The funny thing is there’s a comment from just a few minutes ago saying the auth-left definitely doesn’t oppose fascists either.
So if we want to play games with terms and further the exact infighting I’m criticizing, I guess nobody apart from anarchists is against fascism? Doesn’t make any sense, but I guess you don’t have to make sense if you’re just here to bicker.
Let’s look at Germany, their favorite example. The liberal position was to compromise with the fascists, and attempt to put in Hindenberg as the stop gap. The problem was that Hindenberg was unwilling to EVER accept liberal or social democratic (SPD) government. And so when he couldn’t find conservatives to keep power, he put the Nazis in power.
The “mild” opposition of liberals is only for fascism - they’re very good at holding down the left while they let the fascists take power, and that’s exactly the problem.
I feel like the argument here makes itself. The point of post is that liberals don’t actually do anything significant to oppose fascism, or as you put it, only “mildly” opposing fascism.
Which of these people was leader of Germany 2 years later? Inability to oppose fascism still permits it to take power. The only way to stop fascism is taking an actual firm stand against it, which liberals don’t.
my issue is that liberals aren’t going to resolve fascism because they create the material conditions for fascism.
fascism doesn’t appear from nowhere, it emerges from the immiseration and instability that capitalism produces, something liberals are content to ‘manage’ without resolving.
Okay, imagine someone is blasting your house with a high-pressure hose, breaking all its windows, flooding it, etc.
Your argument is to target the people who make plastic because that hose nozzle has plastic, rather than either convincing them to stop selling hoses to psychopaths or targeting the psychopath with the hose.
Again, the guy with the hose is just glad you’re focusing your efforts elsewhere while he destroys everything you have.
Nah, you just weren’t able to comprehend it, either because you couldn’t no matter what you did or because you refused to try.
I do find that lemmy.ml tankies tend to refuse to think. They’re intelligent when they bother, including when they’re not busy propagandizing themselves or others.
By my understanding, the left seeks to diffuse political power as widely and evenly as possible, while the right seeks to consolidate it.
Communism works only if there’s a mechanism to assure that the command economy actually serves the public and not the political class. So when we look at USSR, it was authoritarian since Stalin.
Similarly the Democratic Republic of the Congo was a Leninist Democracy until France came in and installed a puppet dictator. It’s still called the Democratic Republic, I think.
Reagan did the same thing to Grenada in 1983. That was especially conspicuous since there weren’t any major resources or strategic points involved. It was about black folks making a public-serving government work.
This is why I don’t understand what Tankies are, unless they’re to the left what Christian Nationalists are to Christianity.
Similarly, the seeds of the dissolution of democracy are built into the Constitution of the United States, in the preservation of institutionalized slavery and safeguards against mob rule is est, the loss of white male landowner power to poors, blacks and women as they respectively gain suffrage. It was meant all along to be democracy but not really.
Isildur should have thrown the damn ring into Mount Doom when he had the chance.
Totally. There’s a great book called The Founder’s Coup, which goes into exhaustive detail about how the Constitution was absolutely designed to stop democracy - most specifically, that which could threaten debt collection. See Shay’s Rebellion, a very ignored topic on much US casual history.
By my understanding, the left seeks to diffuse political power as widely and evenly as possible, while the right seeks to consolidate it.
No, that discounts the Auth-Left, who consolidates power in the form of a Vanguard Party and/or autocrat.
Communism works only if there’s a mechanism to assure that the command economy actually serves the public and not the political class. So when we look at USSR, it was authoritarian since Stalin.
It was authoritarian before that, but Stalin was definitely the cherry on top.
The rest of your comment is true; capitalists have an extensive history of installing pro-capitalist dictatorships.
This is why I don’t understand what Tankies are, unless they’re to the left what Christian Nationalists are to Christianity.
To me, a “tankie” is more or less the Auth-Left, more or less a Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist, in the sense that they believe that as long as the goal is ostensibly some form of socialism (or “socialism”), no amount of brutality, cruelty, or immorality can be too far.
On lemmy.world, they hail from @lemmy.ml 99% of the time, and you’ll see them doing mental gymnastics to defend Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and denying things like the Holodomor and the Uyghur genocide. You’ll also see them making moves to take down the USA rather than reform it for the better, no matter how many people suffer and die in the process. There’s a lot of overlap with accelerationism in my opinion, as I suspect a lot of the people in this thread and others are trying to convince people the DNC isn’t worth voting for because it will help the GOP win, bringing on a second US civil war and/or a massive and bloody world-wide class-war/revolution, killing millions or even billions but possibly resulting in a socialist government faster.
Tankies will claim that any non-tankie slaps “tankie” on any socialist or communist, but that’s not true for any reasonable person, hopefully myself included.
