Fuck outta here, liberals shit on the left as much as conservatives do.
liberalsleftists shit on the leftFTFY
They’re not that unified & don’t set aside their differences to work toward a common goal.
Case in point: trying to divide left liberals from the left.
First Past The Post means voting for far right liberal capitalists or literally figurative nazis.
Any sane person, including the socialists and anarchists, would vote against the nazis.
So they’re both right.
No it doesn’t.
If Ken Martin fixes primaries, one look at Minnesota tells you he’s so bad at keeping progressives out of office he might as well not be trying.
Either way, we have a solid chance of a decent dem candidate making it to the general. And if they do the general is a shoe in.
If Ken Martin fixes primaries, one look at Minnesota tells you he’s so bad at keeping progressives out of office he might as well not be trying.
I always say this, what happened to the Americans who stopped the Gilded Age and ushered in the two Roosevelts? Americans forgot how to mobilise.
No, the wealthy united against everyone else despite any differences during FDR.
This led to the Business Plot, which failed because the puppet general backed out and snitched on the wealthiest capitalists for trying to overthrow FDR …
And not a single person was punished.
They didn’t give up, they just decided buying both parties was easier than a coup, and maintained the illusion of choice.
We didn’t “forget” shit, we had our country stolen from us by the wealthiest citizens.
We didn’t “forget” shit, we had our country stolen from us by the wealthiest citizens.
I mean before FDR, during the Gilded Age. People successfully mobilised to curtail monopolists and other industry tycoons. I think Americans did forget to do that.
It doesn’t matter who you vote for.
Democrats rig their primaries.
far right liberal capitalists or literally figurative nazis.
if you’re on the wrong side of us ‘foreign policy’ both of these groups will exterminate you all the same.
the bipartisan consensus between them is that capitalist exploitation continues
True, but maybe with small changes in the sociopolitical fabric of the US, eventually, in some decades, US foreign policy can change also. Western European powers are STILL up to no good in Africa and West Asia and they have been at it for hundreds of years… Small steps, right? 😔
That was a good episode!
I hate liberals more than conservatives because at least with conservatives they don’t go around pretending to be on my side while doing heinous shit. Conservatives just do the heinous shit without the pretense.
At this point, I just want the lesser of the two evils.
You know, like leftist vs a fucking lunatic fascist pedo rapist who is burning our country to the ground as if his addled slimy ass is going to take any of it with him when he finally cacks.
Yes, we need things to get cleaned out of the Barney Horror Picutre Show, but if we give up ground about twice more, it’ll just be full-on Right vs Right. The next person that goes in has to be left of Biden at the very least or no margins will be made. We couldn’t even get we’ll stop funding the atrocities in Gaza out of the “left” candidate last time.
Should it have been K? F yeah in comparison, but give us something to drag people out of the house to vote for.
This reminds me of that meme (article?) someone posted a couple days ago about some dude who loves metal gives up trying to explain to his family that he’s not goth, cuz it’s easier to just lets his family ogle at his ‘goth phase’.
So… same energy - whether or not “left” and “democrat” are synonymous depends entirely on the person I’m talking to… they either already know, or I don’t have the energy to try to teach them.
That’s sort of the point of my post. It’s trying to poke fun on people not knowing the difference and depending on how the person define the terms. Instead, they called this post a “psyops” and I guess I also inadvertently caused another leftist/liberal (in-)fighting depending how you look at it.
Agreed. But also, you can just ignore those terms entirely and focus on actual issues…
100%
This is pointless identitarian bullshit that does nothing to stop the fascists currently in charge of the United States.
It all makes me a bit suspicious.
Remove the American part. The right has found a nice way to divide the left and they’re using it everywhere. If you find yourself hating everyone, using vitriole toward people on your side, stop and reflect that you’re the problem.
That sounds convincing but, when establishment Democrats fight the left ten times harder than they fight the right, I don’t think it’s right wing propaganda dividing us.
I don’t think the right did that to the left. We did it to ourselves. In contrast, the right is somehow really good at putting aside differences to work toward a common goal. I want to know how we can copy that.
I don’t think the right did that to the left.
Cambridge Analytica would disagree.
Can you elaborate? How did Cambridge Analytica affect the left’s/liberal’s perspectives on each other?
The right has found a nice way to divide the left and they’re using it everywhere.
Someone mentioned it that the problem is that NIMBYs happened to also be liberals. What do you think of building affordable housing and raising the minimum wage? These two issues are happening across the world, and they happened since mainstream parties have been in charge for thirty years.
