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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ending Citizens United, as it is much harder to implement these changes when politicians can be bought by corporate interests.
This requires reversing a supreme court decision that benefits capital. This means 5 members of the supreme court must vote to end something that vastly benefits them and the people who got them appointed to that position. You do not get that high up in our judicial system by consistantly ruling in favor of the working class. You simply won’t get appointed with that kind of track record. I’m sorry but the odds are really stacked against us here.i’m not saying its impossible but I am saying that its close. Even if it were to happen I am almost certain corporations would find other avenues to control our political establishment.
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.
Implementation is once again very difficult here. This requires incumbent politicians who see their positions as a career to intentionally put themselves at a disadvantage. This isn’t impossible and i am certain it will happen in some places from good faith actors but nationwide? Idk if that is feasible and who’s to say this wouldn’t eventually be reversed by new incumbents looking to hold on to power and their career? Essentially this requires politicians to act against their own interests on a large scale.
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
Misinformation is currently very beneficial to the political establishment. It allows them to spin whatever narrative they want through whatever avenues they want. This goes for both sides of the american political dichotomy. If the people cannot trust anything then they will only trust what reinforces their already held beliefs. Meaning they won’t differ from the party line they already subscribe to. It allows political parties to isolate their members from external narratives highly effectively. From the perspective of the bourgeois rather than the political class they use, misinformation allows them to keep the working class divided. Instesd of the working class recognizing our common enemy we are kept busy fighting eachother through whatever narratives can be whipped up by the slim few who control all of our media services. To put shortly, neither the ruling economic class nor the political elite have a material interest to reduce misinformation. We are post truth.
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.
Okay so lets say we have a perfectly regulated systen where our politicians legally cannot own businesses, be landlords, or accept money from corporate interests. Why wouldn’t the capitalists just leave? Fuck off to some place where they can do that. Then what? The vast majority of our wealth just gets transferred to another country where we cannot siphon some of it off as taxes for the public good. Now we are a country of workers entirely dependant on a foreign ruling class for jobs who have no interest in improving or maintaining our infrastructure. Capital flight is a real thing and I encourage you to look into it. Regulating capitalism is not feasible at this point, not in any way that matters. I guess we could stop them from flering the country through the threat of violence but I don’t think you are in favor of that.
Assuming that the capitalists do not flee this country, wouldn’t they work tirelessly til the end of time to erode these regulations? What is to stop them from using illegal avenues to do so? Sure you could catch and jail some of them but under capitalism we require capitalists to exist so you can’t jail all of them. Effectively what you require are all capitalists to be good people forever which is unreasonable.
Imperialism is less a feature these days, more globalist multinational conglomeration.
Imperialism is actually just as bad as its always been maybe worse. It just looks different. There is a vast system of unequal exchange between the imperial core and imperial periphery. We still go to war to maintain our grasp on key resources. We still overthrow governments that try to nationalize their resources. We still influence foreign elections to get politicians elected who we can control. We still commit genocide in the name of profiteering. We just don’t rule over them like we used to because that was too blatant.
Ultimately what you want is great and I agree that it would be cool. But there are contradictory interests between the working and owning classes that always eventually lead to a necessary system change within production. Capitalists have a material incentive to do what they do and they are gonna keep trying to do it. It happened to the feudal order and it will happen to capitalism too. I only hope we survive the process.
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.
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
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 of 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.
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?
The big irony is that I don’t think you even realize just how perfectly you proved my original point. “Leftists should toe the Liberal Line” = Not Troll, “Liberals should accommodate Left-wing policies” = Troll, apparently
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.
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.
Why do you think housing crisis and wealth inequality is happening across the world? Why did the working class is turning to the right when they used to vote liberal? These issues doesn’t just stop in the US as you pointed out. It is almost as if valuing private property and individualism is not the Achilles heel of liberals. And precisely private property and individualism is what liberalism was founded on.
I am going to be blunt. The difference between non-US liberals and US liberals is that the former know exactly who they are and what they want-- they are NIMBYs who don’t want their property value to go down, and homeless families and children and tenants paying half their monthly salary in rent be damned. Meanwhile, US liberals shy away from admitting they are NIMBYs, but instead caricaturise the working class as racist hicks, rather than recognising they are mostly decent folks who just want roof over their heads and not living paycheck to paycheck. There are plenty of news of neighbourhoods in liberal California and New York blocking affordable housing.
A lot of people commenting here and seemingly annoyed that liberal and left are different because of said issues, is precisely what this post is about. Knowing they are different is a start.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
.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
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.
Yep. Just like that. Perfect example of the drivel they spread in an attempt to divide us.
