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What do liberals like?
I’m only told what they dislike. I even know what conservatives like, that’s an easy answer. Liberals, I haven’t a clue.
What do liberals like?
Performative actions that give them the illusion of being illuminated leaders.
They like progress that happened in the past, and they like stories about that progress where an individual, not a movement, fought for what was right and the system, now aware that it was hurting people, changed all on its own without political struggle or mass organizing.
They like voting in parliamentary representative elections, even if every step of that election is rigged to benefit the rich capitalist class, in fact this is the only kind of democracy they like.
They like the feeling that words like freedom, justice, liberty bring. They like ideals, in fact they are total idealists who dont understand that progress should be based on more than ideas. Change does begin with an idea, but so does reaction.
They like to believe that there is no such thing as class.
They like experts and repeating the opinions of experts, and they like to not think about from what institutions and incentives exist to bestow expertise.
Liberals like good government.
Both conservatives and leftists believe the government is fundamentally flawed. People keep electing conservatives who sabotage the government to prove it’s flawed (but not in a way that would negatively effect them and their friends). Young people support leftism at protests (which are really just social get togethers) until they grow out of it and vote for conservatives because they continue to believe the government is flawed. Or maybe refuse to participate in a system because it’s not perfect.
If a liberal admits there’s flaws to the system which they want to fix, they are blamed for it because they failed to provide good government. The fact that liberals aren’t in power long enough to make the government better doesn’t matter. They’re considered failures if conservatives prevent them from providing good government.
So people vote for the conservatives to run the government because they succeed in preventing liberals from making the government good.
You know the craziest part about all this is that I’ve been given about three contradictory definitions on what a liberal is, and not one person has claimed to be one.
I’d consider that “Lemmy 101” if the subject was conservatives. They’d never know to come here to begin with, but liberals?
Shouldn’t this thread be full of infighting and opinions?
…where are they? Is this something no one wants to be?
I mean this is a leftist meme community, so I’d expect mostly leftists to be the ones responding. Just like if on a conservative meme platform you asked what leftists are, you’d mostly get conservatives answering.
But I feel like the replies to your question don’t really contradict each other. One was describing them as the Democrats in the US, which is basically accurate. It’s gotten turned into a word meaning leftist by the Republicans, but it’s basically just people who think the current system is pretty much good, and only needs small tweaks.
This amounts to effectively a support of capitalism and the free market, with some regulations being added on top of what we have now. Communism is bad though, and at most we should have some more safety nets. The civil rights movement is good now, but go back to then and liberals were the “white moderates” MLK talked about. Stuff like that disrupts the status quo too much. Since what constitutes the current system changes over time, what liberals support also will, just like any ideology evolves.
Obviously everyone here (me included) will probably be a bit biased against liberals, but also a lot of anarchists or communists or other left wing folk will have probably identified as a liberal at some point in time, and statistically still know and/or be family with a lot of them.
Given their recent electoral strategies, they mostly expect to be elected for not being Trump/conservative.
Ah, the leftist strategy, very bold.
It’s an effective strategy, up to a point. “Vote for me because I’m not the guy you hate” is one of the oldest political strategies around. And Democrats have even openly said that they’ve been funding the most extremist right-wing candidates on the ballot for years to set up easy wins when people think their opponent is a nutjob. There was a lady who even wrote a book about how she won an election doing this. And then she lost to that same extremist in the very next election. Because what they’ve actually done is push the Overton Window further and further into extremism.
At a Systemic level hey’re big fans of the only true Power being Money whilst the Vote is nothing more than a bit of loud Theatre & Clown Show that doesn’t actually control the managing of a country - or in other words, of Oligarchy rather than Democracy.
At a personal level they’re big fans of personal upside maximization with no legal, ethical or moral limits, aka Greed Is Good, or in other words, for sociopathy to be totally legal, socially aceptable and even celebrated.
I like any political map that triangulates liberals from the left and right.
And I love any one that properly omits libertarians.
I am getting more and more confused.
Liberty ≈ Freedom.
Liberal is someone beliveing in something adjacent to freedom. Libertarian is someone believing in something adjecent to freedom.
But I only hear bad things about liberals, alright I already knew 'Merricans are stupid, they get angry about a word while not even being autistic. But I also somethymes hear about libertarians. what the fuck is that supposed to be, especially compared to its namely cousin?
Well I know I’m not being entirely fair to the poor, old 'Murricans, there surely is something they all know about their system, that has not yet reached me. Still calling someone by one of your core tenets ('Murrica, land of the free, home to lady liberty…) and believing that to be an unterstandible slur sure is weird.
Sorry, Bud. The names are mostly just advertisements and not necessarily useful for understanding the underlying philosophy.
American Liberalism (capital ‘L’) is fluid over time at best in its philosophy, and is actively shifting to further elitist interests from a less charitable perspective. It often prioritises corporations over people and cherry picks which cases of violence are or aren’t acceptable by the state.
American Libertarianism (again, capital ‘L’) is Anarcho-capitalism, which believes the world would be a better place if the state was bordering on non-existent, and companies were allowed to operate completely unregulated.
thank you
Libertarianism isn’t nearly as extreme as anarcho capitalism. It argues for minimal government where possible, but still supports governments providing military and law enforcement, emergency services, etc. The libertarian party, for example, is basically what Republicans were pre-trump on fiscal and economic issues, but without any desire to restrict stuff like gay marriage or marijuana. A libertarian is as much an anarcho capitalist as a socialist is a communist (they’re not).
That is not significant a distinction for me to care to differentiate one from the other. They both are right-libertarian, are wanting laissez-faire capitalism with as close to zero oversight as possible, and are cutting taxes as low as possible by gutting public services. Whether one still wants to keep state-funded cops and fire departments is no longer relevant when the end results of both are corporate-nation hellscapes in my view.
Jesse…
what the fuck am I talking about?
well im confused. so what do you wanna do about it?
Idk you calling people stupid while also coming off as extremely ignorant on the topic just makes you seem like both an asshole and an idiot.
You can either be an asshole or ignorant but if you’re both then all I can ask is Jesse what the fuck are you talking about.
Well people are stupid. I am a hypocrite, I am somethymes an asshole. And I’ll call americans stupid for however long I wish to.
