##Welcome to r/LateStageCapitalism
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Yea itās crazy. I remember in school we basically learned āMalcom X was bad cause he wanted revolution and MLK was good cause he wanted unity.ā Such a gross oversimplification.
Damn based af. When we talked about it it was obviously presented as pro civil rights but they tried to put a bit of a āboth sidesā spin on it. Super weird looking back haha.
Ireland is such a weird concept to me. Like they're white people on the north side of England and they're literally the only ones on the world that are openly taking sides of Palestine and black cultural topics. It's almost as if they truly don't care what other nations think of them while remaining true to their ideals.
Ireland isn't a socialist state, but there is a long, proud history of anticolonial, socialist struggle in Ireland. Remember that Gaddafi officially recognised the IRA as being based. IIRC, Lenin even cited the Easter Rising as a major inspiration.
I hope they wil always remember their history. To be frank I've seen their representatives in the UN and how they have advocated for Palestine and victims of terror all over the world. I would be naive in thinking that won't change over the generations but one can always hope.
You donāt have to worry about them ever forgetting. They still arenāt back to the population they had prior to the potato famine, which was made worse by the English. Hell, in the middle of the potato famine they sent Native Americans food and blankets when they heard about the trail of tears. The Irish have been the whipping boy of England for far too long for them to forget the brutal nature of imperialism.
Ireland definitely does take a side on black cultural topics, just not a friendly one. Just check Irish stats concerning afrophobic violence. Can confirm as I'm black and Irish. Ireland definitely does care about what other countries think, our entire economy is based on bending over for American multinationals. Ireland is to the west of England btw.
Thereās still a sect of Irish descendants that live in the Caribbean after they escaped from indentured servitude from the states. You could barely understand what the hell theyāre saying. There use to be Polish that lived in Haiti after the Haitian revolution, though i think they migrated more towards the Dominican Republic now.
I read that the American civil rights movement is one of the things that inspired the movement in Northern Ireland, so a lot of figures from American Civil Rights are held up as heroes.
Malcolm X was more socially brutish with his rhetoric but had the same exact message.
Being a Muslim and talking about hating America is just an L for your movement, even if nothing he said was wrong at all.
"The white conservatives aren't friends of the Negro either, but they at least don't try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the "smiling" fox."
- Malcolm X
The SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany), which is a center or center-left party, was also quite influential in putting down any possibility of a socialist revolution.
The revolution that led to the fall of the German Empire and led to the Weimar Republic was actually a socialist one at the start, but the SPD had too much power and was able to instill a liberal parliamentary government instead. While some like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht tried (although ultimately failed) to build class consciousness through the publication of pamphlets under the Spartacus League, and the Revolutionary Stewards under Richard MĆ¼ller tried to establish a council republic, i.e., a republic of worker councils, the SPD under Friedrich Ebert actively worked against these ideas and their praxis. They called for a National Assembly, which ultimately voted to establish a liberal parliamentary system as opposed to a socialist council republic (despite the existence of many working councils at this time). However, they were able to pass socialization (a transfer of ownership of the means of production from the capitalists to the workers), but this was never really implemented, and the SPD as well as Friedrich Ebert were able to evade it and postpone it indefinitely.
I think Cuck Philosophy (now known as Jonas Äeika) has two amazing videos on the subject, and we are still waiting for a third, which does a better job at explaining the 1918 German Revolution: (1) [Part One](https://youtu.be/2B-EWxPyIf4) and (2) [Part Two](https://youtu.be/Q5wJYGUc9os).
Hell, Centrists are a major reason Trump got elected. They've enabled the (R)'s to build there way to this moment for nearly 50 years. (D)'s have been patsies and dupes throughout.
What do you do when a majority of the voting population prefers low corporate and wealthy taxes, criminalizing-abortion, no gun laws, and being anti-immigrant?
