What’s the difference between a fascist and an “anarchist” who does everything they can to kneecap the only viable left leaning political party in the US?
There’s no practical difference, just window dressing. They both cheer on oppression and pain for those suffering under Republicans.
And don’t even get me started on communists. Left and right authoritarians, I’ve gotten death threats from both of them. Whether it’s some leftist telling me I would “get the wall” when the Revolution comes or some fucking Republican telling me that the US was only for Christians and that they’ll go after “traitors” soon, you get to the same fucking place at the end of the day. The only real difference is that there’s far more Republicans, and they’re far more organized than left authoritarians.
This is why libs get clowned on so hard. You claim to support “the only viable left leaning political party”, and yet you’re kneecapping large swaths of people on the ground engaging in direct action advancing left leaning values. Remember, segregation wasn’t ended because black people voted, blood was spilt in the streets. Same with the LGBT community, see the stonewall uprising, aka, the first pride parade.
I don’t care how you vote, but if you can’t see the difference between an anarchist engaging in direct action against an oppressive state and fascists doing hate crimes; well, I’d say it’s time to get off your high horse and do a little introspection.
yet you’re kneecapping large swaths of people on the ground engaging in direct action advancing left leaning values
Direct action is meaningless if you’re hostile to building a coalition broad enough to actually gain any significant political power. It doesn’t matter how many lit memes anarchists and communists share on social media and how much they horn on about “direct action,” this is a democracy and without votes going to candidates who can win, it is ultimately meaningless.
You want me to do some introspection? I did. I remember being young and convinced socialism was the way forward. Then I grew the fuck up and did some introspection.
Direct action is meaningless if you’re hostile to building a coalition broad enough to actually gain any significant political power.
Spoken like someone who’s never done organizing, participated in protests or any other direct action. You’re a keyboard warrior who’s probably never even interacted with a socialist IRL.
this is a democracy and without votes going to candidates who can win, it is ultimately meaningless.
Not a democracy and also I already gave 2 examples showing the contrary.
I remember being young and convinced socialism was the way forward. Then I grew the fuck up and did some introspection.
No need to be a condescending dick. I’m also guessing I’m older than you, not that it’s relevant.
I’ve participated in dozens of protests. Protests with political organization can lead to change. Protests without political organization are just yelling at a wall.
No need to be a condescending dick.
If you don’t want someone to take offense at what you write, don’t smugly tell them to learn introspection. Act like an arrogant dick, get treated like an arrogant dick.
Protests with political organization can lead to change. Protests without political organization are just yelling at a wall.
Right… I’m not sure why you think I’m not in favor of organized resistance.
If you don’t want someone to take offense at what you write, don’t smugly tell them to learn introspection. Act like an arrogant dick, get treated like an arrogant dick.
You were doing a “both sides” between anarchists and fascists, eerily similar to Trump, while claiming to be “left leaning”. I think my response was warranted, if not understated. But frankly, that’s plain ignorant.
Like I said, attempting to degrade the only left leaning political coalition means someone is hostile to any sort of positive left leaning activism. If that doesn’t describe a given anarchist, then what I said doesn’t apply to them. If it does, then they might as well be a Trumpster.
Who or what is this sole “left leaning political coalition”? If you’re referring to Democrats they are neither left leaning nor a coalition. They are a center-right political party. Coalition implies multiple parties. And the Democratic party isn’t exactly known for activism, unless you’re counting fundraising events.
And the Democratic party isn’t exactly known for activism
They’re the only hope for getting anything actually done, like the climate change actions taken by Biden. I don’t always agree with the Democratic Party, but nobody other than them or Republicans are organized better than a herd of cats or numerous enough to win office, so…
I’ve participated in dozens of protests. Protests with political organization can lead to change. Protests without political organization are just yelling at a wall.
Protests !== organizing. Organizing achieves political change. Protest does not. Leftists know how to organize, liberals do not.
Liberals don’t know how to organize precisely because the Democratic party dominates the elections. No need to organize when the organization already exists. All they need to do is to “vote blue no matter who”.
Direct action is meaningless if you’re hostile to building a coalition broad enough to actually gain any significant political power
The US isn’t a democracy, you can’t build coalitions with people who want to destroy everything you stand for, direct action got George Floyd justice not votes, and the people you back turned around and decided to fund the police to record levels, it’s a war not an electoral campaign
I remember being young and convinced socialism was the way forward. Then I grew the fuck up and did some introspection.
Do you know how to communicate in anything other than thought terminating clichés?
This is delusional. Direct action absolutely has its place, but all the things you mentioned were ultimately won at the ballot box. As it should be. Don’t let a childish revolution fetish blind you to what constitutes a viable framework for lasting progress.
Edit - “Has.” As in he has a ball. Or she has a textbook.
Not an ML. And certainly don’t think I’m the only leftist. Lots of different types of leftists, many I disagree with. But unless you’re opposed to capitalism, then you’re a liberal, not a leftist.
the only viable left leaning political party in the US
I vote for Democrats because shit, why not? But what is the worth of a party that:
Does not function as a party (single defectors routinely kill major legislation without consequence)
Is incapable of countering the rising tide of fascism, or unwilling to do so
Has no plan to address the Supreme Court, which will continue to kill anything legitimately good if left unchecked
Is too beholden to capital to push even the most tepid climate change legislation (the Green New Deal)
Constantly attacks its left flank, preferring to chase the votes of suburban reactionaries
Isn’t even reliably pro-labor
Tailed popular movements on all sorts of civil rights issues
Still can’t be bothered to even de-schedule marijuana, the most slam-dunk popular policy one could imagine + a huge driver of mass incarceration
Is on basically the same page as Republicans with respect to foreign policy
Generally offers nothing besides “at least we’re not as bad as Republicans, most of the time”
Where is that party going? It’s never going to meaningfully address climate change, it offers only crumbs to the working class, and any social change has to be led from the outside.
the only viable left leaning political party in the US?
There is no “viable left leaning political party in the US” lmao. You are a far right country. Both parties are far right. If you were over here in the UK you would all be tories and even then I’m not sure if that’s far enough right for the average democrat.
Commies and fascists are the same thing because they do the violence. The reasons they do the violence is not relevant.
I, a good democrat, don’t do the violence. Those bodies that keep piling up in other (dirty, evil) countries during Democrat run governments are coincidental. All the funding I give to police departments totally aren’t related to the police blasting people in the streets daily. I know this because my ideology is totally not conservative.
the only viable left leaning political party in the US?
I might be misunderstanding you, so I apologize if that is the case, but if you are referring to the Democrats they are far from left leaning. They aren’t even center leaning.
You can’t even say they have a better track record than the Republicans. They bomb countries as much (or in recent years even more) than the Republicans. They advocate for wars. They fund ICE even more than the Republicans. They stand up just as much for reproductive rights (read: not at all). They just do all of it while waving a rainbow flag.
