But have you considered that a system that leads to fascism is still better than actually manifested fascism?? And yea, maybe we should fix it before it gets there, but if it can’t be fixed with voting now then we should have voted harder before, and vote harder next time
The thread has made it to /all, lord help us.
Liberal *slower death cult.
“Guys guys, lets work for the slow death instead of the fast death.”
Gives similar vibes to “capitalism is the least bad system”
Lol
I just want a little fascism … not a lot of fascism.
Just a little exploitation for my benefit, as long as it doesn’t happen near me.
The global south can have a little exploitation, as a treat.
What have they ever done for us? /j
“So long as we’re exploiting the brown people in countries I don’t have to care about, it’s all good”
“How about half a genocide?”
With our latest promo, you can even have a full genocide as long as your communication remains civil !
as long as your communication remains civil
Alternatively, you can just call anyone calling out the genocide “antisemitic”. /j
Or you just say all your slurs in a conlang i dont speak, thats 5% yiddish 20% bastardized arabic you’ll call me a bigot for recognizing and 80% slurs, mostly for arabs. That’s also good.
Edit: wait do you need money to think up new slurs? Its fine i just need a number to write on the check.
Let’s just go for the whole genocide, otherwise we might have to pay for bananas.
You can’t make an omlette without cracking a few eggs, therefore, a little genocide, as a treat is fine.
No, you got it all wrong!
We shouldn’t do fascism, we should do imperialism! since we’re not affected, problem solved! Because as long as i don’t see the brown people suffering, it’s all okay.
As a treat!
Guys guys, lets work for the slow death instead of the fast death
i mean… yes?
What about working for the no death ?
Well that’s called necromancy and is generally frowned upon (ofc i get what you mean, avoiding death is the goal)
Not always! If you add the rocket equation it’s called cosmism.
They’re not mutually exclusive. I’d argue it’s easier to work on the no death solution under a slow death regime than a fast one. We’ve still got a lot of work to do to get to an ideal solution. Lesser evil solutions ensure slightly more favorable conditions while we do that work.
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Interesting argument, planet destroying weapon of mass destruction
What can I say, my Gary is called anarchism 😛
The fbi will murder you.
we all are working for it but clearly aren’t there yet, to draw a parallel, we don’t have a cure for cancer YET but you can bet your ass i’m gonna do chemo if i end up with it
But how is liberalism [the slow death cult] going to get us there. Liberalism has been the dominant system for the past 70 years. And I’d say we’re worse off economically then we were in the 60s.
Liberalism is what USA is founded on
We could squabble about specifics for a long time. But using a broad definition. Yes, you are absolutely 100% correct. I was thinking with a narrow 20th century defintion.
Liberalism has been the dominant system for the past 70 years
8/14 presidents were republican. that’s the majority, for those of you that can’t do math
And I’d say we’re worse off economically then we were in the 60s.
doesnt take much for a billionaire-backed asshole to undo decades of progress cough trump
Republicans have been broadly economically liberal until Trump’s second term.
To reuse the analogy, I’m not saying that everyone becoming immortal will happen in a finger snap, I’m saying that “just dying from cancer Vs. chemo for a few wealthy” is a bullshit choice. The first wee basic step we should strive for is to make the treatment available to all those suffering from cancer.
The wee basic step we should strive for is to make the treatment available to all those suffering from cancer.
right. so the slow death. the one you were previously criticizing.
In politics, the first wee basic step we should strive for is not a complete revolution without the support of the masses, but to put in power someone who, if not better, doesn’t ruin more the already tragic and delicate system we have, to give us time to organize better.
And uhh yeah we kinda failed at that
without the support of the masses
Good thing clinton and harris had all that support of the masses, love how they managed to get all that support from the masses. Im glad me not voting for them didn’t matter, because ‘the masses’ supported them so much!
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Said it already, the slow death is accepting that the treatment should go to those who can afford it. That’s the unacceptable compromise for leftists…
Offer arrives from global council of oligarchs tomorrow:
Kill all landlords, landback by the end of the month, cops are allowed only two pieces of kit¹, but we keep gig apps cops and for-profit healthcare for at least another decade. No struggle no tear gas no death.
I’d take that deal.
¹pants bullets radio and a car each count for one.
the slow death is accepting that the treatment should go to those who can afford it.
and how does that relate to politics, especially seeing as you are actively sabotaging the party that wants medicare/medicaid
No. If there is any hope of actual survival, that comes before all else. Accepting the slow death of “voting blue no matter who” means that there is no possibility of averting fascism whatsoever. It is an inevitability that if the only side representing “the left” is associating itself with a declining status quo while refusing to do any of the things necessary to keep that status quo functional, them people will abandon it, and if the only ones offering an alternative are the far-right, then they are the ones who will win. There is no hope of survival whatsoever.
There are, however, two possibilities that do offer some slim hope of surviving. One is that the Democratic party can be pressured into doing the basic, minimal tasks of governance necessary to avert fascism - tasks that they will never simply choose to do of their own volition. The second is that the left can establish a credible alternative outside of the organization of the Democratic party, whether electorally or otherwise. Both of those objectives are furthered by voting third party when the Democrats are offering someone insultingly unacceptable, while “voting blue no matter who” flies directly contrary to both goals.
You’re thinking of it as doing chemo when there’s no cure. That’s not what this is. This is deciding to just take a nice little nap in the comfy snow because your legs are so tired and you’ll totally get up again in just a few minutes, rather than choosing to get up and push forward through the darkness in the hope, however slim, of finding an actual shelter.
This “buying time to organize” line is constantly thrown around, I don’t buy it as sincere at all, for starters. But regardless, time is not on our side, buying time only means allowing conditions to deteriorate further, it’s just procrastinating and kicking the can down the line. And how do you effectively organize an alternative to the status quo and present yourself as separate from it while simultaneously trying to rally around it and supporting it unconditionally? It’s nonsense.
This “buying time to organize” line is constantly thrown around, I don’t buy it as sincere at all, for starters.
I’ve heard that line for close to 30 years. So, when is that organizing supposed to start? When things get so uncomfortable that we have no choice? Not sure how that’s materially different than the accelerationist position, except that it means fighting the proverbial 800lb. silverback gorilla instead of an adolescent.
Okay but have ypu considered that suggesting i shouldn’t want to die is ageist and attacking my culture? Whos the real imperialist, huh, boomer?
You’re thinking of it as doing chemo when there’s no cure. That’s not what this is. This is deciding to just take a nice little nap in the comfy snow because your legs are so tired and you’ll totally get up again in just a few minutes, rather than choosing to get up and push forward through the darkness in the hope, however slim, of finding an actual shelter.
No, they were right. Chemo is the right analogy. Fascism is cancer, liberalism is chemo, leftism is the cure. Cancer kills, chemo is miserable but it’s better than dying of cancer, and a cure isn’t ready yet. Your options are to die of cancer waiting for the perfect cure, or doing chemo to live long enough to maybe see that cure.
This “buying time to organize” line is constantly thrown around, I don’t buy it as sincere at all, for starters.
It’s constantly “thrown around” because it’s true. Your posturing as the sincerity police doesn’t change that fact. The Dems told Palestinian activists to wait their turn to talk, MAGA stripped their degrees, arrested, and deported them. It’s easier to organize on the sidelines than from prison.
But regardless, time is not on our side,
Exactly, because of the idealists who refused to help buy more
buying time only means allowing conditions to deteriorate further, it’s just procrastinating and kicking the can down the line.