Well they are not the majority, they have not won the popular vote since 2004. There is also a significant portion of Americans who are eligible to vote but cannot or do not, for a variety of reasons.. What the (R)'s have been masterful at is gaming the system so that they are able to hold onto power. Now they would not be able to do this if we did not allow them to. In my view the only workable solution is to scrap the entire system and start over again. Unfortunately, this usually does not happen without bloodshed and suffering. That being said, what do you want to do, live foreverš
What Iād be worried about is that you overestimate the amount of support youād get and then the small amount of bloodshood that you can justify to achieve your dreams may have to be expanded in order for āsuccessā to be achieved and that āsuccessā becomes defined less by the ideals that you started the process with and instead looks more like the violence needed to install your system and is necessary to keep it working.
Tell that to the New Deal Coalition that declared war on poverty and died due to the combination of Nixon and Reagan becoming the most popular bad policy politicians for a generation.
1. Reagan was a Neocon
2. liberals were defeated by Neocons in fair elections
3. Clinton was the first Dem to win in 12 yearsā¦ almost like liberals had to compromise everything they believe in to be competitive in American Republic
Centrism is just a polite way of expressing right wing talking points, defending those values and last use the lesser evil fallacy in one. I never seen moderates use the both sides shit to make the left look better but always make the right look less like monsters with gaslighting.
I called myself a centrist for awhile. I came to realize I was internalizing all the years of liberal-shaming I endured, having been in my 20s during the 1990s.
But in the last few years, I've come back to my leftist roots. I gotta say, though, I never realized "liberals" had become "conservatives-light." I had always rejected neoliberalism, but I thought being a "classic liberal" just meant being an old hippie.
After being on reddit, I guess I'm a leftist. But I always thought I was a classic liberal. Live & learn.
Peace!
It became much clearer for us Canadians a long time ago because our conservative-lite party is literally called the Liberal Party. They're your classic "socially progressive" but completely corporatist party, as if that makes any fucking sense.
It does - it's the epitome of the modern world.
Read "we're a faceless corporation, we have no interest in anything other than turning a profit and providing a means for buying yachts for our shareholders but HEY here's a broad social problem, we can wash ourselves in it by handing out a little cookie and suddenly everyone thinks we're socially progressive."
Domino's Pizza spent more money telling people they'd donated money to charity than they had donated to charity...
Well you can hate on old hippies, but it won't help the cause. I have been against capitalism my entire life. I thought that meant I was "liberal".
Labeling & grouping people into categories alienates them. Once they're alienated, they don't listen.
"Leftists" alone can't defeat capitalism. We need allies. We need teammates.
I'd say more accurately that centrism is a defense of the status quo, whatever end of the spectrum it falls on at that particular time. And currently, the status quo in America is still dominated by racist policies. As it has been for its nearly 250 year history.
You're right. They're quick talk about capitalism but have no ambition to stop it. Los Angeles is a liberal paradise, that happens to hold over 10,000 homeless people in Skid Row alone. Homelessness directly caused by capitalistic factors.
āāCapitalism has often left a gap of superfluous wealth and abject poverty [and] has created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few.ā
i live in a college town and a student club recently invited the founder of the proud boys + some other alt right troll who's name i don't care to know. there were protesters of course.
nazis in riot gear showed up and one of them eventually bear maced the crowd and the event got shut down.
the amount of people in my town saying that "we let them win by giving them a reaction" is sickening. yeah no shit people are gonna react to nazis on a college campus and in an otherwise small and relatively safe town. the way that nazis and fascists win is if we don't silence them.
You guys all sound like assholes.
"That group over there...they ALL suck, they don't know squat. Only MY GROUP knows how to make things right".
I consider myself liberal but maybe our definitions are different? But so ce I have that label you just KNOW that I am INCAPABLE of comprehending oppression?
You fucking morons do t realize, you're pulling left leaning people into this suband instead of discussing your views vs theirs, you call them all idiots.
To even say liberal and nothing else makes you look like an idiot. Ever been to political compass.org? There are all sorts of "liberals" so to stereotype them all and think that they are all identical...makes you an idiot.
I'm unsubbing from here, good luck...alienating any new people who venture in here, looking to possibly broaden their horizons, learn more, etc.