I really hope you meant the Greens or the CPUSA; which have their own issues but are certainly more left than either the Democrats or Republicans.
I was sure it was gonna be ironic when they started comparing anarchists to fascists, but fun fact: no, they actually mean it.
Anarchists are fascists, everyone. You’ve heard it here first!
I swear, if there’s something liberals hate more than what’s on their right, it’s what’s on their left.
The US has two right wing parties. Never mind nationally, I’ve had Democrat electeds oversee cops “sweeping” encampments just as brutally as any Republican would, what exactly is supposed to be the harm getting reduced here?
The Republican Party is blatantly fascist now. The next time the Republicans get the house, senate, and presidency, you can guarantee women and trans people will no longer have bodily autonomy nation wide. Children will be kidnapped from their lbgt parents and put into the system. All social safety nets will be gutted. Democracy will be eliminated. If they let public education still exist, it will just be used for job training and indoctrination of fascist ideology. They will shoot immigrants at the border instead of just laying traps. They will expand the mass incarceration program to make room for the dissidents and utilize them for more slave labor in prisons.
What’s the difference between a fascist and an “anarchist” who does everything they can to kneecap the only viable left leaning political party in the US?
There’s a viable left leaning political party in the US? What is it?
What’s the difference between a fascist and an “anarchist” who does everything they can to kneecap the only viable left leaning political party in the US?
Sorry which party is this? Dems are not even a remotely left-leaning party. Joe Biden literally criminalized the rail workers using their legal right to strike.
This is also like a children’s picture book-level of understanding of fascism. As if the Dems’ policy of 4 more years of the status quo could prevent fascism at all. That has literally never worked as a way to combat fascism.
No he fuckin did not, the rank and file wanted 14 days, the rank and file pushed for a strike, which union leadership did not want, the rank and file did not vote to sabotage their striking rights, Biden and the Capitalists wanted 0 days and no strike, the Squad “wanted” 7 days and were willing to sacrifice the right to strike despite knowing perfectly well the 7 days bill would die in the Senate
4 days is an insulting crumb to incentivize workers from not engaging in unauthorized slowdown measures, sick and tired of you Blue MAGA slugs
What’s the difference between a fascist and an “anarchist” who does everything they can to kneecap the only viable left leaning political party in the US?
Left leaning? According to who or what? If you said socially progressive there might be a point here, but the democratic party is no where near left wing. And the social progressiveness only serves to take advantage of those being oppressed in order to win votes. It’s hollow, and when people start losing rights (like women and abortion) the Democrats will make 500 excuses about why they can’t do anything, instead of actually doing something. The democratic party serves as a ratchet to kill and absorb left wing movements and keep the acceptable discourse within the sphere of economic liberalism.
I’m begging Americans to read literally anything about their political system from a non American, non Eurocentrist perspective. Begging. I’ll start by linking some here.
The specific combination of factors in the historical formation of U.S. society—dominant “biblical” religious ideology and absence of a workers’ party—has resulted in government by a de facto single party, the party of capital. The two segments that make up this single party share the same fundamental liberalism. Both focus their attention solely on the minority who “participate” in the truncated and powerless democratic life on offer. Each has its supporters in the middle classes, since the working classes seldom vote, and has adapted its language to them. Each encapsulates a conglomerate of segmentary capitalist interests (the “lobbies”) and supporters from various “communities.”
American democracy is today the advanced model of what I call “low-intensity democracy.” It operates on the basis of a complete separation between the management of political life, grounded on the practice of electoral democracy, and the management of economic life, governed by the laws of capital accumulation. Moreover, this separation is not questioned in any substantial way, but is, rather, part of what is called the general consensus. Yet that separation eliminates all the creative potential found in political democracy. It emasculates the representative institutions (parliaments and others), which are made powerless in the face of the “market” whose dictates must be accepted. Marx thought that the construction of a “pure” capitalism in the United States, without any pre-capitalist antecedent, was an advantage for the socialist struggle. I think, on the contrary, that the devastating effects of this “pure” capitalism are the most serious obstacles imaginable.
What’s the actual genuine alternative then where Ukraine doesn’t have to fight to free it’s territory from Russia? A ceasefire is worthless as Russia will build up forces again and just attack, trying to set out what it tried to do for years, take Ukraine under Russian control. And then people such as yourselves will then be criticising Ukraine and the west again when they put up another fight. Ukraine can’t win in your eyes.
I’ve been following the war since February last year and it’s been day after day after day of Russians explicitly targeting civilians, literally machine gunning them down in the streets, shooting at cars with tanks, raping and murdering them, targeted rocket attacks at hospitals, apartment blocks, places where people are trying to seek refuge from the war, stealing Ukrainian children and sending them to Russia, the list just goes on and on. There maybe unfortunate collateral damage from Ukrainian forces, there always is sadly in any war, but it’s highly unlikely that Ukraine are targeting the very people they’re trying to liberate.
US aid isn’t enough to win, only to continue the bloodshed.
That’s a strong argument for the US to drastically increase its aid or even get involved to end the war very quickly. The US and its allies would very likely have the war over within weeks if not literally days. That would be a win win right? No more bloodshed like you said. No more hundreds of Ukrainian or Russian soldiers lives wasted. Ukraine gets it’s territory back. The genocidal Russian imperialists get pushed back to their own borders.
You’re working from a number of false premises - Like the people in the DPR and LPR don’t want to be part of Ukraine, because the Galacian fascists who control the government in Kiev won’t stop trying to kill them. What about the self-determination of people not to be slaughtered by Banderite fascist death squads? What about the self-determinations of Crimeans to finally break with Ukraine after trying for thirty years? Ahh, you will say, but those elections weren’t real, so I can say that no one in any of those regions actually wants to be free of the violence directed at them by hte Rada.
ANd I could go on and on and on but you know what the truth is and you know I’m a lying tankie and blah blah blah we’ve all done this dance before.
If the democrats truly are the only viable “left” option then the only reasonable course of action would be to burn the whole state apparatus down and start anew.
You won’t advocate for that of course because the fact is you don’t really care about things being better, you care about pretending to be on the moral high-ground, so vague platitudes about things getting better in the abstract you get from democrats is just enough for you, because you probably endure no economic hardship and politics is just an extension of sports to you.
The far-right is the most militant and by far outnumbers the far left. Right now, if things were started anew, it would be a new far-right government. A militant far-left uprising would literally just get murdered, and most republican voters would be ok with it.
A course of action that seems obvious to me (I may be wrong) would be for left-wing people to organize within the Democratic party to get left-wing people elected as Democrats. Kinda like the “Tea Party” or MAGA movement.
Is your issue with anarchists or authoritarians? I somehow doubt that anarchists are sending you death threats. Nor do I see anarchists kneecapping the Democrats. Anarchists don’t want a state, though many do vote for the moderate right-wing (not “left leaning”) Democrats simply because they think it’s the right thing to do.