Surprising no one, the tankies were very upset by being described here, including one whom I’ve blocked that replied something below.
Go ahead, ask them if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is imperialist or if China’s oppression of the Uyghurs is a genocide, and watch the definition of “imperialism” and “genocide” change before your very eyes.
The common theme is “as long as it somehow opposes western capitalism, nothing can be immoral.”
Well, the classic definition of right and left is in accordance with or opposition to the king, respectively.
I think it moved from there to pro- / anti-monarchism when the notion of monarchy was challenged in the 19th century.
After the French revolution, foreign neighbors demands France select a new king under threat of war. The War of the First Coalition results and Napoleon shows them what’s what. Then Napoleon declares himself emperor and declares a bunch of civil rights to get everyone on board. Later, during the Bourbon restoration, Charles X rolls those rights back necessitating a second revolution. It’ll take about seventy years or so before France establishes a proper republic, and another thirty-ish years to re-establish rights. And there are some controversies today, such as the right to practice Islam and wear a burqa.
These days, we see multi-party democracies as the most liberal, but voters can be manipulated, as per the Southern Strategy. Today, a massive far-right propaganda machine runs in the US 24/7 using the same brainwashing techniques used on US soldiers in Korea. So it’s possible democracy is already obsolete due to modern communications and… well, they call it messaging.
One option is sortition, that is, election by lottery. This drastically increases the odds we won’t get officials like Ted Cruz or JD Vance (fhat is, shapeshifters who have no principles but can say anything, feigning confidence and sincerity to stay adjacent to power). We’ll need redundant checks against corruption and incompetence. We might also need a system that sorts experts from lobbyists, to provide our citizen-officials complete information and a public-serving mandate.
That said, I can’t imagine what else leftism can mean. It certainly doesn’t refer to command economics such as socialism or communism, since those, on their own, more authoritarian than a free market.
I cannot discern a point to your comment other than to muddy the waters by eroding the modern definitions of “left” and “right.” Maybe you just enjoy pedantry?
Rather, the modern definition of left and right you appear to be adhering to is Warsaw Pact and NATO, respectively. Maybe the chart is meant to preserve wealth and political power, by not including actual left-wing theory.
Tankies will claim that any non-tankie slaps “tankie” on any socialist or communist
Except they do. I don’t know which of you taught the liberals that word, but it was a very very bad move. Now it means “anyone who criticized Joe Biden while he tried to start WWIII”.
The auth-left does oppose the auth-right, so your pedantry is both unnecessary and unappreciated as it drives the exact divisiveness among [whatever preferred term you choose for the group we both know I’m talking about] that I’m criticizing.
Frankly this is some No True Leftist stuff. Tankies want to bring about socialism via an intermediary step of brutality. You could definitely argue that such a step is not True Socialism, and I think you’d be right, but I took a shit today that wasn’t True Socialism so does that mean the next thing I did was not socialism?
For the record, I don’t like tankies either, but there’s plenty of space to push back against them without relying on bad faith arguments.
You aren’t browsing their coms. They want to put leftists “on the wall” -sic, too. Everyone’s pretty fortunate that they don’t go outside and stick to ordering delivery
I’m well-aware both flavors of hyper-authoritarianism are bad, I’m pointing out that your picking fights with people who oppose fascism is the exact counter-productive bickering I was criticizing.
There was this dude at work I was trying to get to watch the first couple episodes of andor season 2 because the bickering in the woods rang so similar to liberals and leftists arguing, especially online. The rebels capture Andor(literal revenge driven super antifa spy and movement leader) by chance while he’s undercover and proceed to bicker among themselves and split their ranks in half while an ambush draws closer. Too busy with vanity and their purity tests to find common ground with their allies
Yes, that’s what we need now more than ever as we approach the general election in the US: More in-fighting amongst anti-fascists.
idk if i’d call liberals antifascists; not credible as that. they specialize in losing to fascists while blaming everyone but themselves
Motherfucker we are the og antifats you better get your shit straight
Eighty percent of all nazi casualties were inflicted by the Red Army
Holy historical revisionism.
What shit did you smoke to have you spout such bullshit?
Historically, liberals enabled and worked with the fascists to disenfranchise the communists and the anarchists, ya know, the actual OG antifascists.
The funny thing is there’s a comment from just a few minutes ago saying the auth-left definitely doesn’t oppose fascists either.
So if we want to play games with terms and further the exact infighting I’m criticizing, I guess nobody apart from anarchists is against fascism? Doesn’t make any sense, but I guess you don’t have to make sense if you’re just here to bicker.
you simultaneously accuse me of bickering and try to get me to defend a caricature of a position… that you constructed for me
i said liberals are not credible opponents of fascism. my reasoning being they are not really opposed to fascism as much as upholding capitalism.