It’s not nimbys, it’s corporations buying up all of the housing, building only “luxury” apartments and price fixing the fuck out of the rent. Then they spout “Trickle Down Housing” where the “luxury” apartments will be available in 30 years.
NIMBYs and corporations are results of both problem, excessive individualism.
I’m in favor of both. I live in one of the most expensive states in the US, and I’m actually doing okay, but I’m very much in favor of affordable housing. People who work need places to live.
And people should make a living wage. But I also think that shit is too expensive, and increasing wages doesn’t help. We’re seeing the middle class absolutely disappear. We need to eat rich people, but that goes without saying.
I think the country is full of ladder pullers. They made their way up and don’t want others to have an escalator. These people worked their way up (or had their generational wealth raise them) so it feels like oppression to have others easily get something they have.
I understand the sentiment. Where I live, they have liquor licenses based on population, so they’re limited, and in turn they become massively expensive. You’ll see people pay six or seven figures for one.
Anytime folks talk about adjusting the laws to allow more establishments to serve, the same argument comes up, that someone paid a fortune, and now you’re just giving them away. Doesn’t make them right, but I get it.
I always imagine that if I win the lottery, I’d buy land in my town and build parks, but who knows what happens when that’s a reality, you know? I like to think I’d be philanthropic af, but money has been corrupting people since literally the dawn of time. Advanced society is when we do away with money.
You don’t have to be authoritarian to be a leftist.
Of course not. In fact if there is anything I associate with leftist ideologies it’s anti-authoritarianism.
Tell that to ml lol
Unpaid interns working for Russia don’t count as being “leftist” lol
They’re working for you, asshole. They developed the software you’re using right now.
They are slaves. Bots are slaves.
No point, I’d just get banned.
Hey guys,
Remember when we found out Russia and China were manipulating us into fighting between left and right, and now they’re dividing the left into 2 camps that are supposed to hate each other?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The left has always been infighting. The two great memes of the left are walls of text and hating other leftists.
But liberals are not leftists. And we’ve disliked you for decades and globally.
The post is a jab about American folks who conflate the terms. I wasn’t expecting people to take this as seriously as others have!
Although now that you mentioned it, I kinda sense that there could be something going on sometimes, especially on comments looking down on the working class supporting the Republicans, while refusing to acknowledge that they used to vote Democrats. Plenty of people worth their salt would tell anyone that it is because the working class felt abandoned after the outsourcing of jobs without offering alternatives. Unfortunately, a lot on the left, but more so on liberals, don’t see this and keep calling the working class as dumb hicks. There are definitely folks who are too far gone and support fascists, but to caricaturise everyone in the demographic while a more plausible explanation is available seems tone deaf. It made me think that there could be an intentional wedge to create in-fighting for such deliberate nosing down.
The left and liberals are one and the same in America.
Now I’m sure you’re going to go on some stupid fucking diatribe about how “aCkShuAllY they AREN’T”.
That’s just Russian fucking propaganda. You’re trying to bisect the left to create infighting in order to prop up fascist interests.
Begone, troll.
The left and liberals are one and the same in America.
Just ask the opinion on economic issues and there is stark difference.
That’s just Russian fucking propaganda.
Is it really Russian propaganda? Or American oligarch propaganda to conflate the two terms?
I read comments from a lot of Europeans (and maybe those in Oceania, I’ll be honest, I don’t think much about that region because I’m from America) who seem to think they’re immune from what happened in the US over the last decade plus, but it’s clearly spreading, and yet it’s this onslaught of shit talking, Americans are dumb, there is only one liberalism, if you’re not with us you’re against us.
Well, they divided the left, people lost interest, and now what was unarguably the strongest nation in the world has gone awry, but let’s go ahead and wax poetic about this unrealistic perfect world that people want. The right, as much as I disagree with them, is pretty grounded in reality, and they use that to their advantage, and the left lives in Idealand, and that’s a vague concept. And it’s a great place, but it’s not possible when you shit on people who don’t match your exact idea.
I’m farting into the wind here, I’ve got a less than zero confidence many of these accounts exist solely to create strife, the same way they did on Reddit. This isn’t a leftist Utopia, it’s a fucking blender.
However you define liberal, there is the big question mark. Why did the working class used to vote liberal and Democrats but now turned to the right?
Where are you from that somehow this isn’t affecting you. I just saw top posts on Lemmy about how Germany and France joined the UK in having far right parties reach the top of the polls. Please don’t let me demean whatever country you’re from if it’s not those, but a world where Germany, France, the UK, join the already gone US in far right ideology is no bueno (to use a language that might suffer in the future). But go ahead and take your jabs, because time is running out.