Your sweeping generalizations and attempts to paint all of us with the same brush betray your own lack of knowledge, but don’t worry, I’m sure the planet will last long enough for the Democrats’ slow incremental change, and I’m sure my family in border camps are very thankful to be in liberal concentration camps.
I think you’re giving too much credit to “authoritarianism” as a political dimension beyond those weird conservatives who want ersatz father figure heads of state
Apologizing after saying something stupid is a level of grace we rarely see from the smugtrust
Any objective measure of politics puts them on the right wing. Your only measure is relative. Because you have no ideology whatsoever you have no underpinning with which to judge a political party.
The point isn’t somehow that Conservatives are left wing, but that Democrats aren’t “reformers” either! Most of what they do is “rehabilitate” and I don’t mean that with respect to the criminal code.
they can to kneecap the only viable left leaning political party in the US?
Are you talking about the party that doubled Trump’s deportation numbers, expanded oil drilling and fracking and striped the rail unions of their right to strike? I know you’re not talking about THAT party, you think we’ve all been at brunch and hadn’t been paying attention like you jackasses?
An anarchist is fighting against military/police. A fascist belongs, or wants to, to military/police.
An anarchist is fighting against people who hold some power. A fascist is fighting against people because of their religion or origins.
An anarchist likes to vote and discuss. A fascist likes to follow orders.
An anarchist tends towards decentralization. A fascist tends towards centralization.
This are only some differences but spoiler alert : anarchist and fascist are not the same. They do not act the same way, they do not think the same way.
I understand that you hate them both, it is your point of view, and it’s okay. But please, follow my advice : avoid trying to justify it with sentences as universal and strong as “There is no practical difference”, it makes the whole thing ridiculous.
In the end, saying there is only “one viable […] party”, and even believing in a party itself, are also part of the problem imo. If you truly believe in this sentence, no wonder why you dislike anarchists and why they probably dislike you. But does it imply that either you or them are fascistic ? And if yes, did you considered that it could be you, who are defending a single “viable” party as the only solution, hating on every other option ?
His point was that “anarchist” was in quotes because they self-identify as an anarchist but behave in contradictory way.
And I would say my experience with a few lemmy instances is exactly that. “I am an anarchist” is a way of creating group lines, consisting of the in-group of anarchists, and everyone else in the out-group (fascists and liberals together).
It’s really silly because it’s an inherent contradiction. The point of being an anarchist is that there is no out-group, and yet they’ve just recreated the in-group out-group mentality all over again.
Oh, okay thank you for clarification.
I agree with you, sectarianism is to me one of the biggest problem in far-left groups.
But I still think that this is not enough imo to justify that “There is no practical difference” between them and fascists, even if restricted to their behavior on those communities.
Anyway, i understand this comment better now, thank you <3
Oh yeah, there’s a huge difference between tankies and fascists. Tankies are 10,000% better.
Suppose my only two choices in a vote were between a tankie that punched me in the face and slept with my mother, and a fascist. I would not just vote for the tankie, I would also donate money, canvas for them, and tell all my friends to vote for them.
I think it’s just an online problem, anybody who gets radicalized in an echo chamber loses the plot of their own cause. It’s just optics.
If an “anarchist” is trying to undermine any politician with a realistic chance of making office who is at all sympathetic to efforts at police reform, they’re not fighting the police, they’re fighting reform efforts.
What’s the difference between a fascist and an “anarchist” who does everything they can to kneecap the only viable left leaning political party in the US?
Mutual Aid: A Theory of Evolution is available on Gutenberg. Go learn something.
I will repeat this until the heat-death of the universe:
Personal liberty and self-determination are assailed by many threats: the theocrats, nihilists, corporatists, fascists, and so-called “collectivists”. They all claim to be the true authoritative “voice of the people”.
Extreme authoritarian “leftists”, A.K.A. “tankies” (i.e., apologists for Lenin, Stalin, Mao, the CCP, the DPRK, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Xi Jingping, etc.), are threats to a free, egalitarian, and open society, are just as violently authoritarian as their religious, corporatist, and fascist competitors, and should be treated with the contempt, distrust, and ridicule they deserve.
They claim to speak and fight for the proletariat, promising a new utopia, never before seen, once their revolution executes the last “class-traitor”. In practice, once they’re finished with “seizing the means of production”, they’ll never relinquish control and become the new ruling class. Beware of their cults. Understand what they really are; power over everything and everyone, forever, is what they seek. They want you either as a true believer (a willing pawn) or dead, just like all of the other supposedly benevolent dictators who promised utopias throughout history.
They’ll assume the mantle of an enlightened elite post-revolutionary administration to guide the proletariat to their promised utopia of “each according to their ability, to each according to their need”. In practice, "the party leadership needs the most, because they’re obviously the most able” in reorganizing the economic and political structure of society. The utopia of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” will never exist, only the dictatorship of the “revolutionary party”. Repression and execution await those who question their claims and decisions. These supposed champions of labor are really harbingers of death - of the mind and the body politic.
They’re akin to the pigs in Orwell’s Animal Farm, the loudest voices in the revolution, usurpers of a righteous cause, but a bit “more equal” than everyone else after the farmer is done away with. Fortunately, the pigs, like the farmer, got their comeuppance in the end of the story.
What’s the difference between a fascist, a democrat, and a Republican? At least the fascist makes the trains run on time while he’s running concentration camps and murdering minorities in the streets.
Oh so Title 42 didn’t expand under Biden, and the concentration camps haven’t grown multiple-fold in the last few years? They didn’t put literally record breaking funding into the very police forces that have been proven definitively not only to NOT reduce crime, but to systematically oppress the poor and minorities? The democrats pulled out of all of our foreign invasions and curtailed military industrial spending, closing bases around the world and bringing troops home? They stopped the absurd sanctions regimes intended to specifically starve civilians in many countries around the world?
I guess when you’re a middle class American, you have the luxury of not caring about the explicitly fascist behavior of thecUS government. Those of us in minority groups and the lower classes, and even more so those of us not in the US, don’t have that luxury. US fascism is maintained by force both internally and externally.
The Biden administration ended title 42, kid. And police forces do reduce crime. What’s needed is to get accountability for bad cops and to reform training, not neuter the justice system.
Police forces don’t reduce crime, and it’s laughable that anyone could still think so after this many years of empirical data showing that increasing police presence and funding is not correlated with a decrease in criminality. Improving economic conditions for lower classes, however, is correlated with reduction in criminality.
Biden admin didn’t end title 42, they ended the pandemic which prevented them from continuing the policy(and also resulted in the eviction of thousands of people and is implicated in the current covid wave by ending free testing), and so now they’ve gone back to Trump Era policy of refusal at the border for anyone who came through another country along the way, a definitive violation of international refugee laws. Even that only happened after years of use of Title 42 to deport hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants a year.
Also note how you ignored the concentration camps on the border… do you support their existence?
Yes, police forces do reduce crime. That’s long been established in social science. I don’t care what your ideology is, if you’re denying reality, then I don’t know what the point of having a conversation with you is.