No, conditions are deteriorating either way. Buying time is just slowing that deterioration, so enough structure remains to build upon.
And how do you effectively organize an alternative to the status quo and present yourself as separate from it while simultaneously trying to rally around it and supporting it unconditionally?
It’s not unconditional, it’s based on two conditions: as long as fascism is getting enough votes to win, and as long as there’s no viable alternative. I see plenty of suggested alternatives, but none that are viable. This mindset vastly overestimates the political will of the average voter, and vastly underestimates the time and effort necessary to effectively organize an alternative.
People aren’t just going to spontaneously rally around a vague impetus for revolution. Certainly not enough people to actually succeed. They need to see a specific plan of action, organization, and popularity. Third party candidates pulling <1% aren’t it. You’re suggesting a cancer patient replace their chemo with keto and essential oils.
When there’s a cure, I’ll be behind it 100%. Until then, I’m sticking with chemo so I can live long enough to see a cure.
I’ve tried reasoning with you before so I know you won’t listen, you are a devout believer in voting blue no matter who and I’d have about as much luck trying to reason with you as if I tried to convince my parents to become atheists.
Everything you say is wrong, and your words constantly show your true beliefs that you refuse to admit. For example, “The Dems told Palestinian activists to wait their turn to talk,” when in fact they disrupted protests through force, arrested many of them, denounced them as antisemites, and refused to give even the token gesture of allowing a Palestinians speaker at the convention. You don’t mind any of that, because despite what you’ll say, you don’t care about the issue.
I have no interest in discussing anything further with you.
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I’m a devout believer in voting blue no matter who until there is a better alternative.
The problem, fundamentally, is that you have no plan (and actively opposed plans) to make an alternative come into reality. Because you are a liberal who supports what we already have. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, but when there isn’t a will, there certainly isn’t a way - this is why you cannot find any alternative to voting blue no matter who unconditionally, forever (no matter how much you try to weasel that you don’t), because you don’t actually want to find an alternative, because you’re not in the market for one at all.
But, as a liberal, you can’t actually stand for anything, even liberalism. You exaxtly fit MLK’s description of the white moderate who is always saying, “I agree with your goals but I disagree with your methods” and is always telling people to “wait for a more convenient time.” We’ve been through this and I will not entertain your pretenses of being any sort of leftist.
Nope. I can remember you now, the moment someone on the left criticizes your deeply flawed attempt at praxis, you turn into the sincerity police and declare them to be liberals. This is extremely transparent
The problem, fundamentally, is that you have no plan (and actively opposed plans) to make an alternative come into reality.
False. I am actively opposed to bad plans. I care more about actually securing a leftist government than about virtue signaling to online revolutionary cosplayers, which means I focus more on material solutions than lofty ideology.
Because you are a liberal who supports what we already have.
False, I’m simply aware of what we already have, and which actions are incapable of changing it.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, but when there isn’t a will, there certainly isn’t a way
Precisely my point. The American people lack the will. Maybe that will change, but for now that is the case.
this is why you cannot find any alternative to voting blue no matter who unconditionally, forever (no matter how much you try to weasel that you don’t), because you don’t actually want to find an alternative, because you’re not in the market for one at all.
Once again, false. But again, I’m not in the market for ineffective virtue signal “alternatives” like protest voting third party in the general election. I’m in the market for effective alternatives, like democratizing workplaces and building grassroots campaigns in local elections so that one day we can have a viable leftist candidate in the general election.
You exaxtly fit MLK’s description of the white moderate who is always saying, “I agree with your goals but I disagree with your methods” and is always telling people to “wait for a more convenient time.” We’ve been through this and I will not entertain your pretenses of being any sort of leftist.
Which would have come close to an interesting point if your methods worked. But they don’t. It’s not liberalism to reject counterproductive methods. I don’t consider anyone who abandons the material dialectic for ideological grandstanding to be a leftist. You are a cosplayer with a romanticized vision of revolution, and none of the tact or organization so essentially necessary to enact that revolution.
liberalism leads to fascism. it’s the cause of cancer, not the cure in any sense.
Didn’t say it was the cure. Chemo isn’t the cure for cancer, it’s a treatment. Baby tigers lead to adult tigers, but I’d rather be locked in a tiger cage with a baby than an adult.
but that’s not the option. it’s being locked in a tiger den, and you’re choosing to play with the cub. you should be trying to get out of the den or kill the tigers.
How do you figure? Getting out of the cage and killing the tiger are both tasks which are easier to do when trapped with a baby tiger than an adult one.
So capitalism leads to fascism, and its socialism we want; is that right?
My issue with this is that Dale and Boomhauer aren’t in the back of the truck then they are.
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Join a Union? Feed the homeless? Organize your fellow tenants? Actually attend a city council meeting?
You’re smugly confirming your allegiance to the liberal death cult, because your only conception of “political engagement” is voting in a system that is crumbling before our very eyes.
And no, just voting wouldn’t have stopped that decay. Nothing in the world is static, and 1000 years of Obama wouldn’t stop the larger political-economic factors that are fueling fascism, political polarization, and civil unrest.
Cool, go vote, especially if it’s in your local and state elections that no one actually pays attention to. But disengage from the rat race, and do something with an actual impact in your community.
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Aaaaaaand moderators have nuked my comments. Awesome. Any explanation as to why, besides not liking the points I was making?
it’s in the mod log.
rule 7
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you can leave
Blocking the community now. Enjoy your very correct views that aren’t allowed to ever be challenged for very good reasons.
bye
I guess this means you don’t know what a “progressive” is, huh?
Progressives are Neoliberal 2.0. In the corporate sector, this is called getting ahead of the problem. co-op the left before the left can even learn to walk again. There are billionaires on both sides supporting this pseudo world aka left and Right paradigm. We are all just watching Shadows dance on the walls. We are not going to vote our way out of these bigger problems. And if you keep it real and you see how the sausage is made, you can pretty much predict how this is all eventually gonna go. The Ratchet effect. We move further and further to the right. And clearly this has something to do with fiscal realities and the suffering of the working class. Like guns aren’t the problem. The problem is fiscal. And those fiscal problems lead to interpersonal issues. The guns don’t help though. We don’t like to deal with the root causes because it questions the very nature of our existence. Ultimately, I am victorious because we will destroy ourselves. We are literally in the process of destroying all life on Earth. It’s kind of awesome being right about everything. Unfortunately, I am mortal and I suffer just like all the other slobs.
There are billionaires on both sides supporting this pseudo world aka left and Right paradigm.
Really? Do tell… which billionaire parasites are (supposedly) funding the left?
It’s kind of awesome being right about everything.
That just tells me you’ve never been right about anything.
I think they’re confusing “progressive” with “Performative Discord Leftists Who want to have intellectual arguments but are afraid of real conservatives so they just infight and purity test all day” or “Lemmy users”
but are afraid of real conservatives
Why should they be afraid of something that hasn’t existed since the end of WW2?
real conservatives
The last one im aware of died in 2013. He was almost 90, and would probably be an anarchist in modern context. He seemed like he was moving that way.
So that’s your idea of a “progressive,” huh? Two plutocratic racketeers in over-priced suits?
I grew up in a country that insisted these two guys were somewhere to the left of Fidel Castro.
Show me what a True Progressive American Politician looks like, please.
Sooooo… you don’t know who Bernie Sanders is? That’s a “progressive” - or, more accurately, an edgy liberal.