Lol. Yeah im sure that it’s China and Russians who are causing leftist to not trust liberals. The last 300 years of human history in which liberals gleefully murdered leftists has nothing to do with it.
I’m not saying that this isn’t happening, but at the same time it also seems to get heavily implied in threads like these that the solution is for leftists to just get onboard with two-party neoliberalist capitalism just for this next one election, just this once, we promise.
Calling on the Democratic Party to adopt left-wing policies keeps getting branded “divisive”, but calling on Leftists to adopt the center-right is treated like an attempt at unification.
The people calling for party unity don’t want any of the political aspects of a united Left, they just want to carry on the same policies they had before but with more people being scared into holding their noses and voting for them.
Yeah I’m done arguing with Russian trolls tonight. Good luck in your future endeavors.
The hilarious thing about this is that I’m not even the only person in this thread that you’ve accused of being a Russian troll.
It doesn’t even make sense on its own terms, like why would the Russians be trying to promote the case that the Democratic Party should make more concessions to the Left? Is “Russian troll” just what you call anyone who disagrees with your theories on political strategising?
It’s just that lefties don’t seem to want to or know how to build power. It feels very performative. If they actually cared about any of the issues they are so vocal about, I don’t know, maybe they would do the groundwork to build a political framework. That’s why I applaud people like Zohran or AOC. They are there, doing the work day in and out. But online lefties are just pouting and crying about liberals non stop
Zohran
Thanks for picking an example that so beautifully supports my case. Literally the one time a guy comes up with some mildly left-of-center policies that might actually stand some chance of getting implemented, Establishment Democrats turned on him so strongly that the guy they actually wanted felt emboldened enough to run against him as an independent.
Yes. I didn’t think establishment democrats would just roll over without a fight. But they are boomers on their last ticket out. If we don’t at least try, then what’s the point? Is the sum total of all our efforts then intended to be online memes? That’s why I look up to Mamdani because he’s not punching the entire democratic apparatus. He’s punching the hardline centrist boomers that are holding the party back. After all, Zohran is running from within the democratic primary, and not as an independent. I have a lot of respect for him and will always support him. He’s doing the work to change the party and move it in the right direction. So is AOC. On the other hand, online lefties sum total action amounts to…memes? I don’t know. You tell me. What exactly are y’all doing?
You get it; I think there is an issue of conflating what the lazy, safe seat Democrats in office that are borderline Republicans want and what the Democratic voters want. Mamdani is closer to what liberal/left Democratic voters want for our party. A big issue is the politicians in power in our party are mostly corporate types that are not necessarily trying to rock the boat too much.
It’s a nuanced and multifaceted issue which mainly comes from Citizens United. Plus, it’s an issue of the First Past the Post voting system in much of the country making it harder for more progressive candidates to come out ahead.
I think there’s also a bit of a misconception that we can’t incorporate things like Universal Healthcare, Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Services, or other progressive/leftist policies under our current economic system.
That’s not to say that we can’t change things down the line, but we can regulate capitalism and create income floors so no one is going without food, medicine, shelter, or support.
KGB handbook: play up the loudest voices on both sides of every social issue, make every tiny issue seem so overblown and saturated with lies and nonsense that average people stay out of it and stop trusting anyone involved.
This leaves people with no activism or outside opinion they can trust so they go along with whatever state media reports because what else is there.
This has worked wonders in other countries, it is working wonders in America. It is going to work in your country next, reader. What are you going to do about it?
Divide and conquer. If the left can’t see that then they doom us all. Liberals want freedom and justice and that is NOT being represented by most democrats
If the left can’t see that then they doom us all.
Why is it the Left’s responsibility to toe the Liberal line in the name of unity, but never vice versa?
Mf I’m here right now talking about unity
That’s a very one-sided take. Yes, leftists can easily fall for the divide and conquer purity tests. To pretend that liberals don’t fall for it as they have historically and are currently sabotaging popular & successful leftist candidates is ridiculous.
Show me a liberal sabotaging a leftist and I’ll show you a liar
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Committee_email_leak
Maybe not the most solid rock to build an argument on, but for American values of leftist and liberal, you’ll find this to be a prime example.
Blackshirts and Reds - Michael Parenti - Ch 1
In Germany, a similar pattern of complicity between fascists and capitalists emerged. German workers and farm laborers had won the right to unionize, the eight-hour day, and unemployment insurance. But to revive profit levels, heavy industry and big finance wanted wage cuts for their workers and massive state subsidies and tax cuts for themselves.