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 this 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.
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.
This requires reversing a supreme court decision that benefits capital. This means 5 members of the supreme court must vote to end something that vastly benefits them and the people who got them appointed to that position. You do not get that high up in our judicial system by consistantly ruling in favor of the working class. You simply won’t get appointed with that kind of track record. I’m sorry but the odds are really stacked against us here.i’m not saying its impossible but I am saying that its close. Even if it were to happen I am almost certain corporations would find other avenues to control our political establishment.
Implementation is once again very difficult here. This requires incumbent politicians who see their positions as a career to intentionally put themselves at a disadvantage. This isn’t impossible and i am certain it will happen in some places from good faith actors but nationwide? Idk if that is feasible and who’s to say this wouldn’t eventually be reversed by new incumbents looking to hold on to power and their career? Essentially this requires politicians to act against their own interests on a large scale.
Misinformation is currently very beneficial to the political establishment. It allows them to spin whatever narrative they want through whatever avenues they want. This goes for both sides of the american political dichotomy. If the people cannot trust anything then they will only trust what reinforces their already held beliefs. Meaning they won’t differ from the party line they already subscribe to. It allows political parties to isolate their members from external narratives highly effectively. From the perspective of the bourgeois rather than the political class they use, misinformation allows them to keep the working class divided. Instesd of the working class recognizing our common enemy we are kept busy fighting eachother through whatever narratives can be whipped up by the slim few who control all of our media services. To put shortly, neither the ruling economic class nor the political elite have a material interest to reduce misinformation. We are post truth.
Okay so lets say we have a perfectly regulated systen where our politicians legally cannot own businesses, be landlords, or accept money from corporate interests. Why wouldn’t the capitalists just leave? Fuck off to some place where they can do that. Then what? The vast majority of our wealth just gets transferred to another country where we cannot siphon some of it off as taxes for the public good. Now we are a country of workers entirely dependant on a foreign ruling class for jobs who have no interest in improving or maintaining our infrastructure. Capital flight is a real thing and I encourage you to look into it. Regulating capitalism is not feasible at this point, not in any way that matters. I guess we could stop them from flering the country through the threat of violence but I don’t think you are in favor of that.
Assuming that the capitalists do not flee this country, wouldn’t they work tirelessly til the end of time to erode these regulations? What is to stop them from using illegal avenues to do so? Sure you could catch and jail some of them but under capitalism we require capitalists to exist so you can’t jail all of them. Effectively what you require are all capitalists to be good people forever which is unreasonable.
Imperialism is actually just as bad as its always been maybe worse. It just looks different. There is a vast system of unequal exchange between the imperial core and imperial periphery. We still go to war to maintain our grasp on key resources. We still overthrow governments that try to nationalize their resources. We still influence foreign elections to get politicians elected who we can control. We still commit genocide in the name of profiteering. We just don’t rule over them like we used to because that was too blatant.
Ultimately what you want is great and I agree that it would be cool. But there are contradictory interests between the working and owning classes that always eventually lead to a necessary system change within production. Capitalists have a material incentive to do what they do and they are gonna keep trying to do it. It happened to the feudal order and it will happen to capitalism too. I only hope we survive the process.
liberals will never stop insisting that they’re part of ‘the left’
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.
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.
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
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 of 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.
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?
The big irony is that I don’t think you even realize just how perfectly you proved my original point. “Leftists should toe the Liberal Line” = Not Troll, “Liberals should accommodate Left-wing policies” = Troll, apparently
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.
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.
Why do you think housing crisis and wealth inequality is happening across the world? Why did the working class is turning to the right when they used to vote liberal? These issues doesn’t just stop in the US as you pointed out. It is almost as if valuing private property and individualism is not the Achilles heel of liberals. And precisely private property and individualism is what liberalism was founded on.
I am going to be blunt. The difference between non-US liberals and US liberals is that the former know exactly who they are and what they want-- they are NIMBYs who don’t want their property value to go down, and homeless families and children and tenants paying half their monthly salary in rent be damned. Meanwhile, US liberals shy away from admitting they are NIMBYs, but instead caricaturise the working class as racist hicks, rather than recognising they are mostly decent folks who just want roof over their heads and not living paycheck to paycheck. There are plenty of news of neighbourhoods in liberal California and New York blocking affordable housing.
A lot of people commenting here and seemingly annoyed that liberal and left are different because of said issues, is precisely what this post is about. Knowing they are different is a start.
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.
Just ask the opinion on economic issues and there is stark difference.
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?
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
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
The Liberalism to Fascism Pipeline (Neoliberalism Explained)
Economic Update: Fascism
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.