braces for down votes and possible ban
braces for down votes and possible ban
I've been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to "voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism" and "the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic" and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.
More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they're replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.
It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling -- in retrospect I'm pretty sure I could've built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that's what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) -- and the only reason I'm not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.
I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?
Generally true, yes. In most cases, the leftists using that sort of terminology are tankies, meaning they are explicitly pro-authoritarian. They just want the dictators to be communists (or claimed communists) rather than capitalists (despite said dictatorial communism usually being about seizing all the money for themselves anyways and often results in full on capitalism regardless, China is a great example).
So you don't even need the word replacement thought experiment. Tankies are openly authoritarian.
People really don't want to acknowledge that politics is more than one axis.
Like communism is the opposite of capitalism, not democracy. The opposite of democracy is a dictatorship.
And when a dictator calls their government Communist, it's pretty much a guarantee it's not even a communist economy anymore than when North Korea or Russia claim to be democracies.
Very true. Reading a lot of Socialist lit has made me very critical about the regular framework I see regularly posited as Socialism being a direct opposite of capitalism and being some kind of inevitable slippery slope toward Communism.
Like as a system it is very distinct from Communist ideologically speaking and represents a sliding scale of public ownership versus private ownership but never fully occludes private ownership, currency or the very basics of capitalism systemically and any one person's veiw of where that balance should rest is itself an end point and fully formed political belief. You can believe a mix of liberal / capitalist and socialist things that are not strictly contradictory. Capitalism is a sliding scale we are just currently dealing with it's deep unstable and predatory end. Admitting some capitalism is okay and can be made more ethical doesn't disqualify you from the left nor does it nessisarily make you "centrist". It also doesn't make you automatically a fan of everything capitalist or the status quo.
The number of "That's not Socialism! Socialism means only (posit one potential facet out of the massive cloud of policies/stances of the ideology) or " That is only the secret aim of Communists to tip the teeter-totter towards our/their goals!" is a very paternalistic view. Socialism is DEEP and diverse. There's not a central author or even a neat handful of authors one can point to. The more you read the more internal variations you find.
People generally seem to just want an enemy to point and hiss at, they don't want to look at things as a potential series of sliding scales or people of mixed ideological stances as valid in their own right.
I have a friend who has come to reflect this exact behavior to an extraordinary degree of accuracy.
It's interesting because the near puritanical nature of their responses to nearly anything has become more extreme than even the most devoutly religions individuals. Obviously the focus of their evangelizing is very different, but it has become difficult to even have a conversation.
I'll give you an example: I saw a new game called Pal World, which looked absurd, mentioned and was instantly met with the fact that the game was unacceptable because it supports forced labor.
Additionally, there seems to be an immense amount of hypocrisy in regards to what is good and what is bad, largely driven by what best I can refer to as their "leftist Zeitgeist." As bad as I can tell now, according to them, I am a liberal, and apparently liberals are bad, and the only true salvation is being a leftist?
Of course, I have a much more varied and complex set of moral and political values that likely don't fall under a singular label... But what do I know about anything.
This is kind of like saying Helldivers 2 is bad because it's about forcefully spreading "democracy" (pretty obviously it means capitalism) to other planets.
Yeah, it is, but it's hugely satirical and makes blatant political statements through satire.
Pal World isn't that deep, I don't think there's much depth to their forced labor system other than parodying Pokémon and slightly highlighting how the Pokémon universe is full of forced labor and isn't that kind of funny
As bad as I can tell now, according to them, I am a liberal, and apparently liberals are bad, and the only true salvation is being a leftist?
Watch it before you rage downvote...
The Most Dangerous Thing In The Western Hemisphere: American Liberals
was instantly met with the fact that the game was unacceptable because it supports forced labor.
If this is true, it should be constantly called out. You're shrugging at slavery?
Edit: I don't play or care about this game. Obviously I don't give two shits if creatures are slaves in video games as long as there's nothing about it that makes it seem like a good idea for sentient creatures
Fiction is fiction. This is the same kind of logic that adults used when I was a kid because Harry Potter promoted witchcraft, or when the country had a moral panic because Call of Duty had their children killing people. Nothing in the game literally advocates for or glorifies IRL slavery, that would be absurd.
If you can't parse fiction from reality, then you aren't fit for just about anything. Movies, music, video games, books, etc. Every medium frequently depicts things you shouldn't emulate. Even the literal Bible has depictions of slavery, rape, incest, and murder.