I’m going to go ahead and assume that even here, on a (supposedly) anarchist community, I will still have to waste my energy explaining to liberals how their own ideology actually works?
Sooooo… you don’t know who Bernie Sanders is?
He’s the guy who spent twelve years stumping for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, right?
waste my energy explaining to liberals how their own ideology actually works?
Does liberal ideology work? Seems like its in full collapse at the moment.
He’s the guy who spent twelve years stumping for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, right?
Yeah… you know that thing “progressives” were doing right up to the election?
Does liberal ideology work?
You’ll know when it stops working - you’ll see liberals roll out the red carpet for fascists while pretending they cannot do anything to stop them. Do you see anything like that happening now, perhaps?
Instead of a politician, what about a civil revolutionary?
Martin Luther King Jr. was a leftist.
He was a socialist, not an American leftist. He was a goddamn dirty commie that the FBI tried to get him to commit suicide. And libturds like to whitewash’s ass. Martin Luther King was killed by the FBI. Then he was paraded around as a mascot for neoliberalism and the libturds. The Empire made him a mascot and gave him a holiday. In Empire, you have many holidays, gladiator games, and idols to worship.
Socialism falls under leftism.
Ah, the United States (ca. 2016)
I grew up in a country that insisted these two guys were somewhere to the left of Fidel Castro.
Your post makes me think you somehow believed them…
Oh snap.hahahah
Let me be clear, we’re occupying Afghanistan, but we’re going to be doing it the right way this time.
Progressives aren’t quite the same as infighting discord leftists and socially isolated teenagers who think we’re going to topple capitalism aaannnny day now.
There are millions and millions of people who we would consider “progressive” and they tend to do things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmwvHyJJr50
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Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
Blindly supporting means the party can start offering policies to entice those who don’t vote for them (conservatives).
Tell me again which moves the overton window?
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Focusing on nothing but voting enables neoliberalism in promoting fascism.
Well I’m right behind you bud. I’ll vote AND you let me know what you wanna do.
Vote if you want. But don’t waste too much time doing so and join a political org.
Good news for you, voting only takes one day.
But that’s not counting this time we’re spending on it right now.
The United States has some of the longest election cycles, maybe in the world, but definitely among western liberal democracies.
So yes, the literal act itself takes a day. But everything surrounding that day is taken up by planning for the next election, enough robs people of other kinds of political engagement, by being such a massive time and energy sink.
They want to kill anybody who disagrees with installing an autocrat who promises to redistribute wealth via execution.
Veryeanarchist stance /s
We can only ever have one message. Classic and so true /s
Electoralism doesn’t change shit and binds resources.
The amount of simping for electoralist politics in an anarchist sub is truly depressing.
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Electoralism doesn’t change shit and binds resources.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Look, it’s PugJesus being angry at the anarchists in the anarchist com! Go figure. /s
Voting changes things. See: every election that wasn’t rigged. Maybe some that were.
Ok, my bad: it doesn’t change shit in your favour.
Can we stop pretending like voting for the Democrats as they exist now stops the Republicans from winning? It only makes them win more slowly. It is literally why everyone is so disillusioned and why the Democrats were unable to sell their message to enough people. And can we also take for granted that me saying this doesn’t mean that I didn’t vote for Kamala Harris?
Maybe we could stop pretending that the shitty Democrats that have never learned their lesson suddenly will if Republicans win one more time
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Yes. That’s how electoralist politics work. The power as a voter lies in the ability to withhold their vote or to vote for someone else. The moment your vote is being forced into compliance, you have thus lost all your political power under that system.
It’s kinda one of the major flaws of an electoralist system.
Congratulations for reaching the point.
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“some of my colleagues lost. I shall now begin the transformation to a totally new human”
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You’re confusing cause and effect; democrats need to promise policy that improves people’s material conditions if they want people to vote for them, and use every single power at their disposal to prevent further harm until then to prove they will do as they say if they win. Nobody is going to vote for a party that they dont believe will help them.
You cant win while telling your own base “eat shit, what are you gonna do, not vote?”
You cant win while telling your own base “eat shit, what are you gonna do, not vote?”
The only thing that tells you that is a common sense analysis of the situation
There is also the fact that democrats lost in 2024, and 2016, and the way the dems lost the house and senate in 2010 after bailing out the banks for stealing people’s houses and giving the health insurance companies subsidies instead of giving us healthcare. Turns out when you do the opposite of what your base wants, fewer people vote.
Can we stop pretending that withholding a Democratic vote will make any positive difference?
So you know they won’t learn, but want people to vote for them anyway? Fucking idiot you are
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“Please stop bombing children”, “How about we don’t back a genocide”, “Maybe illness shouldn’t put you into bankruptcy”, “Police shouldn’t be able to assault and murder innocent people”
I feel like these are reasonable requests, and quite different than “short of perfect”
Maybe if the Democrats fought for those values, instead of against them, then they would gain leftist support.
not voting does not exist, it’s a vote for the other side.
this is a lie
The Democrats exist as they do now because they can’t rely on the left to vote. So they have to pander to the center.
The centrist voter is a myth. There is not a human who will vote for “means-tested subsidies for a state-run employer-funded health insurance marketplace where you have no idea what it will cover or cost.” But wouldn’t vote for “free healthcare” when you move to the center by compromising your bills, you lose voters who suspect the policy won’t help them, you dont gain a bunch of “moderate Republicans” who want only half of immigrants subjected to inhumane conditions.
Take a marketing class. If you think that politics is about pandering and not about convincing people, then you’ve lost the game already
Yes, we already lost last election because of the exact reasons stated by the person you’re responding to
Except the person they were responding to phrased the situation poorly by leaving out important context.
In reality, the Democrats lost because they kept expecting leftists to vote against their working class interests in favor of right wing, pro corporate policies that only serve to maintain the capitalist system. You know, the very thing we are fundamentally against?
Maybe if the Democrats actually made strides for legitimate left wing policies, they would encourage more left wing individuals to throw their hat in with them.
Yet, time and time again, they have shown to throw the working class under the bus if it serves the whims of the capitalist market. Now, no one trusts them to uphold our interests when push comes to shove.
Ah I understand now. You took Marketing 101 and have it all figured out.
I definitely don’t have it all figured out, but I wanna know do you ever think about stuff like what it took for the civil rights movement of the 1960s to succeed? Do you think it was a matter of pandering to the interests of centrist liberals or do you think that a big part of it was criticizing status quo liberalism and refusing to settle? I really think that you should read theletter from Birmingham jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because the archetype that he addresses in that work is replayed out every single time somebody ever deigns to criticize the Democrats for their political strategy.
You’re not exactly wrong, but it’s even more fundamental than that. If leftists were a more reliable voting bloc, then Democrats couldn’t exist as they do today. They would be primaried by more leftist candidates. And then, if hard left policies were more popular with the general electorate, they would win.
The nightmare we’re all living in right now is proof. I don’t believe for an instant that The Powers That Be wanted Donald Trump to be president. Even by fascist standards he’s kind of a disaster. They wanted fucking Jeb! But Trump’s implicit message of “I’m going to fuck shit up and the establishment doesn’t want me” resonated with a lot of people. It just got the extra boost from being tied with fucked up racism, sexism, and ignorance, all of which are tied to pretty solid groups of voters.
That’s for the democrats to choose
Uh riiight
Are the choosing democrats in the room with us? Because last time I checked they can only watch as Republicans cut social security, medical, and education while raising taxes and setting up concentration camps.
I’m sure you’re okay with all of that so long as you can send a message.
