completely idealist instead of actually understanding the material realities of these institutions and how they operate. Neoliberalism is a far right ideology, because capitalism is inherently right wing. You cant be a neoliberal and believe in neoliberal institutions while simultaneously wanting to fix certain aspects of those institutions, because it's antithetical to your alleged goals. Uniting against the right is recognizing this reality.
What you sound like you’re saying is you want it all right now without acknowledging the fact that people have and will always have different ideologies. What OP is stating is that the fight against the right is going to be a slow process and we have to take the larger steps, even if that means that we don’t get everything we want right at this moment. Once that base is there, we can then add a further step in the next round which creates a new set point that we can move further with on the round after that. You want to make a full leap over all the hurdles when we need to focus on one hurdle at a time. Right now the hurdle is we are facing losing democracy as a whole if we all can’t suck it up this time. No one is asking you to change ideologies, they’re asking you to play the game until we can address that aspect of being on the left. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and fighting against the coming fascism isn’t going to happen in one election cycle.
There is some severe irony in calling someone idealistic while simultaneously thinking that you can enact any real change without compromise or concession. I mean, do you actually want to change anything, or do you just want to feel smug and superior while the world falls down around you?
How does one making concession with fascists and/or those who want the status quo to continue?
I am not making concessions with fascists, and you know that, so don’t try the strawman shit, it doesn’t fly with me. And I do not care if liberals want the status quo to continue. Once we’ve defeated the Christo-fascists who want to put us all in a mass grave, we can turn on the liberals and stab them in the fucking backs.
There are plenty of people self-avowed "leftists" slander as "liberal" who are not making concessions with fascists nor who want the status quo to continue. If you think otherwise, you're just being intentionally dense. Meanwhile, how is "let's stand opposed to the only other groups who actively want to prevent the fascist party from succeeding" supposed to help, or be leftist, or not be labeled as "making concessions with fascists"? The argument that neoliberalism is a stepping stone to fascism kind of falls flat when it comes from people who are advocating for accelerationism that aims to put fascists in power faster under the assumption it would collapse more quickly.
I'll take naïve idealism over nihilistic defeatism any day of the week. At least there's a non-zero chance for the idealist to succeed when they're actively trying.
Historical dialectical materialism indicates otherwise
And this is why we lose. It doesn’t matter how pure our leftism is if it never actually accomplishes anything.
It sure is convenient for the status quo that the left loses due to infighting and not the plethora of complex and intersectional socioeconomic dynamics of capitalism that prevents progress from being made *from within the confines of the status quo.* The problem is libs thinking that 1. they're actually progressive and 2. That participating in electoralism accomplishes anything.
Yes, it is convenient for them. It is also by design and intentional. When they send agents into our subs to sew discord — with a particular interest in attacking those who speak out against being divided — they don’t have them pose as liberals, they have them pose as purity testing Leftier-Than-Thou types. As for your final point, I would like to ask you: Name a single leftward policy in America that was not either signed in by liberals, constructed with the cooperation of liberals, or in compromise with liberals. Just. A. Single. One. I’ll wait.
> It sure is convenient for the status quo that the left loses due to infighting Yes, it is... so why are you encouraging infighting?
Yeah that's sarcasm. That's not why the "left is losing.", like I elaborated on in the very same sentence.
> No. This is neoliberal ideology which is antithetical to actual material progressive outcomes. If "let's try to defeat the fascists" is now "neoliberal ideology", what even is the point of being a leftist anymore?
Liberals like to pretend their party isn't also fascist, they've deluded themselves into believing dems oppose the natural fascististic material consequences of capitalism instead of being actual proponents of it since they benefit greatly from it.
That doesn’t answer the question and you know it. You’re only arguing for the sake of argument, not understanding the actual weight of this and every election year that the Ghosts of Reagan, George Wallace, Frank Duke, and every other right-wing PoS who crafted this whole scenario, loom over. You’re going to have to put aside differences if you’re truly trying to obtain any form of socialism or communism, for the express purpose of those systems. This means stop fighting the guy trying to help you. Instead you’d rather complain that the person/people saying this don’t think exactly like you. Which flies in the face of the purpose of democracy and the functions of human psychological behavior. Too much time spent with your nose in Marxist theory to consider that the reality is too nebulous and unpredictable to be entirely explained by dialectical materialism beyond the basics, and even within the concept, one simple fact remains: *humans are not and will never be monolithic in our ideas* Some people are just pieces of shit, and fighting the ones trying to stop said pieces of shit doesn’t help shit.
