PugJesusAny number of deaths is worth the fantasy, apparently
KeyboardHumans….
nondescripthandleMy favorite part is this is exactly what the dems are doing with Trump, their startegy since the beginning was not to stop Trump and just wait for him to ruin the country enough that people vote for them again. They were saying as much earlier in the year too. Hilarious to see after they called all their detractors accelerationist before deciding to join in.
Stupidity knows no ideological borders, it would seem
I mean at least yall went from blaming the immigrants to blaming the socialists for the election so that’s still some kind of improvement.
I mean at least yall went from blaming the immigrants to blaming the socialists for the elections so that’s still some kind of improvement.
Fucking what.
I am being sarcastic. I still haven’t fully gotten over when people were blaming immigrants for 2024 elections.
There was a tiktok trend of calling ICE on your neighbors most of which could not vote in first place.
irelephant [he/him]Remember when Kamala lost and lots of people were blaming mexians for voting for trump? They’re referring to that.
I remember when people were shocked that Latino voters swung towards Trump compared to previous elections. To say that that’s ‘blaming Mexicans’ or immigrants would be an astounding interpretation of that.
idk, there were a lot of liberals on twitter and bluesky saying that mexicans deserved to get deported for voting for trump. There absolutely was a lot of people who were blaming them, even if you yourself didn’t.
I won’t disagree, both because I’m not active on Bluesky or Twitter, and because I know that people are fucking immensely stupid and repugnant regardless of ideology - and liberalism is not exactly a sunshine and rainbows ideology to begin with. But most discourse I saw that applied actual blame to minorities wrt the election was around Arab-Americans.
While I regard protest votes and abstaining as universally unacceptable, the shift of Arab-Americans away from the Dems in 2024 lost us one state, at best - whereas we needed to pick up (or not lose, depending on how you want to see things) three. So while I condemn that on a moral level, strategically, it means very little, and the people who narrow in on that are either expressing some latent racism or trying to avoid the broader issue that the DNC royally screwed the pooch - something that Lemmy, for all of its other faults, quite freely admits.
Most of the discourse around the Latino vote I saw was either shock, or in the context of the male vote in general and without application of blame of the wider electoral failure to the Latino vote. But, again, I’m not trying to contradict that such things were said. I certainly run in left-liberal information bubbles where that kind of talk would be verboten to begin with.
no? literally no leftists side with maga (except for maga communism, but that’s fringe).
no? literally no leftists side with maga (except for maga communism, but that’s fringe).
You’re not reading the extremely simple comic very well, then.
Dems worked against Trumps opponents in 2015 in the hopes that the electorate would see how bad Trump is and deliver an easy Dem win. It didn’t work like that.
Leftists have been quite openly on here salivating over how working against Kamala and delivering Trump, and Trump being nakedly bad will lead to either the American people or the world as a whole seeing just how bad neoliberalism is, and deliver the long-awaited Revolution™. That’s just as fucking stupid.
openly
Any examples? besides some people who don’t want to vote dem?
Besides, the democrats are the neoliberal party. Trump is closer to fascism.
Any examples? besides some people who don’t want to vote dem?
From this very comment section:
Republicans and Democrats are both perfectly ok with state violence so long as it’s against brown people, and preferably overseas. How many millions have died from lack of access to affordable health care and an almost non-existent social safety net in the US over the past century? But those aren’t counted as ideological deaths for some reason? If you think that choosing either of the two main parties which both have an official policy of supporting foreign genocides is the lesser evil somehow, you’ve been duped. America has killed more people in wars in the past 20 years than nearly any other state, except perhaps for Russia. You’re just bent out of shape because that state violence has been turned on the domestic population for once. Anything has got to be better than the status quo.
“There is no lesser evil, the only reason you’re upset is because it’s naked now, and that’s implicitly a good thing because it will lead to something other than the status quo”
Or, as I put it:
Leftists have been quite openly on here salivating over how working against Kamala and delivering Trump, and Trump being nakedly bad will lead to either the American people or the world as a whole seeing just how bad neoliberalism is, and deliver the long-awaited Revolution™.