During the 1920s, the Nazi Sturmabteilung or SA, the brown-shirted storm troopers, subsidized by business, were used mostly as an antilabor paramilitary force whose function was to terrorize workers and farm laborers. By 1930, most of the tycoons had concluded that the Weimar Republic no longer served their needs and was too accommodating to the working class. They greatly increased their subsidies to Hitler, propelling the Nazi party onto the national stage. Business tycoons supplied the Nazis with generous funds for fleets of motor cars and loudspeakers to saturate the cities and villages of Germany, along with funds for Nazi party organizations, youth groups, and paramilitary forces. In the July 1932 campaign, Hitler had sufficient funds to fly to fifty cities in the last two weeks alone.
In that same campaign the Nazis received 37.3 percent of the vote, the highest they ever won in a democratic national election. They never had a majority of the people on their side. To the extent that they had any kind of reliable base, it generally was among the more affluent members of society. In addition, elements of the petty bourgeoisie and many lumpenproletariats served as strong-arm party thugs, organized into the SA storm troopers. But the great majority of the organized working class supported the Communists or Social Democrats to the very end.
In the December 1932 election, three candidates ran for president: the conservative incumbent Field Marshal von Hindenburg, the Nazi candidate Adolph Hitler, and the Communist party candidate Ernst Thaelmann. In his campaign, Thaelmann argued that a vote for Hindenburg amounted to a vote for Hitler and that Hitler would lead Germany into war. The bourgeois press, including the Social Democrats, denounced this view as “Moscow inspired.” Hindenburg was re-elected while the Nazis dropped approximately two million votes in the Reichstag election as compared to their peak of over 13.7 million.
True to form, the Social Democrat leaders refused the Communist party’s proposal to form an eleventh-hour coalition against Nazism. As in many other countries past and present, so in Germany, the Social Democrats would sooner ally themselves with the reactionary Right than make common cause with the Reds.3 Meanwhile a number of right-wing parties coalesced behind the Nazis and in January 1933, just weeks after the election, Hindenburg invited Hitler to become chancellor.
Upon assuming state power, Hitler and his Nazis pursued a politico-economic agenda not unlike Mussolini’s. They crushed organized labor and eradicated all elections, opposition parties, and independent publications. Hundreds of thousands of opponents were imprisoned, tortured, or murdered. In Germany as in Italy, the communists endured the severest political repression of all groups.
Here were two peoples, the Italians and Germans, with different histories, cultures, and languages, and supposedly different temperaments, who ended up with the same repressive solutions because of the compelling similarities of economic power and class conflict that prevailed in their respective countries. In such diverse countries as Lithuania, Croatia, Rumania, Hungary, and Spain, a similar fascist pattern emerged to do its utmost to save big capital from the impositions of democracy.4
The Liberalism to Fascism Pipeline (Neoliberalism Explained)
True to form, the Social Democrat leaders refused the Communist party’s proposal to form an eleventh-hour coalition against Nazism. As in many other countries past and present, so in Germany, the Social Democrats would sooner ally themselves with the reactionary Right than make common cause with the Reds.
Well, the German SPD’s famous symbol was the three arrows, representing the opposition to conservatism, fascism and communism. Of course, SPD refused to form a coalition with the communists. And during the Great Depression, the SPD already lost their majority in the parliament and had to form a grand coalition with various parties. They were finally made insignificant when they lost more seats and influence in 1932 elections, being relegated in to minority and opposition. In spite of that, they are the only major party-- all 92 SPD MPs-- who voted down the Enabling Act, which gave absolute power to Hitler, while the rest of parliament either approved it or being communist MP they were prevented by SA to enter the parliament.
.ml leading the charge on this.
I see a lot of other really suspicious shit around Lemmy. I have a suspicion it’s trying to be used like r/the_donald was.
Yup. There’s stuff that pings my radar as well.
However, the technical barrier to actually getting on Lemmy forces a minimum level of intelligence. I. E. the pool of useful idiots is way smaller than reddit. Most tankie wank gets called out.
Doesn’t mean that we’re not being used for training data. I’m also still percolating on what can be done by just posting slanted articles and stifling disent.
Lemmy is better but still totally susceptible to manipulation.
If anything is being used to stir shit and divide and conquer it’s all the noxious anti-communist liberals running around crying about tankies
Yep. Just like that. Perfect example of the drivel they spread in an attempt to divide us.
example of one of those ^
You see the problem is if we don’t agree with everything liberals say then we are dividing the left somehow. When will you learn that we simply strongly disagree with your ideology? The left isn’t allied with liberals and never has been.
What have you agreed with them on?
Idk, stuff like racism is bad probably. They don’t actually need to follow through for me to agree
I disagree that there is a strong divide ideologically speaking. I think regarding the liberals in Congress this holds fairly true for their more conservative approach to progress, but I wouldn’t say it’s the same for what leftist-liberal voters want.