And I’m glad you admitted that the Biden administration ended Title 42.
Lmao. Still nothing on the concentration camps, nor their expansion under Biden, nor the illegal use of Trumps pre-covid policy, and nothing but apologia for Biden using title 42 for 2 full years to deport well over a million refugees.
If it were the case that more police means less crime, crime rates around the country would be at record low rates after the billions of dollars pumped into law enforcement by the federal government. Not to mention that the average city spends between 30-60% of its entire yearly budget on police forces. Is your belief that if they increase that to 70%, 80%, 100%, it will reduce crime? Do you not realize funding is indeed a zero sum game, and that putting more money into police necessarily means putting less money into social programs that have shown actual efficacy in reducing criminality?
Left is literally the opposite of authoritarian. You seem to be conflating a whole lot of ideas and terminology here. You sound like an ideological leftist who has been confused by the right’s deliberate language-muddying.
Left is egalitarian. That takes many different forms: socialism, communism, direct democracy, anarchism, etc.
Right is authoritarian. That also takes many different forms: monarchy, feudalism, oligarchy, corporatism, etc.
Authoritarianism (or vertical/hierarchical power structure) is THE defining characteristic of the right. “Auth-left” is Doublethink; an oxymoron meant to distract from the fact that wealth and power are one and the same.
State-imposed collectivism is left-leaning authoritarianism. It is the authoritarian and non-voluntary implementation of leftist economic policy. It is an extremely simple concept that I cant fathom how you aren’t able to grasp.
Um, “the state” is whatever the government is. Are you actually suggesting that True Anarchy is the only leftist organizational structure that can fit the definition of “Leftist”? Because that’s what you are alluding to.
Also, you absolutely did not provide the “definitions of left and right”. These definitions aren’t even universally agreed upon. I am assuming you mean “Liberalism and Conservatism” when you say “left and right”, and it is just untrue that Liberalism is incompatible with authoritarianism, and it is equally untrue that conservatism must be accompanied by authoritarianism. For example, Libertarianism is a patently right-leaning ideology that completely rejects authoritarianism. At the same time, communism is state-imposed redistribution of economic means; that is 100% undeniably a left-leaning ideology that accepts and implements authoritarianism.
I am assuming you mean “Liberalism and Conservatism” when you say “left and right”
I do not, because those are not the same thing in the same way buttered toast is not a pizza. Liberalism is “centrist”. It appears egalitarian at first glance, but if focuses heavily (if not entirely) on means rather than ends, allowing for (and even encouraging) consolidation of wealth & power; that is: rightward drift. “Conservatism” is a relative term, not an absolute.
Libertarianism is a patently right-leaning ideology that completely rejects authoritarianism.
Libertarianism’s origins are leftist/anarchist, but the term itself has recently been co-opted by rightists and liberals the same way authoritarians always always co-opt leftist terms.
communism is state-imposed redistribution of economic means; that is 100% undeniably a left-leaning ideology that accepts and implements authoritarianism.
That is not the definition of communism. Regardless of what you think about Marxist concepts themselves (or their feasibility) Marxism/Communism requires the “withering away of the state.” So long as there is entrenched leadership, that society is not leftist in the same way the Nazis were not socialist, and Republicans are not “pro-life”. And yes, that means the USSR was right wing, not left. At no point did the USSR meet the criteria or definition of communism. The definitions lead to the label, not the other way around.
Regardless of what you think about Marxist concepts themselves (or their feasibility) Marxism/Communism requires the “withering away of the state.” So long as there is entrenched leadership, that society is not leftist in the same way the Nazis were not socialist, and Republicans are not “pro-life”. And yes, that means the USSR was right wing, not left. At no point did the USSR meet the criteria or definition of communism. The definitions lead to the label, not the other way around.
I have disagreed with almost everything you have said, and am likely a member of the group you are railing against in this discussion. However, IMO you are spot on here.
Thank you for that. Keep this in mind though: I’m just saying the same thing over and over in different ways each time.
“Auth-left” is just another kind of “both-siding”. It’s rightists claiming that other rightists are actually leftists so that the masses will be too afraid to consider actual leftist proposals seriously.
Leftist/egalitarian systems tend to be inherently unstable because of the existence of human greed. Greed will always lead to certain people trying, and succeeding, to hoard wealth and power for themselves. I refer to this as “rightward pressure”. The trick is pushing the dial as far left as possible while ensuring it remains stable and preventing rightward drift.
Lenin and other revolutionaries recognized this catch a long time ago, and so tried to justify “temporary tyranny” as a means to establish a leftist ends. Lenin didn’t have a lot of success with that in life; then upon Lenin’s death, Stalin seized power and never let it go… meaning that for all the suffering and bloodshed, Lenin and his Bolsheviks merely traded one right wing dictator/Tzar for another. Same story in China… And North Korea… And Cuba…
On the flip-side you have liberalism; which are leftist means that deliberately ignores “rightward pressure”, eventually resulting in rightist ends… as wealth and power accumulate and snowball for a few at the expense of the many (e.g. “late stage capitalism”).
So the question is: given that people are selfish and greedy, and any rightward movement cannot be safely considered temporary; how do we reach leftist ends while using only leftist means?
My personal stance? Democracy. We use Democracy to bolster Democracy a bit at a time… and the first thing we need to do to make that possible in implement a very aggressive progressive taxation system that caps how much wealth (and therefore power) any one individual or entity can control. Until we can fix that one thing, the politicians will continue to control the public instead of the other way around. That is the essence of leftism.
I consider myself a leftist, not a liberal, but looking at the totality of your comments, I’m doubtful you consider me one.
However, I’m also in the camp of “I have one party I can vote for who leans more to the right than I wish they did, and another who is literally courting fascism in the short term. So why are you busting my balls?” 😁
Authoritarianism (or vertical/hierarchical power structure) is THE defining characteristic of the right. “Auth-left” is Doublethink; an oxymoron meant to distract from the fact that wealth and power are one and the same.
This is so incredibly naive. Stalin? Mao? Evil authoritarianism comes in all flavors left and right. If you truly believe leftists aren’t capable of evil you need to study more history.
Not a Marxist, but I won’t tolerate deliberately lying about terminology or muddying language. That’s a bad faith authoritarian/rightist tactic and I won’t let it slide.
Authoritarianism is literally a defining feature of communism. Redefining terms to escape the reality of what ideologies look like when implemented is just dishonest.
Communism literally - by Marx and Engel’s own definition - requires the “withering away of the state”. As the creators and originators of the very concept of “communism”, can you name one society that has met their criteria or achieved the goals laid out in their definition?
Yes, I understand that Marx and Engels did not have realistic political ideals and that every attempt to implement their ideology has diverged from their utopian vision into authoritarianism when reality hits that ideology. That’s the point.