Oh yea, i can see them only watching. Can’t have your members go against the
mandate of the people
I mean who can ask for more from them? that stern letter they sent only after trumps points fell to 40. I am sure that hit home to that one staffer he has that can read. Oh and at the same time democrats were sitting at a 27 so you know, too busy watching and censuring their own to ensure there is no impediments to republicans directed fee fall into tyranny, no time for self reflection!
When democrats won it was all the minority parties fault we can’t get anything done. But you see, decorum is far more important than fighting tyrants.
Embarrassing
There haven’t been more DNC than GOP senators in over 10 years. You want them to do stuff? Volunteer for them in the midterms.
In hindsight, everyone on the left side of the spectrum would have been better off not voting in the 2020 presidential presidential election.
… Uh ok
Blindly voting means the Right win.
Vote for the furthest left-wing candidate in the primary.
Vote the for furthest left-wong candidate in the general.
It’s not difficult.
Ill vote in the primary, but 2020 showed us, if our guy doesn’t win, voting for a conservative in the general is still handing power to the Republicans
I would say not voting for the “conservative” in 2024 more directly handed power to the Republicans, no?
Voting for the conservative in 2020 gave us Trump in 2024.
The only way we could have avoided Trump in 2024 is if a conservative didn’t win the primary in 2020, and the only way that would have happened is if the DNC knew a conservative didn’t have a shot in hell.
If the DNC believes we will vote for whatever they give us, we will get no concessions. Our mistake in 2020 was compromising and voting for Biden in the hope we could get some concessions after the election.
So vote for no one?
no one cares
no one will work for your interests
no one will overthrow the oppressive systems
no one has never taken a bribe
You forgot a step. Short term vs long term planning.
The problem with voting with your method is you only get to vote once. Every vote you need to make the decision:
-
I should vote based on the optimal outcome of this election.
-
I should vote based on the optimal outcome over many elections.
It’s important that you first ask yourself this question. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And often by voting for (1) you’re hurting (2).
For example, everyone to the left of Republicans would have been better off if Trump had won in 2020. The primary process was rigged to keep progressive Democrats divided while forcing Biden through as the centrist compromise. People on the left tried to vote for progressive candidates, but the DNC rigged it so that all the centrists EXCEPT Biden dropped out early, while the progressive candidates had their vote divided. The DNC organized for Biden to win the primary. And then, in the general, everyone on the left held their nose and voted for him. They followed your advice to the letter, and everyone to the left of Republicans was massive harmed as the result of following your exact advice.
Those on the left followed your instructions exactly, but they ended up with an inferior option than if they had voted third party.
Biden winning in 2020 guaranteed a MAGA win in 2024. Biden was never going to make the changes needed to prevent MAGA from returning to power. This was predicted by many on the left before he was even sworn in.
Trump in 2020 would have been far less dangerous than a Trump in 2024. He wouldn’t have had 4 years to regroup and plan out his whole Project 2025. He would have been a lame duck from day one, and he wouldn’t have had the political capital he came in with in 2024.
Centrists, liberals, leftists, all of them did themselves a disservice by voting for Biden in 2020. Objectively, everyone EXCEPT Republicans would have had a better long-term outcome if Trump had won in 2020. But in your strategy, we’re not allowed to consider the long term effects of our decisions. We’re just supposed to myopically focus on this and only this election.
Trump winning in 2020 being better is a BIG assumption that fails to consider just how bad things could have gone.
Off the top of my head, would things be better right now if we’d had Turkey’s levels of inflation? How bad would poverty have gotten? How many people would’ve died from suicides and extra Covid deaths? Would he immediately have gone into revenge for BLM mode?
There is a level of death and destruction that you are failing to consider.
Also, really consider how this conspiracy to stop Bernie in 2020 is just the centrists making a strategic decision not to split the vote. In the French parliamentary elections, like 200 left-wing and centrist candidates withdrew from the second-round run-off races to avoid splitting the anti-far-right vote —Do you consider what they did to be unethical and a subversion of democracy?
You claim to worry about long term planning when you don’t even have the hindsight of all the horrible shit happening we could have avoided.
That’s the kind of moron speak we get from these people though. They pretend to care about stopping fascism but would gladly usher it in to tEaCh DeMoCrAtS a LeSsOn
-
Blindly? I think it’s pretty fucking blind personally to see clearly that a train is coming but to stay the fuck on the tracks
Right, we’ve seen the train coming for decades as 2 right wing parties exploit a country and drain its people of wellbeing and as expected it enabled the rise of fascism.
Pretty stupid to stay on the track instead of hopping off and not supporting them.
You love that fucking track so goddamned much
You’re the one not wanting to change?
Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
No, it doesn’t. The pseudo-democratic spectacle liberals call “democracy” is completely immune to abstinence or boycotts.
The libs don’t lose when the fascists win. There’s a good reason they keep fascists around.
Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
Blindly supporting means the party can start offering policies to entice those who don’t vote for them (conservatives).
That’s true in a democratic system, sure. But what I think the electoral entryists lose sight of is the real incentive of a politician isn’t necessarily to win election. The real incentive of a politician is to build political capital within the party/government in order to pursue an objective. And that objective isn’t necessarily going to be a popular one.
Case in point, look at the UK Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour Right very deliberately and explicitly tanked their own chances to win in 2019, because they didn’t want the policies that Corbyn was championing. The fact that Corbyn had brought in an enormous number of new, enthusiastic left-liberal voters was considered a problem to solve not a benefit of his campaign strategy.
Consequently, when Corbyn lost to Johnson, New Labour spent the next years systematically weeding out all of the new left-liberals introduced to the party in the prior cycle. They consolidated support around Starmer by shrinking participation not by expanding it.
The modern Democratic Party is engaged in a similar project. The goal is not to entice anyone into the party. It is to establish the Dem Party as the only viable alternative to Trump and demand voters approach the liberal(ish) party on its own terms. The Dems exist to cater to the donors first and then to the corporate media and then to the celebrity class.
Tell me again which moves the overton window?
The only thing that moves the Overton Window is consolidation of control over the local media.
Leftists quite literally need to get control of the airwaves and democratize the engines of journalism and information commerce. Anything else is a fool’s errand.
You aren’t going to beat FOX News at a propaganda contest by being a Silent Majority. All you’re going to get is BlueMAGA blaming you when they lose, while MSNBC calls you a bunch of Putin Bots and TikTok degenerates.
You fucking lawn dart. No it doesn’t and this is the dumbest, most short sighted, most fucking idiotic opinion I have seen on the subject.
You and others like you not voting just pushed the Overton window in the direction opposite of what you want.
Okay centrist.
Choosing not to vote doesn’t make you not a centrist.
No that comes from not voting for centrists.
Okay centrist.
Jesus fuck me, you are a moron.
Okay centrist.
Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
That’s an assumption. Another assumption is that they try to win over the voters who reliable show up and ignore the ones who don’t as unreachable.
How do you ensure the outcome you’re looking for happens? Hope is not a strategy.
Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
Leftists have been doing this strategy for a couple decades now. How successful has this been at moving the Overton window left?
Leftists have been doing this strategy for a couple decades now
OBJECTION!
What actual
evidencedo you have of this claim?This gets thrown around all the time as “conventional wisdom,” but it’s never actually backed up by anything. In fact, the Libertarian Party typically gets roughly three times the number of votes as the Green Party, and the last major third party candidate, Ross Perot, split the Republican vote leading to Clinton’s election.