As for me being ignorant… The search-engines are never useful. I asked for information and gave some sort of premediated Information about my previous understanding. Now I know more than beforehand. Because some people were helpful.
You catch more flies with honey
One catches more idiots with platitudes /s
Libertarian has two different meanings, depending on who you talk two.
In the modern day, and unless they qualify it, “libertarianism = anarcho-capitalism”.
Classical libertarianism (sometimes left libertarianism, or libertarian socialism) is more akin to anarcho-syndicalism. Advocacy for ownership of the means of production via trade unions and the like, with the goal of obsoleting the state and capitalism, that kinda thing.
EDIT: Also, capital-L “Liberalism” in the US is more than a little bit of a departure from liberalism. It’s mostly evolved into a meaningless pejorative the far right uses against the center-left (and when I say that, I’m talking about center-left from an American perspective, so really more center-right)
not to mention “liberal” in the us usually refers to “neoliberal” as in neoliberal capitalism, which is wack.
Truth
I hate all you dick licks.
Aw. I hate you too. ♥️
Hate u more, babe 😘
we like guns?
guns are a beautiful opinion enhancer.
One of the most settled questions on the Left that applies to both Marxists and Anarchists is the belief that Revolution is necessary and Reform does not work.
A fascist has a gun and your minority neighbor doesn’t. The fascist will get their gun illegally if necessary to spread fascism. Do you trust law enforcement to be the shield for minorities against gun-wielding fascists?
As a leftist who grew up with guns, I’m neutral on guns. individual gun ownership is historically meaningless. Only organized defense and resistance stands a chance against state violence. Our hobbies and consumer identities aren’t radical, and political struggle, which will need to be defended by organized armed resistance, is the only way to get to socialism, unless you’re a fan of that lib Stalin.
Well… recently some guy (definetly Hunter Biden and no-one else) hurt someone else real bad. now a lot of 'murricans are suddenly able to get treatment for things, where they previously couldn’t. So there is a possibility for limited change through single people with single weapons.
Though on the other hand, there previously was a daily quota of two americans being able to be shot, whithout anyone being interested even a slight bit.
There is a reason why 90% of politically active socialists are against adventurism. Maybe this one flies under the radar, it wouldn’t surprise me if the ruling class was as desensitized toward gin violence as the rest of us. It would also give us excellent ammunition if, over the killing of one CEO, there was suddenly all this social change called for by the capitalist class and outcry from the media, especially as our children practice active shooter drills at school. This guy was like the head of a company that is part of a much larger company that owns a bunch of insurance companies, and that CEO is still doing just fine. The insurance company is anecdotally approving more claims, but the system remains. We can’t say what oppressions will be, but they won’t be meaningful but in the short term, and they won’t last.
“All these revolutions only served to make the state stronger,” is arguably the most important quote of Marx because it addressed how class concessions are just subsumed by the body politic and become part of the apparatus of oppression itself. Don’t be a sucker, get organized if you want to create lasting change
organization may however also lead to infighting, disorganization, insubordination and treason, look no further than the reform! party in the usa at the end of the last century. when one knows what one has to do, one has the means to do it, then doing it and only telling a minimal amount of people (at best 0) will always be a preferable outcome for achieving a small, personal victory.
If one has a plan they should DO IT! JUST… DO IT!talking to others will a) improve the plan against certain unthought factors b) expose the plan to scrutiny, leading to longer planning thymes, leading to less action, c) expose the plan to exposure, resulting in arrests, resulting in failure
Somethymes a movement needs some early victories to get going. Afterwards however it will need to cut itself loose from its beginnings and change tactics, yes. Partly, because, as you’ve said, the system adapts to the earlier strategies.
but in my mind making the big evil afraid and making it flail around untill it fails is a preferable alternative to having it be able to play one as a chess piece in the big game of strife.
Make it be afraid. Make it suffer under its own delusions. While it suffers from itself and focusses down the ghouls of its past, organize, enforce the ghouls, remember who the ghouls are. gain power. destroy power.
Once humans are in power they corrupt. Not everyone to the same extent, but the longer the more is at least a strongly indicated tendency. Soo…
That’s just it, they aren’t afraid. Also encouraging other people to do adventurism and potentially throw their life away is a disgusting, shameful thing to try and do. “Organizing can be inconvenient” so can prison and execution, not to mention the cascade of negative repercussions for the left, in addition to many others, that always come from widespread adventurism. I’m afraid you don’t know enough about the history of class resistance to see why you’re just pinning some hopes on a dream.
Hoping someone else will solve your problem, someone else will pull the trigger, is wrong headed. Don’t pull the trigger yourself, create the conditions for a new way of living. There is no one who could be executed whose death will result in everyone getting free, high quality, gender affirming healthcare. Your first step isnt a step forward its a step back. But in the end we won’t know for sure until the history is decided stay tuned, and in the mean time educate yourself!
Once humans are in power they corrupt.
Corrupt what? Are you religious, because this is some christian mythology. This is why our movements must be democratic. Get a grip
Why aren’t they afraid? Because the system keeps everything JUST stable enough, year after year, while slowly eroding the good from the many. They needn’t be afraid, because they have protection, from each other, from below and from above. What happens when the realization hits, that their protection is only limited and easily ripped off?
Yes, call me stupid will surely put YOU on a good pedestal.
Organization is the only way to keep this amount of people on our planet living. getting truely rid of organization would be culling BILLIONS of people. Thats not what I’m arguing for, currently. If one wants an adventure, to borrow your words, one can certainly have some friends, but in every story of friends taking down the bad guy, there is one that does, or nearly does, betray the group. Singular hereos do not have to worry about that, at least.
If one is in prison, one at leat has a roof above their head and daily slop. if one has already lost everything, what is there to loose in execution? one can keep their honor, reaching glory in the afterlife. Yes it wont help them with anything (*actually, thinking about it, if they are in pain, cant afford help, living being a fate worse than death…), especially not their loss, but there is hope for others at the end.
