Welcome ex-Redditors!
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I've seen a few. They are mostly just anti American (fair enough). They often miss the point that something being anti American doesn't mean they are not their own empire with its own problematic takes.
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First time reading the original statement, and this actually makes me less concerned. It isn't secret knowledge that the capital has worked hard to reframe being left from wanting anti capitalist economic policies to mostly social issues without consequence such as inclusive language and skin color quotas. None of that addresses the real problem that is the capitalist system driving us all into servitude and the planet towards collapse.
This is also why the left is generally not considered attractive to the average voter. They don't care about any of that social crap, they care about their own situation and how to improve that. And while inclusivity is important and a just cause it is entirely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things and not a valid agenda to run a political movement on.
The lives of every marginalized group of people will improve a hundred times more by toppling the system that keeps us all oppressed and unhappy, than by having the government use their preferred pronouns when letting them know they have to make do with less, again.
Just say you're fine with bigotry as long as white dudes benefit in the way you want, it's a lot faster and more intellectually honest.
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I'm aware that to the far left everyone who doesn't want to abolish capitalism is considered right wing. I mean the normal (Dutch) political spectrum. Social democratic
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I'm aware that to the far left everyone who doesn't want to abolish capitalism is considered right wing. I mean the normal (Dutch) political spectrum. Social democratic
normal (white, western, neoliberal) political spectrum.
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If Harris was gonna be swayed by public opinion, it would have happened after the massive protest vote in Michigan. It didn't. It could have happened after polling showed how incredibly unpopular her Gaza policy was with her party base. It didn't. And it didn't change when she actually needed votes, it's safe to say it never would have changed.
If Harris has been elected, a huge number of Democrats would be more than happy to sweep current events in Gaza under the rug, because now our person is in charge, and they can do no wrong.
Stop with your moral grandstanding. Harm reduction is a thing. Both are bad options, but even assuming she wouldn't have been swayed things would still have been better than they are now. You can do your protest vote in the primary if you want, but those short-sighted actions in the general is how fascism has won.
Regardless, it really just feels like you decided to fuck over minority groups in the US while also making things worse for the Palestinians. Trump is gearing up to start WW3 and the only reason I think they aren't going to nuke Gaza is because they want the land. Not that conventional weapons can't do the same amount of damage.
Meanwhile, you throw women, immigrants, and trans people under the bus because you wanted to feel smug about something. Between wondering if I will be able to maintain rights, or even life, in the next 4 years on top of them literally tearing the government apart and doing damage that will take decades to fix, if it even can be fixed, I don't see things getting back to even how they were a year ago in my lifetime, even if I manage to get to an old age.
I can only do what I can, and I can't fight for people in another country when I'm worried about what is happening domestically. My focus has to be making sure my friends and I are safe. I am exhausted and have no energy left to spare for the Palestinians.
I hate that I have to make that decision, but people like you forced it on me. We told all of you this would happen, and you did not care. I can't help Palestinians if I get arrested for existing or just murdered in the street.
They want to classify all trans people as porn, just for existing in public, and then execute "pornographers", which will largely just be queer people they just arbitrarily classified as porn. It's literally what the Nazis did.
So I really have no sympathy left. Honestly, I'm pretty sure much of the people who refused to vote over Gaza likely just fell for a right wing campaign to split the left. If so, it worked and you fell for it. The people who aren't Trump supporters and didn't vote for Harris are short sighted fucking idiots.
I have no more energy to coddle people like you and if me calling you out for stupidity for letting fascism win "pushes" you to the far right, then you never actually had any principals.
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Then why choose to believe what those same human rights abusers tell you is true about another country?
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Denying propaganda the CIA is selling you about China is not the same thing as denying everything the CCP has ever done wrong. Especially when even the CIA has backtracked their claims, and you religiously stick to it.
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Okay, what about ...
Look, I know you're in your young 20's, almost definitely white, definitely a man, and I was once each of those things, too.
You've gone down the Right-wing pipeline, you've nodded along, you've downed the kool-aid. From the sounds of it a light sprinkling of an extremely flawed, right-wing education system.
You are not experiencing your own thoughts. You're regurgitating arguments you've heard online; over and over again, you say the same things, respond in the same way, make the same mistakes. You hamfistedly wave at anyone who ever called themselves socialist and go 'see! look at these mistakes! They're all the same!' When in reality:
Although the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally socialist state led to widespread association of socialism with the Soviet economic model, it has since shifted in favour of democratic socialism. Academics recognised the mixed economies of several Western European and Nordic countries as "democratic socialist".[34][35] Following the revolutions of 1989, many of these countries moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the advanced capitalist world.[36] In parallel, many former socialist politicians and political parties embraced "Third Way" politics, remaining committed to equality and welfare while abandoning public ownership and class-based politics.[37] Socialism experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 2010s.