More recently, the 2016 election had two major “outsider” candidates. Of them, Trump refused to rule out a third party run, while Sanders went all out campaigning for Clinton, despite all the shenanigans with superdelegates.
Only in 2024 can I see a credible case that some of the left has begun using the stubborn, “my way or the highway” tactics that the right has been employing for decades - with a high degree of success, I might add! The Republican Party has shifted further and further right to accommodate the demands of their base, because they know that if they’re soft on things like guns or abortion, significant portions of their base will denounce them as RINOs and sit out or vote third party. The Democratic Party, by contrast, knows that they can always count on the left to flinch, to be “reasonable,” to accept the “lesser evil,” and so they have moved further right as well, taking those votes for granted.
Again, every piece of actual evidence contradicts this “conventional wisdom,” which only exists in the first place because liberals are so preoccupied with the idea that someone, somewhere, might choose to stand on principle rather than fall in line. Meanwhile, people on the right are constantly choosing to die on the dumbest, most petty hills imaginable.
Leftists have been doing this strategy for a couple decades now.
No. The left hasn’t.
Yes it has. Voting turnout in the US is dreadful. Who do you think does reliably get out to vote? I’ll give you a hint: it’s right wingers.
Yes it has.
No, it hasn’t. That is, unless you want to claim that liberals lying themselves into a corner is (somehow) “leftist strategy.”
What? What does that mean in the context of this conversation?
This you?
Leftists have been doing this strategy for a couple decades now.
I could have sworn that was you.
And those right wingers have gotten momentum and a lot of what they have asked for. Dems are not as left as we want, but that is where the little progressive politics we have lives. Not voting for it or working to grow is is hurting us.
Voting blue no matter who seems to have done the US wonders huh?
You can’t have it both ways. Either the progressives not voting had no change on the outcome on of the election thus their strategy has no merit, OR progressives not voting cost democrats the election and the democrat party were at fault for abandoning their base. Oh what’s that? The apathetic vote is not to blame for either scenario? No shit.
You’re getting confused because it doesn’t have anything to do with the outcome of the last election.
Leftists don’t vote, therefore no one caters to them, therefore the overton window moves right.
Leftists have been doing this strategy for a couple decades now.
Wait, what? No they haven’t. They’ve been turning out in droves in both primaries and general elections.
If leftists are turning out in droves in the primary how are we getting Joe Biden?
Warren split the vote.
If you combine Sanders and Warren into one they still would have lost to Biden by a pretty wide margin.
Warren is to the right of Bernie anyway, and Bernie is barely left enough for many leftists; I can’t imagine it was leftists that Warren was splitting away.
If you combine Sanders and Warren into one they still would have lost to Biden by a pretty wide margin.
That’s incorrect
Probably be more successful if you stopped being rightists and joined them?
And I think you’ll find that blindly supporting blue no matter who has been done far more often for a couple of decades now. How successful has this been at moving the Overton window left?
Let’s compare leftist strategies of never turning out with the evangelical strategy of driving massive turnouts.
Who has had better success shifting their party?
What planet are you living on where either of those strategies are actually what’s being employed?
The right turns out because they’re getting what they want. Would they still turn out of the candidate was a RINO who was soft on things like guns, abortion, or immigration? Probably not! The party has been disciplined by the base for deviating on those issues often enough that they have kept moving to more extreme right positions and the right no longer has any reason to defect.
Meanwhile, there are tons of people on (what passes for) the left who will readily agree that Biden and Harris were complicit in genocide, in some of the worst crimes imaginable, and yet, we should still fall in line behind them. Right wingers will be like, “Sure, this guy has an impeccable record on most of the issues I care about, but he accepted free federal Medicare expansion, which is socialism, so fuck that RINO piece of shit commie traitor I’m voting Libertarian!” And so the Libertarian Party is triple the size of the Greens. And yet, somehow, libs are constantly obsessed with this idea that somewhere out there, someone might be standing on leftist principles, and that’s the worst thing ever and they must immediately be lectured and shamed for it.
Try to pull that shit in some of their circles and you’re liable to get shot. I mean, can you imagine? “Look, I’m as upset as anybody that the only realistic candidates are anti-gun, but you just have to accept that guns are not on the ballot this time around, you’re going to have to vote for someone who wants to take your guns away, and if you don’t, it means you’re a bad person and I’ll constantly lecture you about it. Hey, where are pointing that- OK, OK, I’LL LEAVE”
As Lonergan and Blyth put it in Angrynomics, the right has better tribal enforcement along the boundaries they care about. Like a football team with more fired up and cohesive fans.
The democratic party has two major problems;
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Their leadership is technocratic and alienated along class lines from the voter base they’re trying to reach. Nobody trusts them to do anything more than run on focus group issues, then turn around the moment they get into power and fail to act on them. This is not isolated to American politics - France’s emmanuel macron is another really good example. The working-class voting base, more than any other group, has been burned too many times on this since clinton1 to get enthusiastic about a democrat candidate. They are almost immediately viewed - and rightly so - as being fundamentally untrustworthy. The DNC’s subsequent games with the 2016 primaries lost an entire generation of potential voters who now view themselves as disenfrachised party outsiders. Now that the senile party leadership is literally dropping dead in office, there is nobody left to replace them who have the blessing of those same aging party elites. From their perspective, they are under siege from without vs. the republicans, and within from the newbies. They well and truly did it to themselves by resisting the emerging organic self-interest of their replacements. Kronus ate his children.
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Funding sources come from billionaires and the top .01%. Normal people no longer have the disposable income, even at >$250kpa, to make significant enough contributions to run effective election campaigns. This is a form of capture by the ultra-wealthy, and therefore it makes it very difficult to run a campaign on small donations. The political process is entirely captured by the owner class, because nobody else has the $$$$$$ to own anything at all, and now gets charged rents to keep them in usury. Corporate donors can’t be relied upon because they are simple organisms who act in their own best interest of making more money. This needed to be corrected in the 2000’s, and the opportunity was lost. Instead we used QE to prop up a zombie economic system which did not provide appropriate investment in the next generation of the population, nor did it appropriately invest in infrastructure. So instead of flying taxis, vibrant broadband-enabled online fora, high speed trains, electric vehicles, stable rural communities and walkable cities, we got NFT’s, crypto scams, decaying suburbs harboring increasing deaths of despair, ludicrously oversized and inefficient vehicles and auto-enshittifying privacy-destroying cloud capital phone apps. It’s a paper tiger that is now falling to pieces vs. other emerging global competitors because it has extracted every drop of value from its feeder resource pools and is now well into the process of self-cannabalizing. It is a pest economy in the final stages of ecosystem collapse.
Basically, the triangulation game is already played out, the dam has disintegrated and there’s no longer any useful opposition to the rightwards move, because in order to even be an oppositional force, it would require selfless multi-billionaire unicorns (hah!) to effectively sacrifice their family fortunes in order to fund and animate such a movement- whilst somehow political candidates capable of rebuilding five decades of broken promises and tonedeaf social positions regards to the working class come out of the woodwork as a fully-formed well-oiled political machine that both offers and delivers enough Good Things to budge the needle. The technocratic so-called “Abundance Agenda” currently being circulated amongst DNC circles fails to do this - in typical democrat fashion - by attempting to lobotomize the working class out of the picture and reducing them to a mute “consumer of ideas”.
I guess stranger things have happened, but I’m pessimistic on the outlook at this point, because they’d have to win against an entrenched radical political insurgency, with full control of the government, and near unanimous support of the owner class, that legitimately doesn’t want democracy to succeed anymore.