For instance, I’m in favor of Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Services, union support/collective bargaining, Universal Healthcare, universal daycare, free college/trade school education, and support for nuclear power & renewable energy solutions.
I believe the capitalist system needs to be reigned in entirely where there should not be any billionaires. Tax loopholes need to be closed on corporations that allow for the billionaires to take loans on their stock. There should be no monopolies or big conglomerates as they prevent competition.
Furthermore, we should change the reward structure of our economy by highly subsidizing jobs like teaching, researching, and the arts as I believe these sectors are what help a society to flourish yet are underfunded/underpaid.
We differ in that I recognize that to be impossible under capitalism. Monopolies and imperialism are a feature not a bug
I disagree that they are impossible; hard to do yes, but not impossible. They require the political power to implement those things is the key thing, but that goes with everything. In the US for instance, if it was just the blue states voting for those things to be implemented in blue states and if the blue states funded it then I think would be possible to implement some of those things even in our current political climate.
There’s a few things you need to make it possible though:
-
Ending Citizens United, as it is much harder to implement these changes when politicians can be bought by corporate interests.
-
Alternative Voting systems in place at local, state, and federal levels. As progressive politicians sometimes have a higher barrier of getting off the ground verses incumbents due to vote splitting.
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Reimplementing and expanding the Fairness Doctrine to include all traditional media, social media, and apply to online influencers. As misinformation is currently allowed to be spread without audiences being presented a more well rounded picture.
I will add that the monopolies are inevitable if the system is unregulated. Same thing with cartels. Capitalism only works with regulations to keep the system working. As the entire benefit of capitalism, innovation, all but stops when competition is not allowed to happen with big companies. That is why we need regulators that are not able to be influenced or bought out by corporate lobbyists.
Imperialism is less a feature these days, more globalist multinational conglomeration. It’s cut from the same cloth though, with unscrupulous companies seeking to exploit locals in international markets. The answer to dealing with these entities is that we need a multinational trade deal with our allies.
Namely, we need to punish companies and countries that try to exploit locals in other counties for cheap/exploitative labor practices. Any country or company that doesn’t do business by the agreement should be met with steep tariffs, ideally with some of those funds set aside to go back to the workers who were robbed of the fruits of their labor. I believe the agreement should require that resources be collected in a way that is sustainable, implementing green practices, and non-exploitative.
-
Good point, tankies isn’t a very well know term.
Telling new users they shouldn’t listen to the FooBars when they say “don’t vote for Genocide Joe, I’m your friendly neighborhood communist btw” doesn’t directly convey why the FooBars can’t be trusted. I think most people on Lemmy agree that communism isn’t the enemy.
Maybe instead of tankie, we should use a more known and direct descriptor: don’t trust the dictators.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. We live in a dictatorship of capital, I’m opposed to that.
What’re you talking about, the whole system is working fine. The far right isn’t riding to popularity throughout Europe, and clearly hasn’t taken hold in the US.
Listen, if you can’t do everything I like, then you’re a fascist. And I mean everything. I’d pluck an example out of the air, but there’s no point, because someone else will. And yeah, it’s probably a good example, but I’m willing to bet the farm on it.
I mean in a normal country liberals are on the right of the political spectrum and close to the conservative? Cfr. macronist France.
Liberals are only on the left in the US because the US is far right.
It’s almost like left and right are bullshit labels, sort of like conservative obviously was to MAGA after Trump was voted in.
I base my labels on the seating arrangements of the revolutionary French parliament from over 200 years ago. What’s wrong with that?
I think both sides of the National Assembly would have had you guillotined if you said they’re a parliament.
PS: Guillotines didn’t exist at that point so this is technically inaccurate.
I’d certainly guillotine anyone who thought that a 200 year old reference merited relevance and was anything other than proof at how bullshit out of touch the labels are. Then again, people being as ignorant as they were 200 years ago seems on cue.
I mean, the split is still there. On the right you have people who want to concentrate power and on the right people who want to distribute it. The left-right spectrum doesn’t carry all the information, but it’s still a pretty useful descriptor. Why do you think it’s bullshit?
Because it shifts from country to country no matter the scales you use. You could put dots on whatever imaginary axis you choose, and they would be unidentifiable across countries - about the only thing it could identify are the people who don’t have a clue about political environments elsewhere but think they do.
Your definition isn’t even correct, there are many “left” parties that want to concentrate power and even the most infamously “right” government of them all, that of the GQP in the US, have claimed things like wanting to “distribute” power from federal to state government. About the only universal single axial distinction between parties are those willing to operate and respect a system of governance, and those that only want to game it and change it to what they want, and even that is constantly shifting.