Bonus, also from this comment section:
I respect the american will, they voted for this. It’s good for the world. These minorities didn’t care about the kids in gaza and have a way out compared to them. Why should I care?
Leftists have been quite openly on here salivating over how working against Kamala and delivering Trump, and Trump being nakedly bad will lead to either the American people or the world as a whole seeing just how bad neoliberalism is, and deliver the long-awaited Revolution™.
Besides, the democrats are the neoliberal party. Trump is closer to fascism.
A great many people here on Lemmy will say there’s no effective difference between neoliberalism and fascism.
Are you talking about pre election? Of course you can do something about Trump by not electing him. After Trump won, there’s nothing left to do except let him show everybody why it was a bad idea.
After Trump won, there’s nothing left to do except let him show everybody why it was a bad idea.
“Let the fascist burn down society unopposed” is not exactly a fucking recipe for anything except empowering fascism.
People don’t touch the hot stove and learn their fucking lesson. People touch the hot stove and blame the liberals for burning them.
There is no effective opposition plan to fascism that involves ceding uncontested control to fascists
When I hear comments like this, I think that in your eyes democracy is optional when you have somebody like Trump in office. He’s clearly a fascist, so democrats need to arrest him and put a democrat in charge.
If you belong to a party that values democracy, you need to recognize that the fascist is an elected officials and do what you can legally do to maintain control and make sure the voters know who is to blame.
That’s exactly what they believe.
But it’s an inherent issue with democracy, that it only really works if we all have somewhat of a shared view of the world. If the people in a democracy have many different, and opposite views of the world, democracy simply cannot work because we’re not just disagreeing in what the method to reach our goals are, we disagree fundamentally on what our goals are and what the very fabric of our society should look like. That’s why many on the right will say that assimilation is important. And yes that has been co-opted by racists, but originally the idea was that a democracy can only sustain itself if all its members have a shared culture. Pluralism, as has been observed since Plato, only leads to the collapse of a democracy because consensus becomes impossible.
altkey (he\him)I don’t find democracy flawed by itself, but it is nothing but a cherished and fragile balance that gets watered down and coopted if not constantly maintained.
Coexisting with other opinions is a work that doesn’t end once you get there, and natural foes of it like corporative lobbies, career politicians and now again pointless populists are always there to dismantle whatever was built. It being ‘a thing to fight for’ is reduced to a movie cliche, but it does, unlike feudal caste elite-guided medieval shit, require that effort at all times. Erosion of that understanding leads to what we can see today.
Sharing culture and integration can start right now, and it spontaniously happens on it’s own if not put down, but the same rightwing people would likely draw another isolated Israel on the map than break the barriers from their own side, than accept other people as equals and discuss.
You do realize there are other options for opposing fascism than “A coup” right?
Yeah, and democrats are doing many things. I think what California is trying to do to counter Texas’s redisctricting is an example.
What are things you think Democrats should be doing that they are not?
Fascists are incompatible with democracy and should be barred from holding any office.
You're take is either aggressively fucking stupid, or you are a fascist arguing in bad faith.
Please, tell me what the policy is that prevents the fascists from holding office. I think you are expressing a “feeling” not an actual policy that stands any chance of being created.
You want to bar fascists from holding office? I’d love that. Who gets to define who the fascists are? The Lemmy hivemind? Do we hold a vote to determine who the fascists are? I think Trump is a fascist, but I think most people that voted for him would disagree. What happens if Trump labels all democratic governors as fascists? Do they all of a sudden have to leave office? Also, how the *** do you expect this law to be created? You think the house and senate can pass this and the president will sign it?
I may be aggressively fucking stupid IRL, but I’m not hearing any real actionable policy ideas that would pass and also cannot be abused by the actual fascists.
Bare minimum, if at any point you've expressed as a politician negative views towards democracy or any core philosophical element of democracy or indicates a desire to remove or destroy it, you should be bared from running for office.
Any politician who expresses positive feelings or views of historical parties who dismantled or destroyed democracy should also bar them from running.