Wait until you hear about cookie clicker.
I don't give a fuck if a game has actual "human" slaves, it's not real and anyone who can't figure that out has a lot more issues
I believe they are doing the PETA and Pokemon bit, where the Pals are enslaved, though this is a bit of a weird anecdote and not representative of the broader, grass touching left.
Interestingly, Bertrand Russell made a similar argument about Marxism and Christianity, so you're not alone in feeling this way.
I think the tendency you're describing is real, but it only holds among a tiny minority of people, who happen to be quite loud in mainly online spaces. There's no significant organisation of any kind that holds those views or is doing anything to implement them as any kind of policy, anywhere in the world.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of evangelical Christians!
My advice dealing with either is to politely engage, explain your views and, if they start being rude, stop talking to them.
Bertrand Russell made a similar argument about Marxism and Christianity
Of course he did. He wrote entire textbooks on philosophy of language that amounted to "X is actually just like Y for some mathematical transformation T".
But that's the thing about mathematical transformations. You potentially lose a bunch of information when you transform an apple into an orange by saying "They both look like fruit to me." And Russell spent a bunch of time tackling the problem (ultimately unsuccessfully, as evidenced by the modern state of data compression) in a way your average Reddit-tier philosophy undergrad rarely does.
Nobody making money from being a tankie doesn't really make tankies better
Are you having a bad day or something?
To be clear, I completely understand and agree with your point. However, posts trying to convince people to vote using half-baked metaphors like these are, to use the evangelism analogy in this post, the equivalent of internet atheist edgelordism. In some ways, they do more harm than good in conveying the point.
What ultimately helped me get out of the strict revolutionary mindset were actual anecdotes and examples. The ultimate idea fueling these people is that the system is designed to screw everyone over, and in some ways it is. But you have to show them that it can be an effective method of harm reduction at the very least.
Metaphor can be helpful, but it has to tread a fine line. If it's too exaggerated then it comes of as unrealistic or condescending.
That's just my take on this though.
I don't understand what you mean by a strict revolutionary mindset and how that precludes voting. Plenty of revolutionaries believe in voting. At least in countries where one party is markedly better than the other, which is becoming more difficult in the US and to a lesser extent the UK.
Stop trying to divide the working class against itself.
We are all working class.
I am being called a fascist for voting for a left of center politician who is not far enough left of center, and I am the one dividing the working class?
Tbh, I wouldn't think someone calling you a fascist for voting Biden should be taken seriously. Although, as an abstentionist, I disagree with your strategy. I value other ways to act and can't resolve myself to vote for this kind of politicians.
That being said, we have our estimates of what will actually stop fascists and what cannot. Voting, imo, is a strategy. If someday I'm not able to contribute meaningfully to the type of political endeavors I'm taking part in, I'll probably start voting for this kind of candidates.
My own motto would be "do as you believe us best, as long as you're trying to do something to slow down of repel the fascists. We'll see what was and wasn't effective later"
I am being called a fascist for voting for a left of center politician
And here I'm the one who keeps getting banned from .ml for not worshipping Stalin hard enough.
If you're fighting against reform and shill for China and Russia then you're acting against all of our own best interests, don't get mad when people retaliate over your bullshit.
This^
The more we infight the more time the billionaires have
It's of course possible to just be opposed to the meat grinder that is modern society without requiring me to be some kind of revolutionary?
And I would raise the argument that the vast majority of "leftists" are like that and are not actually revolutionary because most people can't be bothered to be revolutionary. It's hard work and even if you succeed, then you have to do more work.
I'm quite happy for a government to exist, I just want it to be a good one. I'm not even asking for a Star Trek utopia, just not actively evil. That'll do for now.
It’s of course possible to just be opposed to the meat grinder that is modern society without requiring me to be some kind of revolutionary?
Sure. But people who support the meat grinder will call you one anyway.
Yeah sure but this comment seems to be from the opinion of other "leftists. Although it is actually probably from the perspective of someone who is actually centralist and have just have convinced themselves that they have a political opinion. That way they can look down on everyone and feel smug.
The right are evil, and the left are apparently religious nut jobs. Yay balance.
I’m quite happy for a government to exist, I just want it to be a good one. I’m not even asking for a Star Trek utopia, just not actively evil. That’ll do for now.
