I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we’ve been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they’re accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It’s a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we’re missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it’s extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever consider that those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we’re giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it’s why they’re targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
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I came back to the post, and boy, did you get them riled up lol
Hopefully it serves to further demonstrate my point. It certainly has solidified its legitimacy for me.
It’s also very helpful of them all to come draw attention to themselves so those who wish to identify and block them have an easy opportunity.
They all speak sort of similarly to each other, too.
A lot of them are probably literally the same person.
I am highly curious to know what’s really going on there. Maybe it’s like 3 really influential accounts that are all very confident in themselves, and 50 other people who are looking for that all started imitating them, and at this point it’s mostly self-sustaining just from confused leftists. Maybe it’s a little team of 5 people all assigned to Lemmy, and they take shifts but only 1-2 of them are active at a time. Maybe it’s just one guy. Maybe it’s two whole separate teams, one for China and one for Russia, and they coexist with each other without being bothered or trying to coordinate all that much. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe some of them are American? That seems unlikely, I don’t think any GOP operation is this in-depth at this stage and some of them periodically make slip-ups that reveal that they’re not from the US even though they’re claiming to be, but who knows.
I really would like to know the answer. I think I never will find out, but it would be fascinating.
It could also be AI generated responses with similar prompts. Or a call center with specific guidelines for tone and content. Or some sort of remote platform with guidelines for posting. I know there are call centers full of scammers and the same was true of bot-farm employees at some point, probably still.
It is pretty fascinating. But yeah, the odds of ever getting a real answer are pretty low unless there’s some sort of whistleblower.
But hey, I bet said whistleblower could start a pretty profitable career in independent investigative journalism if they did provide that information to the right people, or if they self-published successfully. Just a thought, if such a person happens to be reading this!
Or do you just not lile the answers you sought? You could at least engage with the most reasonable seeming people, but that doesn’t seem like your intention.
To quell your paranoia, yes I voted lesser evil this cycle, yes I am a real human person. No I did not enjoy voting the way I did, a sad result of the state of things when your choices were genocide supporter, and genocide enthusiast. I don’t mean to pop your conspiracy bubble, and pre-election I definitely understood your notion about driving a cudule when we did need a win, but it’s not that time anymore. If you choose to close your eyes over analyzing the reasons people believe some things, you’ll find yourself in a place just like Q anons did.
Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
These two things drive me fucking crazy, and you are absolutely spot on with all of this. Obviously, the Democrats aren’t perfect. But the argument that X makes them complicit in Y issue is a null point when the alternative is unbridled, unchecked fascism.
WHATEVER POINT YOU WERE TRYING TO MAKE, IT WILL NOT BE SOLVED BY ELECTING FASCISTS. It doesn’t matter if it’s corruption, wars, homophobia, trade, the economy, taxes, it could even be people shitting in litter boxes.
Whatever it is, having the entire country taken down to the studs is not going to help your issue, in fact, it’s probably going to make your problem significantly worse. The economy? Look up the tariff war that caused the great depression. Homophobia? Read up on the lavender scare and how it tanked our astronomy and weapons research, notably ICBM research. Wars? Need I say anything more? We’ve had insane wars due to Republican war hawks for decades. Whoever you were trying to protect, they are 100% B O N E D now. And now we are sending innocent people off to literal concentration camps, so don’t give me any of that “the Dems don’t respect human rights” crap. It’s beyond the pale now and all this was warned of in advance by those morons who published P2025 before the election. And yet, people still fell for it. It’s absolutely infuriating that we are gonna have to dig the country (and the economy) out of a massive pit once again, if it’s even possible at this point. We will be extremely lucky to prize it back out of the hands of dictators before they run it into the ground like they did with Venezuela.
Watch out for the following five fallacies, and the cuckoo is easy to spot:
- oversimplification: false dichotomy, ignoring relevant factors
- genetic fallacy: instead of focusing on what is being said, the cuckoo always focuses on who says it
- straw man: cuckoos are really eager to put words into your mouth, and try to force you to defend claims you never did in first place
- ignore refutation: if you prove without a shadow of doubt that the cuckoo’s claim is wrong, they’ll ignore your refutation and still use it to back up even dumber claims
- ad nauseam: same claim over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Then as you spot the cuckoo, the rest is easier - for example, IMO a sensible approach is to point out what the cuckoo is doing, to whoever might be reading your comment, while disengaging so you aren’t giving the cuckoo further time to sing.
That’s quickly becoming my approach. Point it out and then immediately block them and stop engaging. Once you block them, they can’t keep following you around spamming the same noise.
I think it’s a very common belief amongst forums like these to look to logical fallacies to root out dishonest behavior, in the hopes that it’ll provide a nice and easy way to deduce when someone’s a grifter. That you can tell if someone’s a liar – or for that matter, real – by applying them sufficiently.
The problem is, humans are fallible. They fuck up. Innocently. Constantly. It’s normal to make fallacious arguments, and doing so should not cause you to be automatically marked off as a robot, troll or spy. Some examples for your given fallacies:
- Oversimplification can also occur if someone is tired and does not want to go into rigorous academic detail for their argument. Alternatively, they may simply not know the detail to begin with.
- Genetic fallacy can occur due to simple human anger; if someone feels that their interlocutor has made bad-faith arguments frequently before, they’re inclined to ignore what that individual has to say outright, likely without even reading it. (This one has happened in this thread, several times)
- Strawmen happen all the time and extremely easily, because people will inevitably end up making assumptions about the position of others based on previous discussions they’ve had. If you spend enough time arguing a point and getting response
X, you’re going to start assuming that the person you’re talking to about that is implyingX, even if they haven’t said it and never intended to. - Ignoring refutation happens plenty simply when people get defensive. Admitting you’re wrong is hard, and it’s much preferable to instead change the topic or find some other way of pretending you were never disproven of anything. This is inherently a logical leap, and that’s why it leads to often dumber positions.
- With regard to ad nauseam: If someone finds a particular point very convincing and easy to understand for themselves, they may find it confusing as to why you don’t agree on it. This can lead to them repeatedly trying to explain it more thoroughly and in different words under the assumption that the way they said it was why you didn’t get it. I’ve done this a lot in my past.
With those examples out of the way, I just want to emphasize the fact that you should never pretend the presence of logical fallacies is a guarantee of bad faith, much less use it to dehumanize others. If we let ourselves do that, we’ll all tear each other apart under the mistaken assumption that we’re rooting out an evil that has no promise of even being present at all. To err is human.
Just to be clear:
I am not proposing to categorically label anyone using those five fallacies a cuckoo. I said that it’s easy to spot the cuckoo when you look for those fallacies. Because cuckoos rely on those fallacies to convey their “As A Leftist®, I say we should disempower ourselves!” discourse.
In that case, I contend that is is not easy to spot a cuckoo, and believing that is leaves one dangerously prone to overconfidence. So while I appreciate that you don’t see these fallacies as de facto proof of disingenuous behavior, I still feel that you’re running the risk of false positives.