Yes, I understand that Marx and Engels did not have realistic political ideals
Have you read any of Marx? I’m not an ML but if you even glance at Capital you can tell that Marx’s whole schtick was using science to come up with realistic political ideals.
I see you moved the goal post to a different field.
If you want to criticize the specifics of Marx/Engels proposals, that is very different than - whether by ignorance or malice - outright lying about them.
What’s the difference between a fascist and an “anarchist” who does everything they can to kneecap the only viable left leaning political party in the US?
what’s the difference between a cuckold and someone who votes for racist, homophobic, classicist establishment politicians no matter what; there is no difference.
Whatever lies you have to tell to make sure America gets worse, I guess. No honest, thinking human being could think there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. That’s how we all know people like you are either useful idiots or just cosplaying Republicans.
What’s the difference between a fascist and an “anarchist” who does everything they can to kneecap the only viable left leaning political party in the US?
There’s no practical difference, just window dressing. They both cheer on oppression and pain for those suffering under Republicans.
And don’t even get me started on communists. Left and right authoritarians, I’ve gotten death threats from both of them. Whether it’s some leftist telling me I would “get the wall” when the Revolution comes or some fucking Republican telling me that the US was only for Christians and that they’ll go after “traitors” soon, you get to the same fucking place at the end of the day. The only real difference is that there’s far more Republicans, and they’re far more organized than left authoritarians.
bOtH sIdEs
This is why libs get clowned on so hard. You claim to support “the only viable left leaning political party”, and yet you’re kneecapping large swaths of people on the ground engaging in direct action advancing left leaning values. Remember, segregation wasn’t ended because black people voted, blood was spilt in the streets. Same with the LGBT community, see the stonewall uprising, aka, the first pride parade.
I don’t care how you vote, but if you can’t see the difference between an anarchist engaging in direct action against an oppressive state and fascists doing hate crimes; well, I’d say it’s time to get off your high horse and do a little introspection.
Direct action is meaningless if you’re hostile to building a coalition broad enough to actually gain any significant political power. It doesn’t matter how many lit memes anarchists and communists share on social media and how much they horn on about “direct action,” this is a democracy and without votes going to candidates who can win, it is ultimately meaningless.
You want me to do some introspection? I did. I remember being young and convinced socialism was the way forward. Then I grew the fuck up and did some introspection.
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They must mean that referendum we had to overturn Roe v. Wade, or the one that got us universal healthcare
No I think they mean the 2016 Democrat primary and the subsequent election
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Spoken like someone who’s never done organizing, participated in protests or any other direct action. You’re a keyboard warrior who’s probably never even interacted with a socialist IRL.
Not a democracy and also I already gave 2 examples showing the contrary.
No need to be a condescending dick. I’m also guessing I’m older than you, not that it’s relevant.
I’ve participated in dozens of protests. Protests with political organization can lead to change. Protests without political organization are just yelling at a wall.
If you don’t want someone to take offense at what you write, don’t smugly tell them to learn introspection. Act like an arrogant dick, get treated like an arrogant dick.
Right… I’m not sure why you think I’m not in favor of organized resistance.
You were doing a “both sides” between anarchists and fascists, eerily similar to Trump, while claiming to be “left leaning”. I think my response was warranted, if not understated. But frankly, that’s plain ignorant.
Like I said, attempting to degrade the only left leaning political coalition means someone is hostile to any sort of positive left leaning activism. If that doesn’t describe a given anarchist, then what I said doesn’t apply to them. If it does, then they might as well be a Trumpster.
Who or what is this sole “left leaning political coalition”? If you’re referring to Democrats they are neither left leaning nor a coalition. They are a center-right political party. Coalition implies multiple parties. And the Democratic party isn’t exactly known for activism, unless you’re counting fundraising events.
Suuuuuure they’re right leaning.
They’re the only hope for getting anything actually done, like the climate change actions taken by Biden. I don’t always agree with the Democratic Party, but nobody other than them or Republicans are organized better than a herd of cats or numerous enough to win office, so…
Protests !== organizing. Organizing achieves political change. Protest does not. Leftists know how to organize, liberals do not.
If liberals don’t know how to organize and leftists do, why does the Democratic party dominate elections
Have you heard of COINTELPRO?
Because leftists understand that actual progress doesn’t come from voting?
Have you heard of capitalism?
Liberals don’t know how to organize precisely because the Democratic party dominates the elections. No need to organize when the organization already exists. All they need to do is to “vote blue no matter who”.
This is unnecessary aggro, and you are the only one here making sweeping assumptions.
Nah, the other fellow is too
Did you actually do any studying about socialism during this phase, or is this the “Che Guevara T-Shirt” socialism I’ve heard so much about?
We both know it wasn’t even Che Guevara T-Shirt socialism. It was definitely “I think the nordic model is pretty cool” socialism.
The US isn’t a democracy, you can’t build coalitions with people who want to destroy everything you stand for, direct action got George Floyd justice not votes, and the people you back turned around and decided to fund the police to record levels, it’s a war not an electoral campaign
Do you know how to communicate in anything other than thought terminating clichés?
The Democrats have significant political power how’s that working out?
This is delusional. Direct action absolutely has its place, but all the things you mentioned were ultimately won at the ballot box. As it should be. Don’t let a childish revolution fetish blind you to what constitutes a viable framework for lasting progress.
Edit - “Has.” As in he has a ball. Or she has a textbook.
It’s funny how libs think they can tell me when direct action is necessary, and it’s always in the past tense, never in the present.
It’s funny when ML thinks they are the only leftists
Not an ML. And certainly don’t think I’m the only leftist. Lots of different types of leftists, many I disagree with. But unless you’re opposed to capitalism, then you’re a liberal, not a leftist.
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Yup, like I said, lots of leftists I disagree with. That includes ML’s. What’s your point exactly?
My point is that I got you confused for a different poster. Please accept my deepest apologies.
Liberals aren’t leftists, but there’s a whole world of political thought to the left of liberals.
I am a ML and everything I have seen of Jenkem’s posting here makes me think they are probably a leftist.
We probably don’t agree on everything, but they’re no liberal.
Hey now. Anarchists and Maoists and a bunch of others are leftists too.
Liberals are not.
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Can you define direct action for me? What do you think it is?
Minneapolis May 28, 2020
I vote for Democrats because shit, why not? But what is the worth of a party that:
Where is that party going? It’s never going to meaningfully address climate change, it offers only crumbs to the working class, and any social change has to be led from the outside.
Left unity is everyone dunking on this trash take.
Aye! 🚩🏴
There is no “viable left leaning political party in the US” lmao. You are a far right country. Both parties are far right. If you were over here in the UK you would all be tories and even then I’m not sure if that’s far enough right for the average democrat.
yeah a lot of dems are far right enough they’d probably be labour
Commies and fascists are the same thing because they do the violence. The reasons they do the violence is not relevant.