See, that's usually where the core political differences start to rear their head. The sort of like, revolutionary leftist, being so swamped in the failures of modern government, begins to see everything through this lens. Ahh, we need to replace the whole system, because any attempt to make it better is inevitably met with failure. It's relatively easy to feel totally hopeless if you start to grasp, say, the history of civil rights, right. Fight for equal voting, fight to eliminate lynchings, fight for equal economic access. But then we see white flight take place, we see redlining take place, we see the public pools get closed down and we still see huge enclaves and ghettos exist with lack of economic access, a school to prison pipeline, an inability for prisoners to vote, an a specific carve out in the constitution for slavery to basically be legal as long as it's only done with prisoners. Because you're so focused on how everything could be improved, it begins to feel as though everything is still a total failure.
I dunno. I do just kind of buy into dual power, so it's not a problem for me at all and this divide doesn't really exist, but that's where that kind of like, hopeless put upon revolutionary perspective comes from.
Tankies, and those they convince of their selfish narcissistic political insanity (and antisemtism) are the bane of the Fediverse. You're not going insane.
Don't worry about getting banned. You didn't post on the .ml instances after all! ;)
Seriously though, you're not crazy. My advice is to not get emotionally invested in any of those types of interactions. If they're being too stupid for you, just block them. You're mental wellbeing will thank you for it.
In the long run, blocking them just cedes the floor to them.
This rings extra true for me because many of the redfash that I used to follow (before russia invaded Ukraine and they went mask off) were actually ex-Evangelicals. Later it struck me how they'd just exchanged one fascist ideology with another.
The Nolan Chart used to be taught in intro to Poli-Sci. I’m not sure if it is anymore, but it should really be taught in high school.
Here’s the quiz (oversimplified by today’s standards), that will give you an idea of your political ideology position on the Nolan Chart.
This is basically how you get horseshoe theory, but if you come at an authoritarian leftist with horseshoe theory they'll mention the nonsense fishhook theory.
We’ve seen Horseshoe theory in the development of several dictatorships. However, I don’t really follow how fish hook theory is anything more than a defensive suggestion to mask authoritarian progress.
Finally an explanation for a dumbass like me. The quiz might be oversimplified, but it seems like a decent starting point for what I should do my research on
It’s helpful for learning the difference between economic and social legislation. They’re displayed as two separate axes, demonstrating that political ideology is more of a spectrum that is defined by two independent variables.
Economic: More tax socialization - liberal, Less tax socialization - conservative
Social: More social liberty - libertarian, Less social liberty - authoritarian
I met him 95% of the way... and failed.
That's because the people you're picking fights with only care about being right. It's why the American government undergoes a political ratchet toward the right: the people pushing for radical change at all costs and the people seeking compromise are not evenly distributed.
There's this half baked idea that keeps bouncing around in my mind, let's give it a engagement friendly name: Scam Theory.
Scam Theory, stated simply, is the idea that most of society is composed of scams. Scams, in this case, are any relationship where a large group of people come to believe lies that harm them and others, told by a small group of people who peddle those lies because they benefit from that harm.
It's like Category Theory, where you start to see the commonality across many disparate domains of math; except in this case it's commonality across many different social groups, and the commonality is the cycle of abuse.
Under Scam Theory, there are only minor implementation details that differentiate political zealots and religious zealots. Given some time, I could probably think of dozen more commonalities between leftist revolutionaries and christian doomsdayers. Or any other religion's extremists for that matter. Or people that buy into get rich quick schemes. Or capitalism. Or any other type of scam.
One of the main aspects of commonality amongst all scams is that there are the in-group, who participate and get to go to heaven/live in utopia/become fabulously wealthy/find happiness/stay young forever/etc, and the out-group, who didn't participate get to burn in hell/get walled for being counterrevolutionary/stay poor/be miserable/grow old and die alone/etc.
All you have to do to support Scam Theory is be vigilant of scams, spread this info, and don't be like one of the easy targets who will suffer (scams) for not buying into Scam Theory
FR FR, to me the biggest part is how they can be anti-liberal and still act as though their arguments are in good faith.
The definition of Liberal is to advocate for human rights, equality, fairness, and justice with reform as a major vehicle to improve the lives of all.
But Tankies act like you're the bad guy for not wanting to disestablish NATO, bunch of CCP cucks the lot of them. I honestly believe that hexbear doesn't even really have very many real users, that it's just a coordinated effort to breed dissent and violence in the west to the benefit of China and their immediate allies.
they can be anti-liberal and still act as though their arguments are in good faith.