Fallacies are useful for evaluating the validity of arguments and positions, not for evaluating people themselves. Solitary comments can never let you evaluate a whole person, because no whole person fits in a text box.
In that case, I contend […]
When answering your earlier comment, I wasn’t sure if you were
- Speaking on general grounds, without noticing that context made your comment imply that I said what I did not; OR
- Assuming=bullshitting that I said what I did not. e.g. that I’d not be taking into account that humans are fallible, or that I would be dehumanising others.
In doubt, I answered it with a simple clarification. However, that “in that case” confirms it’s #2, so I’ll readdress your earlier comment: cut off the crap.
Avoiding fallacies is not “academic rigour” dammit, it’s basic human decency. Decent human beings avoid bringing unnecessary harm to other human beings, and irrationalities (like fallacies) harm people. Doubly so in this context (politics), because that fallacy means people supporting people/entities/policies that should they not support. (Look at Gaza for a prime example of that. It’s literally people being killed because people give a thumbs up to an oversimplification, so a genocide looks like self-defence.)
“If someone is tired”, “simple human anger”, “when people get defensive” - people under those situations should not be discussing politics (mind the context!) on first place.
And no, it is neither logically nor morally acceptable to assume the others’ views, as you said under “strawmen”. It’s piece of shit behaviour of people who don’t mind blaming others for what they did not say or do not support.
Now, addressing this comment:
In that case, I contend that is is not easy to spot a cuckoo
In the context? Yes, it is. If someone is babbling “As A Leftist®, I say we should not fight back” and you smell those fallacies, the first thing you should look for is a brood parasite.
Fallacies are useful for evaluating the validity of arguments and positions, not for evaluating people themselves.
It’s useful for both.
While brainfarts happen, and people should be lenient towards small mistakes, someone who doesn’t even try to avoid fallacies is a harmful individual and should be treated as such.
I still feel that you’re running the risk of false positives.
Not a problem in the light of the proposed solution. (Point out and disengage)
Solitary comments can never let you evaluate a whole person, because no whole person fits in a text box.
In line with what you did in the earlier comment, now you’re implying that I would have claimed that solitary comments let you evaluate a whole person. I did not; please stop implying otherwise, this is at the very least disingenuous, if not worse.
The whole thing with the cuckoo is that it’s a useful label for people engaging into a certain political behaviour dammit. This is clear by context, if you actually bother to read the OP.
[In the line of what I proposed, I am disengaging. While the user above is not behaving like a cuckoo, I have little to no patience towards assumers putting words into the others’ mouths.]
straw man: cuckoos are really eager to put words into your mouth, and try to force you to defend claims you never did in first place
This one is a really key tell. The people who spend most of their message emphasizing what it is that their opponents believe, and only in passing deal with what they believe (which tends to be along the lines of “well they all want to kill Palestinian babies but I don’t want that, so clearly you can see the difference”), and immediately start telling anyone who talks with them what they believe also… that’s an important signal.
I think it is so popular because it is substantially lower-effort than engaging with anything the person is actually saying, and also t works on anything. You don’t have to be on the right side of the argument, you can just assign your opponent some awful crazy shit, and then get to work disagreeing with that.
Hey, have you used Tumblr? I ask, because I don’t think that this is always people trying to infiltrate a political discussion to paralyze effective leftist organizing. I do think it totally is sometimes- but sometimes it’s because of how people structure their values and philosophy of engagement with the world, politics and moral actions.
I have become very familiar with how, on Tumblr, the dominant cultural paradigm has a strong tendency to several of those traits purely because of a combination of ways that the internet, and that website, is structured; and, the ambient cultural values of the US informing how they structured their beliefs about morality and politics.
People who are part of this paradigm tend to have a strongly dentological bent, and are obsessed with if an action is good or bad in and of itself; and, especially critically- if there is any part of it that represents any moral compromise, no matter how small. They do not want to ever have to compromise their principles, and frame those principles as actions and behaviors and not ends. They are very focused on maintaining a sense of moral purity and superiority, which naturally leads to inaction due to the inherent compromises present in political action and general life.
Paired with this is a deep desire to prove one’s virtue, which is done by performing it- frequently by finding an acceptable target for harassment or abuse, then heaping unpleasant behavior on them in order to show that bad people are bad and they, a good person, is good. It’s very simplistic and results in people who are constantly vigilant of if anything they do can be construed as wrong, because then it becomes a vector for harassment and attack, and who are constantly trying to discern if someone else is currently vulnerable to the same.
This mixes with a general lack of critical thinking skill, reading comprehension and fact-checking that so defines our modern septic pit of an internet; and, you have a cycle of inaction and abuse that accomplishes very little. It’s very frustrating, and a major contributing factor to me not using Tumblr anymore. I got really burnt out on people who would use, for example, you not reblogging a post supporting a specific political point as proof that you were maliciously against the political point, even if you openly advocated for it, or it was about a marginalized group you were a part of.
I feel like you are identifying a pattern that is very real and important, but I think your conclusions about why it happens may be too narrow. I think there’s a multiplicity of groups of different political and philosophical tendencies that are contributing to this atmosphere. I also feel like sometimes people need a place to vent about how incredibly infuriating US politicians and politics are- I try to keep that to my friends and personal writing, nowadays, but there was a point when I was incredibly bitter about how the Democrats continued to neglect and ignore people in need due to political exigencies. Sure, I get it, and sure, I support them whenever I get a chance to, but damn if it’s not frustrating.
I increasingly feel like there needs to be more sectioning of discussions on platforms to allow constructive discussion and vent-posting to be clearly separated and have that be aggressively enforced.
Very good post. I appreciate the time, effort and insight that went into this as well as and especially the fact that it is advocating for understanding others and seeing why they do what they do without accusations. Thank you for the write-up!
just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
This is the same kind of argument that the tankies use to dismiss anyone who disagrees with them as a CIA plant. At least they name the CIA, you seem to be pointing to an even more ambiguous “they” that are out to get us. This is a conspiracy theory, dress it up all you want but your pointing to some ambiguous “they” and blaming them for your problems with no proof.
Occams razor is that they are leftists who hate the democratic party. They critique them more then the Republicans because the liberal side of lemmy covers that pretty well already, half the front page is shitting on trump right now. That’s good but at a certain point your beating a dead horse, everyone here already hates trump and thinks he’s bad, no point in reinforcing that past a point. A lot of people on here still have loyalty to the democratic party though that far exceeds the democrats loyalty to the left, so pointing that out can be effective and help change people’s minds instead of posting/commenting trump is hitler for the millionth time.
Your interpretation of Occam’s razor is that no one ever lies? Do you really think all human beings being honest about everything they say requires the least number of assumptions?
You’ve successfully clustered a bunch of trolls, time to block a bunch?
In a sense yes, people generally tell the truth more than they lie so the default assumption should be that someone is telling the truth, otherwise you enter into paranoia. That assumption can be broken when there is a clear gain from lying. Eg. You catch a thief outside the store they robbed they have a very clear reason to lie and say they were just walking by.