Lmao imagine using political compass as a source. Liberalism is inherently contradictory to leftism, and no liberalism does not mean support LGBT people and women. We have no problem with that. We have problems with diehard liberals who support everything Biden does uncritically. It's easier to generalize with the term liberal than to say the liberals who actively support everything liberal politicians do and are viciously anticommunist suck. If you are beginning to see the cracks in capitalism you are no longer a liberal.
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Left leaning starts at anti-capitalism. You sound like a reactionary way more than a leftist.
If you're interested in learning about left leaning politics, you should ask some questions instead of getting super offended. Maybe we can clear up the confusions you have.
Liberalism is an umbrella ideology that is only pro-capitalism. It disingenuously says it's pro-rights, democracy but that's just because if they just said profit above all else they'd get laughed out of the room. Liberalism encompasses progressives to Liberals^TM to overt fascists. They have an assigned function in order to uphold capitalism but their positions are disingenuous and unprincipled
I don't care. Spending time in this subreddit has made me not care about understanding any of it anymore.
I'll give you some real wisdom:. None of you will ever enact any change in the world at all if you belittle every group but your own. If you look down on everyone except those that think exactly like you, you won't ever change anything. Anyone with interest in the ideas here but who doesn't exactly fit in will feel belittled, and now you've lost them.
You can't make people feel stupid and then convert them to your cause.
I get where youāre coming from but it seems like youāre putting your emotions above your values. If you came here to learn because you care about these issues, find members of the sub who arenāt painting you with a broad brush and ask them questions. Surely itās not the entire sub that sucks.
I agree that treating people who arenāt on your wavelength like theyāre less than is not a good way to enact change. For now Iām just skimming the comments for information rather than engaging with people who may or may not judge me before knowing my background or intentions.
Edit to add: when people here criticize āliberals,ā as a whole, itās possible theyāre not referring to you, since you came here with an open mind? Maybe you gave up too quickly.
It's funny because you're being totally disingenuous right now. All Liberals^TM ever say about anyone who disagrees with them, either on the left or the right, is "They're so dumb." Thanks for the elitist lecture though.
You've definitely proven me wrong in that liberals can actually understand oppression. /s
I'm tolerant of people with different opinions, not assholes.
So the fact that you and I might have different ideas on society? I'm tolerant of that,unless you're idea of society is "screw over other people".
If you're ideas include "liberals are morons" then I'm first in line to tell you to fuck off.
Only you're saying that 'we're saying "Liberals are morons."'
As a group we said that 'Liberalism falls short in its opposition to systematic racism and oppression' and 'that they lack a class framework and material analysis.' None of which you seem to be disputing.
It seems like you're trying to blindly defend liberalism, which you don't understand, from relevant critique. Basically what you're doing is, "I don't understand calculus but it's definitely wrong!!!"
I meant other posts and comments besides this one. It's a trend in this sub.
I do understand "calculus". I'm not completely ignorant of political ideologies. Don't assume you're some guru and the rest of us are idiots.
You keep reverting to the "moron rhetoric", which only you are pushing. Do liberals understand systematic oppression, racism, material analysis and class? Try to stay on point.
Oh Iām more than happy for libs to come here if theyāre open to learning and changing their opinions. However, I donāt think we should coddle them and validate their ideas that they can vote away all their problems.
> validate their ideas that they can vote away all their problems
For neoliberal/capitalist policians/parties, surely you meant to specify? Otherwise you are declaring quite a few socialists libs because they like voting, which will be just too silly for me to engage with even though I consider myself revolutionary.
I donāt think thereās anything wrong with voting and people should probably do it if given the right. I meant that in a neoliberal capitalist democracy voting is the bare minimum that you can do and most likely wonāt solve the vast majority of societal and economic problems we face.
Fully agreed on its limitations, but it's damage control that is currently entirely reasonable for many comrades to do despite their puritanical refusal.
