Centrism

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There is absolutely such a thing as "far left". You'll find people who hold these deep genuine convictions about communal living and egalitarianism and ecological preservation over industrial development.

But "far" has to mean "bad" and the left/right spectrum needs to be equivalently bad. So we get an earful about how some Wiccan thruple with a compost pile and a compounding business that trades in underground abortion medication is interchangeable with the Wehraboo failson who shoots up a Black Baptist Church.

Adding to the problem, you're not going to find any "far left" billionaires, because the very process of accumulating billions requires a reactionary worldview.

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Rightwingers believe they can and should wield their power to crush their political and business opponents. And if they do this enough times, they'll accrue immense amounts of wealth and power. They should never surrender, never compromise, and always fight to the bitter end, because a long and painful enough campaign will see liberals surrender and conservatives triumph.

In this, they are proven absolutely correct.

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I've had people on this platform tell me they were excited for, "the fall of empire." Knowing full well there would be a human cost. So yes, oppression is bad, but if your answer is violence then it's time to parse which violence is acceptable to you because obviously you've already distinguished.

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Stalin wasn't progressivism, actually the opposite, it was the conservative part of the party, that inspired the other dictators.

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Him and the Nazis were among the first to recognize the health benefits with not smoking and he is credited with pushing Germans to quit smoking but especially pregnant women and kids.

The hazards of smoking had been established as far back as the 17th century. One of America's Founding Fathers - Benjamin Rush - was on record as a physician documenting and objecting to the proliferation of smoking.

The Nazi cribbing of then-modern health trends against smoking was not a point in their favor. FFS, this was an organization that popularized the consumption of methamphetamines

Nixon created the EPA.

Congress authored the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), having modeled it after Senator James E. Murray's Resources and Conservation Act (RCA) of 1959. Nixon organized the EPA under the powers afforded this law.

Even past that, Nixon was - fundamentally - a Liberal Republican. His social and economic views were in line with the liberal establishment of his era. His governance was in line with his predecessors, LBJ and Kennedy and Eisenhower. If he'd been born 50 years later, he'd be right at home in the administration of Gavin Newsom or Kathy Hochul.

Your need to equivocate between left and right in this regard is extraordinarily naive and shortsighted.

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There is absolutely such a thing as “far left”.

Again. There is no such thing as a "far left." It's an invention of liberal media, who insists on having one to equate with the far right to suit their both-side-ism propaganda, and it's being being propagated by liberals who desperately want to pretend that their right-wing ideology qualifies as "leftist" simply because they don't want to be associated with their fascist cousins.

And you fell for it.

Anarchists and communists aren't "far left." They are simply left.

You are either left or you are not.

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Horseshoe theory is truly one of my worst enemies, a thought terminating cliche that is zesty enough to feel like a revelation so every midwit loves to trot it out to feel superior. "Opposite things have similarities, therefore, opposite things tend toward the same"

socsa

Oppression is bad...

...Unless that oppression is done by the vanguard to protect the revolution. Then the oppression is ok.

socsa

Yeah idk, excluding all the historical Marxist Leninists movements from the leftist continuum feels a bit disingenuous.

socsa

You could have just said "what about all the good things Hitler did" if you wanted to put yourself like that.

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However they do nothing particularly responsible about the indicated fiscal problems. GOP administrations have a track record of spending even more than the democratic administrations, while pulling in less revenue.

So they jump up and down at a credible issue, but have no credibility as they have zero track record of fixing it, just making things even worse.

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Democrats aren't left wing

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And you fell for it.

I've got a friend who is in jail right now because she chained herself to the front of an oil refinery, protesting fossil fuel consumption. That's the very definition of "far left". She put her ideology on her sleeve and risked her life for her beliefs in the hope that she could enact revolutionary change.

Anarchists and communists aren’t “far left.” They are simply left.

Slapping a name-tag on your beliefs isn't what's at issue here. Illegalism is what's at issue. Once you are so passionate about your understanding of the world that you'll put your health and safety and your very life on the line to live out your values, you're going outside the bounds of what centrists can stomach.

Miep Gies was a member of the far-left. Paul Watson is a member of the far-left. Khymani James is a member of the far-left. Steven Donziger is a member of the far-left. Chris Smalls is a member of the far-left.

They're doing so much more than fucking posting.

You are either left or you are not.

You can claim to know all the theory. But there's a yawning void between theory and praxis.

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Reminds me of a coworker who went on a rant about how the workplace was so unfair and didn't give opportunities to white men.

Nevermind the workplace is about 90% white men, and pretty much all the higher paid folks are white men.

The delusion is strong, to bitch to the face of the pretty much token underpaid minorities and women that they are getting way too many opportunities that should be going to white men.

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There's always a bigger fish

Majorllama

The irony of you telling me to stop posting Nazi propaganda and then linking an article with zero sources that many historians have already called out as just being a Nazi smear article not based in historical fact whatsoever.

Not really the "gotcha" you were going for but you believe whatever you wanna believe I guess.

Majorllama

You've missed the point of all my previous comments entirely. Good job.

socsa

Oh no I completely understood the point, which is why I chose that exact language.

The history of humanity going back thousands of years is the history of progress triumphing over conservatism. Every single major historical epoch in recorded human history follows this trend. But Mussolini made the trains run on time so I guess we're even.

Iceblade

Happens more often than you may realize. Someone being "correct" on a topic in an objective sense is good, but that doesn't necessarily outweigh their flaws. Also worth keeping in mind that "left" or "right" ideology can mean very different things in different parts of the world.

An easy example from my own country - our left wing worked hard to shut down functioning nuclear power plants with plenty of time left to run whilst the right wanted to preserve them. Left largely got their way on the issue, and now we're in an electricity crisis due to a lack of dispatchable capacity.

Think for yourself, consider ideas & statements based on their own merits rather than judging them by who is embracing them at the current moment. A century ago it was the Democratic party pushing jim crow laws in the US and the RNC were championing civil rights.