Endlessly engaging and debating bad faith arguments is liberalism's greatest weakness. If you don't have the strength of conviction, you're forever going to negotiate away the foundation of your democracy.
Tip O'Neal negotiated with Reagan.
Ted Kennedy negotiated with the Bushes
Nancy Pelosi negotiated with Donald Trump
And now here we are, on the verge of another Jan 6th, debating whether we can even have another free and fair election again.
But Tankies act like you’re the bad guy for not wanting to disestablish NATO, bunch of CCP cucks the lot of them.
Tucker Carlson wants us to side with Russia in a war on China.
And the MSNBC response is "We should be at war with both of them!"
Insanity. But if you disagree, you're the tankie.
- “voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism”
I've been hearing substantial amounts of "If you're not voting for Biden then you're implicitly endorsing Fascism". Perhaps this is just reflexive push-back?
- “the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic”
If you've ever actually dealt with babies before - with one particular anatomical difference that makes changing a diaper more exciting - there's not much about them that screams "gender" until parents make a big show of color-coding. And there's definitely a lot of goofy phrenology-tier bullshit that goes into "Blue is For Boys and Pink is for Girls".
There's definitely a degree of transphobia that goes into people who are insecure about their boy baby wearing girl colors. And I've seen quite a few dime-story psychiatrists insist that infants can be "turned" gay based on insufficiently gendered living spaces or treatments. The most consistently crazy claim I've seen is that when male babies are breast fed for too long, they become "sissified", which can range from becoming cis-homo to trans-hetero depending on who you ask.
It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian
Well, let's maybe take a step back and first ask which one of these people are endorsing the bombing of an abortion clinic.
If you’ve ever actually dealt with babies before - with one particular anatomical difference that makes changing a diaper more exciting - there’s not much about them that screams “gender” until parents make a big show of color-coding. And there’s definitely a lot of goofy phrenology-tier bullshit that goes into “Blue is For Boys and Pink is for Girls”.
Also, I've never heard anyone say that naming a baby is transphobic.
Far less the naming than the fanfare in gendering.
I think it would be less of a big deal if so many fights over gender revolve around what's written on a birth certificate. But because that's the battlefield, people are more reticent of what goes into creating it.
Oh my god. Tumblr's reading comprehension is better than this.
I'm not saying your political opinions are the same as those of the right. I'm saying you use the same bad faith tactics that they do to spread them.
Namely, you both believe that nothing short of perfection on the first go is worth pursuing, and anyone who dares to pursue it is at best wasting their efforts and at worst a traitor to the cause.
I’m saying you use the same bad faith tactics
Uh-huh
Namely, you both believe that nothing short of perfection on the first go
Biden has been in office since 1973. Crack open the '94 Crime Bill, the '05 Bankruptcy Bill, and the How Does This Keep Getting Worse Every Time They Renewed It Patriot Act.
We are well past his first go and nowhere in the ballpark of perfection.
I love calling a genocide "short of perfection".
It's brilliant.
American progressives are crying for what’s already working in Europe. I am not sure the European norm is that revolutionary, tbh. But it’s “revolutionary” for Americans.
Not at all what's being talked about in this post. More like the people wanting a civil war that will result in the deaths of millions.
I don't know that most people actually want it so much as they're tired of all the edging
Ah yeah, I didn’t read OPs body text. The authoritarian left and right are equally repulsive to most people. It’s always a small, but vocal minority that moves the needle on any issue, but not till they can get some kind of common ground with the masses. Advocating for extremist transformations is never going to fly.
So coming back to my original post, it would be “revolutionary” for America to become like progressive European countries w.r.t social policies.
Look. A lot of people are sick of what looks an awful lot like bullshit. We've seen what liberal politics gets us. We see that the victories of the past were won in spite of liberal moderates, rather than with their cooperation. If you find more people taking hard line stances, maybe it is self defense against being dragged into mealy mouthed excuses about why we have to vote for leaders who support genocides.