Let's look at Pol Pot, to go back to your whataboutism:
Ideologically a Maoist and a Khmer ethnonationalist...
Seriously, it's on his goddamn wikipedia page, dude. This, what you're doing here? It's embarrassing. You think you're standing up to those meany evil 'left-wingers' when in reality you're a Toy Poodle for fascism, yapping at what you're told to, always waiting for another head pat from your online friends that never quite comes, never quite seems to make you feel like you feel it should.
Conservative parties began because aristocrats felt they had lost too much power, and wanted into the parliamentary system. It's oligarchs now. Is that really who has your best interest? Do you think Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Trump care about you? That they will ever do something for you, at the expense of themselves?
Because over on the socialist side we're at the protests, we're at the strikes, we're demanding change, we're helping the poor, we're punching up at authority. You're ideologically marching alongside cops, brown shirts, Nazi's, and you what, think they'll spare you? At best you're meat for the grinder when the fighting starts.
Look into all of this. Really dive into what Conservatism is, why it was created, how it's been opposed to every advancement in society that you enjoy: shorter work weeks, shorter work days, actual safety for workers, workers compensation, paternity leave, health care, freedom to strike, etc. All of those are socialist-won, often through literal bloodshed.
What have wealthy billionaires done to make your life better? Why do you think they're so invested in keeping you angry at visible minorities, women, 'the left', the 2% of the planet who are transgendered, the 2SLGBTQIA+ community? Why is it your enemies are all exactly strong enough to scare you, yet so weak you can insult them for it? Why do you have to punch down to hit these terrifying enemies of whatever it is you hold dear?
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"Tankie Triad?" Really? This is just McCarthyian LARPing, you don't have to constantly saber-rattle towards the Marxist-friendly instances, USAID is being defunded lol
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No, I mean it's the new / local meme word to shut off conversation. And apparently used pretty much the same way right-wingers use it.
Ah! Yeah, that's true
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I'm curious where a lot of those folks come from/what their backgrounds are. I assume like 50% are Russian bots, but of those who are real people, how'd they end up where they are in life/their opinions? I have a hard time wrapping my head around it.
I question the "Russian Bots" narrative pretty heavily, there's no evidence for that conspiracy theory nor would it make sense, Lemmy is too small to make an impact. Either way, I started reading Marxist theory a bit in college but more when I actually started working, and over the years I've read more theory and history.
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Woohoo for tribalism
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Okay, what about ...
Look, I know you're in your young 20's, almost definitely white, definitely a man, and I was once each of those things, too.
You've gone down the Right-wing pipeline, you've nodded along, you've downed the kool-aid. From the sounds of it a light sprinkling of an extremely flawed, right-wing education system.
You are not experiencing your own thoughts. You're regurgitating arguments you've heard online; over and over again, you say the same things, respond in the same way, make the same mistakes. You hamfistedly wave at anyone who ever called themselves socialist and go 'see! look at these mistakes! They're all the same!' When in reality:
Although the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally socialist state led to widespread association of socialism with the Soviet economic model, it has since shifted in favour of democratic socialism. Academics recognised the mixed economies of several Western European and Nordic countries as "democratic socialist".[34][35] Following the revolutions of 1989, many of these countries moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the advanced capitalist world.[36] In parallel, many former socialist politicians and political parties embraced "Third Way" politics, remaining committed to equality and welfare while abandoning public ownership and class-based politics.[37] Socialism experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 2010s.
Let's look at Pol Pot, to go back to your whataboutism:
Ideologically a Maoist and a Khmer ethnonationalist...
Seriously, it's on his goddamn wikipedia page, dude. This, what you're doing here? It's embarrassing. You think you're standing up to those meany evil 'left-wingers' when in reality you're a Toy Poodle for fascism, yapping at what you're told to, always waiting for another head pat from your online friends that never quite comes, never quite seems to make you feel like you feel it should.
Conservative parties began because aristocrats felt they had lost too much power, and wanted into the parliamentary system. It's oligarchs now. Is that really who has your best interest? Do you think Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Trump care about you? That they will ever do something for you, at the expense of themselves?