You’re explanation on why they’re lying isn’t very clear. First off, you fail to name who these people are and leave it ambiguous to let the person reading fill it in with their enemy (maga, nazis, russians etc.) just like every other conspiracy theory. Since the subject isn’t clear neither is the motive, you just sort of fill that in with "they hate the left, why do they hate the left? What are they gaining from convincing maybe a couple dozen liberals that the democrats suck on a very marginal social media? This isn’t the politburo for the comintern, there is barely any power on here to diffuse, so why put effort into doing so when there are far larger platforms to influence.
I’d like to draw a parallel to data security. Why make a strong password if nobody’s out there trying to break into accounts? Why secure your server’s ports if nobody’s going to attack them? Why take precautions against malicious collection of data to sell to third parties if we’re not sure who or how that data would be used?
These are behaviors that we don’t know the specific motivations for, we don’t know the individual bad actors in question or who they’re working for or what their specific plans are. But we know that if someone calls you claiming to be Geeksquad and tells you to go buy a bunch of gift cards to read to them over the phone, you’re being scammed. We know that if someone pretends to be a representative of a company and comes asking for your password, you shouldn’t trust them. We know that if certain kinds of traffic are spamming your ports looking for vulnerabilities, they don’t mean well.
Why? Because we are aware of the threat vector and can move to protect it before knowing the details of who in particular is planning on exploiting it. I don’t need to know specifically which hacker wants to break into my server to limit open ports. I don’t need to know who wants to steal my Steam account to know setting up 2fA is worthwhile.
Assuming good faith in bad actors is a vulnerability. The exploit vector is an attack on the political power of the left. I don’t need to know specifically who is behind it. I could speculate. Maybe it’s MAGA, maybe it’s Russia, maybe it’s some foreign bot-farm being hired by some other authoritarian regime, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that allowing the threat vector to remain open disempowers the left.
Why Lemmy? Why a small niche leftist platform rather than a larger platform?
Let’s say you’re a time traveler who hates punk music. What would be more effective to stop it before it starts? Sabotaging the planning for the Warped Tour in the 90s, or burning down CBGB in 1973?
CBGB was a small club at the time, barely notable at all. The Warped Tour, on the other hand, was a massive endeavor involving dozens of bands and thousands upon thousands of punk and ska fans. But if you know your history, you know that CBGB was a small venue with a massive impact on the American punk scene. It was a place where a lot of the bands that we know today got their start and came up. The Warped Tour, on the other hand, while probably influential on 90s teenagers who got to go see 20 bands in person for 20 bucks, was mostly just riding the wave of punk’s popularity and capitalizing it.
Targeting leftist spaces, especially small leftist spaces, could potentially be much more effective than targeting more general spaces. Lemmy in particular selects not only for leftists, but for anti-corporate, anti-establishment people with enough of an interest in tech and enough social media presence to jump on the bandwagon of a relatively unknown protocol just so they don’t have to rely on corporate social media. It has a barrier for entry that most of the public find to be either too daunting to bother to surmount, or that involves enough obscurity that they’re not even aware of it to begin with.
Beehaw in particular has human-vetted signups and even has a history of defederating with instances that have open sign-ups in order to be able to deal with moderation. A lot of that moderation is literally just contending with social conservatives who show up spouting racism, queerphobia, sexism, and ablism.
In other words, we are a small space that caters to a particular crowd of people well outside the mainstream politically, socially, and technologically. Small, niche spaces have a tremendous potential for resulting in wider-spread influence.
It’s not about convincing us that democrats suck. Most of us aren’t particularly happy with the democratic establishment anyway. It’s about demotivating us and frustrating our internal communications. It’s about trying to sabotage a potential locus for resistance.
And it isn’t just Lemmy. It isn’t even just the left that’s being targeted. We know social media is being used to pollute discourse and manipulate politics. We know there’s an artificial rightward push going on, and we know that it isn’t just the United States that’s being targeted with it. But anyone who wants to advance this artificial rightward push has a strong motivation to exploit any vulnerabilities that can be found in the US because of our position globally. Now that that position is crumbling, they have a strong motivation to make sure it doesn’t recover.
We have a responsibility to address that threat vector no matter who those parties are.
This isn’t data security though. In a cyber security context, yes paranoia is a valuable attribute. It can let you catch threats before they happen which is good.
In a political context though, paranoia, especially directed within the organization, is a corrosive and reactionary attribute. It divides and causes factionalism in political organization and brings energy away from making positive change and fighting the actual oppressors and puts that energy toward testing and purging your “allies”.
If a group out of power gives into paranoia and conspiracies they just divide into smaller and smaller factions who don’t trust each other and can’t work together to gain power. If a group in power gives in to paranoia, the majority group tends to start purging whoever they can claim are “fakes” conveniently along with everyone else they disagree with.
I can’t think of a single time in history where paranoia directed at secret enemies within has ever helped a progressive cause. Meanwhile I can name tons of instances where it destroyed a progressive cause, or at least it’s credibility and popularity: the reign of terror, stalins purges, mao’s cultural revolution, even in modern day Maduro loves to claim the CIA is out to get him.
It never helps the cause, it is just used as a way for the leaders of the group to offload any anger directed at the people in charge of the organization towards some, often imagined, sabotoeurs. Collectivization failing and causing mass starvation? Is it stalins fault?, no it’s the kulaks and the trotskyists sabotaging the revolution.
The democrats have failed us, twice now. Instead of recognizing there failure and changing tack they’re trying to direct anger at the enemy within, progressives and Palestinian activists who they claim are sabotaging the democratic chances and are probably agents of russia. Pelosi literally told a group of pro-palestinian activists protesting on her lawn to “go back to russia”.
We need to stop focusing on finding the “Russian assets in our midst” and focus on reforming the democratic party and defeating trumpism with a positive plan for change.
One disagreement. Dems have been failing us since FDR left office.
This is the discourse that should be going on. Keep up the work and like the insight.
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Glad to have you with us. We’re talking about David Hogg below, who is one of the people who is trying to do this. Let’s rock.
Please stop strawmanning us (I’m sort of assuming that this comment can be aimed at me, which I think is accurate) for long enough to get behind some kind of effort like that. Our main complaint about one certain subset of the “3rd party leftists” so called is that, on Lemmy, the sum total of their efforts seems to be not producing any success for 3rd parties, or for the left, or for reforming the Democrats, or against the Republicans, or anything like that, but actually interfering with the “revamping” as you say. By shitting on people like Bernie, or Elizabeth Warren, or David Hogg, or encouraging people not to vote letting Trump get in office which now makes things much harder, or encouraging them to vote for someone who definitely won’t win, and so on.
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Yeah, I sort of saw talking with t3rmit3 that me and OP do actually see things a little differently maybe in some important respects. I actually don’t think everyone who fits a lot of OP’s criteria is necessarily (or even probably) a fake account. I definitely think there’s a huge problem of fake accounts but the way OP has framed it I think also includes some people who are just speaking their mind.