We've seen what liberal politics gets us:
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Fighting to Slow and Reverse the Effects of Climate Change
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Free Libraries
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Free or Cheap Public Transit
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Free Schooling
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Free Daycare
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Free Medical Care
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Paid Sick Leave
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Paid Maternal Leave
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Border Policies That Accept Good People and More Effectively Removes The Bad
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Protections for Human Rights
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Separation of Church and State
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Right to Love Whoever You Want to Love
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Reluctance to Enter Foreign Wars
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Better Economies
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Lower Deficits
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Free Care for Chronic Mental Illnesses
But sure, BoTh sIdES baD, Vi JinPeeng the Pooh can save us! RusSiA iS wInnING thE WAr aGaInST wHiTE SuPReMaCIsT aNtI-cHrIStianS
Are you kidding? Almost none of these points are true. We have almost none of these points besides libraries which are constantly being refunded, and schools that are all but useless.
We are doing nothing more than a token effort to fight the climate collapse, no such thing as free daycare, there is not free medical care, paid maternal leave is laughably short, and so on.
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And your solution is reverting to authoritarianism?
There are leftist ideas which don't route through autocracy, but for whatever reason internet leftists seem to hate these just as much as they hate... everything else. That leaves many to conclude that they are more interested in campism and dumb revolutionary fan service than actual leftist ideas.
Wouldn't these people want to choose their opposition by voting? I assume it would be easier to win victories in a liberal democracy than a Russia-like authoritarian state (which the GOP seems like they're shooting for).
Sure trash is gonna act like trash. They want their fascist orange tumor to get back in so they can be violent and anti american.
Outside of the word "capitalist," literally nothing presented in the top half of the image is even political, let alone authoritarian 🙄 it kinda seems like you're just using popular negative words against things you dislike.
"Any attempt at actual progress makes you a liberal" isn't political? "I have a right to tell you what media you should watch" isn't political?
What are you talking about?
You know, "Any attempt to make actual progress makes you a lukewarm Christian" is kind of a weird and ambiguous statement and seems like someone was working backwards from the starting point of being anti-leftist.
Related: one glaring thing of note is anti-leftist sentiment routinely conflates liberal and leftist together.
How can one tell the difference between someone who truly believes that and a redcap cosplaying as a "leftist" to wedge drive?
The right wing has spent generations embedding themselves into corridors of power, from the local school board up to and including the supreme court.
A huge number of the left wing typically don't even vote. So then when the left do get energized but it's not enough to stem the tide or accomplish too much, because they didn't invest in the long game... then they start this hyper-ideological, cultural revolution style thinking. It's exhausting.
Folks, your opponents put in the effort while you just showed up for the test.
A huge number of the left wing typically don’t even vote.
I've voted in every election since 2004. I've campaigned for folks running from City Council to Senate and donated well into the tens of thousands of dollars.
I know quite a few people more left wing than me who go farther. Salting workplaces to help organize unions. Spending 100s of hours on pro bono legal fights for the wrongfully convicted. Weekends at food banks. Months overseas providing medical aid. Lifetimes caring for adults with Downs Syndrome and children with Leukemia.
None of them get the kind of media exposure or political representation or government assistance as your LibsOfTikTok smear campaign or JD Vance book club.
"Why won't leftists just vote harder?" is the most divorced from reality sentiment. Just painfully disconnected from the real world.
Evangelicals come with serial numbers now?
I mean, how long do you expect people to participate in a game where there is no way to change the outcome for the better? People can act stupid, but that doesn't mean they are stupid - more and more people are starting to see how this spectacle that the political racketeers and their media cronies insist on calling "Democracy!" really works. If you expect people to just bounce back from such realizations and simply "vote strategically" you're in for disappointment.
I'm not USian... but if I was, would I go vote with you? Sure. But that's only because I've had a long time to digest the fact that my vote means absolutely nothing (so-called "representative democracy" is a racket everywhere - not just the US), and would only do it out of solidarity with all the people who are terrified of what is coming next.
I've seen the ways that people have tried to get out the vote for this year's election in the US.. and I'm afraid to report that, so far, it's not working - and that's not your fault..
Yeah there are some funny people out there and I would never have moved over to the left if not for more reasonable people that talk normal and actually engage with ideas.
Marxism and Christianity only share the fact that they contain frameworks for analyzing material reality(Marxism through Materialism and Christianity through representing reality as though it is divine, and thus explainable via the divine), and this post seems to not be willing to honestly engage with Marxism as a concept.
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Marxists do not oppose incremental change. Marxists believe that minor concessions under Capitalism are insufficient to actually fix the underlying problems, and this point of view is built on a thorough understanding of the Marxist critique of Capitalism.