I myself cannot do adventures rather well. There arw reasons for that. So the only way for me to change things is through getting others to do the adventure isn’t it? I help them on their quest, and I don’t betray them to certain forces. In the end I will have little gained and little lost, in most cases. However, betting on faraway dreams keeps the demons away. Just as gamblers do, one bets on the big win and ignores the big loss. Yes One can also set on the small wins and try to evade the small losses. Thats why I’m not yet completely out of the game.
There needs to be certain chaos for revolution to win out. Revolution in a place and thyme of steady tracks will achieve nought. Creating the uncertainties needed is essential for eventual betterment. One has to pull the arrow back for it to fly forwards doesnt one? Taking a few steps backwards is essential in taking a few good steps forward.
To hammer it home: as long as the capitalists are driving the carriage forwards, without looking scared, nothing will scare those beneath them. and if nothing is able to scare those beneath the top layer, and any layers below, the whole thing is steadily doing what it is.
Now I ask you. what is easier: convincing all of the bottom rung of the hierarchy together or to shake up the very top? Surely focusing ones efforts on the very top achieves the most? In the USA hundreds of people are killed steadily, yet the system seems undisturbed. Is that not a disgusting state of affairs? is that how it should continue to be? In the USA hundreds, thousands of people are unable to afford education, treatment, a good life, their small, or their big dream, is that how it ought to be?
What would happen if those at the top had their services denied? had their life denied? they’d push for change just as much. but lifes always been unfair and they’ve got the advantage. As such they have already taken care of every inconveniance, bare one.
Yes executing one will not make the whole system fixed overnight. But where does that change? 30%? thirty percent of what? this list: https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#6230f1ae3d78 maybe? the next bigger list? some other list of evil, slightly more hidden people?
All in all barely a few hundred people? just how can one measure suffering? I dont know, but I know, but i know that a few hundred people is easier changed out than a few million. But one is casually and repeatedly done the other is not.
“changing out the cleaner…”
changing out the h-vac-repair man, chaging out the sewage-plant-worker, changing out the miners, changing out he poor people. Letting them die and replacing them. letting them fail and replacing them, because their nose doesnt suit you. truely a dream of might. the king is the king, the kings advisors are exchangeable. The kings cooks are easily exchangeable. The beggars in front of the kings castle are good for target-practice.
Once humans are in power they corrupt. The whole system has changed because those on top have been exchanged? Nope, thats why one has to destroy any power one has willingly.
You are right. There are no benevolent beings. no gods, no perfect people (Also no perfectly evil/bad ones). Some are worse, some are less bad, maybe the better ones are resistant, maybe they havent had the chance, mayve one doesnt see the bad, maybe they aren’t bad to you, maybe there are checks and balances keeping them in, well, check (which just means they havent gotten to show their full potential, since those checks are limits on power and corruptability).
This is why we need to remove the currently “bad”, powerfull and corrupt ones, and replace them with new ones. So that they may tear down the hierarchy of power, so that it may be replaced by a new system. truely a revolution worth dying for.
Where did I call you stupid? What is this, a reverse ad hominem? A passive aggressive strawman? I criticized harshly the action of encouraging adventurism, and the “are you religious” question was to point out confusion, not stupidity. I wish you wouldn’t assume I think the worst of you because we disagree. Even if I criticize you doesn’t mean I believe there is something inherent, some “stupid” quality that you have and I don’t. That’s a phenomenological fallacy. I don’t believe that things are, I believe that everything is becoming something else. So I am hopeful that you will learn from this event, and it pushes you to develop beyond your current limitations, which have led to my harsher criticisms. I used to have a lot of very confused ideas myself but I pushed myself to learn more and refine my ideas and ideals. Even in my confused notions, I can see the nugget of truth that I was clinging to, and I’ve learned to refine it and communicate it better. I’m sure there is some nugget of truth for you as well that remains unrefined, and if you learn to separate the bad ideas that form your base assumptions and warp your perspective, from the truth, then that will become your unique perspective and communicating it well will help others to find their unique perspectives. Everything is one thing. Obsessing about individualism is one of the main weapons wielded in the class war.
But to your points I think your reasoning is purely idealistic and divorced from history and what is possible. As if Luigi was the first person to invent adventurism. Its good to be able to formulate your own reasoning, but you’re missing the step where you check your conclusions against the material world. Hopefully in your process of self actualization you learn to apply this step and improve your ability to draw meaningful conclusions from facts and not just rearrange them to suit your fancy.
I hope you are never approached to help any adventurist, as you will surely have been targeted by a federal informant.
If you don’t then you’re a class traitor and I hate you furiously and I’m now going to split off and start my own party for us true lefties!
/s
Most leftists, generally yes.
Doesn’t mean they like US style gun culture or obsessed with them. But the system leftists oppose is armed and has/will use those arms upon leftists that gain any significant amount of power.
Arm the oppressed.
We also know the difference between liberals and conservatives.
Liberals are formerly conservatives. Conservatives are now extremist fascists.
As opposed to those moderate fascists?
I dropped a / I guess. I meant either or.
Honestly, the “likes guns” part doesn’t work anywhere outside the US, if that. And that includes conservatives.
Internationally I’m pretty sure “hates Trump” would absolutely be in the center, too.
“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary” - Karl Marx
Oh, you don’t want to get biblical with 19th century political theory quotes or none of this chart makes sense, in the US or otherwise.
Huh?
Bro thinks the proletariat doesn’t need to be armed because capitalists respect democracy.
Maybe English didn’t their first language but damn that’s just gibberish
This quote applies to Marx’s time though. When armed workers would have had nearly the same arsenal as a professional military. When horse carriages and trains were the only way to move soldiers at all.
In the age of tanks, jets and missiles, do you seriously believe workers have the slightest chance against a military? It takes a single nuke to crush a revolution that is not supported by the military.
Who won the Vietnam War? It is not at all clear that the US military could defeat a committed domestic guerrilla force. Especially if the military was split on the nature of the conflict. A bloodless political revolution is possible and there’s historical precedent for it wrt socialist movements, although expect a civil war of some kind. The fallacy that socialists just want to wage a bloody civil war in order to get free healthcare is so tired and fake and divorced from anything but liberal delusions.