I, a good democrat, don’t do the violence. Those bodies that keep piling up in other (dirty, evil) countries during Democrat run governments are coincidental. All the funding I give to police departments totally aren’t related to the police blasting people in the streets daily. I know this because my ideology is totally not conservative.
I might be misunderstanding you, so I apologize if that is the case, but if you are referring to the Democrats they are far from left leaning. They aren’t even center leaning.
You can’t even say they have a better track record than the Republicans. They bomb countries as much (or in recent years even more) than the Republicans. They advocate for wars. They fund ICE even more than the Republicans. They stand up just as much for reproductive rights (read: not at all). They just do all of it while waving a rainbow flag.
I really hope you meant the Greens or the CPUSA; which have their own issues but are certainly more left than either the Democrats or Republicans.
I think they must be referring to the SALT party in Seattle.
Link to them bombing more than Republicans? And also several blue states have abortion rights and protections while the red states have none.
Whatever lies you need to tell yourself, I guess.
Lmao what a pathetic response
If you mean the Democrats (which you must to say ““viable””) you are too lost in the sauce.
“Come on guys, we should back the Strassers. They aren’t perfect but come on!”
I really want to know what you said before the communist told you that you deserved the wall
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This comment is giving me so much whiplash.
I was sure it was gonna be ironic when they started comparing anarchists to fascists, but fun fact: no, they actually mean it. Anarchists are fascists, everyone. You’ve heard it here first!
I swear, if there’s something liberals hate more than what’s on their right, it’s what’s on their left.
Vibes based politics is endemic among liberals. We try to help them but it’s mostly futile.
Absolute potato brained worldview
That’s not fair to Estonians. This can only come from the mind of a Burgerländer.
idk I saw some pretty awful posts from the Estonian admin of lemm.ee
The US has two right wing parties. Never mind nationally, I’ve had Democrat electeds oversee cops “sweeping” encampments just as brutally as any Republican would, what exactly is supposed to be the harm getting reduced here?
The Republican Party is blatantly fascist now. The next time the Republicans get the house, senate, and presidency, you can guarantee women and trans people will no longer have bodily autonomy nation wide. Children will be kidnapped from their lbgt parents and put into the system. All social safety nets will be gutted. Democracy will be eliminated. If they let public education still exist, it will just be used for job training and indoctrination of fascist ideology. They will shoot immigrants at the border instead of just laying traps. They will expand the mass incarceration program to make room for the dissidents and utilize them for more slave labor in prisons.
Basically, the U.S. will become Russia.
There’s a viable left leaning political party in the US? What is it?
Sorry which party is this? Dems are not even a remotely left-leaning party. Joe Biden literally criminalized the rail workers using their legal right to strike.
This is also like a children’s picture book-level of understanding of fascism. As if the Dems’ policy of 4 more years of the status quo could prevent fascism at all. That has literally never worked as a way to combat fascism.
And then used his platform and office to force the rail companies to address their concerns. You fucks are so dishonest
A bad deal that didn’t get close to meeting the unions demands is not “addressing their concerns”
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No he fuckin did not, the rank and file wanted 14 days, the rank and file pushed for a strike, which union leadership did not want, the rank and file did not vote to sabotage their striking rights, Biden and the Capitalists wanted 0 days and no strike, the Squad “wanted” 7 days and were willing to sacrifice the right to strike despite knowing perfectly well the 7 days bill would die in the Senate
4 days is an insulting crumb to incentivize workers from not engaging in unauthorized slowdown measures, sick and tired of you Blue MAGA slugs
Do you have a source for this? I have never heard the other side of this story so I am interested.
This happened right before CSX announced an agreement on sick leave
https://www.reuters.com/business/white-house-renews-pressure-railroads-over-paid-sick-leave-2023-02-09/
Left leaning? According to who or what? If you said socially progressive there might be a point here, but the democratic party is no where near left wing. And the social progressiveness only serves to take advantage of those being oppressed in order to win votes. It’s hollow, and when people start losing rights (like women and abortion) the Democrats will make 500 excuses about why they can’t do anything, instead of actually doing something. The democratic party serves as a ratchet to kill and absorb left wing movements and keep the acceptable discourse within the sphere of economic liberalism.
I’m begging Americans to read literally anything about their political system from a non American, non Eurocentrist perspective. Begging. I’ll start by linking some here.
Samir Amin, Revolution From North To South
You should look up who created lemmy.
we have one of those? what’s the name of the party?
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TIL you have to endorse letting the Ukrainians fall to fascist imperialism to be on the left
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What’s the actual genuine alternative then where Ukraine doesn’t have to fight to free it’s territory from Russia? A ceasefire is worthless as Russia will build up forces again and just attack, trying to set out what it tried to do for years, take Ukraine under Russian control. And then people such as yourselves will then be criticising Ukraine and the west again when they put up another fight. Ukraine can’t win in your eyes.
I’ve been following the war since February last year and it’s been day after day after day of Russians explicitly targeting civilians, literally machine gunning them down in the streets, shooting at cars with tanks, raping and murdering them, targeted rocket attacks at hospitals, apartment blocks, places where people are trying to seek refuge from the war, stealing Ukrainian children and sending them to Russia, the list just goes on and on. There maybe unfortunate collateral damage from Ukrainian forces, there always is sadly in any war, but it’s highly unlikely that Ukraine are targeting the very people they’re trying to liberate.
That’s a strong argument for the US to drastically increase its aid or even get involved to end the war very quickly. The US and its allies would very likely have the war over within weeks if not literally days. That would be a win win right? No more bloodshed like you said. No more hundreds of Ukrainian or Russian soldiers lives wasted. Ukraine gets it’s territory back. The genocidal Russian imperialists get pushed back to their own borders.
You’re working from a number of false premises - Like the people in the DPR and LPR don’t want to be part of Ukraine, because the Galacian fascists who control the government in Kiev won’t stop trying to kill them. What about the self-determination of people not to be slaughtered by Banderite fascist death squads? What about the self-determinations of Crimeans to finally break with Ukraine after trying for thirty years? Ahh, you will say, but those elections weren’t real, so I can say that no one in any of those regions actually wants to be free of the violence directed at them by hte Rada.
ANd I could go on and on and on but you know what the truth is and you know I’m a lying tankie and blah blah blah we’ve all done this dance before.
Ukraine is winning the war, fash.
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Bakhmut was a unequivocal Ukranian victory, what are you talking about?
Ok fash
You tell these commies bro, our hero Zeleksny has already sworn to led the white race to victory
Nice cope
TIL you have to endorse letting the Ukrainians ethically cleanse the Donbass and Crimea to be on the left
No no, we want NATO out of Ukraine
And damn what the Ukrainians want!
“the Ukrainians” are not a monolith. You may be aware that a civil war raged for 8 years before Russia invaded?
“The Ukranians, they yearn for the trenches.”
This is
If the democrats truly are the only viable “left” option then the only reasonable course of action would be to burn the whole state apparatus down and start anew.