As long as the democratic party elite fail to engage in good faith, they will continue to lose. Even if they do, they’ll also have an uphill battle until they have demonstrated in terms of lived experience to a chronically abused electorate that they have the will and capability to deliver on their promises.
I agree with most what you’re saying but I think you’re minconstruing the abundance book. Ezra has been clear and very vocal about wanting to execute the goals of the left. He’s just calling for a more fluid mechanism that doesn’t put up dozens of roadblocks throughout the process. No one ever addresses the elephant in the room: the upper echelon progressive home owner class. This group alone is blocking every progressive movement indirectly while also spouting the usual progressive rhetoric.
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The Tea Party, they obliterated the old GOP by not voting them and voting for their people instead. The DNC has kept their party under lock and key to avoid any of that happening.
You’re misremembering.
The Tea Party pushed more conservative candidates in primaries, but in general elections Tea Party voters never sat out in protest - instead, they either supported the GOP candidate or, in a few cases, backed third-party or independent runs, but there were never large-scale abstention.
Much better yeah
Blame everyone except the fascists
There is this wild concept called “two things existing at once”
You can simultaneously blame the fascist for their actions while also holding the liberal establishment accountable for theirs. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Scratch a liberal…
I think its possible to blame one group in this meme and another group in another meme.
Fascists are bad, they don’t listen to criticism.
Liberals are less bad, and claim to listen to criticism.
So why not try to criticize the people who are “fighting” Trump for better plans and actions? One person alone has a good idea but not a great execution. Gathering an idea and people to fight for it is worth doing.
Plus if you think no one here is calling out fascists, you’re hella ignorant and blind. We call out the people who enable and slow roll fascists. We can blame Biden for not arresting Trump because he wanted two wins in a roll.
No but see you spent an entire minute not calling out fascists while you responded to liberals saying we should accept the proper party submission position© for the fascists. So you’re basically the same as a fascist. Sorry; i don’t make the rules, i just fetishize and enforce them only on my ideological enemies.
Because a lot of the people in here didn’t vote last election.
- Most people here did. I did for Harris. Somehow everytime someone says that, they’re saying it to people who voted.
- Non-voting democrats were further to the right. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democratic-nonvoters-policy-preferences/
You can probably drop this trope now that there’s plenty of data showing that. It was largely moderate, working class Democrats who didn’t vote, not online leftists.
Because the better plan has historically always led to a failed state and all of our enemes are cheering it on.
When Anarchists and Tankies are capitalising on a situation the outcomes are as predictable as the Trump Agenda.
Oh look, blatant historical ignorance to the reasons that led to a failed state. Of course it was intrinsic to the philosophy, absolutely not due to outside interference and manipulation from decades of concentrated effort by the capitalist hegemony.
Look, the state itself as a concept has its issues, but your perspective of the situation is just flat bullshit.
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That was also the widespread belief about democracy until the 1700s.
Not really, Greece practiced democracy for hundreds of years and it was pretty well documented.
Pah, Greek democracy was interesting, but very limited given how narrow their Deimos was with women, foreign residents and slaves not counting.
Yes really, it was considered a failure despite those well-documented centuries.
“Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
— James Madison, Federalist Papers 10 & 51
Yeah. If we had all just fallen in line president delacruz would be fixing shit right now. She was electable if these fucking anarchists would have voted for her!
Who?
Clearly didnt even read your ballot. Fucking shameful. This is why we’re being ruled by fascists.
historically always led to a failed state
Failed state (USSR) is when you turn a feudal backwater country (Russian Empire) with a life expectancy of 28 years into the second world industrial power within 50 years and provide universal free healthcare, education, pensions for retirement, eliminate unemployment and homelessness, and you don’t exploit the resources and labour of the global south. Oh, and you save Europe from Nazism, which is what this post was originally about.
In this hypothetical also get to starve millions of people to death and your legacy gets to be sending out late night death squads to kill dissenters. Well, not you. You would never be in charge. You will never be Joseph Stalin, somebody else will be and you will suffer with the rest of the peasants.
Millions of people routinely starved in pre-Soviet Russia and you don’t seem to have a problem with it. Soviets ended hunger after WW2 through the mechanisation of agriculture, as all countries which eliminated hunger did. Suffering famines during civil wars, during Nazi invasion of your territory, and during mass collectivisation processes, isn’t exclusive to the Soviet Union, it’s a rather common thing in preindustrial societies as the Soviet Union was at that time. That’s in opposition to England murdering many millions more of Indians in the Bengal famine during WW2 by purposefully extracting essentially all food from some regions of India.
your legacy gets to be sending out late night death squads to kill dissenters
Thats just, like, your opinion, dude. The legacy of the Soviet Union (a project much greater than a single man who was president for less than 3 decades of the project) saved Europe from Nazism (saving tens if not hundreds of millions of lives in the process), industrialised 300 million people without abusing colonialism and extraction of resources and labour from the global south, rose life expectancy from 28 years to 70, guaranteed free education to the highest level to all women and men of the country, produced the lowest historically recorded levels of inequality in the region, and eliminated homelessness and unemployment.
Stop swallowing and spreading western anticommunist propaganda, the evil is the western empire oppressing billions in the global south, not a country that suffered famines during land collectivisation.
No that’s not accurate. Centralized agricultural planning in pre-soviet Russia was still better than what the Soviets implemented, this was all very well documented that more people died as a result of the changes made.
Centralized agricultural planning in pre-soviet Russia was still better than what the Soviets implemented
Life expectancy was 28 years old before the Bolsheviks, after the land reforms and WW2 life expectancy rose dramatically to 60, what on Earth are you talking about
We’re well past identifying the source of the problem. If aliens invaded and everyone was debating how best to fight back, you’d be sitting there saying “Why is nobody blaming the aliens!?” Everyone who would understand that the country is falling into fascism already does. Anyone who doesn’t simply hasn’t yet admitted that they like fascism.
Yes, fascists exist, and are to blame for a large chunk of the failures of society. Now is the time to figure out who’s going to help fight against them in a way that keeps them away for as long as possible, and who’s going to claim that they had some good points, setting the stage for their expedited return.
Alright but you’re also additionally alienating the party who majority aligns with your supposed policy stances as well as the people who vote for them, unless you dislike accountability, democracy, and worker solidarity.
If you think the Democratic party in any way, shape, or form supports leftist (especially anarchist) ideology, then you are so politically illiterate that it isn’t even a joke. It’s just sad.
then you are so politically illiterate that it isn’t even a joke. It’s just sad.
They’ve previously defended Nazis and continue to claim they never did so, they’re amazingly politically illiterate and refuse to learn
Devotion to capitalism and the status quo will certainly complicate forming a unified front based around against changing the economic system.
I’ve yet to converse with somebody who has any realistic plan to do away with capitalism unless their definition of capitalism is “western nation”.
Let’s just tax the rich and regulate the markets.
And what’s your plan to get that done? What, you’re going to convince wealthy politicians to give you those things, and piss off their donors, just out of the goodness of their hearts? What about when they don’t do that, are you going to find your backbone and criticize them directly instead of turning all of your vitriol to the left of you?
No, of course not. Your plan is to vote harder and throw up your hands when the things we desperately need as a class are explicitly left off the table; spoiling the vote, btw; because the things that would really get people out to vote, across party lines, just happen to be things that go against the interests of the ruling class. Then you’ll shout at the rest of us for “dividing the left” when we point out the fucking obvious that those who derive power from capital are not going to give up that power voluntarily and the whole thing was smoke and mirrors to keep you invested in the system that affords them that power.