Also the arms are needed to defend the political and social revolution, which will be directly attacked by armed thugs and reactionaries if it managed to gain traction toward actually upending the capitalist system. Look up The Deacons of Defense and the history of defending civil rights orgs and leaders, while kicking the Klan out of southern mainstream political life. Its not optional. However individuals armed is meaningless, there needs to be civil defense groups and left wing militias to be able to actually protect the people that need protected when they become targets of attack.
I wouldn’t really call the NVA a guerilla force. They used those tactics somewhat, but the guerilla force was the Vietcong and they got wiped in the Tet offensive. It was the NVA that won the war.
Thanks for the correction, I hope to start studying the socialist history of Vietnam much more
The best thing I would say is the NVA wanted to position itself where US ground forces had to engage with it directly and have a war of attrition, which the US could not politically do. They did that by going into the jugle to make US air power and artillery less effective while also using Soviet air defense and jets. Guerilla tactics usually avoids massed fighting against your enemy, but that’s actually what the NVA wanted.
If the US could march into North Vietnam that’d be a different story but they were entirely unwilling to do anything like that because it would’ve taken incredible manpower and casualties and the US public was not for it.
Leftists maintain that Revolution is necessary, and the past century has shown countless guerilla victories over Imperialists with better technology using asymetrical warfare tactics. War is evolving.
Nukes are, like, the worst example for counter insurgency (COIN). Any government that vaporizes a city of their own people will quickly have the rest of their population in open revolt as well.
And, as proven again and again, classical militaries are horrendously bad at fighting insurgencies that have popular support. There are no front lines, only fighters. Every attempt at suppressing a movement harms bystanders much more than militants, driving more people away from the government.
Nukes can be used in various ways though, vaporizing a city would be quite the way up the escalation ladder.
I don’t have a study to cite, obviously, but I believe military threats can be extremely effective.
Start with detonating a nuke in the middle of nowhere as threat. If that doesn’t have the desired result, an EMP blast above a target city could be the next step. And so on and so forth.
Whenever guns are mentioned, I’m just reminded of how the US usually acts in case a single cop is killed:
After Matthews stumbled out of the house, a SWAT team – unaware that Kahl was dead – began firing thousands of rounds at the house, eventually setting it ablaze by pouring diesel fuel down the house’s chimney. Kahl’s burned remains were found the following day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Kahl
Sure, he was a far right extremist and his death has probably bettered the world. Yet it proves that the amount of firepower usually determines the result.
They can do that to individuals, or even small, localized organizations (MOVE bombing comes to mind). But overwhelming force fails to work once the enemy is organized, can change locations and hide with comrades, etc. That’s why for any reasonable leftists guns are important, but not the be-all end-all. That’s organization. Repression and COIN has many faces, and open mass violence is but the last of them.
Modern COIN (when done right) is all about eroding popular support for the revolution. As long as the majority of civilians sympathize with the cause, it’s next to impossible to militarily defeat an insurrection. And bigger guns are of limited use for that, what matters is who you aim them at
If that’s your opinion then why bother worrying at all? Just put the slave collar on yourself.
I hear this argument a lot and it rings hollow to me. State violence is mainly through police, not military campaigns. The Black Panthers were openly armed as a show of force against police. As a result, Ronald Reagan (while California governor, with support from the NRA) put some of the strictest gun control laws on the books to disarm them. If an openly armed group popped up today, you can’t send in tanks and jets against them. They don’t have command centers and bases to target. Even for our high level of state violence, it would be a huge escalation (and unconstitutional) to involve the military. Even with actual military campaigns, an armed population doesn’t just get steamrolled. Look at the decade of insurgency fighting that took place in Iraq. Gun control means cops are the only ones with guns.
Another example: during the George Floyd protests, there were often armed counter protesters and police were brutalizing the protesters while leaving the counter protesters unharmed. A lot of ink was spilled about how this showed how the police were on the side of the counter protesters. That’s almost certainly true. However, there was also a protest in Texas where they showed up openly armed and the police didn’t touch them. They didn’t need to have enough firepower to win a battle. They just had to make it not worth it.
Nukes didn’t help that CEO. Asymmetric warfare is a thing. I want to think there is a totally peaceful solution, and maybe there is. But even peaceful solutions only work with a silent threat of armed revolt in the background.
Depends on the circumstance…
Kinda have to, since none of the “leftist” ideologies has any chance of hell of being bought into action without revolution.
Since revolution requires some degree of violence, and established states have access to not just man portable firearms, but bigger guns as well, then attempting to use violence to change said state without access to firearms is what you might call dumb. You might call it suicidal. You might call it a form of Darwinism whereby the truly stupid leftists get killed off by whatever government they’re going at so that the non-stupid leftists that are left breed smarter babies that will then realize that without equal access to arms, no populace can revolt.
I guess you don’t have to like guns. It is possible to dislike something immensely and still use it as a tool. Like toothpaste. It tastes weird, it’s not fun to use, but without it, you have no teeth eventually. Guns are like toothpaste, your squeeze them and weird things come out, but at least your teeth are clean.
Did a gun company write this? 🤣
checks user name
Ummmm, maybe?
To make a revolution you need the people on your side, not guns specifically. The bastille was torn down by hand. Just look at the USA 6 jan. They didn’t need guns, and thats fu-king USA!
If you needed guns to make a revolution, you’d probably need RPGs and tanks too.
They didn’t need guns on Jan 6 because there were traitors in major government offices - namely the White House and the Pentagon - who withheld the National Guard from mobilizing and reduced the number of police in the area that day.
There were soldiers ready and waiting, guns in hand, who were told to standby.
Well guns wouldn’t have changed that.
Also, if the whole population is in on it, the national guard will probably stand down too.
If they had had guns, they probably would’ve succeeded. What kept them from executing Senators was basically a single locked door in a hallway and one or two police officers holding it while the politicians were evacuated through the tunnels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
I don’t think you understand how a military police state works. The government’s monopoly on violence keeps the population in line. It wasn’t until after MLK was killed and over 2 billion dollars worth of damage was done by rioters burning down entire sections of cities that civil rights laws were passed. Years of protests led to nothing. A week of riots had the laws written, drafted, and signed into law. Look at what’s happening right now over the death of a certain CEO of a major health insurance company.