Some of the accounts that I would place in that category also hate Bernie. They call him a “sheepdog” or say that he is controlled opposition designed to siphon off support that could productively go towards some 3rd party candidate that 99% of the country has never heard of, and that’s who we should be voting for. I mean sure, that viewpoint could be legitimate from some kind of person who’s got a comprehensive master plan I’m just too thick to understand, how doing that will tie in with the left finally seizing power in this country if we can all dump Bernie, but you surely should understand that me (and presumably OP) will be skeptical.
Maybe we want politicians who will actively work for us, economically as well as socially.
Sounds great. Vote them in.
I would love to see a push to the left in US politics and in the Democratic party. I voted for Sanders, and I think the kind of arguments he’s been making consistently for decades would be a great perspective to see gain traction. The rallies he’s been putting together with AOC and the responses he’s gotten at town halls even in very red districts have been encouraging.
I fully support primarying Democrat politicians who fail to offer real solutions. 100% get them the hell out of office and replace them with people who will reconnect the party with the people and fight for affordable housing, medicare for all, and living wages. Let’s chuck Schumer out on his ass.
But our approach needs to be viable. It won’t happen by splitting the vote. That’s just math. I don’t like first past the post, and I’d love to get rid of it at the first available opportunity, but it’s the system we’re working with right now.
You can’t play chess using only your knights because you like the way the horsey looks. You have to know what the pieces do and use them to their fullest extent. By all means, make your pawns into queens, but to do that you have to think about which moves you’re actually capable of making on the board.
So here’s the thing, on my state ballot last November, I had TVs corporate Democrat who votes with the Republicans half the time (the time it matters), and a new Dem who could or would not articulate a platform for or against anything. Bet I voted third.
So run for office or find a candidate who might and help them get to that position.
Voting for a third party, unless it’s in a small local election where they might actually have a shot, will do literally nothing but get us a Republican.
If you’re still sitting here in April of 2025 and saying that the Democrats are the same as the Republicans, though? Get the hell out of our nest.
The corporate Dem won and is still voting the Republican agenda. 🤷♀️
ETA: I would need funds to campaign and a means of travel. I also lack experience but am willing to learn. Suggestions?
You see this comment? https://lemmy.world/comment/16774478
That’s the attitude that drives away voters. Now, I do have a degree of higher education and thanks to the internet and not arrogant users who helped me continue informally learning, I’d say I’m decently literate, and well-informed. And that attitude in that comment pretty much guarantees I’m probably not voting D again in my lifetime, unless someone really in touch comes to be on my local ballot. The attitude in that comment is what many disenfranchised D voters have gotten from the last five national election cycles. I’m absolutely not voting R for the rest of my life either, but HRC, Biden, Harris and all the Democrat candidates when there were primaries did not inspire hope, let alone confidence. Sanders did, until the DNC routed him out and he rolled over for them that cycle and the next. The last time before that was Kucinich and he had reservation-causing concerns, but I would have voted for him and many of my friends would have, too. I voted Obama, not because I thought he was better, bit that he was less odious. Never. Again. If Democrats really want our votes, let them earn them. Cavorting with war criminals and their daughters while ignoring issues important to me ain’t it. And for the record, socially left and economically right isn’t left. We crave leftist candidates, socially, ecologically, and economically. It’s our money, give it to us.
So run for office or find a candidate who might and help them get to that position.
This is literally 100% the answer. It could be within the Democratic party, it could be outside it, the details are details.
The point is that someone who comes up to you saying “I’m not voting for a DEMOCRAT, how could that ever help?” and also “I’m not voting! That will help, that’s the answer, you should too.” is definitely either lying or badly confused.
Like, yes, our system is corrupt and a lot of Democrats are a huge part of the problem. That won’t go away if you refuse to engage with it. It will get worse.
Again, it takes money and transportation. If one is a city dweller, transportation may be easier. Rurally, not so much.
“I would have overthrown the bourgeoisie, but I couldn’t find a ride.”
That’s pretty much it. Most of my rides have died due to preventable causes, and they were lifelong D voters. There’s one left and they’re not in great shape. The others are busy working several jobs and caring for children or elderly family members. We worked hard, even up to death, when jobs were available.
stop saying this stupid shit about third parties. you could argue the same point for Conservatives who didn’t vote Trump. also which is it—are leftists so numerous they are a problem and ruin everything or are we small and useless and unimportant?
Pretty ironic that Millie here is concerned about insincere trolls, yet they come off as the biggest troll here. I have blocked them and I suggest any leftists here do the same.
It’s pretty fn hateful couches in “polite, concerned” language. Phillipthebucket is the wolf showing the snarl, millie is the smiling fox.
https://kbin.earth/m/chat@beehaw.org/t/1270160/Brood-Parasitism-in-Leftist-Politics/comment/6448892#entry-comment-6448892
There’s your answer.
no thanks lol
As a leftist:
- True, It’s a piece of paper. If you think that will save us, you’re a dumbass.
- Mostly True, Look up the ratchet effect.
- Mostly False, we’ve had due process. It’s been unfair to minority communities, but in general it’s existed.
- Mostly False, He was mildly better. This is faint praise given he was a demented fossil facilitating a genocide.
Mildly better. Well, if this post accomplished one thing it was self-identification of the people it is about.
Neat how you ignored the rest of the sentence there. Probably because those aren’t contestable points huh?
“Mostly False, He was mildly better.”
Does that help?
This is faint praise given he was a demented fossil facilitating a genocide.
You know what I meant. Being obtuse doesn’t help your case, it just makes you look like a debate pervert.
I’m not an american (but anti-electoral nonetheless), and I do get the critique and think it is perfectly valid if one views things through liberal framework - vote for the lesser evil, minimize suffering, not voting is letting the bad candidate on getting the upper hand, etc.
However, this isn’t an objective position but an ideological one, as it operates within lesser-evilism, coalitionism within capitalist institutions and having a definition of “the left” that generalizes them to essentially having to be “pro-democracy somewhat progressive liberals”, and any deviation makes them into a troll or a right winger or something like that.
What is important to realize is that most leftists aren’t liberals - in fact, many leftists, particularly Marxists, view elections as:
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A way to legitimize the class rule that leads into passivity among the working class who are being ruled over, essentially recognizing that this “tool that we are given” is just an illusion and leads to neutralization of worker power,
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Enabling of ‘capitalist-tribalism’ in the form of “which capitalist manager do you support” which is seen in US through party loyalty and basically disarming the working class from realizing their own interests.
Essentially, their goal isn’t to just “vote for the lesser evil” or “achieve the maximum good through the means we’re given” but to abolish the system entirely, and electorialism/voting is counter-productive in that regard due to legitimizing effect that it has that I mentioned previously. This does go against the “liberal left” and their goals, and being on the same political wing does not automatically mean there’s an alliance or shared goals, nor does it mean that two positions aren’t going to have antagonistic goals.
Besides, why blame the left for the electoral failure who abstained from voting? Why not blame MAGA for voting in an enemy that goes against your interests (as in, people who have actually voted)?