We as a class will need to organize and build class consciousness so that we can pull our collective power together and use it to force the hand of the ruling class. That’s what a realistic plan looks like. That is the only way meaningful change has ever been wrought about in this country.
Fair democracy with an educated populace to minimize all human suffering and avert maximum harm.
Don’t like wealth hoarders? Tax them.
Don’t like shady businesses? Regulate them.
If something needs to be overthrown it’s a wannabe despot, not the concept of goods traded for legal tender. Constant progress has occured for hundreds of years. Theres hardly ever a time in the past better than this decade in the USA.
Capitalism is not only “the concept of goods traded for legal tender”, it is an ideology that wealth accumulation is the one true moral good to strive for above all else, no matter who or what you have to exploit for it. It is a system where power and capital are one and the same.
Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, fascism is imperialism turned inwards. It’s a corporate capture of government to remove all obstacles for wealth accumulation, private growth at the expense of the working class using the out-group as a scapegoat. It’s not only a really bad guy getting into power, it is the natural progression of capitalism.
Theres hardly ever a time in the past better than this decade in the USA.
This is laughably false. Holy shit you’re brainwashed.
If anything you suggested worked, we wouldn’t be here. We have had all of that in the past, and it didn’t solve the core problem that allowed all of it to then be taken away.
It’s a great thought experiment, but it’s not a plan and it doesn’t help anyone who was already struggling before the last decade.
Hey, remember all the time the blues defended red team by taking all the momentum, monopolizing possibility, and then just throwing as hard as they possibly could at the last second, up to and including surrendering a presidemtial election that they won?
Remember when they murdered the concept of hope for my entire generation?
If you didn’t vote delacruz, you clearly didn’t take this electoralism stuff seriously.
I don’t wanna blame anybody. I want to criticize the people that I think have the best chance of actually being influenced to do the things we need them to do. And guess who that is?
Liberals: best I can do is tittering at the edges.
If i sit on the fence, I will never be on the wrong side.
The fence is very squarely with medical for all, free education, democracy, and taxing the rich while the other side is about a mile away from the fence in 1930s Germany, so…
If the Democrats were willing and capable of getting Americans things like universal healthcare, why didn’t they do it while they were in power?
Democrats haven’t had 60 senators since 1979. They had 58 in 2010 for exactly 72 days and tried to pass public option healthcare but only 1 independent voted with them so they settled for the lesser medicaid expansion that the current Republicans are gutting in the budget. For the record, that medicaid expansion passed with supermajority as every singe Republican voted nay.
Participating in democracy doesn’t lead to fascism, capitalism does. Protest non-voters are idiots that gave away the one best power our system offers. Congratulations on your new fascist overlords, dummies. Anarchism is about power to the people and power to communities, you vote for the best thing for your community regardless of your personal feelings. Do I wish there was a better candidate than Kamala Harris? Hell yeah I do, but she is lightyears better than Trump for my people so she got my vote. You have to start where you are, not in some fantasy land where leftists have a viable alternative. You want change? Go find a milquetoast liberal running uncontested and primary against them. Ask hard questions and make them accountable. Sitting on your high horse while the world burns is not only useless, but an insult to the people who are actually suffering because of your choices. Fuck off.
If an army is attacking your enemy you dont send your military in against both sides just because you dont like either. You will either sit and watch it play out (not a real option) or join the side you hate the least knowing that I the end they will need to go.
Modern Democrats are just old-school 1980s Republicans.
Weird to see a pro authoritarian post in an anarchy community
inevitably
If you could have voted, didn’t vote for Harris, and aren’t actively out in the streets hucking bricks at ICE and trumpers, then I have no respect for you.
You played the game and you played to lose. You played to lose when we had everything to lose, and nothing to gain. You made the 4th worst choice I can think of in the last 30 years.
This is some Marxist nonsense my dude. Societies don’t have inevitable endpoints.
Have all the western countries that have had rising fascist dictatorship movements in the past few years come about through some other unrelated means?
We’re clearly in a trend of rising authoritarianism, but that doesn’t mean it’s inevitable. Such waves have receded in the past and they likely will again.
I just don’t like these inevitability narratives because they deprive people of agency in shaping society. Sure, maybe liberalism has a tendency to creep towards fascism, at least under some conditions. But this happens through the actions of the people that make up those societies and it can be resisted.
I agree. But I also think capitalist systems make facism easy. And naturally trend towards it.
I agree “inevitability” is too strong and a little too marxist oversimplification of history for me.
I largely agree. Authoritarian systems tend to support one another over the long term, even as they compete in other ways. So capitalism, being a system where economic power is concentrated in the hands of the few can also encourage the establishment of similar state structures. But this is not necessarily fascism. We can see similar trends happening in historically socialist countries today. But fascism is one possible manifestation of this process.
Capitalism inevitably results in fascism. It’s just the end result. The choice there is people maintaining a system that’s results in fascism.
Capitalism has existed for centuries and usually did not end in fascism. There’s no historical support for this claim. It’s simply an invention of authoritarian leftists because it’s useful to convince people they need to choose one brand of authoritarianism or the other.
Fascism at its core is a way for a minority of the population to say, “we deserve wealth and power over everyone else regardless of merit. We’re going to take away rights and opportunity from everyone in order to give ourselves an unfair advantage. We’ll make it so only our group counts a fully legally human, and we’ll dominate society and the economy accordingly.” In this general sense, capitalism for the vast majority of its history has been some flavor of fascist, in the general sense. Obviously as a specific political system, fascism is more particular. But in the general sense of its mechanism, where one group tries to take control by stripping the rights from everyone else? That is the norm in capitalist societies, not the exception.
For the vast, vast majority of capitalism’s history, it’s been built on defining a certain in group who have rights, and an out group who have no rights and can be exploited. Western countries didn’t even give economic freedom to the majority of their population until the last 50 years or so. Women were legal property and couldn’t have bank accounts. They were legally not considered fully human in the same way men were. Men didn’t want to compete with women, so they took away women’s freedom and didn’t allow them to compete in the marketplace. The majority of the population, completely excluded from economic life, in the most capitalist societies on Earth.
Or you could look it from a racial lens. De jure discrimination was written into the law until the 1960s or so. And de facto racial discrimination never went away. You say that capitalism doesn’t usually end in fascism, yet the US kept a substantial portion of its population in a nightmare system of fascist apartheid. White people didn’t want to compete with black people in the market, so they stripped black people of their civil rights.
The key thing to keep in mind about capitalism is that in a true free market, no one earns any profits. If there were no barriers to entry, starting competitors would be easy, and profit margins for all businesses would be razor thin. But that’s not how capitalism works in the real world. There are barriers to entry, and in capitalist countries, owners and those in power do everything they can to give themselves unfair advantages so they don’t have to compete in the market. And one of the easiest ways to make sure your group doesn’t have to compete freely in the market is to simply declare large swaths of the population as not fully human and thus undeserving of economic freedom.
Interesting points but I think you’re conflating fascism with what I would call authoritarianism. If you define fascism as any system where a minority clique takes control of society then you’re going to have to call nations like the USSR or China fascist. Which, while I agree they have similar features, are getting pretty far from the colloquial and academic definitions of fascism.