I don’t think that was a revolution, neither that the USA is a dictatorship or a “military police state”.
And yes, dictatorships use violence to stay in place, and revolutions doesn’t bring that down, it’s more the other way around, the dictatorship starts to become weak and actors move in to take power (can be the population, another country, …).
Like Syria. Hopefully Russia in 2025.
Which wasn’t a revolution, Jan 6th or the Civil Rights Movement? The Jan 6th was definitely an attempted coup (unless you ask the MAGA cultists), but the Civil Rights was definitely a revolution of some form. And the Kent State Massacre is just an example of the violent suppression often used by the US government (though we usually prefer it to be in other countries).
The US isn’t a dictatorship (yet, who knows where we’ll be in 2 years time), but you look at how militarized our police force is and how many US citizens are gunned down by them every year and tell me we that we aren’t a militarized police state. Our cops are buying surplus IFVs from the army to drive around in. Palestinian protesters at colleges were having their belongings seized and thrown out by police and administration both - including things like medications. During Bush Jr’s administration, you could only legally protest against the Iraq war in areas cordoned off with concrete barriers and fences (sometimes with barbed wire on them). Several studies were done years back by some Ivy League schools looking at laws that were passed or not and their popularity with the 1% vs the majority of Americans, and their conclusion was that the US cannot be considered a democracy and is in fact an oligarchy.
Dictatorships are usually brought down by their own incompetence, but resistance groups speed that up and help keep people from dying. The point isn’t open warfare against guys with tanks and beyond visual range missiles, but asymmetric warfare meant to cripple the government’s operational capacity for oppression and community support for the population. Like in Myanmar, where resistance groups are fighting against the ethnic cleansing being done by the military using 3d printed guns because not a single nation in the world cares enough to send them aid. They can’t get guns, but they can get hobby 3d printers and bullets, and that’s good enough to kill a soldier and take his gun.
Like George Washington said when he opposed the Second Amendment, “Farmers with guns will never win against a professional army.” But you don’t need to, you just need to be annoying enough that the government falls on their own knife trying to catch you. Rambo getting gunned down in a blaze of glory will be remembered as an idiot. The black militia put together and trained by a black WW2 veteran who put down sandbags and machine gun emplacements on people’s porches to protect them from retaliation by the KKK are remembered as heroes. Just like the people who showed up for MLK’s show of force in D.C. that we call The Million Man March today. That wasn’t just a protest. It was a threat that terrified every white suburbanite across the country. If he could mobilize a million people to the capital just to march, what else could he do?
A revolution is not one event, the French Revolution didn’t end with the storming of the bastile. The french people were armed for the revolution
Jan 6 failed. The Bastille was in 1789.
I think my point still stand, which is it’s not about the weapons.
Yep, you can have your own personal armory. You’ll be limited by what you can hold, and more importantly wield. Worse what was won by a small group of armed insurgents. Can be lost just as easily.
If you have the people on your side, you may never have to fire a shot. And it will be generations before what was gained is forgotten and becomes vulnerable again. If they’re constantly having to look over their shoulders. Wondering if that janitor will come for them. If they can trust the people that cook and bring their food. It simply will not be worth it to them.
They’re sociopaths. They’ll take advantage of anything society allows them to. It’s also why they want AI and robots so badly. Then they won’t need societies permission anymore.
Tell that to the United Healthcare CEO.
I’ve been fighting for a political solution to income inequality for decades now and, at the moment, we are further than ever from any kind of success. Even so, I am still hopeful that we might get a backlash to the second Trump presidency that moves things in the right direction. However, I’m more convinced than ever that were we to start making serious gains that the economic establishment would abandon politics in favor of kinetic solutions. An armed populis is the only deterrence we have.
Not a revolution
Who said anything about a revolution?
Your point is indeed unchanged, whether it was standing in the first place is a different question.
I like guns and some parts of capitalism, I like some ideas from the ML people and anarchists. The complete evolution of human thought and philosophy is worthy of consideration without bias or prejudice.
Addendum not racial supremacy, though
I’d argue that’s worth consideration in the context of a history class.
I would heap written abuse upon you, but it’s true
As a Leftist there are a few types of leftists I hate
- Fake Leftists: People who think Socialism is when “government does stuff” and they just want the government to do everything
- Ignorant Leftists: People who blindly hate capitalism but make no real attempt to look into leftist theory
- “Anti-imperalists”: People who support “anti-imperialism” by supporting the other empire. These people will blindly support Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, the Taliban, Assad’s Syria, HTS, and occasionally blatant terrorism.
- Aesthetic “Leftists”: People who see leftism as nothing more than an aesthetic which they can use. They make no real attempt to understand leftism but rather then simply being ignorent they actively attempt to subvert the term. These people will say “leftism just means left of center” and use that to justify Capitalism, western imperialism, and other very non leftist ideals under the justification that “leftism has no hard definition” (it does).
supporting the other empire […] Cuba, Venezuela
Tell me you don’t understand imperialism without telling me you don’t understand imperialism (especially funny coming from someone criticising people who don’t read theory). Cuba is possibly the most peaceful nation on Earth, with the core of its international policy usually being sending doctors to countries in need. Please tell me a single imperialist act by Cuba or Venezuela.
Critical support to flawed countries is a sad consequence of Realpolitik. Do you support England and the USSR joining forces against Nazism in World War 2? Because they’re otherwise geopolitical enemies that only joined the effort because there was a greater evil.
Cuba is possibly the most peaceful country on Earth
Yup, they’re so incredibly peaceful that they have an entire Wikipedia article deticated to their foreign military interventions
If [socialist country] is so [good characteristic], how come [wikipedia article predominantly edited by people from the west, citing sources from the west].
Also funny that even the article starts claiming that it’s a list of “military and medical support”, and most of the involvements you’re seeing are support of emancipatory movements against imperialist aggression.
Aesthetic “Leftists”
Absolutely infuriating. These are people who spend a lot of time on discord, closely nurturing a group of diverse people of specific ethnic or gender/sexual identities because it makes them feel very progressive but makes no effort to see their “friends” as humans and won’t hold them accountable when any of them become abusive or hassle other friends in the group. These are the college-kids who will commit all their energy to fighting a school-mascot which bothers nobody, while literal nazis march on another part of the campus. These are the ones who create campaigns to “take down” another popular leftist for saying something like the word “retarded” while actual threats to humanity rise in power. And generally just find it a lot easier to attack people ostensibly on their side than the actual challenge of fighting for actual community organization efforts against a rising tide of fascism and hate.