There just isn’t that kind of leftist discourse in America. If there are communists here, I’ve never met one in real life, and I live in a very progressive region. Lemmy has been my first real exposure to anything further left of democratic socialism. I’m not sure why non-Americans are so continually surprised that we use “liberal” framework to discuss politics (that word means something completely different to us than it does to you). It would be great if the far right didn’t keep moving us to the right, but that’s the situation we live in. As capitalism fails, more people are waking up to the class struggle, but you can’t just change a whole country’s political paradigm overnight.
Honestly, this applies to EU too. There are still communists out there in real world (mostly found in university groups, labor unions or just some very niche book clubs), but way fewer than when compared to 20th century thanks to the efforts of red scare, the hellscape of “socialist” regimes, etc. There’s also the fact that if you want to be a communist, you need to go way out of your way to seek the theory and groups and actually study rather than having the ideology imposed onto you (but exceptions apply, like how Marxism-Leninism and Maoism can definitely be cultish).
Also, “liberal framework” in my comment was referring to viewing politics as choosing between good or bad, treating the system as being a fair, neutral arbiter, and it’s how majority view electorialism since that’s what is imposed onto us. Doesn’t really have to do anything with progressives being referred to as liberals in the US, but just taking liberal democracy at its face value.
I agree with the concept that electoral politics will not bring us the change we want but disagree with the notion that it isn’t beneficial to vote for lesser evil.
We exist in both paradigms. The worse evil does directly impact our lives, this isn’t debatable especially with Trump, so it makes sense to vote for lesser evil. Leftists are correct the lesser evil voting does not change the status quo (ratchet theory) but I view it as incorrect for leftists to moralize the act of voting to the point that if you vote you are not a leftist
It’s a tool and revolution is easier when you aren’t under threat of being sent to a concentration camp. These are issues of tactics not virtue
In addition to that:
A proletariat that keeps disempowering itself is a proletariat unable to fight in an eventual revolution. And fascism is all about disempowering the masses.
So sometimes you need to bite into the sour apple and vote, even if this means voting in an absolute clown against someone who’s a clown and a fascist, and in the process playing along a system that is utterly corrupt and made to enforce the elites are kept in place.
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Voluntarily disenfranchising yourself is complying in advance.
A broken tool still has its uses. A bent screwdriver can still be a prybar. A rusty sword can still kill, so don’t ask people to drop it before have something better. It is possible to explore and acknowledge the failures and limitations of a system – and to reduce overreliance on it – without abdicating all influence over it.
The Democratic Party is a disappointment. They follow popular (polled) opinion rather than sticking to principles, and that makes them vulnerable to Overton shifts. As public opinion towards trans people has been poisoned by the Jugendverderber libel, Democrats have largely thrown trans people under the bus instead of fighting back. Likewise, Democrats stick closely to corporate interests because money is power. These issues may never be fixable.
The solution to this is not to capitulate and discard what political influence we still hold.
The first half of the solution is to primary the hell out of Democrats. A left-wing caucus within the party could easily tilt things in our favor, just like the Freedom Caucus tilted the RNC in the opposite direction once before. Bernie Sanders (link) and David Hogg (link) are now spearheading multiple campaigns to do exactly that. Even if you have no faith in your ability to change the norms of the party, just think how much impact your resistance could have if you held an office, even a low one, even for just a week. Do you have any idea how much trouble a county clerk can make?
The second half of the solution is to build solidarity-based power structures outside government to reduce overreliance on a broken system. Economic desperation, social isolation, and cultural “other”-ing make people easy to exploit and oppress regardless of the type of government, so attack those problems directly. Unions, mutual aid networks, churches, you know the drill. Put in the legwork to find them in your area or your profession.
Embrace nuance. Embrace diversity – even political diversity. Political beliefs are not sacred, but the lives under those political systems are. Don’t try to reduce the vast complexity of politics to 120 characters. Don’t treat the ongoing wellbeing of human beings flippantly. If you think the problem is the existence of a state, then say so, but make your case for why making the state worse makes conditions for its subjects better. If you think voting third-party will teach the Democrats a lesson and drag them leftwards, then make your case and acknowledge the risks of what happens if you’re wrong.
Don’t just ridicule every positive effort you see. Doomer trolls (or cuckoos, if we’re going with that) are pithy, but reductive, and their criticism is never constructive.
This all day.
I think one if the big things that people miss is that while it may be the most prominent fights in the headlines, there are countless little fights going on all the time and they have a huge impact. They don’t make national news or sometimes even local news, but they still matter. It’s easy to dismiss them, but they still move the overton window and they still have a substantial impact on the day to day lives of people across the country. Every union steward in some small retail chain standing up to management makes an impact. Every judge who stands up for the rights of marginalized people makes an impact. Every city councilor who votes to fund programs for people in need. Every volunteer who shows up day after day to soup kitchens and food banks. Everybody who stops to give a few bucks to a person on the street. Everyone who sees someone struggling and takes the time to try to lift them up. Every advocate who spends their time helping people who are trying to find a way out of horrible situations.
The less visible stuff is much more wide-spread and makes a huge difference, maybe even more of a difference in many cases, than the big visible stuff.
It honestly drives me up a wall when people who seem like they never go out and connect with the real world around them spend so much time ranting about how everyone’s screwed and nobody’s doing anything about it. All they have to do is look outside or step outside themselves and lend someone, anyone a hand.
All they have to do is look outside or step outside themselves and lend someone, anyone a hand.
Touch grass, if you will.
I remember years ago watching a video – I desperately wish I could remember the channel – where the author shared his experience with depression and the early days of 4chan anime forums. He found it easier to browse forums about anime than to go out and actually watch them. Then the negativity piled in. That anime you like? “It’s shit.” Any hint of optimism or passion was an opportunity to get a rise out of someone or smugly ridicule them. The only unassailable belief was to doubt everything. The only winning move was not to care.
I’ve been thinking about that video a lot recently.
Online activism has led to a handful of noteworthy victories. But the ease of online activism has also made people (myself included) rely too much on it, and get disillusioned by it, as if we’ve forgotten that online activism is pointless unless it leads to real-world resistance.
I don’t believe doomer trolls are right-wing plants (though I acknowledge it’s a potential avenue of attack in the future). I don’t think they usually have ulterior accelerationist motives (though I have spoken with a few). I think for the most part, they’re just people who’ve given up, or otherwise mistaken cynicism for maturity, and seeing anyone else expressing optimism or trying to organize real-world resistance just pisses them off.
I don’t believe doomer trolls are right-wing plants (though I acknowledge it’s a potential avenue of attack in the future). I don’t think they usually have ulterior accelerationist motives (though I have spoken with a few). I think for the most part, they’re just people who’ve given up, or otherwise mistaken cynicism for maturity, and seeing anyone else expressing optimism or trying to organize real-world resistance just pisses them off.
This is the attitude I want to see. Believing people are psy-ops, or bots, or being evil on purpose — none of that is necessary and almost all of it is conspiratorial thinking. It’s the kind of thing the right thrives on, and it’s gross.