Right now a lot of our governments are democracies being divided up into the people who want to continue to operate within them being increasingly outnumbered by the people being hoodwinked into transitioning and increasingly operating outside of them. But even that isn’t left of right, and it is very dependent on the type of government it is being manifested in the first place - someone might want to play within the system in a high democracy high trust society yet would be willing to support those living in a dictatorship who work to game and change it.
Left and right is highly psychological. Venezuela’s dictator Maduro is placed in the “left” by those that like to criticize their own left parties, while Mile’s is “right” while Bukele, who has close links to Milei and Maduro, is not identified by either, having called himself a “man of the left” while increasingly prospering within the “right”. Why? Optics and psychology. “Left” and “right” is very easy to manipulate into a bipartisanship, and a bipartisanship can be worn down into an autocracy. The US is a prime example of this.
A party can be identified by two things: the ideology they say they will represent, of which things like “left”/“right” is the vaguest yet safest thing they can claim and easiest thing to divide society on, and what they actually can and will do, and to define either of these, you need far more labels than different ends of an axis. But people think the creation of the universe is detailed in a pocket book called the Bible, so it’s no surprise they think “left” and “right” is sufficient connotation.
I wish these memes came with a political compass clarification of what these terms exactly mean for the author.
Republicans are the Fascist Party, Democrats are the Conservative Party; Dem Soc are the moderate party. We don’t have a left party in the US.
I would just like to state that most Americans have no idea what the difference between a liberal and leftist is. When you say you’re a liberal, they think you’re a leftist. When you say you’re a leftist, they think you’re a leftist. The conflation will always be there, given the history of the US and decades of the usage of the conflation in everyday American language.
Edit Addendum: it doesn’t help that liberals/democratic establishment are somewhat more “”“”“”“”““left””“”“”“”“” of the conservatives/Republicans, which is why liberals are grouped with the “left” in the US. It also doesn’t help that the “left”, who would be more accurately known as that grouping of socialists, communists, anarchists, and every other small or large anti-capitalist and or progressive political identity group, just call themselves “the left” or “leftist”, playing into the idea that one’s politics can be quickly understood by pointing to the linear spectrum of “right” and “left”, as if these broad and false dichotomies fit reality to a tee or some shit.
PSL exists belive it or not
They have yet to field a successful candidate for public office; imma stick to the dem socialists for now
Our goal is not to change the system from within. Feel free to engage with DSA candidates and politics, I do too sometimes but I also understand that their influence is limited in scope and I should engage with revolutionary politics as well.
Chinese funded militants? Hard fucking pass, China’s everything wrong with the USA and then some.
.ml user detected, opinion disregarded
Blinding yourself to the opinions of those who disagree with you is a great way to learn and grow 👍
Do you know where the funding for PSL cones from?
Me, my comrades, and Neville Singham who I am relatively cool with. Class traitors of that variety are too uncommon
Ok cool, as long as you’re aware. I’m definitely in favor of revolution; but Mr Singham is a bit too pro-Beijing for me. I’d rather not swap one kind of authoritarian for another
Your favorite flavor of boot is red, no thanks.
Only when it steps on the throats of the bourgeois ❤️
Why don’t you go learn and grow on an infinite AI Slop feed. After all, no information can be detrimental, right?
Only party I support at this point.
Left is Progressive. DNC create progress everytime we put them in, even without having more than 50 senate seats in over a decade. DNC are your dudes.
No, they’re REALLY not. Haven’t been since they fucked Bernie in 2016
The DNC is complicit in the fascist takeover of the US
Bernie lost because millions more people voted for the other candidates in 2016. The fact that he was even allowed to run on the DNC ticket despite his third party status is truly the opposite of fucking.
We already discussed this in another thread. The 2020 race was decided by Obama/DNC forcing multiple candidates to drop out. After Super Tuesday the chances were slim for Bernie to have any chance at winning and there was no point in voters coming out from the remaining primaries.
Stop spreading bullshit.
I remember that thread, you owned yourself by linking to an article which disagreed with you.
Only it didn’t. Have you worked on your reading skills?
Did you miss the year? I was talking g about 2016 you dolt
Doesn’t matter. The guy made the same mistake for both elections.
What about the complicity in the Fascist takeover of our Government? The billionaires that back the DNC would LOVE to try out fascism
If that were true they could be reaping the benefits of supporting the Trump Admin directly, like Walczak and Tim Cook have.