You wouldn't even have to use the word "fascism". Just create a law that establishes that its illegal to dismantle, weaken, or destroy democracy and that even conspiring or openly stating the criminal threat of doing so is also a crime and on top of whatever criminal penalties it also prevents you from running for office as punishment.
First, no chance in a million years this would ever make it through the house, senate and get signed by the president. And unless it’s a constitutional amendment, the courts would kill this under first amendment protection.
Even if none of that is true, this would be so incredibly easy to abuse, you would just be handing a dictatorship to anybody that wants to abuse it. For any idea like this, you need to ask, how could Trump abuse this? Sure, Trump, as he exists now, would be barred from running for office. But what if he was careful to hide his fascist side? Now that he’s in office, it’s game on!
The 50+ Texas democrats that have left the state to prevent redistricting? One might argue that act is undemocratic and immediately remove them from office and bar them from ever running for office again.
It’s easy to downvote and talk smack on a web forum, it’s hard to come up with a realistic plan.
theneverfoxCool, so there’s an ethnic cleansing going on. When it becomes full on genocide, do we still just shrug and respect democracy?
They’re currently attempting to rig elections and taking bribes, all out in the open. Trump attempted a coup, and managed to get back into office. They’ve pushed the unitary executive theory into practice, they’re ignoring both the courts and Congress when it suits them.
The rule of law is dead. No amount of following the rules will fix that. Our democracy has been hacked. The checks and balances have failed. Things will not go back to how they were.
There is only fascism until everything collapses, or progressives take hold of power and do reconstruction.
If you want to live in a democracy, respecting the will of people who don’t want democracy is not an option
So what are you actually suggesting we do, then? Take up arms and start a civil war against the nuclear powered government?
Let me hear some actual solutions. All I’ve heard so far is [very legitimate] complaints and fantasies where individuals are able to magically remove fascists from power.
We resist, and we take back power and give it to people who will use it.
We need to take every seat. From district school boards to US senators, every seat that comes up needs to go to someone who will fight.
And I really mean fight - everything from gerrymandering California to ordering police to arrest federal agents invading our cities. But smaller and more personal things too
If you’re so much as in charge of a book club, I want you to abuse that tiny amount of power to bully any open MAGA people
These people are trying to kill us and destroy our country. They don’t want democracy, they want to take away our votes and our freedom.
Their voices don’t matter, they need to be shamed and attacked until they can’t make eye contact. They should be made to realize they aren’t entitled to opinions.
No, there’s no glorious revolution coming. Just a period of fascism before the collapse of an empire. We are just fucked
But that doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference. Things can get better locally, we can drive the Fascists back and save a lot of people. We can slow them down until we can take back power.
We can start working on the cultural norms that will drive fascism underground for another century.
So if you want to make things better, fuck the rules. Things never would have gotten this far if we were more punk rock. We need to learn to be punk rock.
Hmm, I 100% agree, but I just want to point out that this is not incompatible with “respecting democracy”.
Well, when I hear “respecting democracy”, I think back to a guy I met in France. They just had an election, in his words “he’s going to ruin this country, but eh, this is democracy”. He accepted the result, because he respected the process
That’s exactly what I don’t want. I don’t want respect in the Democratic process, because breaking norms and cheating let them hack the system. We need to cheat too
This isn’t respectful of democracy, it’s contemptuous of a failed system
ZombiepirateAs an anarchist who is opposed to accelerationionism, it’s frustrating how many people see it as an ideology that wants the state to immediately collapse.
I’ve had multiple arguments with liberals who say I’m not a real anarchist because I want pragmatic short-term progressive solutions like Medicare for all.
So yeah, I’m not wanting to condemn people to death for my ideology. Got me!
What you described is the literal definition of a conservative. So that means you’re a conservative.
umm. no. direction of change is crucial lol. some of us want capitalism to wither away as well as the state withering away. that is not conservatism lol.
Explain the mechanism through which the state will wither away. Then when the state has withered away explain how it will take more than 5 minutes before it reforms again.