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Marxists do not oppose reform, they just believe it is impossible to do successfully without sliding backward, because the state is built in a manner that supports Capitalism and resists change.
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Marxism is an economic critique of Capitalism, a philosophical framework, and a call to action. It is a complete set of tools to look at the world, analyze it, and how to fix it. In this manner, it can be superficially compared to Christianity, but only on the surface.
That's really it.
So Marxists are not opposed to incremental change, except they actually are. And Marxists are not opposed to reform except they consider it impossible.
What in the Ministry of Truth?
Marxists are not opposed to incremental change. They do not believe incremental change is a bad thing, and do not move against it. Incremental change is a nice-to-have, when revolutionary change is seen as necessary.
Marxists are not opposed to reform. If it is shown to be legitimately possible to reform a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, ie a Capitalist State, into a Socialist one, Marxists would be first in line. However, history has shown this to be extraordinarily difficult to outright impossible, akin to politely asking a bear to stop mauling you, so Marxists seek other methods. Marxists are Materialists, not Idealists.
Hope that helps!
Oh man... This is well stated and clear. But confusing because people from lemmy.ml are irrational and authoritarian. Not sure what to do? Should I confront that confusion? Nah. Fuck it downvote.
Hmmm.... This seems a little hypocritical. fair enough. Downvoting my comment as well.
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Dude, everything on the internet is fake.
Somthing somthing horseshoe theory.
I don't completely agree with your point but I feel it somehow. The question would be : what would be the opposite of this ? As you surely know, compromise, while crucial, also has its dangers.
Wild to me that people actually think liberal democracy isn't authoritarian, it is literally the dictatorship of the bourgiosie
.ml domains always have the goofiest takes.
The owning class gets what they want while the working class seldom does.
You see how flat that line is? The percentage of the public that wants something has very very little effect on policy
The owning class (bourgiosie) has the authority to hand down dictates that the working class (proletariat) must abide by despite have essentially no influence on the nature of those dictates.
This has got to be a troll, right? A liberal democracy is by definition not authoritarian, what do you even think it means?
Nah, I agree with the original point. Liberal Democracy is only one form of Democracy, and is particularly good at resisting popular change and supporting whoever has the money to lobby. You can see in the US, for example, even presidents who win the popular vote, lose!
More direct democratic forms, whether that be direct democracy, participatory economics, parlimentary democracy, industrial democracy, and so forth are all more accountable to the people and capable of positive change that the public desires.
Despite being overwhelmingly popular, the US does not have: Legalized Marijuana, Medicare for All, Student Loan Forgiveness (outside loophole forgiveness), Enshrined Abortion Protection, and more.
Read up on the types of democracy here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_democracy
They have a point for the USAs flavor of democracy specifically. I don’t have a choice on the ballot to vote for a working class person who shares my struggles. My options are those who came from very wealthy families and have tremendous influence.
You need a lot of money and power to get on ballots and to actually win anything. So yeah we have a democracy, but we only get to vote for the wealthy who are largely influenced (or bought and paid for entirely) by corporations and other ultra-wealthy people who want policy written for themselves.
This analogy is a wide stretch. Nice touch pretending that you're persecuted for your brave centrist beliefs and that you have some concerns.
way to present a big strawman, but what can we expect from liberals still clinging to american exceptionalism.
a few layers of irony here lol
The biggest two lemmy servers are militant authoritarian fascists, so I'm surprised you're only seeing it now
Hexbears, already filtered, don't bother
you might want to look up what either of these things are.
"People who say murder is bad are exactly the same as people saying being gay is bad because both say something is bad." You are very smart.
Did you read the post? Like at all?
I'm not saying that conservative Christians and leftists have the same views. I'm saying they use the same bad faith tactics. They believe that nothing short of perfection in a single go is worth pursuing, and that anyone who dares to pursue it is at best wasting their efforts and at worst a traitor.
My comment was more on the original post. You can't just switch the content of a point because another one is made in a similar way and say it's basically the same. Guess i got cautious with all the "Climate change activists are like a religious cult" arguments. Just because two groups are advocating strongly for something doesn't mean one of cant have good arguments and the other one isnt full of shit. That being said, I agree that not willing to compromise to a certain degree or aim for intermediate goals is stupid and not productive.
"Authorianism is bad"
"Wow this guy litteraly sees nothing wrong with murdering gay people!"