For these kids being progressive or leftist is entirely about preserving an in-club of specific people who can hate outsiders, but they feel they have a broader societal blessing for the exclusionary and wildly performative attitudes.
for saying something like the word “retarded” while actual threats to humanity rise in power
That one is such a sad phenomenon. I recently saw it in a community I’m in: “Crazy”. If the word was once derogatory towards a group of people, I’d say it has long since lost its teeth, while the stigma it used to express continues to exist independently of individual words. Words have power, but fighting words is useless if the power goes unchecked and self-destructive if other, worse powers grow while you’re distracted.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t be mindful with your language, but maybe focus on the bigger issue first. I’m personally not a fan of people casually calling things autistic that aren’t, because I’m autistic and my need for clear, unambiguous language compels me to have certain specific terms keep their specific meaning. If you misuse it, I might bring it up (as a personal opinion type thing, I’m just as prone to error or misunderstandings as anyone else), but I wouldn’t attempt to “take you down” or anything over it while we’re both fighting people that do worse than just misuse language.
Damn leftists, they ruined leftism
Jokes apart, language is an important tool to express thoughs and persuade people what is better or worse. And when so many concepts get conflated in a single word “leftist”/“leftism” /“socialism”/“communism” , it diminishes the focus of conversations around it. It confuses and distracts from the ideas worth discussing.
this is a way to confuse, divide and defeat the healthy expression of ideas, debate, and by consequence, the capability of people to organize around the ideas that resonate with then.
the worst by any margin are the leftist gatekeepers ! I hate those guys, they’re not real leftists
Leftist here: I swear to fuck if I hear one more Tankie put a “Trump winning is actually a good thing because Kamela’s literally the same person as Trump” card on the table with a “Actually North Korea is this amazing paradise and EVERYONE ON THE FUCKING PLANET is just pretending it’s awful. Source: Trust me bro!” stat booster
So help me God I will… Roll my eyes and drown my sorrows in another round of Dead By Daylight where I hope to find a Jonah in the lobby because I’m a Killer Main…
Seriously, why can’t we have unity like the Rightists do? I mean they just point and say “Look! It’s a gay!”, they all form in a line.
If I point and say “Look! It’s a fascist!”, the whole squad starts pointing at each other and somehow I’m “cancelled for being a rape apologist” because the way I pointed was actually a dog whistle because it vaguely resembled the ancient Anti-Black symbol called “Ligma” popularized in the year 19Dickety2 in response to white men being annoyed that black people could afford chewing gum or something… Which obviously everyone totally knows is a real thing!
I just want us to ya know, save the fucking world from Neolibs and Literal Nazis before we start doing purity tastes on each other. Like, can we wait to do the “Everyone in the group gets chronic backstab syndrome.” shit AFTER we win?
I mean fuck the Deadly Alliance had the fucking patience to wait till they killed the main cast, Raiden included, before that shit… and they’re literally Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, the exact two people I expect to constantly lose Among Us by reporting each other when they’re both the Imposter! In a SELF-REPORT! Because I’m reliving all of my negative experiences with other socialists, and when I’m angry I try to make the nerdiest references I can make while still ensuring there’s a chance for others to get them.
starts frothing, dies of self-inflicted rabies
So what’s Dead by Daylight about? Also any decentl places I could watch it without spending much?
Sorry if I didn’t make it clear. Dead By Daylight is a multiplayer horror game famous for its surprisingly deep story and for including crossover elements.
5 Players enter a match. 1 Killer (Which can be an original character made for DBD like Deathslinger or The Nurse, or a character from a famous game or movie such as Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street or Nemesis from Resident Evil) who hunts down the other four, and the other four are various survivors who must find a way to escape the map before being murdered to death by the killer.
As a Killer Main, I typically opt for the Killer Role and only play as a Survivor every now and then.
The game typically goes for 20 dollars on Steam, but is typically sold for 7 during sales.
Though it’s one of those dealies where if you’re there for the crossover content, you’ll need to pay real money.
i dunno friend, purity tastes sound pretty fun to me
I haven’t seen anyone say Trump winning is a good thing, nor have I seen anyone say the DPRK is a paradise (closest to that is people saying the DPRK has living standards around the level of Cuba these days). Where are you finding these people at significant enough numbers to cause you anguish? Legitimate question here, you’re calling for Left Unity but it seems like you’re misframing others at best, which goes against that ideal.
Don’t be obtuse, he was obviously being hyperbolic.
But doesn’t that hyperbole get in the way of a desire for Left Unity? If someone says “Harris and Trump serve similar interests” and someone interprets that as “Trump is better than Harris, actually,” that fundamentally changes the point the person was making. Hyperbole is only useful as long as the quantitative change in a claim doesn’t change the fundamental equation, if it does, it becomes strawmanning.
No.
Gotcha, so me saying you hate all Leftists is rhetorically fine and just “hyperbole?”
I think that would be a great use of hyperbole, actually. The venn diagram is hilariously accurate, and I think you’re being obnoxious.
Then I disagree with your understanding of rhetoric, that doesn’t make any sense.
I will admit that I’m exaggerating out of frustration, but the idea that North Korea is “Actually a real nice place to live, preferable to America in some respects” is one I hear a lot (I do hear about China being a paradise)
And for the record I was kicked out of my local Socialist Chapter for refusing to endorse a Green Party Candidate who was openly transphobic and talking about nixing expanding healthcare access in favor of just “curing autism with crystals”, the head of which responded to by calling me a rape apologist, which doesn’t make any sense. (Also a white cisguy calling a transgirl a “Rape Apologist” for not going along with transphobia and ableism is sus)
I was hardly the only nay-sayer, he got a lot of backlash for supporting this person, but the fact that I wouldn’t play ball with one of my oppressors seemed to really piss in this guy’s cornflakes.