MLs oppose both, i can work with them on those things at least. with liberals i have to worry that they’re going to turn me into the police.
The ridiculous part of this that you don’t seem to see is that liberals oppose fascism mildly and you refuse to ally with them to get rid of fascism.
Fascism is just over there in the corner smirking, glad you hate liberals too.
Free Palestine.
Definitely.
Note that many liberals agree.
What does this mean?
Because their opposition does not work.
Let’s look at Germany, their favorite example. The liberal position was to compromise with the fascists, and attempt to put in Hindenberg as the stop gap. The problem was that Hindenberg was unwilling to EVER accept liberal or social democratic (SPD) government. And so when he couldn’t find conservatives to keep power, he put the Nazis in power.
The “mild” opposition of liberals is only for fascism - they’re very good at holding down the left while they let the fascists take power, and that’s exactly the problem.
I feel like the argument here makes itself. The point of post is that liberals don’t actually do anything significant to oppose fascism, or as you put it, only “mildly” opposing fascism.
The issue is you’re implying Both Sides Are The Same, which is simply BS.
Active, open fascism is clearly worse than tepid inability to oppose it effectively. Pretending that’s not the case is just propaganda.
Which of these people was leader of Germany 2 years later? Inability to oppose fascism still permits it to take power. The only way to stop fascism is taking an actual firm stand against it, which liberals don’t.
my issue is that liberals aren’t going to resolve fascism because they create the material conditions for fascism.
fascism doesn’t appear from nowhere, it emerges from the immiseration and instability that capitalism produces, something liberals are content to ‘manage’ without resolving.
Okay, imagine someone is blasting your house with a high-pressure hose, breaking all its windows, flooding it, etc.
Your argument is to target the people who make plastic because that hose nozzle has plastic, rather than either convincing them to stop selling hoses to psychopaths or targeting the psychopath with the hose.
Again, the guy with the hose is just glad you’re focusing your efforts elsewhere while he destroys everything you have.
liberals not make a silly metaphor to defend their failing position challenge: impossible
that metaphor is incoherent and doesn’t really engage anything i said, so i’ll pass
Nah, you just weren’t able to comprehend it, either because you couldn’t no matter what you did or because you refused to try.
I do find that lemmy.ml tankies tend to refuse to think. They’re intelligent when they bother, including when they’re not busy propagandizing themselves or others.
By my understanding, the left seeks to diffuse political power as widely and evenly as possible, while the right seeks to consolidate it.
Communism works only if there’s a mechanism to assure that the command economy actually serves the public and not the political class. So when we look at USSR, it was authoritarian since Stalin.
Similarly the Democratic Republic of the Congo was a Leninist Democracy until France came in and installed a puppet dictator. It’s still called the Democratic Republic, I think.
Reagan did the same thing to Grenada in 1983. That was especially conspicuous since there weren’t any major resources or strategic points involved. It was about black folks making a public-serving government work.
This is why I don’t understand what Tankies are, unless they’re to the left what Christian Nationalists are to Christianity.
That’s a popular view, promoted most by Troskyists and Orwell.
That said, the original bullshit of dissolving the Soviets by the claim the Party was the voice of the people was actually done by . . . Trotsky.
Makes sense actually.
Similarly, the seeds of the dissolution of democracy are built into the Constitution of the United States, in the preservation of institutionalized slavery and safeguards against mob rule is est, the loss of white male landowner power to poors, blacks and women as they respectively gain suffrage. It was meant all along to be democracy but not really.
Isildur should have thrown the damn ring into Mount Doom when he had the chance.
Totally. There’s a great book called The Founder’s Coup, which goes into exhaustive detail about how the Constitution was absolutely designed to stop democracy - most specifically, that which could threaten debt collection. See Shay’s Rebellion, a very ignored topic on much US casual history.
No, that discounts the Auth-Left, who consolidates power in the form of a Vanguard Party and/or autocrat.
It was authoritarian before that, but Stalin was definitely the cherry on top.
The rest of your comment is true; capitalists have an extensive history of installing pro-capitalist dictatorships.
To me, a “tankie” is more or less the Auth-Left, more or less a Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist, in the sense that they believe that as long as the goal is ostensibly some form of socialism (or “socialism”), no amount of brutality, cruelty, or immorality can be too far.
On lemmy.world, they hail from @lemmy.ml 99% of the time, and you’ll see them doing mental gymnastics to defend Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and denying things like the Holodomor and the Uyghur genocide. You’ll also see them making moves to take down the USA rather than reform it for the better, no matter how many people suffer and die in the process. There’s a lot of overlap with accelerationism in my opinion, as I suspect a lot of the people in this thread and others are trying to convince people the DNC isn’t worth voting for because it will help the GOP win, bringing on a second US civil war and/or a massive and bloody world-wide class-war/revolution, killing millions or even billions but possibly resulting in a socialist government faster.