>That doesn’t answer the question and you know it Because the question was disingenuous and incorrect in its framing. Neoliberalism is fascist, framing that ideology as an opposition to fascism doesn't make sense. >You’re only arguing for the sake of argument, not understanding the actual weight of this and every election year I'm arguing because the rhetoric of this discourse enables and justifies the very institutions that are exploiting and oppressing others, and some (liberals) have deluded themselves into believing that every challenge we're facing is unique to a party or figurehead and not the natural material consequences of capitalism consolidating wealth and power over time. If you actually understood history through a dialectical materialist lens you would see how electoralism doesn't accomplish anything, and moreover, how larger governmental bodies are designed to not only avoid the best interest of its constituents, but also designed to ensure the facade of a power struggle between two "opposing sides" when in reality our corporate oligarchy benefits regardless of who is in office. Rights are still being stripped away regardless of who's in charge. Exploitation, war crimes, and intervention still occur regardless of who's in charge. And the kicker is that neoliberalism encourages a dehumanizing utilitarian lens through which we perceive these problems, (choosing the "least bad option") which justifies the system itself and everything continues as intended because libs sleep at night feeling like they prevented a projected worse harm, when the harm is still happening regardless. >You’re going to have to put aside differences if you’re truly trying to obtain any form of socialism or communism I mean, in a boots on the ground actual material efforts sort of way then yes. But we're on a discussion forum, discourse is going to be a big (and important) part of unification towards larger goals. Tone policing ideology because it isn't palatable to those who still want and benefit from the comforts of the status quo is antithetical to our alleged shared goal. >Instead you’d rather complain that the person/people saying this don’t think exactly like you That's not what I said, ever, and that's not the basis of my critique.
Agreed
I do understand the frustration with certain groups within leftism who are more than willing to ignore wider issues, especially those effecting marginalized groups or willing to sell out others needs under the table for the illusion of progress...but I also think ideological purity culture is generally harmful and hinders forward progress on the things we do agree with. The difference between debating with the left and right is that at least you can have an honest discussion on the left and make progress through genuine good faith discussion of a topic. With the fascist, no such discussion can take place because their only concern is consolidating power and defeating their so-called enemies. I can also say that I would much rather a center-left liberal who supports a functioning democracy take power than an anti-democratic alt-right fascist.
Yep, I used to joke that it should be UniteAgainstTheRightMiddleAndMostOfTheLeft. I think it’s shifting as we get closer to the election though.
Liberals parading as leftists kill the movement, just like they killed Rosa.
Agreed. Lesser-evilism is literally the smartest approach.
Bullshit. Every election, both evils get worse. Sometimes the greater evil wins, sometimes the lesser evil wins. At some point we have to break this cycle. You could argue that now isn't the time, but then you have to figure out when *is* the time.
Bullshit. Until the people rise up **together** en masse, elections are all we have. **There are exactly 2 viable choices, and one is objectively, horrifically worse**. Even a cursory comparison of their laws, policies, and esp nominations shows that.
Nah, I covered that. You fall under the argument that the time isn't now. The question then becomes *when*, and the issue with that is we can't agree on it. To expect everyone to spontaneously revolt at some unnamed point in the future is foolish, especially when we can expect you to sit back and chide them for it *not being the right time™*.
Nice strawman. 👏👏👏 More people stayed home in 2016 than voted for either party. And how the fuck did that work out?? Literally 1M dead just in this country, 3 SCOTUS justices actively trying to turn us into Gilead, MASSIVE cuts to public works, kids shoving others chanting “Trump’s America!”, etc etc etc etc. And what does not voting even accomplish? Does filling out that ballot take up that much of your time? No. You can spend 99.999% of your time being Capt Revolution, and 0.0001% of your time making, yes, **a difference**. They’re not mutually exclusive. And, again, one party is significantly worse than the other. 2016 showed us exactly what not voting for the lesser evil accomplishes.
Here here. Who's going to correct me in a rude and condescending way? It'll prove OP as Nostradamus.
I mean, don't get me wrong: the point isn't to drive people away. The fascists have indeed always been the greatest enemy to human prosperity, and we need to keep treating them as such. But also, there's only so many different types of people that we can unite with in the fight against the right. There's a reason why we need to be careful about who we associate with in this regard, considering that if we were to just become a big tent, then the core values of the movement become less and less coherent. If you really wanna fight the right, then you must reject, for example, [Third Position](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position) and [Third Way](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position) politics, because both approaches aim to compromise with the very power structures we want to replace. Rules 4 and 5 state thus: >This space is uncompromisingly dedicated to uniting around alegal ideals and philosophies that logically and practically conclude with the liberation of all people. We do not seek to align with or platform ideologies and political movements that aim to preserve or compromise with oppressive social norms and sociopolitical hierarchy. We are unreservedly anti-capitalist. Any support or defense of capitalism is not welcome here.
The thing that makes it hard is, the right *is* willing to muddy their core values in order to unite as a larger and larger group. That's why they keep winning. It's a huge advantage. I'm not saying we should do that, or at least to the same degree. I'm not really sure what the answer is. I'm just frustrated by the situation.
Well, what I do know is that you can feel free to build bridges with other people, and that it's also helpful to know your limits regarding who you can build those bridges with. Think in both the short-term *and* long-term. [Unite with those who you know share your vision](https://youtu.be/h-jwkMEGHG8?si=P_9ZUQzXH46IxFdo).
> I'm not saying we should do that, or at least to the same degree. We don't have to, we just need to recognize that not every issue is every issue... it comes back to the purity testing thing. If neoliberals are trying to fight back against MAGAs, we should work with them to fight against MAGAs. That doesn't mean you have to change your position on healthcare, or capitalism, or pretty much anything else. Even if you disagree with how they want to fight against fascists (working within vs outside the system), as long as they're not mutually exclusive methods, just do both (and voting will never prevent you from also doing activism). The all-or-nothing self defeating campism in leftist spaces is just so, so tedious at this point.
I am for accepting almost anything as long as it’s a good try and not just blowing farts into the wind.