You won’t advocate for that of course because the fact is you don’t really care about things being better, you care about pretending to be on the moral high-ground, so vague platitudes about things getting better in the abstract you get from democrats is just enough for you, because you probably endure no economic hardship and politics is just an extension of sports to you.
The far-right is the most militant and by far outnumbers the far left. Right now, if things were started anew, it would be a new far-right government. A militant far-left uprising would literally just get murdered, and most republican voters would be ok with it.
A course of action that seems obvious to me (I may be wrong) would be for left-wing people to organize within the Democratic party to get left-wing people elected as Democrats. Kinda like the “Tea Party” or MAGA movement.
Is your issue with anarchists or authoritarians? I somehow doubt that anarchists are sending you death threats. Nor do I see anarchists kneecapping the Democrats. Anarchists don’t want a state, though many do vote for the moderate right-wing (not “left leaning”) Democrats simply because they think it’s the right thing to do.
Your sweeping generalizations and attempts to paint all of us with the same brush betray your own lack of knowledge, but don’t worry, I’m sure the planet will last long enough for the Democrats’ slow incremental change, and I’m sure my family in border camps are very thankful to be in liberal concentration camps.
I think you’re giving too much credit to “authoritarianism” as a political dimension beyond those weird conservatives who want ersatz father figure heads of state
Nah I believe it a lot of Anarchists are fighty and wouldn’t be nearly as indulgent with this absurdity as we are.
Democrats aren’t right wing, sorry. Conservatives aren’t reformers.
Apologizing after saying something stupid is a level of grace we rarely see from the smugtrust
Any objective measure of politics puts them on the right wing. Your only measure is relative. Because you have no ideology whatsoever you have no underpinning with which to judge a political party.
The point isn’t somehow that Conservatives are left wing, but that Democrats aren’t “reformers” either! Most of what they do is “rehabilitate” and I don’t mean that with respect to the criminal code.
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Democrats are right wing because they uphold capitalism and advance imperialism. Conservatives aren’t reformers, but neither are Democrats, “sorry.”
Nobody outside of your own circlejerk will take your politics seriously if you define the center as the abolition of capital
Are you talking about the party that doubled Trump’s deportation numbers, expanded oil drilling and fracking and striped the rail unions of their right to strike? I know you’re not talking about THAT party, you think we’ve all been at brunch and hadn’t been paying attention like you jackasses?
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An anarchist is fighting against military/police. A fascist belongs, or wants to, to military/police. An anarchist is fighting against people who hold some power. A fascist is fighting against people because of their religion or origins. An anarchist likes to vote and discuss. A fascist likes to follow orders. An anarchist tends towards decentralization. A fascist tends towards centralization.
This are only some differences but spoiler alert : anarchist and fascist are not the same. They do not act the same way, they do not think the same way.
I understand that you hate them both, it is your point of view, and it’s okay. But please, follow my advice : avoid trying to justify it with sentences as universal and strong as “There is no practical difference”, it makes the whole thing ridiculous.
In the end, saying there is only “one viable […] party”, and even believing in a party itself, are also part of the problem imo. If you truly believe in this sentence, no wonder why you dislike anarchists and why they probably dislike you. But does it imply that either you or them are fascistic ? And if yes, did you considered that it could be you, who are defending a single “viable” party as the only solution, hating on every other option ?
His point was that “anarchist” was in quotes because they self-identify as an anarchist but behave in contradictory way.
And I would say my experience with a few lemmy instances is exactly that. “I am an anarchist” is a way of creating group lines, consisting of the in-group of anarchists, and everyone else in the out-group (fascists and liberals together).
It’s really silly because it’s an inherent contradiction. The point of being an anarchist is that there is no out-group, and yet they’ve just recreated the in-group out-group mentality all over again.
Oh, okay thank you for clarification. I agree with you, sectarianism is to me one of the biggest problem in far-left groups. But I still think that this is not enough imo to justify that “There is no practical difference” between them and fascists, even if restricted to their behavior on those communities. Anyway, i understand this comment better now, thank you <3
Oh yeah, there’s a huge difference between tankies and fascists. Tankies are 10,000% better.
Suppose my only two choices in a vote were between a tankie that punched me in the face and slept with my mother, and a fascist. I would not just vote for the tankie, I would also donate money, canvas for them, and tell all my friends to vote for them.
I think it’s just an online problem, anybody who gets radicalized in an echo chamber loses the plot of their own cause. It’s just optics.
If an “anarchist” is trying to undermine any politician with a realistic chance of making office who is at all sympathetic to efforts at police reform, they’re not fighting the police, they’re fighting reform efforts.
Don’t lump anarchists with way too online MLs.
That’s why I am specifically criticizing people who spend all their time undermining the Democrats rather than trying to engage in real activism
Mutual Aid: A Theory of Evolution is available on Gutenberg. Go learn something.
I will repeat this until the heat-death of the universe:
What’s the difference between a fascist, a democrat, and a Republican? At least the fascist makes the trains run on time while he’s running concentration camps and murdering minorities in the streets.
You’re deranged.
Oh so Title 42 didn’t expand under Biden, and the concentration camps haven’t grown multiple-fold in the last few years? They didn’t put literally record breaking funding into the very police forces that have been proven definitively not only to NOT reduce crime, but to systematically oppress the poor and minorities? The democrats pulled out of all of our foreign invasions and curtailed military industrial spending, closing bases around the world and bringing troops home? They stopped the absurd sanctions regimes intended to specifically starve civilians in many countries around the world?
I guess when you’re a middle class American, you have the luxury of not caring about the explicitly fascist behavior of thecUS government. Those of us in minority groups and the lower classes, and even more so those of us not in the US, don’t have that luxury. US fascism is maintained by force both internally and externally.
The Biden administration ended title 42, kid. And police forces do reduce crime. What’s needed is to get accountability for bad cops and to reform training, not neuter the justice system.
You’re such an arrogant dick in your ignorance.
Police forces don’t reduce crime, and it’s laughable that anyone could still think so after this many years of empirical data showing that increasing police presence and funding is not correlated with a decrease in criminality. Improving economic conditions for lower classes, however, is correlated with reduction in criminality.
Biden admin didn’t end title 42, they ended the pandemic which prevented them from continuing the policy(and also resulted in the eviction of thousands of people and is implicated in the current covid wave by ending free testing), and so now they’ve gone back to Trump Era policy of refusal at the border for anyone who came through another country along the way, a definitive violation of international refugee laws. Even that only happened after years of use of Title 42 to deport hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants a year.
Also note how you ignored the concentration camps on the border… do you support their existence?
Yes, police forces do reduce crime. That’s long been established in social science. I don’t care what your ideology is, if you’re denying reality, then I don’t know what the point of having a conversation with you is.
And I’m glad you admitted that the Biden administration ended Title 42.
Lmao. Still nothing on the concentration camps, nor their expansion under Biden, nor the illegal use of Trumps pre-covid policy, and nothing but apologia for Biden using title 42 for 2 full years to deport well over a million refugees.