I’m not even trolling here, no anarchist has ever been able to explain this to me in a way that isn’t different from literal faith.
i can’t explain it from an anarchist perspective but I can let you know a source for some great commentary on that exact matter if you’re interested?
I am. Shoot.
www.marxists.org/…/state-and-revolution.pdf
it’s well written and in a plain english form. a short read, honestly.
I’m already skeptical because of the author but I’m willing to give it a read. I do know that Lenin by the end of his life really did not like the state he had built so the ideas must be different than the practice.
oh legit “in practice” is always different than on paper. speaking as a software engineer and firefighter - shit always goes sideways. humans gonna human.
but as a polemic I found it to be a solid read.
now, I have never been good at determining “depth” of reads - english class always confused me “what do you mean theme? it’s a farm with talking animals on it.” so … caveat emptor.
The state is the mechanism that stabilizes class antagonism.
Why would it reform “5 minutes” after it is not needed anymore, because class antagonisms ceized to exist?
You need to describe the organization of such a society: how do things get done. Who decides what gets done and how is it decided. How do you stop those humans who are smarter, and more charismatic from rallying a following and imposing their will? The natural state of humanity is hierarchical, now that doesn’t mean that because it’s natural it needs to stay that way but I am simply making the descriptive claim that without guardrails hierarchy will form.
I have thought about this a little though I admit to be ignorant about anarchic literature, Im basing myself mostly on the basic and most well known claims. But from what I know of the goals of the ideology, for me anarchism is only possible through the trans human project. Humans would transcend the genetical and physical differences that make us intrinsically different and therefore more capable than others. We would be truly equal, though not human in any sense of the word anymore. More like a program that can reach consensus without dissenting opinions causing rifts because we are in fact a one who also happens to be many if that makes sense? Like the Geth in Mass Effect. A hive mind.
You need to describe the organization of such a society: how do things get done.
Why? How should I be able to? No one in feudal times could have predicted how things would be done in capitalism. Why should I be able to accurately predict how a free society would look like?
Who decides what gets done and how is it decided.
In my (limited) model? Federated councils. So the people have a say in decisions proportional to how much they are affected by them.
How do you stop those humans who are smarter, and more charismatic from rallying a following and imposing their will?
How will these “smart people” be able to achieve such a following? Immediate hunter-gatherers have strategies against this kind of accumulation of power. For example by ridiculing people who are too full of themselves. Can’t find the youtube video that explains this concept, right now. It was one in this series, though.
Also: you do realize that liberal democracy has this exact problem of demagogues?
The natural state of humanity is hierarchical
Now where did you get that idea? Any sources for that? Also: naturalistic fallacy.
I am simply making the descriptive claim that without guardrails hierarchy will form.
Maybe. Anarchists are quite in favour of these guardrails, though.
I think you overemphasize competition in mankind. One foundational text of anarchism is “mutual aid” by Peter Kropotkin, which adds on to Darwin’s theory by stating (and observing) that cooperation within one species is a vital factor in evolution.
Edit: Found the video I meant
10.1 Do "Egalitarian Societies" Exist? David Graeber & David Wengrow’s "The Dawn of Everything"
I believe some anarchists believe that cooperatives are a good first step. This is maybe more stateless socialism, but an anarchists would prefer elected managers/leaders in such organizations be trained that their position doesn’t give them any real authority over others but rather just additional responsibilities. A small example could be the wording of these positions might be different; instead of managers, they might be called coordinators.
Cooperatives are, at least now, still currently subject to market forces, and people would would together to get things done. The sole difference being workers would have more freedom over their lives since they’d be the owners of the means of productions.
What happens when there is no consensus on an important decision and people split in half and one half tries to impose their will on the other? How is this mediated? And if they do not have authority what happens when someone doesn’t want to do what needs to be done? Who has the authority to punish coerce them?
And I have so many questions about security both domestic and foreign that I don’t even know where to start.
In the coop I was in, important decisions required 2/3rds majority for two meetings in a row. Talked to someone where they required consensus for all decisions, and they said it would sometimes take months of conversations until everyone agreed.