But this? Saying there are people who have real issues and real grief, and that it’s driving them to bad but genuinely held beliefs? That’s sympathetic, it’s understanding, and above all else it does not divide us. This is what we need more of.
From Fascism and Big Business by Daniel Guerrin
From Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks
In re the first excerpt:
This, to me, sounds totally backwards.
The KPD had tried to overthrow the government through violent force with guns, and the establishment government including the SPD had violently fought back. A generation later, the KPD was still so incensed that the SPD had not gone along with getting shot and overthrown that they refused to get things together with the social-democrat + center-party coalition, ran their own spoiler candidate, fought the SPD in the streets, and basically treated the “not left enough” party as the main enemy all the way up until they all went into the camps. Whereas the SPD was still giving speeches against Hitler and trying to muster resistance to him in government even when parliament was half-empty because of all the disappeared opposition.
I have no idea how the groups you’re talking about here map onto the groups I am talking about. But, to me, the problem of splintered opposition to Hitler was 100% a far-left-created problem, which would be an incredibly apt comparison as regards the most recent US election if the election had happened on Lemmy or if the US as a whole had any kind of far-left representation that went above low single digits.
In re the second excerpt:
Yes, it is mathematically certain that in any FPTP election system, things will coalesce into two parties which are both a few inches to one side or another from the center. That is a good argument to me for not doing FPTP. I don’t think you can blame the left-er of the parties if they don’t want to wander away from the center and start losing elections.
If we’re going to apply that to the US, I think the “center” in the US being so far to the right that it’s off the edge of the table is a whole separate problem, largely corporate-media-created, but I think asking the center-right party we call “Democrats” to start losing elections from now on so that everyone on the left can feel better about the Democratic party positions is probably not the answer to that.
(Actually, there is one caveat: They could have just not fucked over Bernie and let him win the election which he 100% would have. That would have been nice. If you want to try to help talk them into doing something like that in the future, that would be grand, but I think (a) hoping for a candidate as good as Bernie to come along every election is a tough ask (b) some campaign finance reform will need to go along with it and maybe putting some people in prison for accepting bribes just to send the point home. If we’re still trying to operate within normal politics. All of this is a little academic now since Trump is aiming to run the elections going forward.)
I have no idea how the groups you’re talking about here map onto the groups I am talking about. But, to me, the problem of splintered opposition to Hitler was 100% a far-left-created problem, which would be an incredibly apt comparison as regards the most recent US election if the election had happened on Lemmy or if the US as a whole had any kind of far-left representation that went above low single digits.
Sure, but this assumes that the KPD and NSDAP weren’t both reacting to a popular sentiment that the SPD wasn’t. I think a good analogy for this is to consider fight or flight in mammal behavior as two extremes of a political spectrum, and an absence of stimulus response representative of ‘status quo’ centrism. A nervous system that is inadequately responding to threatening stimuli risks being eaten/killed by the threat, but a NS that’s too sensitive is prone to overreaction.
There are a lot of ways to flesh out that analogy, but I think the popularity of the NSDAP and the momentum of the KPD (as small as you’d like to see it as) is a missed hormone signal by the SPD that some kind of movement was needed to address the underlying current of populism. Assuming that the KPD ought to have joined the SPD against the Nazis simply because they were the smaller party (without addressing their concerns) completely disregards the political context of the moment.
I think a similar critique of Democrats applies to 2024 (and to an extent 2016 and 2020, with con-founders). Liberals insist that the democrats lost because of 3rd party spoilers and far-left activists deflating the cause, but I think there’s more evidence that the Democrats failed themselves by not reacting to the clear signs of distress that both the far-right and far-left populists were signaling. I think dems miscalculated because they assumed they could meet more voters in the middle like they always had, but didn’t realize that all those people aren’t there anymore. Instead of meeting people in the middle, they were yelling at people on the ends to meet them in the middle, like over-administering an SSRI to someone reacting appropriately to a life-and-death situation.
Any response to fascism is going to need a mixed response to address it - you can’t simply plant yourself in the middle and cross your fingers people will meet you there. Even as a way just to buy time, by not offering any solutions to the issues that created the popular fascist sentiment you’ll end up loosing those voters who can very clearly see them while they grow hopeless/disillusioned that democracy can solve the problems at all.
We can wring our hands all day about far-left and far-right movements being too extreme and demanding perfection all we want, but the truth is that there were simply not enough people in the middle for democrats to overcome the populist motion on the right, and choosing to steer to the middle (and throw a tantrum when people didn’t follow) is a clear cut miscalculation on their part. Especially when it seems pretty clear that most democrats agree on the basic grievances of the left-of-center part of the party.
Assuming that the KPD ought to have joined the SPD against the Nazis simply because they were the smaller party (without addressing their concerns) completely disregards the political context of the moment.
No it doesn’t. Insisting that we need to go to the smaller party’s positions on everything because the center blah blah blah missed opportunity let’s fight about our favorite pet issues that’s what’s really important right now disregards the political context of the moment. Keeping Hitler from coming to power was what was truly important, and the KPD fucked that up completely by not seeing the bigger picture and clinging to their pet issues and they pretty much all died when the horrors started as a result. Whatever sins you want to accuse the SPD of in their positions, it hardly matters. “I’m not planning to kill you and the other guy is and I can win” should be a winning electoral platform whatever else is in it.
I think a similar critique of Democrats applies to 2024 (and to an extent 2016 and 2020, with con-founders). Liberals insist that the democrats lost because of 3rd party spoilers and far-left activists deflating the cause, but I think there’s more evidence that the Democrats failed themselves by not reacting to the clear signs of distress that both the far-right and far-left populists were signaling. I think dems miscalculated because they assumed they could meet more voters in the middle like they always had, but didn’t realize that all those people aren’t there anymore.
Well… for one thing, two things can be true. It can be true both that the far left got itself distracted and the Democrats are a bunch of corporate whores who don’t really “deserve” support. Not all of them but I would say the overwhelming majority are. I get why people aren’t that excited about voting for them, in the same way I am not excited about paying taxes or working a job I hate to get to the one I actually want. However, failing to do those things in this election was a catastrophic tactical blunder which has already produced massive human suffering and promises much more to come. I hope we come out of it stronger, but the whole fucking thing didn’t need to happen. You can reform Democrats without a bunch of immigrants going to El Salvador or worse because you didn’t feel like holding your nose and you’re privileged enough to be able to not have to.
And then, for another thing, I actually don’t think the far-left lost the Democrats this election, although their lack of support was one more drop in the rainstorm. I think the election took place almost entirely in fantasy-land. The far left (tiny in American politics) thought that Kamala Harris was responsible for 100% of Biden’s Israel policy, but also more mainstream people thought that Biden had accomplished nothing of value on climate change or for working people in the US, other people thought Trump was a genius at business who would bring inflation back down, and so on. It was propagandized to the point that it almost doesn’t matter that the Democrats’ messaging was bad.