Wasn’t the only odd thing about the guy, he actually condemened Bernie during the 2020 primaries, citing a “Refusal to advocate for violence against the police” as “Proof that he just doesn’t care!”, when that was never a realistic thing to expect a candidate to do.
So I have dealt with a lot of crazy unreasonable types “on the front lines” so to speak.
Also I sadly have dealt with a lot of “Even though it means letting Trump win, we can’t lift a finger to help Biden/Hillary/Kamela because they’re literally not as bad as Trump on this one issue.”
My point still remains, can we please just focus on actually being productive before we turn on each other?
I can’t speak for the chapter you were a part of, but I think the idea that the DPRK isn’t a hellhole, actually, is a valid point to take against common allegations as such. The PRC is certainly no paradise either, but it has rapidly improved, and I think acknowledging that as well is also valid. I questioned what you alleged because I haven’t seen anyone say the DPRK is paradise, period, nor the idea of Trump being better than Harris.
It happens all over Lemmy, at least it does for me. Anecdotes aren’t typically considered reliable.
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what genocide? you mean the apartheid?
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that was rude
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but what genocide is happening in Lebanon?
Hezbollah and the Israeli invasion that has (seemingly) stopped
It’s not that genocide wasn’t a dealbreaker, it’s that there was no “Don’t Do Genocide” option, it’s called “Harm Reduction”
Obviously I’m sorry about your friends, but if there was a no genocide option, I’d obviously have picked it.
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Both liberals and conservatives are right wing (capitalists).
fiscally that might be true kind of but socially in Canada that is far from true.
Leftists are capitalists too, they just know that strong social safety nets are required to keep the ball in play instead of letting the billionaires take it home with them.
Those are Social Democrats, a subcategory of liberal.
Gross, wrong
In what manner?
He doesn’t know how to spell Anarchy.
In the same manner that everything in humanity is labeled. If the group you’re labeling doesn’t agree with you then you’re creating a false stereotype
Every worst group ever has come up with a bullshit label about how democratic and socialist they were.
It isn’t stereotyping though. The political spectrum is built with a non existent center, or rather at the center one would not care who owns the means of production. Right of center is that the means of production shall be owned by private people/companies. Left of center is that the means of production are owned by the people as a conglomerate. Now anywhere you lay on that (because ideologies and beliefs don’t stick to a 2 dimensional spectrum) you can view people to the right of you and people to the left. But by definition, the democrat party in the U.S. firmly believes the means of production is owned by private citizens/companies. Thus a farmer can buy 1600 acres and farm it as they will. Leftists by definition believe the means of production shouldn’t be owned by individuals or companies as they do not have the good of the people at heart, and will often choose their own self gain over the gain of others.
So people can yell “The Democrats are Marxists” and it immediately sells them out as not knowing what they are taking about, because the very root of what makes Marxism, isnt accepted by Democrats.
Where parties land varies all around the world, but the means of production is the stagnant center point. (Assuming you can get people to agree what makes up those means of production haha)
I put the center between the believable extremes. Utopian communism and anarchy just don’t work, so putting them on the political spectrum is disingenuous at best until it does work. Until we have Star Trek replicators or something to fight against scarcity and/or artificial scarcity.
So with that in mind, avoiding pure idealism, left of center would still include a hobbled capitalism.
Social Democrats support Capitalism with Social Safety Nets. They oppose Socialism and support Capitalism, ergo they fall under the umbrella of Liberalism.
Leftists are capitalists too,
Not all leftists are capitalists. That’s absurd. Socialism is a left-wing ideology.
No, you are clearly not a leftist. Everyone should get a ball, or at least be communally shared. If we seize the means of ball production we can **** CEOs without worrying about going ball-less.
Leftists exist between liberal and communist.
And since communism can’t work with our current understanding of humanity leftist is about as left as you can get
In my analogy everybody does get a ball because that’s the social safety net necessary for gameplay. Not everybody gets a fancy hat with a neat feather though
And here you see a microcosm of the problem. “Leftists” range from “we have to destroy the system and everyone in it damn the consequences” to “I just want the government to provide reasonable services”. (but no, only I am the true left)
Leftists hate themselves?
Search your feelings you know it to be true
Leftists necessarily fall into different ideological frameworks and camps, like Anarchism and Marxism, because they oppose the existing order. These camps often have fundamental disagreements, such as Marxists supporting full Public Ownership and Central Planning while Anarchists support full Horizontalism and Decentralization.
Right-wingers get by on having irrational, contradictory stances of loose structure because it fundamentally doesn’t matter, right wing ideology is the Global Hegemon and status quo so it supports itself regardless of rationality.
I get it… the People’s Front of Judea vs the fucking Judean People’s Front.
Leftists ruined leftism
No just each other
Wait, why do leftists hate leftists?
It’s a joke, but “leftist” is such a wide term that it encompasses groups which don’t really want to do much with each other, such as anarchists, bernie-bros, and ~red fash~ tankies marxist-leninists. Anarchists tend to not hate anarchists for example.
It’s almost as if ideology is just some made up bullshit.
No I don’t disagree with you! But you are still somewhat wrong! Hey social traitor, I’m splitting and creating my own leftist memes! These will be actual trotskyist memes, unlike your bourgeoisie-tainted memes!
rinse and repeat
oh fuck, this gif just made me realise now, after decades of knowing this movie, that they mistranslated this line in the Hungarian dub as “spitters” 🤦♂️ “Splitters” makes so much more sense.
Here we go again, an anarchist calling Marxists leninists “red fash”. What country destroyed Nazism, please remind us.
u mad?
Please remind us!
Aliens!
Seriously though, I don’t know how anarchists can look at the consequences of the Perestroika, Glasnost and eventual dissolution of the Eastern Block, the millions of lives lost to unemployment, alcoholism, drugs and suicide, and still use the word “tankie” (coined to degrade the communists in support of the intervention of the USSR in Hungary when it went down that very path).
It’s precisely because we saw the path of the USSR. Because we can see that ML regimes always leads to oppression and capitalism. They’re just another way to convert poor agrarian/feudalist societies to capitalism and have no socialist potential. Terrible system.
Have you never met leftists?
dern leftists… ruinin’ the left
Leftists. What a bunch of bastards.