Tankies will claim that any non-tankie slaps “tankie” on any socialist or communist, but that’s not true for any reasonable person, hopefully myself included.
Surprising no one, the tankies were very upset by being described here, including one whom I’ve blocked that replied something below.
Go ahead, ask them if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is imperialist or if China’s oppression of the Uyghurs is a genocide, and watch the definition of “imperialism” and “genocide” change before your very eyes.
The common theme is “as long as it somehow opposes western capitalism, nothing can be immoral.”
Well, the classic definition of right and left is in accordance with or opposition to the king, respectively.
I think it moved from there to pro- / anti-monarchism when the notion of monarchy was challenged in the 19th century.
After the French revolution, foreign neighbors demands France select a new king under threat of war. The War of the First Coalition results and Napoleon shows them what’s what. Then Napoleon declares himself emperor and declares a bunch of civil rights to get everyone on board. Later, during the Bourbon restoration, Charles X rolls those rights back necessitating a second revolution. It’ll take about seventy years or so before France establishes a proper republic, and another thirty-ish years to re-establish rights. And there are some controversies today, such as the right to practice Islam and wear a burqa.
These days, we see multi-party democracies as the most liberal, but voters can be manipulated, as per the Southern Strategy. Today, a massive far-right propaganda machine runs in the US 24/7 using the same brainwashing techniques used on US soldiers in Korea. So it’s possible democracy is already obsolete due to modern communications and… well, they call it messaging.
One option is sortition, that is, election by lottery. This drastically increases the odds we won’t get officials like Ted Cruz or JD Vance (fhat is, shapeshifters who have no principles but can say anything, feigning confidence and sincerity to stay adjacent to power). We’ll need redundant checks against corruption and incompetence. We might also need a system that sorts experts from lobbyists, to provide our citizen-officials complete information and a public-serving mandate.
That said, I can’t imagine what else leftism can mean. It certainly doesn’t refer to command economics such as socialism or communism, since those, on their own, more authoritarian than a free market.
I cannot discern a point to your comment other than to muddy the waters by eroding the modern definitions of “left” and “right.” Maybe you just enjoy pedantry?
Rather, the modern definition of left and right you appear to be adhering to is Warsaw Pact and NATO, respectively. Maybe the chart is meant to preserve wealth and political power, by not including actual left-wing theory.
Definitely not. That would be closer to “East” and “West.”
Except they do. I don’t know which of you taught the liberals that word, but it was a very very bad move. Now it means “anyone who criticized Joe Biden while he tried to start WWIII”.
idk if I’d call tankies antifascist. They just think it’s the wrong color
The auth-left does oppose the auth-right, so your pedantry is both unnecessary and unappreciated as it drives the exact divisiveness among [whatever preferred term you choose for the group we both know I’m talking about] that I’m criticizing.
Tankies don’t have left aligned values, only left aligned appearance.
Frankly this is some No True Leftist stuff. Tankies want to bring about socialism via an intermediary step of brutality. You could definitely argue that such a step is not True Socialism, and I think you’d be right, but I took a shit today that wasn’t True Socialism so does that mean the next thing I did was not socialism?
For the record, I don’t like tankies either, but there’s plenty of space to push back against them without relying on bad faith arguments.
They want their label of socialism, not yours. And it’s a rather brutal one.
There’s no way to know that, so I keep such blanket declarations to myself, as should you.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with tankies is that they are “ends justify the means” people.
Some of them seek a benevolent end-state. Some seek an end-state that personally benefits them. There’s no way to tell which is which.
You aren’t browsing their coms. They want to put leftists “on the wall” -sic, too. Everyone’s pretty fortunate that they don’t go outside and stick to ordering delivery
Yes I am.
So what? Whether the auth-left or the auth-right, talk about pedantic. It’s the auth. IT’S THE AUTH.
and I don’t appreciate your lack of appreciation
I’m well-aware both flavors of hyper-authoritarianism are bad, I’m pointing out that your picking fights with people who oppose fascism is the exact counter-productive bickering I was criticizing.
There was this dude at work I was trying to get to watch the first couple episodes of andor season 2 because the bickering in the woods rang so similar to liberals and leftists arguing, especially online. The rebels capture Andor(literal revenge driven super antifa spy and movement leader) by chance while he’s undercover and proceed to bicker among themselves and split their ranks in half while an ambush draws closer. Too busy with vanity and their purity tests to find common ground with their allies
Fascinatingly, just like in Andor, peace-makers between the bickerers are vilified too.
Pretty dumb, but then again we’re not that different from the lesser apes.