Because over on the socialist side we're at the protests, we're at the strikes, we're demanding change, we're helping the poor, we're punching up at authority. You're ideologically marching alongside cops, brown shirts, Nazi's, and you what, think they'll spare you? At best you're meat for the grinder when the fighting starts.
Look into all of this. Really dive into what Conservatism is, why it was created, how it's been opposed to every advancement in society that you enjoy: shorter work weeks, shorter work days, actual safety for workers, workers compensation, paternity leave, health care, freedom to strike, etc. All of those are socialist-won, often through literal bloodshed.
What have wealthy billionaires done to make your life better? Why do you think they're so invested in keeping you angry at visible minorities, women, 'the left', the 2% of the planet who are transgendered, the 2SLGBTQIA+ community? Why is it your enemies are all exactly strong enough to scare you, yet so weak you can insult them for it? Why do you have to punch down to hit these terrifying enemies of whatever it is you hold dear?
I'm going to read all that later, but for the record, I'm a white man in my mid 30s.
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"Tankie" is a pejorative that basically looks like an exact replica of McCarthy's strawman of a Communist. The purpose of the term is to claim the accused that they genuinely hold those McCarthyian characteristics, regardless of reality. It shuts down conversation because it would be inconvenient to have those conversations, it's a thought-terminating cliché more than a real thing.
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Karl Marx said communism is stateless. Tankies are named after their support of soviet tanks to put down revolutions. That's the opposite of stateless.
Marx also described the State as the elements of government that entrench class distinctions like private property rights and armies, but that such a state could only wither away once all industry was publicly owned and controlled. Marx believed the workers needed to be armed and protect revolution.
This has also been explained before, but one of the "revolutions" you defended was led by Nazis that were marking the doors of Jews and Communists, and had started lynching them.
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I posted my boobs & some people were friendly to me. It’s nice here! Surprisingly wholesome.
woow, you're gorgeous... I DMd you
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Trump isn't a fascist, y'all leftists are just over-reacting, stop watering down the term "fascism" /s
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I question the "Russian Bots" narrative pretty heavily, there's no evidence for that conspiracy theory nor would it make sense, Lemmy is too small to make an impact. Either way, I started reading Marxist theory a bit in college but more when I actually started working, and over the years I've read more theory and history.
I'm admittedly not well-versed in Marxism, beyond having the experience of, "Man, this shit looks good on paper!" But I would always take that a more communal-style communism route, so where I struggle is with the purported admiration of the Chinas and USSRs in the world. I suppose you might argue that my view is based on a misunderstanding, which I kind of get. But on a gut level, I have such a hostile feeling toward any authoritarian-style structure that my hang-up always comes back to that. Again, based on a very surface level understanding of what I presume to be a diverse group of views, which is probably part of the issue with simplifying it all.
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Then why choose to believe what those same human rights abusers tell you is true about another country?
Why do you assume I'm believing Americans?
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I'm admittedly not well-versed in Marxism, beyond having the experience of, "Man, this shit looks good on paper!" But I would always take that a more communal-style communism route, so where I struggle is with the purported admiration of the Chinas and USSRs in the world. I suppose you might argue that my view is based on a misunderstanding, which I kind of get. But on a gut level, I have such a hostile feeling toward any authoritarian-style structure that my hang-up always comes back to that. Again, based on a very surface level understanding of what I presume to be a diverse group of views, which is probably part of the issue with simplifying it all.
I think a useful exercise would be to look at what, as you say, "looks good on paper." Where did you get that conception, from Marx, or people talking about Marx? Part of the Red Scare was blunting and twisting Marx, it wasn't just "Marx and Marxists eat babies" or overt misinformation easily dispelled, but often worked in subtle ways, and still does.
I am not going to turn this into a lecture on Marxism (unless you want that, I can do that for hours because I am a fucking nerd). However, I do want to point out that Marx's prediction for Communism was of a fully publicly owned and planned economy over the world, where everyone shared equal ownership with all of industry. He predicted this because he watched Capitalist industry get larger and larger over time, and competition become less and less feasible as barriers to entry got more expensive.
I think you have an idea of Marx in your head that envisions a horizontalist, decentralized economy, when Marx thought further centralization is a necessity of advancing industry in a more and more interconnected production process. We could spend days and years talking about what the PRC and former USSR gets right and wrong, but my point here is more about just how easy it is to misunderstand Marxism entirely from the get-go.
![Cowbee [he/they]](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/c18ce632-5fb5-4888-8226-3dc55a07acc4.jpeg "Cowbee [he/they]"){kind=avatar}