But you’re absolutely right that no modern society has had universally equal rights. We still have many groups that don’t have much legal protection including felons, children, immigrants, even animals could be viewed through this lens as well. But I don’t think that makes any societies that don’t meet this very high standard fascist.
It’s an easy thought-free assertion which makes all opposition to a system heroic, which means it gets wide traction.
Absolutely. This is a thought pattern I find very annoying. Just because you’re opposed to capitalism doesn’t make every critique of it correct. Defeating it means understanding and identifying its real features, not some caricature.
The last waves of fascism this advanced in America were in the 1930s. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century outright Nazis were generally associated with skinheads and were almost universally hated by mainstream culture. There are now actual Nazi movements in control of western nations. And even where they aren’t, they are winning over sizable percentages of the population.
This isnt going to pass as easily as you seem to think. Genocide has been live streamed around the world for almost 2 years and resistance to it has been relatively minor in terms of what you would actually expect. White western Christians (men especially) are actually mostly very down with white supremacy and neofascism. It benefits them specifically. And they represent the largest voting block in most western nations.
Liberalism could have prevented this by preventing Nazis from ever coming into positions of economic / cultural / political power in the first place. Liberalism is primarily concerned with countering revolutionary politics, moreso even than preventing fascist uprisings. It’s more important to them that pro capitalist values are the dominant ones in politics and culture than whether anti fascist values are. The ruling class almost entirely stands to benefit either way, they’re ambivalent towards fascism.
I didn’t say it would be easy, just that fascism is not inevitable.
Can you elaborate on how liberalism could have prevented this? This seems in contradiction to your overall point that fascism is inevitable under liberal governments.
Support working class politics. Support public ownership. Essentially, become a working class state. Outlaw fascist rhetoric. Redistribute wealth from billionaires to the working class. The main reason that fascist media organizations exist is because billionaires do. They wouldn’t be able to mass indoctrinate if they did not have essentially boundless economic power. Fascists won in Germany and America both because of media dominance and manipulation of the western liberal political system. In very comparable ways honestly.
The German democracy failed to respond in any way to the rise of the fascists. The only political party attempting any actual resistance of the fascists was the communists. The conservative and liberal parties were more interested in combating the communists than they were about combating the fascists. It was more important to them that the institutions of capital remains unaffected than fascism being stopped. They could have never let Hitler step foot out of a jail cell again. They honestly could’ve shot him, and a fair number of his nazi party upper echelon. People were calling for it, literally. Most people believe that Hitler mass indoctrinated all of Germany and won a landslide election and from there dismantled German democracy. That actually isnt true though. The final fair and democratic elections in Weimar Germany resulted in an extremely slim victory for the Nazi party. The communists were very close behind them. And in turn were conservatives and social democrats close behind the communists. On the whole, the majority of the nation voted for other parties. Once a bad actor was chancellor, all he had to do was find an excuse to enact emergency powers. He was handed the best possible opportunity on a silver platter by a young communist who was doing his part to fight back. If only others had followed his example, maybe history wouldve ended differently. As it was, Hitler enacted emergency powers to suspend all civil liberties in Germany. He banned the communists from any political organization and started literally rounding up communists and communist politicians and putting them in concentration camps. This was in 1933. The first camps were for communists. Then when Hindenburg died a short while later there was literally nothing standing between him and pure absolute dictatorship.
He could’ve been stopped at many points if liberal democracy was an ideology that prioritized the rights of the working class. If they had had an aim whatsoever of stopping fascism, it was preventable. Much like the democratic party though, their primary aims were to protect the ruling class of capitalists and the institutions that allow them to steal working class labor.
Support working class politics. Support public ownership. Essentially, become a working class state. Outlaw fascist rhetoric. Redistribute wealth from billionaires to the working class
Literally all of this is in opposition to liberalism, there’s a reason why the trend is the opposite in quite literally all liberal democracies
Yes, i very much agree. Liberalism will never present a legitimate defense against fascism, and will never prioritize working class rights.
So how many countries have failed due to authoritarian power control? It’s a consistent through all time and cultures. Power corrupts, and the people in power want more of it.
Fascism is a recent political invention, but authoritarian power that is unstable as soon as the wrong person is in control is a time honored tradition, from Rome to the dynasties of China. Even stable democracies have power grasps, limits of freedoms overtime, and so on.
History does not repeat but it does rhyme.
I completely agree. But to be clear, not all nations go down this path of increasing authoritarianism, and not all of those who do end up at fascism.
It might seem like a small distinction but this idea of the inevitable course of history is such a common thought terminating cliche and it leads to all sorts of wrong ideas and wrong political strategies that I feel a need to call it out. Even though my own position is not completely dissimilar.
Societies don’t have inevitable endpoints, in the same way that you can’t predict with 100% certainty that an individual will die of old age.
Old age isn’t even a thing you can die from. This analogy fails on multiple fronts.
Pedantry is the last refuge of fools.
It’s just a hilariously apt example of the overly simplistic narratives I’m criticizing. If you’re willing to label all capitalism as fascism then perhaps the narrative becomes true, just as falsely labeling all causes of death in the elderly old age makes your analogy work.
Historically, “conquered by neighbors” or “environmental collapse” are both strong contenders for “where societies inevitably go.”
Well I guess if you have a long enough timeline everything possible becomes inevitable. But I don’t think that’s quite what the meme is saying.
Well, to address the meme in particular then, it’s a fairly common saying that fascism is either capitalism in decline/crisis or is the end-game/final-form of capitalism. The first form is a direct quote from Vladimir Lenin: “Fascism is capitalism in decay.” The latter arises from statements by Mussolini, though it does seem the commonly cited “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism” may be a misquote or misinterpretation of his meaning.
I would actually lean into your rebuke somewhat, fascism is a form of authoritarianism and can make use of capitalism as a tool, but ultimately the totalitarian has as much interest in truly free markets as they do in truly free societies. I would say the inevitability is after allowing the market to centralize through unregulated monopolizing, the fascist would then nationalize the industry or otherwise bring it under their own personal control.
Fascism is fundamentally a cult devoted to power: they’ll ally with whichever power currently holds non-government sway, be that capitalists, feudal lords, or gang leaders. What fascists are deeply against is any form of distributed power: be that a truly free and well-regulated market, a trade union, or anarchism of any stripe.
Historically though, capitalist societies have been built on fascist techniques of stripping broad swaths of the population of their civil rights. The most infamously capitalist society in history - the US - cares so little about actually living up to the ideals of “the free market” that up until the 60s or so, only about a third of the population was actually allowed to participate in the free market. A third of the population was legally allowed to operate independently, start businesses, etc. The rest were denied equal protection under the law, a legal regime intentionally designed to force the majority of the population into precarious wage slavery.
That is in the most capitalist country on Earth. The most capitalist nation on Earth hated free markets so much that they had to exclude the majority of the population from the free market in order to maintain a pool of easily exploitable labor.
The first form is a direct quote from Vladimir Lenin: “Fascism is capitalism in decay.”
When did he say that? Fascism would’ve been very new at the time he died.
I think I have to concede this one. I have found numerous attributions of the quote but no mention of the source. Ultimately, i think it’s probably a misquote or a cross-wiring of Lenin’s essay: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. I think people are just freely substituting “fascism” for “imperialism”. Obviously, leftists would see them as related but shouldn’t conflate the two as being equivalent.
Thank you, this is very well said. Any socio-economic structure that centralizes power in the hands of a few is vulnerable to fascism.
Kinda true. Didnt some liberal democracies also turn (partially) anarchist or socialist?