If it were the case that more police means less crime, crime rates around the country would be at record low rates after the billions of dollars pumped into law enforcement by the federal government. Not to mention that the average city spends between 30-60% of its entire yearly budget on police forces. Is your belief that if they increase that to 70%, 80%, 100%, it will reduce crime? Do you not realize funding is indeed a zero sum game, and that putting more money into police necessarily means putting less money into social programs that have shown actual efficacy in reducing criminality?
Left is literally the opposite of authoritarian. You seem to be conflating a whole lot of ideas and terminology here. You sound like an ideological leftist who has been confused by the right’s deliberate language-muddying.
Left is egalitarian. That takes many different forms: socialism, communism, direct democracy, anarchism, etc.
Right is authoritarian. That also takes many different forms: monarchy, feudalism, oligarchy, corporatism, etc.
Authoritarianism (or vertical/hierarchical power structure) is THE defining characteristic of the right. “Auth-left” is Doublethink; an oxymoron meant to distract from the fact that wealth and power are one and the same.
State-imposed collectivism is left-leaning authoritarianism. It is the authoritarian and non-voluntary implementation of leftist economic policy. It is an extremely simple concept that I cant fathom how you aren’t able to grasp.
This is very easy. I provided the definitions of left and right.
Think about what you mean by “the state”. Which definition does it fit?
Um, “the state” is whatever the government is. Are you actually suggesting that True Anarchy is the only leftist organizational structure that can fit the definition of “Leftist”? Because that’s what you are alluding to.
Also, you absolutely did not provide the “definitions of left and right”. These definitions aren’t even universally agreed upon. I am assuming you mean “Liberalism and Conservatism” when you say “left and right”, and it is just untrue that Liberalism is incompatible with authoritarianism, and it is equally untrue that conservatism must be accompanied by authoritarianism. For example, Libertarianism is a patently right-leaning ideology that completely rejects authoritarianism. At the same time, communism is state-imposed redistribution of economic means; that is 100% undeniably a left-leaning ideology that accepts and implements authoritarianism.
I provided specific examples, as well as clear, concise definitions.
You can brush up on the origins and meaning of the left-right spectrum here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_spectrum
I do not, because those are not the same thing in the same way buttered toast is not a pizza. Liberalism is “centrist”. It appears egalitarian at first glance, but if focuses heavily (if not entirely) on means rather than ends, allowing for (and even encouraging) consolidation of wealth & power; that is: rightward drift. “Conservatism” is a relative term, not an absolute.
Libertarianism’s origins are leftist/anarchist, but the term itself has recently been co-opted by rightists and liberals the same way authoritarians always always co-opt leftist terms.
That is not the definition of communism. Regardless of what you think about Marxist concepts themselves (or their feasibility) Marxism/Communism requires the “withering away of the state.” So long as there is entrenched leadership, that society is not leftist in the same way the Nazis were not socialist, and Republicans are not “pro-life”. And yes, that means the USSR was right wing, not left. At no point did the USSR meet the criteria or definition of communism. The definitions lead to the label, not the other way around.
I have disagreed with almost everything you have said, and am likely a member of the group you are railing against in this discussion. However, IMO you are spot on here.
Thank you for that. Keep this in mind though: I’m just saying the same thing over and over in different ways each time.
“Auth-left” is just another kind of “both-siding”. It’s rightists claiming that other rightists are actually leftists so that the masses will be too afraid to consider actual leftist proposals seriously.
Leftist/egalitarian systems tend to be inherently unstable because of the existence of human greed. Greed will always lead to certain people trying, and succeeding, to hoard wealth and power for themselves. I refer to this as “rightward pressure”. The trick is pushing the dial as far left as possible while ensuring it remains stable and preventing rightward drift.
Lenin and other revolutionaries recognized this catch a long time ago, and so tried to justify “temporary tyranny” as a means to establish a leftist ends. Lenin didn’t have a lot of success with that in life; then upon Lenin’s death, Stalin seized power and never let it go… meaning that for all the suffering and bloodshed, Lenin and his Bolsheviks merely traded one right wing dictator/Tzar for another. Same story in China… And North Korea… And Cuba…
On the flip-side you have liberalism; which are leftist means that deliberately ignores “rightward pressure”, eventually resulting in rightist ends… as wealth and power accumulate and snowball for a few at the expense of the many (e.g. “late stage capitalism”).
So the question is: given that people are selfish and greedy, and any rightward movement cannot be safely considered temporary; how do we reach leftist ends while using only leftist means?
My personal stance? Democracy. We use Democracy to bolster Democracy a bit at a time… and the first thing we need to do to make that possible in implement a very aggressive progressive taxation system that caps how much wealth (and therefore power) any one individual or entity can control. Until we can fix that one thing, the politicians will continue to control the public instead of the other way around. That is the essence of leftism.
I consider myself a leftist, not a liberal, but looking at the totality of your comments, I’m doubtful you consider me one.
However, I’m also in the camp of “I have one party I can vote for who leans more to the right than I wish they did, and another who is literally courting fascism in the short term. So why are you busting my balls?” 😁
No, you provided head canon which would get you a failing grade in a freshman political science course.
This is so incredibly naive. Stalin? Mao? Evil authoritarianism comes in all flavors left and right. If you truly believe leftists aren’t capable of evil you need to study more history.
So close. You are soooo close to getting it. Just a little further…
MLs and having a cringeworthy enlightenment complex - name a more iconic duo.
Not a Marxist, but I won’t tolerate deliberately lying about terminology or muddying language. That’s a bad faith authoritarian/rightist tactic and I won’t let it slide.
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Authoritarianism is literally a defining feature of communism. Redefining terms to escape the reality of what ideologies look like when implemented is just dishonest.
Communism literally - by Marx and Engel’s own definition - requires the “withering away of the state”. As the creators and originators of the very concept of “communism”, can you name one society that has met their criteria or achieved the goals laid out in their definition?
Yes, I understand that Marx and Engels did not have realistic political ideals and that every attempt to implement their ideology has diverged from their utopian vision into authoritarianism when reality hits that ideology. That’s the point.
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Have you read any of Marx? I’m not an ML but if you even glance at Capital you can tell that Marx’s whole schtick was using science to come up with realistic political ideals.
Then why didn’t he come up with realistic political ideas
I see you moved the goal post to a different field.
If you want to criticize the specifics of Marx/Engels proposals, that is very different than - whether by ignorance or malice - outright lying about them.
I didn’t say anything about Marx or Engels. I talked about communism.
Oh dear. 🤦🏽
Pick a communist nation, any communist nation
Unfortunate and very true.
what’s the difference between a cuckold and someone who votes for racist, homophobic, classicist establishment politicians no matter what; there is no difference.
Whatever lies you have to tell to make sure America gets worse, I guess. No honest, thinking human being could think there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. That’s how we all know people like you are either useful idiots or just cosplaying Republicans.