The fact of the matter is that the billionaires aren’t a united front, either, because some of them are smart enough to realize their fortunes mean jack fucking shit in the face of a dictator who can take whatever he wants.
If we had enough DNC to impeach then he would be impeached, if we had enough to remove then he would be removed. We’re in this situation to begin with because the GOP have all three chambers and the SCOTUS. None of this shit would be happening otherwise.
GOP got there because the DNC has failed to embrace progressive policies. If the mainstream dems fought for single payer healthcare we’d have a blue majority for 60 years. The fucking bought and paid for corporate shills did this to America. THATS what I mean by complicit!! They’ve shit all over every idea that would actually make life better for working people in favor of the table scraps of billionaires and the GOP filled the void with their mindless nationalism!
And yet somehow none of this happened under the DNC? You make zero sense.
You don’t have to have a party for an ideology to exist.
True, but it’s hard to get elected to office without a party
an ideology doesn’t need to get elected to office to exist.
(Especially ideologies who see the state as illegitimate, say anarchism)
It’s a good thing that that’s not what they said, then.
No,
I think we’ve decided this. The left (rightfully) hates the Democrats.
Leftists hate democrats so much they helped vote in Trump instead of a very decent woman twice.
The only thing leftists hate more then democrats are other leftists.
Leftists aren’t numerous enough to have had much an effect on the election.
But I will confirm your second statement.
Two things:
Leftists did vote for Clinton. (You’ll recall she got more votes.) That is despite the fact that she was a piece-of-shit candidate that we didn’t want, and didn’t win the primary.
Kamala was just plain stupidity. You can’t look poor people in the eye for three months and tell them you won’t change anything and still claim to be decent, much less a legitimate presidential candidate.
Respectfully, you’re being very unreasonable. You don’t get to punch the voters in the face and then whine that you broke your hand.
Kamala wasn’t a great candidate. But there were 2 options, and the other is deploying the military against civilians, ignoring due process.and court orders, and ordering states to imprison the homeless while ensuring an economic collapse that will create more homeless people.
Ignoring the problems with Bidens’ and then Harris’ campaign, which were disastrous and failed to earn the votes of many working class Americans, is precisely how the Democrats will continue to lose even in the face of unpopular fascist opposition.
Zohran Mamdani has been a microcosm of this paradigm shift. Progressive policies are incredibly popular because they address the material harms people face. Anti-israel policies are incredibly popular and only getting more so as Israel and the US continue to facilitate this genocide.
The corporate neoliberalism of the Democratic Party establishment is a critical part of the problem that got us to fascism. We need progressive candidates at all levels to dramatically reform the party and represent the working class constituency it’s supposed to represent.
Yeah, true progressives are great.
But that doesn’t mean you should hand power to treasonous, fascist rapists when your favorite candidate doesn’t get the nomination.
The Democratic Party did hand over power to treasonous fascist rapists, and they did so by running such a bad campaign, despite the consistent polling and public sentiment that showed exactly what needed to change. That’s precisely the issue I’m getting at. The Democratic Party establishment clearly prefers losing to fascists over representing everyday americans
I think you have definitely nailed the issues of the most of the Democratic Party politicians in power. The Democratic Party Politicians don’t necessarily represent the interests of their leftist-liberal voters. They probably will continue to not do so if they are in safe seats and funded by corporations.
What needs to change at the local level, state level, and federal level is implementing an Alternative Voting system. As this is the key way we will be able to get progressive politicians, that support progressive policies, into power.
NYC had Ranked Choice Voting and it likely contributed in part to people feeling to vote their conscience and list Mamdani at the top of the ticket.
it has been shown that many counties voting places were rigged for trump, so she wouldve won anyways, if she hadnt actually conceded too quickly. Also dems dont fight election rigging by the gop at all.
Biden still got the most votes of any presidential candidates.
I’m rubbing the non-voter’s noses in the mess they made and hope they’ll do better in the midterms.
Without COVID Biden would have lost too.
Though, it was important to see Democrats demonstrate, publicly, that brain damage and genocide are not disqualifiers for the presidency in their view.
Biden’s ass cancer would have been a better president than the one we ended up with.
How’s the genocide working out, I think Trump is about to give away Ukraine and Israel is about to take over Gaza City, no?
harris was not voted for, purely out of sexisms, sorry but even people on the left can be a little sexist.
Right…here we go with the purity tests again. If you don’t believe exactly what I believe, you dont deserve my vote. Its this attitude that got us a second Trump presidency, and how’s that working out for us?
Purity test = genocide good or bad.
If you fail this test, you deserve everything that happens to you.
If there is anything worthwhile for being a purity test, it’s being pro or anti genocide.
