Some people on Reddit were talking about how only dictators would want to disarm people

“I don’t know why any individual should ever have a right to have a revolver in his house […] people should not have handguns.”

• Richard Nixon

Ronald Reagan and the NRA advocated for gun control once the Black Panthers started arming black communities. See: Mulford Act

Banning weapons is a problem if the government needs to be overthrown by its people. In places like the USA, this is increasingly obvious that traditional systems of government regulation are rapidly dissolving.

I think another important point to add is, I assume that your pro-socialism economic position is not independent of all those social positions. For an example, our economic structure affects whether we can fight climate change, or whether wealthy industries (including oil, mining, dairy) can maintain disproportionate political power and continue driving politics.

It’s not just that. What you mentioned is a real phenomenon, but not always the case.

One other reason is when right-wing parties don’t realize that their policies are contradictory in practice. This is common in syncretic politics, like Classical Fascism, which has strong roots in both Syndicalism and Nationalism. Mussolini’s class collaborative corporatism [as in corpus, ‘body’] is a policy which sounded progressive on paper but in reality did not prevent the worker exploitation it aimed to lessen.

Another is that even reactionaries can recognize some good ideas, as long as it doesn’t contradict their personal values. I personally know conservatives with pro-environmental policies, because they appreciate and care about the ecosystem and our food supply chain. I know another strong conservative who is anti-privatization but consistently votes for a pro-privatization party! Politics is complex, not a team sport where every voter toes a line.

Terms like “left” and “right” are subjective, and frankly, not a useful way to understand politics due to its idealistic nature. Ask ten people what “left” even means and you’ll get several answers.

This video is a useful overview.

It’s not even about declaring themselves default. Many countries used to have 90+% of population identifying as Christian, with persecution against non-Christians. Christianity was/is taught in schools, determines the public holidays, and was historically written into law, among a million other things. In these countries, they were the default. They were normal and their cultural legacy is still normal. Retaining the status quo of their traditions is not seen as religious celebration or worship, it’s spiritually empty.

Thought experiment: If a Christian attends a friend’s Hanukkah each year, watches the rituals and enjoys the food and company, do you believe this alone now makes them a Jew?

and I call myself an atheist jew, a common thing in Judaism.

I don’t think it makes sense to equivocate Jewish identity with Christianity, because Christianity is a universal religion, not an ethnic religion. Atheists I know who celebrate Christian holidays don’t consider themselves Christian, Christianity is considered to be about the belief system, not the culture surrounding it. Any remaining Christian influence is treated more like a cultural tradition than a religious event. The way Christmas is celebrated in the ones I’ve been to, you could simply change the name and it would then be a completely secular feast. It’s derived from (not influenced by!) a pagan event, so most of its core features aren’t even related to Christianity in the first place, not even the date. Christianity is surprisingly arbitrary in Christmas.

Like you mentioned, Christian atheism appears to be an established concept in other countries, along with similar concepts like lapsed Catholics. I only personally know one person like this, who identifies as a Lutherian but not believing in a higher power, and other people I’ve mentioned it to consider that to be odd and contradictory.

That image looks machine generated… also not good for the environment.

They also won the 1999 prize, and are famously the peace prize winner who were bombed by another peace prize winner in 2015 (Barack Obama).

“as bad”… not quite, and not in the same way. As other people have said, there’s no conscience to AI and I doubt there will be any financial incentive to develop one capable of “being evil” or doing some doomsday takeover. It’s a tool, it will continue to be abused by malicious actors, idiots will continue to trust it for things it can’t do properly, but this isn’t like the movies where it is malicious or murderous.

It’s perfectly capable of, say, being used to push people into personalized hyperrealities (consider how political advertising was microtargeted in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and consider how convincing fake AI imagery can be at a glance). It’s a more boring dystopia, but a powerful bad one nonetheless, capable of deconstructing societies to a large degree.

Hey, actually reading the article is cheating!

You’re right, dodging the question would have been much smarter. I haven’t seen the context but I doubt there’s any need for the mayor of New York to declare a position on these two leaders, and Mamdami has already famously dodged the Zionist Regime visit question in the primaries debate.

I am a communist. The liberal electoral system is systemically rigged towards the bourgeoisie and it would be ridiculous to approach it in good faith.

If your middle of the road beliefs were correct, he wouldn’t have won the primary.

What do you mean? Mamdami’s primary platform didn’t depart from capitalism as far as I saw. Furthermore, the primary has a different voting audience and calls for different tactics (even if using the same strategy) to improve chances of winning that popularity contest.

As far as financial scams go, my parents and uncles handled my grandparents’ finances for their last decade. If they were targeted then there would be an upper limit to how much money they could lose in one scam. They also weren’t paying for things online.

As for younger elderly people, if they’re still smart enough for it then I’d try educating them. Practically, not just talking about it. There are plenty of good public interactive resources for phishing training, so I’d be surprised if there weren’t any for AI. Also simple things like “never pay for anything in gift cards, ever” are some easy wins.

Even if Mamdami didn’t believe that, it would still be the smart thing to say. Elections are a popularity competition, there’s no prize for saying the truth; just ask a climate scientist. The point is to change things.

It’s important to get out of the liberalist mindset of thinking electoralism (here and now) should be about honestly stating every policy and correct position. We don’t live in a marketplace of ideas where simply being correct is worth anything. If the bulk of the population isn’t on board with socialism, then an election seat is either useful for milquetoast mild reform or for propaganda platforming (e.g. Sanders making “socialism” a more approachable idea despite Sanders clearly contradicting socialism in many other statements).

On one hand, yes. Someone posted it here and some more people voted the post up.

On the other, the bourgeoisie own lots and lots of megaphones. Most of the US media cycle is within the circus tent. It’s not us giving attention, it’s the mega-millionaire and billionaire -owned mass media organizations and social media platforms giving the attention.

Reminds me of US COVID hospital workers begging not to be labeled as heroes, for a variety of reasons.

If you’re not doing something material to further the movement, you’re complicit in the status quo. I know we all have our own conditions and circumstances, but even small actions are important. Praiseworthy resistance shouldn’t be heroic, it should be normalized.

There’s no way those commanders aren’t shaking their heads at this stooge. Describing defense as leading to “overuse, overreach, and mission creep”? How did this person study politics, rise up ranks to become a major and still be this ignorant of such simple concepts? I can understand dumb, but ignorant too?

“You kill people and break things for a living.”

I wonder how much of the audience were insulted by that. I think even many of the grunts would find that condescending and dehumanizing.

And it’s important to emphasize when war crimes are official state policy. There’s no “bad apples” excuse here, no-one can deflect this onto the soldiers. They’re comfortable enough that they’re being honest.

I’ve looked briefly into the equivalent of antifascist projects, and former neo-Nazis talking about how their minds were changed. From what I’ve seen:

• People can and do leave political cults
• There’s no universal recipe. A common factor among former neo-Nazis seems to be having someone close to them who doesn’t tolerate the bullshit, so to me it seems the best approach is to stand firm, but leave a door open in the rare case that they have a revelation on their own. (Historically, this sometimes happens if/when their own personal reality begins to clearly contradict the propaganda.)
• Many people simply don’t leave, so it’s unfair to demand those around them spend so much time and effort trying to make it happen. It can be a waste of time. It’s a gamble, really, so again that’s why I say leave a door open, as long as it’s safe.

Obviously these are just second-hand observations, I don’t have much personal experience with this, so if any of it sounds wrong then I’d like to know.

yo dawg i herd u liek boats so we put yo boat on a boat so you can ride while you ride