Once a system is in place that everyone agrees with, there’s hardly any need to enforce anything, but in the case there is, there’d be bylaws to fall back on to collectively enforce.
I’m thinking in terms of what a cooperative economy would look like, so corporations and business, manufacturing and production would be run by cooperatives. I imagine there’d still need to be larger state, but why not run state and federal departments like a coop too?
What you described, gradual change , is the literal definition of a conservative. So that means you’re a conservative.
“Harm reduction is conservatism” is where we’re at.
Fuck’s sake.
That depends on the threshold for harm. But yeah, if you take the maximalist claim that any death or harm direct or indirect is unacceptable, you are basically arguing for no changes in society because we do not know the future and there is always uncertainty.
Conservative doesn’t mean reactionary literally, it is what it means now just like liberal now is taken to mean progressive, but that is not the real definition of the word simply how people use them as a sort of shorthand.
Stop using the term harm reduction. The crazies use that term to “subtly” push the “b b both sides same!” nonsense. Don’t fall for their framing.
Except harm reduction is a real and good thing. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Call it incrementalism then.
This is not about “perfect behind the enemy of good” because I after with that. What this is about is the crazies will stop at nothing to say “b b both sides same!” and they use the term “harm reduction” to sneak that idea in. Anything good they will try to categorize as “it’s merely harm reduction, not actually good. And because it’s harm reduction, it’s harm light, it’s harm, and I will not vote for harm!”
Well that's just fucking wrong. I'm not going to give up on the meaning of words just because crazy people have.
What part of that is wrong? It’s two people looking at the same thing and seeing different things. You see the term harm reduction and see it as good. They see the term harm reduction and see it as bad because [see my explanation above].
it's merely harm reduction, not actually good.
Reducing harm is good.
Are you seriously going to ignore what I said? That’s basically twice.
"it's merely harm reduction, not actually good."
"Well, that's just fucking wrong. I'm not going to give up on the meaning of words just because crazy people have."
What part of that is wrong?
"it's merely harm reduction, not actually good."
"Reducing harm is good."
I have been responding to exactly what you've said, and you think I'm ignoring what you said? Maybe you took "Well, that's just fucking wrong" as my saying that your claim about what crazy people think was wrong. I could have been clearer about that.
My point stands. I don't care what crazy people who are wrong think. And if some bystander is going to be swayed by an argument that harm reduction is bad, they're crazy, too. There's a lot of fucking crazies, and there's nothing I can do about that.
Ok we cleared up the last that you think they are wrong, not that I was wrong.
But you are still basically ignoring this:
It’s [the meme of] two people looking at the same thing and seeing different things. You see the term harm reduction and see it as good. They see the term harm reduction and see it as bad because [see my explanation above].
If you use the term harm reduction, they will never see what you want them to see. Never. Because it’s this scenario:
Except in this case you’re both using the same word to mean different things. Call them wrong, and they’ll call you wrong, and you’ll talk past each other forever.
Orrrrrrr call it incrementalism.
If you use the term harm reduction, they will never see what you want them to see.
As before, I don't care what crazy people think. I'm not wasting my time trying to convince unreasonable people to accept reason, and I'm not going to bend to suit what crazy people might accept.
I've spent many years trying to use reason as a tool for progress, and look where we are now. We're well past the point where reason is an effective tool. The crazy people have numbers on their side. Perhaps they always have, and it just hasn't been obvious until the last few years.
Sorry but you’re still ignoring what I’m saying. Whether you talk to them or not, you’re not even speaking the same language (see meme).
Frankly no wonder you’re frustrated because you’re talking past them, just like you’re talking past me.
As before, I don't care what crazy people think. I'm not wasting my time trying to convince unreasonable people to accept reason
Who's ignoring whom? *I'm not trying to change the minds of crazy people at all. I'm not "talking past them," because I'm not talking to them at all.
Except you, apparently.
“Harm reduction” = “I don’t care if foreigners dies I’m first world I deserve better treatment”