How can people expect any party who doesn’t care about genocide, to care about democracy?
Your profile is interesting. It’s almost like you believe a minority can do everything because you’re “right.” Are you in the burn it all down camp?
Artist, musical performer, and former derby skater from the Midwest.
I’m single, childless, and married to freedom and adventure.
ACAB, Anti-War, and I hate Democrats, Republicans, and billionaires.
Yes, but I hate Trump more.
An inch of gained ground is better than a mile of lost ground.What gained ground?
Gay marriage rights, the railroad unions got their sick leave, the rich were being audited created serious revenue gains and if the DNC were in charge then the TCJA wouldn’t have been renewed meaning even more taxing of the rich.
The railroad unions thing is patently false (they wanted a lot more sick leave and a lot more than sick leave), but also: I’m asking what would’ve improved, not what would’ve not deteriorated or what improved in the past.
Okay I’m sorry that decades of evidence of improvements aren’t enough to convince you that things would have improved again, but then my statement about the TCJA expiring in 2026 and not becoming permanent still qualifies as an answer. We would be taxing the fucking rich. How can you even pretend that’s not what we should be doing?
No ground was gained Trump won. Decades of progress erased in 7 months. The genocide in Israel has accelerated. And our economy is crashing.
If Dems won and kept things as they were 7 months ago everything would be demonstrably better than they are now.
Would there still be issues? Of course there are always issues, but it would have been much better.
While this is all true, i can’t imagine that the left would have been celebrating a democratic win today if she won in the fall. If they truly wanted a democratic win (or to gain an inch) they would have pinched their noses and voted for Kamala
That’s true I guess. Way too superficial for my liking, but that’s outside the scope of this conversation. The person I replied to said there would be (small) gains from electing Harris, not just less losses, so I was asking for them yo elaborate.
To address small gains I could have seen at the very least Roe v. Wade being codified by a Harris White House.
Then why didn’t they do that in Biden’s term?
Republican controlled house and senate following midterms. Roe was overturned after mid-terms
I feel like online lefties are all performative and have no genuine strategy for building power. So they resort to the usual purity testing and punching out at liberals non stop. Meanwhile, conservatives are literally ripping people off the streets and putting them in cages. But hey, did you know liberals are actually centrists?
It’s like, my dude, learn to build political power first. Then you can move on to putting liberals in concentration camps like you’ve always been wanting to do. This here is just posturing
I mean, it’s a meme not a dissertation, but also breaking away from liberals is a precondition to building any kind of real power. As long as the left is only an appendage of the liberal establishment, it’ll never appeal to the broader working class.
I don’t disagree with this sentiment. It’s also hard to entertain these types of conversations online because I never know who I’m talking to. Am I interacting with a tankie, an anarchist, or even worst - lemmy’s worst nightmare - a soc dem? Each will have a different position and mandate it’s own type of discourse. But regardless of what your political alignment, you should want to build power.
If you’re a tankie, you will completely eschew building coalitions with liberals. And there’s nothing wrong with that! But then, I don’t know, build an independent party and do something instead of bitching 24/7 about liberals.
If you’re a soc dem, you could try to rebuild the democratic party from within. It’s already undergone several waves of changes, so whose to say it couldn’t happen again? AOC and Mamdani are trying. I support them.
If you’re an anarchist, the same principle applies. You should want to build power. You don’t have align all the time with liberals, but maybe you can form coalitions around policies that highlight the goals of anarchism in a way that makes the movement visible to the general public. You know, building power.
Posting memes 24/7 about liberals is like screaming into the void where all your friends are standing next to you and clapping. Like, ok? What’s next?
I mean, I’d guess most people here don’t think posting memes is a substitute for effective political action. I share your disdain for terminally online lefties (which I guess includes myself), but someone could be dunking on liberals online and doing politics offline. OP could be an active member of their local DSA chapter for all we know. Posting and looking at memes is just entertainment; it doesn’t need to automatically come at the cost of productive work.
Right. You could totally be right about OPs offline political engagement. My critique is more directed at the entirety of the online leftist media apparatus (the twitch streamers, the youtubers, the online pundits, etc). These people are so wrapped in their own personas and audience capture, that they are essentially worthless at building any political power or anything that resembles a movement.
We have twitch streamers with insanely huge audiences like Hassan, who claims to be a socialist, but whenever he’s offered a chance to expand the message or gain some kind of momentum he shoots it down. There seems to be no will or strategy to expand this effort beyond maybe growing youtube subscribers. That’s it. So when I see the same memes posted on lemmy, day after day, I have to wonder: what is the end goal?