Harris was the better candidate. People in overwhelming numbers thought various imaginary things about her which made her “bad,” although the question of what was up with Trump didn’t really factor into it except among the very deeply confused. I think that’s the result of really incredibly powerful propaganda being deployed at a massive scale, and the media being too apathetic to try to do its jobs even when people were listening to them. I don’t think it’s fair to say that Biden’s performance, Harris’s platform, or the far-left’s organic reaction to anything, was responsible in any way for what happened. It was mostly just based on fantasies and misdirection. What we do about that, I have no idea.
“I’m not planning to kill you and the other guy is and I can win” should be a winning electoral platform whatever else is in it.
“Should be”, maybe, but it wasn’t. Maybe a hyperbolic example: people are driven to suicide everyday, but debating the calculus of what’s worthy of ending your life over doesn’t help those people who are in crisis. It’s a failure of understanding to demand that people ignore their own suffering, or accept their own injustice, because you’ve made the calculus for them that some alternative is worse. If you refuse to ask yourself what motivates those people to abandon hope in democracy then you’ve shut yourself off from learning from historical atrocity. It’s insufficient to use hindsight to say ‘they should have chosen the lesser evil’, because then you’ll never be able to recognize the crisis until it’s already happening.
I get why people aren’t that excited about voting for them, in the same way I am not excited about paying taxes or working a job I hate to get to the one I actually want
Then you understand why the democrats failed their own cause, because unless democrats can waive a magic wand and force people to choose an evil (lesser or greater), those people will not be showing up for them. Call it a tactical error of the voter if you want, I don’t care. No liberation or civil rights movement has ever been judged on the merits of their cause - if it were simply a matter of lesser or greater morals there would be no need for struggle - the effectiveness of any fight for liberation can only ever be judged by its ability to stir action against injustice from the un-moving.
It was propagandized to the point that it almost doesn’t matter that the Democrats’ messaging was bad.
It’s also possible that those accomplishments, as much as we’d like to celebrate them, weren’t addressing the core popular discontent of the voters. It could be a matter of messaging or propaganda, true, but it would be irresponsible to have this conversation and not point out that the current popular messaging in the democratic base isn’t related to infrastructure spending, inflation, or climate initiatives - it’s an expression of frustration about a system that’s rendered ineffective against oligarchs who use their immense wealth to undermine and frustrate all attempts at democratic reform. There’s an implicit assumption from moderates that our capitalist system can be managed with incremental reforms, but there’s no allowance for the possibility that we may eventually cross a threshold of inequality that cannot be managed with incremental progress anymore, especially when that inequality is being allowed to express itself in the democratic process itself. Even if we’re not yet at that point, dismissing those concerns as “fantasies and misdirection” is a surefire way of losing those voters to apathy, spoiler candidates, or violent resistance.
People in overwhelming numbers thought various imaginary things about her which made her “bad,” although the question of what was up with Trump didn’t really factor into it except among the very deeply confused.
Because Harris didn’t have a message to deliver for herself, except that she wasn’t Trump. It’s entirely possible (if not 100% certain) that people are reacting to an extreme level of distress and confusion that exists completely separate from Trump, and by not giving them a clear theory about what is causing it and what to do about it, it created a vacuum for people to pick whatever issue they were feeling the most in that moment and accuse/notice a lack of platform to address it. Democrats desperately want to occupy a middle ground of ‘nothing fundamental will change’, while seemingly not noticing that voters are increasingly desperate for fundamental change. Yes, Trump is a fascist, but at least he’s acknowledging the alarm his base is feeling and offering them an explanation and all the reactionary change they could ever want. That’s why his base showed up, and the ours didn’t. The people the democrats are losing aren’t the people who don’t see the danger in Trump, they’re loosing the people who might think Trump is a bit radical but think the democrats are actively protecting a status quo that they’re completely miserable with. I cannot stress enough how much democrats are fucking themselves next cycle by blaming those people who are already pissed off about a lack of meaningful action for their suffering, past and present. That’s how you turn apathetic non-voters into violent reactionaries.
“I’m not planning to kill you and the other guy is and I can win” should be a winning electoral platform whatever else is in it.
“Should be”, maybe, but it wasn’t.
Correct. Which indicates to me that something other than the content of the platforms was the issue.
Like I say, I mostly agree with you about the shittiness of the Democratic establishment and particularly as pertains to kneecapping Bernie, who would have addressed your (extremely valid) complaints and also would have won the election. Assuming no one shot him.
I’m just saying two things can be true. The Democrats can be ghouls who need replacement or foundational reform, and also the electorate can be so addled by propaganda that they missed noticing that Biden did absolutely historic things to help the working class, address climate change, basically all the core issues except for Israel and even his Israel atrocity didn’t apply to Kamala Harris except in people’s minds. And that addled understanding and confusion was what cost them the election. The DNC consultants have dogshit messaging, also, which certainly didn’t help, but people were mostly convinced that Trump would bring inflation back down again and Kamala Harris was just as bad so why bother (depending on which side of the aisle they were on).
Those two things can both be true. You seem like you’re spending incredible words lecturing me on the first thing. Yes. I agree with you. Two things can be true.
You seem like you’re spending incredible words lecturing me on the first thing. Yes. I agree with you. Two things can be true.
It might seem like i’m lecturing you because I don’t think you’re grasping what I’m saying. There being an objective better choice in an election has no bearing on if that’s a sufficient platform to get the votes you need. Insisting that ‘it should have been enough that she wasn’t trump’ while also insisting that the base doesn’t have legitimate concerns that depressed their motivation to vote is nothing more than sticking your fingers in your ears. Claiming that, instead of having legitimate grievances with democratic governance, voters didn’t turn out in enough numbers for Harris because they were too propagandized (i’m trying so hard not to use the word ‘dumb’) to know what was good for them is paternalistic bullshit.
Anything to avoid having to consider the possibility that the moderate approach to governance is what created the populist radicalization we’re now having to deal with.
Like I say, I mostly agree with you about the shittiness of the Democratic establishment and particularly as pertains to kneecapping Bernie
We are so far beyond the problems with the 2016 election, it’s almost not even worth talking about it. The democrats have a far, far deeper problem with their organization that is clearly not limited to one or two high-ranking chairmen putting their fingers on the scale.
Insisting that ‘it should have been enough that she wasn’t trump’
Yes. In an “objective” sense if we separate away the realities of what it takes to sell people and win elections, it should have been enough that she didn’t want to kill immigrants, destroy the government, and seize power forever, and the other guy did. And you seem to agree with me on this, up above, so presumably you’re using the definition of “should have been” that I use in the following paragraph.
Clearly, in a “reality” sense instead of the objective sense, it wasn’t enough to actually win, in this election. You are saying the American people are having an understandable reaction to both three decades (at least) of Democratic fuckery, and to bland corporate-friendly “status quo” messaging from a deeply flawed DNC campaign apparatus. Yes, I agree. As I keep saying. That’s pretty sensible.