It is very easy for people without a credible shred of leftist thought to claim to be a leftist.
Challenging those people winds up being an example of ‘leftist infighting’.
So… a leftist and a tankie pretending to be a leftist, in a argument, basically…
Most common pairing for that is moderate centrist and a radical liberal, I find.
SPLITTERS
Most conservatives are able to band together regardless of whether another of them is too racist, or too capitalist. They’re able to look past flaws in that regard.
Meanwhile, we lefties fight among ourselves for not being left enough, or for being too left. It’s why there are very few leftist governments.
Nonsense. conservatives inflight and even kill each other all the fucking time. This is a myth promoted by “left unity” leftists, and “big tent” libs to force everyone to follow them.
Aye, they do, but when it comes to voting they unify.
Take the UK for example. Of our three main parties the Conservatives are, well, conservative, Labour are (ostensibly) leftwing, and Liberal Democrats are centre-left.
In the end, most of my 44 years have been spent under a series of Tory governments because leftists who don’t see Labour as left enough don’t vote out of protest, and leftists who see Labour as too left will vote Lib Dem. Meanwhile, those in the centre or on the right will vote Tory. Sure, there are far right parties here, but they’re mostly cranks and outright racists.
We only have a Labour government right now because the Tories went too lunatic and Starmer’s lot shifted enough to the centre to attract those who would vote LibDem.
Prior to our last election, I saw a whole bunch of fellow lefties going apeshite because Starmer isn’t leftwing enough, and still crying that Corbyn was fucked over (which, to be fair, he was), so much so that I genuinely feared for five more years of Tories reaming us. There was very little room for pragmatism.
It’s because voting is useless. Many leftists don’t bother with voting and focus on things that actually work.
It might be useless, but ultimately it’s the only tool that the majority have at their disposal.
Not at all. Direct action is always an option.
Leftists have never been the majority though so we can’t rely on voting to adress our issues and interests. Last time I saw numbers more Ameicans wanted a party to the right of the Republicans than Americans who wanted a party to the left of Democrats. We’re the absolute political minority yet many of our policies poll higjer than candidates from either party.
Voting typically has a lower risk than trying to overthrow the government. (assuming elections are still somewhat legitimate, that is)
Direct action isn’t directly “trying to overthrow the government” It’s trying to improve one’s own life directly, instead of begging the elites to do so for you.
Oh I read that comment as you saying “don’t bother voting”, which I hope that isn’t what you meant.
As somebody who was an EU immigrant in the UK for over a decade and also lived in other countries of Europe, lets just say that New Labour are plain Rightwing (so, not even Center-Left, although the original Labour definitelly were Leftwing) and the Liberal Democrats are pure rightwing (whislt the Tories have been Far Right since at least the Leave Referendum).
The ideology of “Thatcher’s Greatest Achievement” - a “relaxed about wealth” ideology which loves privatisation and derregulation - which took over Labour is not Left of center and the LibDems have always been even more Neolibs than that.
The Overtoon Window in England (not as much the other UK nations) is way to the Right of the rest of Europe, so its understandable that many there think that when they neither grew up back in the days when Labour was actually a party of the Working Class and never saw politics elsewhere in Europe.
The Republicans have bred a cult that makes up the core of their voting block, though. This is how Trump originally got into the primaries and then elected. He pulled the cultists away from their masters and they couldn’t control the new MAGA cult.
Both my grandfather before he died and my first boss had the same exact reaction if you asked who they were voting for. They’d look at you like you’d grown an extra head and reply, “I’m a Republican. I vote for the nominee.”
As a leftist… I can’t say I see a flaw here.
As a leftist, I resent that
Hey, fuck you, buddy!
See you at the next meeting.
American leftists, perhaps. The vast majority of the developed world wants nothing to do with guns, on either side.
Even then, I don’t think that this is necessarily true. I’d probably swap that part with free healthcare, as it’s something that’s equally true across the world.
Most of the Western World doesn’t have a meaningful Leftist movement
Trump is not a conservative. Fascists and reactionaries are not conservatives. Far right is not the right, eventhough the right did sliped into far right because of the liberals.
Trump campaigning on conservative values is like Harris campaigning on wealth inequality.
Instead we got “fuck immigrants” and “gay rights”.
Don’t you mean “fuck immigrants and gay rights” from both candidates?
The right slipped into the far right because of the far right. Don’t blame anyone but them for their actions
I blame the liberals because they had the power for decades and they are actively supporting the fascists in order to fight the left. They are responsible.
But as always liberals will always, always pretend nothing is their fault. They took all the decisions for a century, but somehow they shouldn’t be accountable for the problems they brought on the world. They’re spoiled children if you ask me.
Fascists are responsible for fascism. Could others have stood up top them? Yeah that would be nice. Did they cause it? No of course not!
Liberals are causing fascism. They are directly responsible.
That is the most stupid thing I’ve read today. Granted it’t not even half one in the morning but it’s gonna be a high bar to bear
What do you think “it’s us or chaos” is doing?
The Democrats did spend years funding the most extremist opponents in their elections to set up easy wins for themselves. A lady even wrote a book about how she won her election this way.
And then she lost to that extremist the very next election.
Maybe, but the far right are responsible for the actions of the far right. Stop deflecting
Don’t misunderstand me, I agree the extremists are responsible for their actions and the extremism. But there are other factors that led to those views being pushed into mainstream politics. The Democrats didn’t help things by funding extremist candidates for the easy win in the same way that the Republicans breeding their core voting block of “I’m a Republican, I vote for the nominee” cultists didn’t help when Trump stole them from less extremist candidates in the primary. Like how TV channels choosing to air 30 minutes of Trump’s empty podium instead of Bernie’s speech during the Democratic primaries didn’t help run a fair primary that year.
Extremists are responsible for their actions, but those who help to push their views aren’t spotless.
Stop
Deflecting
Every accusation is an admission.
Stop deflecting by pretending that there’s no greater issue than just the extremists. The rot’s just gonna come back if we don’t stop it at the source after we deal with the cancer in front of us.
Or are you incapable of thinking about what happens after the extremists are dealt with.
AFTER is the key word here. Stop trying to find someone else to blame and look directly at the people who are to blame