(Edit: I adjusted some things in the preceding paragraph)
I would also add to that that they suffered from an incredible amount of misleading propaganda that led them to believe absurd fantasies about the candidates. That’s not paternalistic, that’s reality. I don’t think it is fair to ask them to look at corporate news, paid shills and total random idiots on social media, Russian-funded podcasters, and so on, and form an informed picture of reality. That’s not saying they are dumb, it is saying that our systems of news and political information in this country are so shockingly bad that it would literally be better if people were throwing darts at a board to pick the president.
insisting that the base doesn’t have legitimate concerns that depressed their motivation to vote
Claiming that, instead of having legitimate grievances with democratic governance
Anything to avoid having to consider the possibility that the moderate approach to governance is what created the populist radicalization we’re now having to deal with.
Okay, I’m just going to stop my reply here.
Go back and read my message. It says 100% the opposite of that. You’re spending time that you could have spent on your reply, telling me what I think on my side, and what you are telling me is 100% backwards. And then, in passing, you’re lecturing me about how some things I already believe are true. I mean there’s a little side issue of whether propaganda and voter miseducation was a factor in this election (and for some reason you are claiming that it was not), but you’re barely even dealing with that. You’re mostly just telling me what I think and arguing with me when I tell you I think different.
Again, I think this is actually a pretty important issue. I actually think I’ve said pretty much everything I wanted to say on the original discussion, and spending extensive time just repeating “No, I didn’t say that, I actually said the opposite of that” seems like a screaming waste of time. We’ve gone back and forth about it for a couple of messages now and I’m not real into continuing for a bunch more.
I think this is a such a big problem that it deserves a specific real solution, way beyond just you and me talking about this specific issue. I think actually I’ll try to write something up about it (as I threatened to do below when talking about the issue of propaganda accounts), or maybe work on a more sustainable solution of some sort.
This post is beyond delusional. It’s like the meme about everything I don’t like is woke. The liberal version basically being everything I don’t like is a Russian/MAGA bot. Is it really that hard to believe that left leaning people don’t agree with the Democratic Party platform? You’re deeper in your bubble than you realize my friend.
Oh look, someone who’s generalizing op then tries to discredit them! Way to prove their point
They didn’t make any type of platform or political argument to even debate against. Basically saying that everyone who dislikes democrats is secretly a republican. That’s all I’m calling them on. Total nonsense.
Misdirection, nice! That’s cuz this is not about platforms or any political argument, dr Troll
You’re goofy man. I don’t even know what your point is. OP said something. I said I disagreed with it. Epic troll by me I guess.
Go to a politics or platforms community if you’re looking for a politic argument or stuff about platforms
Let’s just get a few facts out of the way:
- Genocide is the worst crime humanity is capable of
- The US has a direct hand in multiple genocides
- Record levels of homelessness in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Death from preventable illnesses in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Highest infant mortality in the western world in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Democrats are not interested in changing the status quo
- Republicans want a return to chattel slavery
- Neither party is willing to help us, nor will they ever allow us to vote third party by adding ranked choice or anything liek that
- Therefore, our best bet to break the cycle is to collectively vote for, say, the green party
You think leftists are unrealistic for being disgusted with Democrats? The genocide was live streamed to the world. Did you not see any of it? Did it not move you?
I was with you but then you said vote green?
If you’re going to vote, vote against the Republican party. If you want change from status quo, the ballot box isn’t where it will happen
In my case, I’m in a deep blue state. Otherwise I would grit my teeth and vote for the “lesser” evil. But we really do need a new party.
The current US voting system does not allow for a 3rd party to have a chance. If you want a new party, then you either need to replace one of the main two, or change the electoral rules.
From the outside, it doesn’t seem like either option is likely to happen peacefully, so things will likely need to get way much worse before they get any better.
Oh, I know. But imagine, if you will, if enough people collectively decided to vote 3rd party. It’s a minority of Americans who even vote at all. If a third party received the majority of votes, they would have to be put in office – hypothetically at least.
if enough people collectively decided to vote 3rd party.
Then it would either become the 1st/2nd party, or disappear into oblivion. If it could became part of Congress, where it could look for alliances, then maybe… but based on current sentiment, it seems unlikely.
voting Green is voting against Republicans
I had more I wanted to say on this topic when I first read it, but at the time I also had more energy. Had I not had other obligations, I would’ve written out my more detailed thoughts then. As it is, however, I’ll have to settle for the (relative) shortform, as I find this thread exhausting from the outset and the sheer quantity of incredibly angry back-and-forth here has only made it worse.
To suffice the ideas of mine that I still remember, then:
- I have a feeling that while you may not consider me specifically to be a “cuckoo,” that this post was still partially aimed at people like myself, since I’ve spent a fair chunk of time arguing to the immense faults of the Democrat Party, some of which was in discussion with you.
- If the above is true, I feel dehumanized and find this topic incredibly depressing.
- Regardless of the above, I find jumping to assumptions of bad faith on the part of those with whom you disagree on this topic understandable, but needlessly conspiratorial.
But to end my comment, I’d like to point out an area on which you and I can find common ground: Your point of “Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism” suggests you feel that the people arguing against voting / the Democrat Party are doing a poor job of offering alternative solutions. On this, I agree. Solutions for that scenario are hard to come by and often complicated, and where people do have things to suggest a portion of them are very flawed; voting Green, not voting, and the occasional implicit suggestion for violence, etc. All of those have huge problems that I know I don’t need to explain to you.
For that, all I can say is that I agree that leftists can do better and should. I’ve seen the good suggestions before. Things like mutual aid, education, organizing, joining events — all of these are very useful things that are significantly more important than one vote in a broken electoral system. Unfortunately, as you’ve noticed, frustrated and angry people tend to be bad at mentioning these things.
I only ask that you consider that these people are frustrated, angry, and restless, rather than actively fake.
If you read down to my comments down below, you’ll find some examples of people doing specific fuck-ups that strongly indicate that they are non-American fake accounts, and not someone who is frustrated, angry, or restless.
I do think that a lot of people on far-left-Lemmy are in fact genuine accounts who also do the things OP is saying, and that maybe calling them fake accounts isn’t productive. I actually think fake accounts on Lemmy is also a huge problem, but the tells that I consider are a little different than the ones OP talks about.
For that, all I can say is that I agree that leftists can do better and should. I’ve seen the good suggestions before. Things like mutual aid, education, organizing, joining events — all of these are very useful things that are significantly more important than one vote in a broken electoral system.
Yes. Whether or not someone is fake, talking about those things constantly would be a much better (and also less suspicious) thing to talk about, as opposed to incessantly talking specifically about how important it is not to vote and not so much about those other things.
A lot of the accounts I’m talking about are still talking about how important it is not to vote for Democrats, and haven’t bothered to say more or less anything about joining the protests that are going on right now. Actually, I’ve seen a little scattering of the current generation of fake commenters who are talking about how dangerous the protests are, how some might be “false flags,” how we need to be careful or they’re going to sit this upcoming one out. Things like that.