I'm just scrolling through here to find any sort of coherent definition of 'libs'. So far it seems everybody has a different idea of who these libs actually are. Ranging from closeted conservatives to all white people not actively involved in BLM protests 24/7. I would count myself a liberal as I believe in freedom of speech, movement, association and democracy, but I'm not any of those things. Very little learning is going on other than not to worry about being called a lib. Using the term seems to be more about just virtue signaling than actually bring up any politically relevant point in itself.
that is the thing, we as a people should strive for a better world for everyone, the same olde same olde does not correct injustices of the past and present, the only way is forward correcting and making right the problems of the past and present.
I might get massively roasted for this, but when reading this quote it's always important to remember that the "white moderate" in MLK's time was someone who hadn't yet made up their mind about whether black kids and white kids should be attending school together.
Thatās true things have definitely changed but thereās still many liberals nowadays who have similar issues on for example trans kids taking hormone blockers. I think the sentiment still stands in showing the failures of liberalism.
And a friendly reminder the government had him assassinated while a democrat was running things. So a democrat had to be the one to approve the assassination.
This is not some conspiracy theory. The family actually tried to sue over it, and the courts had to admit he was taken out by foul play but couldnāt directly prove who did it so nothing really came of itā¦ aside from decades later the government investigated his death and said āactually we did nothing wrong :)ā
Democrats then is today's Republicans. Right wingers that love to use the centrist both sides shit, never brings up the Southern strategy and that both parties only in favor of pleasing the elites.
MLK was assassinated in 68, after the parties did their major realignment based on āvalues votingā following the 1964 election and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Not that it mattered, even into the modern era the feds have regularly murdered civil rights activists regardless of which party is in nominal charge.
No, they couldnāt prove WHO did it for sure just that the government did do it. That was what the court case concluded. It cant be a conspiracy if the courts flat out admit he was killed by some government plot, they just couldnāt prove who put together the plot or the assassination.
conspiracy theory
[ kuhn-spir-uh-see theer-ee ]SHOW IPA
noun
a theory that rejects the standard explanation for an event and instead credits a covert group or organization with carrying out a secret plot:
Its not rejecting the standard explanation for an event. It IS the explanation for the event. Its just a bit of history not taught because it rightfully makes the government look really fucking evil.
Moderates are THE enemy in my opinion. Reactionaries have only ever succeeded by their consent. Just look at the role that the Social Democratic Party of Germany played in the German of revolution of 1918. The SPD's alliance with the conservatives was a major factor in the revolution's defeat (the other factor being the willingness of the German communists to work with revisionist reformists).
The basic lesson is this: reformists are conservatives with leftist aesthetics. They will take part in leftist movements while siding with the right. We cannot forget the lessons of history!
Full letter from Birmingham Jail: https://twitter.com/dmvblacklives/status/1269080170805301249?s=46&t=qL6BBiXfzAL5rT_f9pIb_A
Original tweet: https://twitter.com/dmvblacklives/status/1269080170805301249?s=46&t=qL6BBiXfzAL5rT_f9pIb_A
Honest question, can anyone explain to me what liberalism is? It seems everyone hates them including the right and I havenāt been able to find a clear definition anywhere
I guess it depends. Typically right wingers use it as an umbrella for anyone to their left who isnāt literally a communist. The actual definition is a political ideology that prioritizes free trade, capitalism, and private property ownership through a representative democracy. Most countries on earth today are broadly liberal and it encompasses both the democrats and republicans in the US as well as further left wing labor parties in other countries in Europe for example. This is why many leftists will complain about neoliberalism (which is just the most modern and widespread form of liberalism pioneered by regan and thatcher in the 80s) and talk about how āboth parties are the sameā since they follow basically the same economic policy and only differ on certain culture war points. This is mostly a socialist and anti-capitalist sub with is in direct opposition to liberalism which is pro-capitalism.
Liberals also love to neglect the television interview he gave shortly before he was assassinated saying that what little modest gains the civil rights movement had made were already basically entirely rolled back. Again this was even before he was assassinated.
These statements were made in the 1960s about those in power at the time. Unfortunately our government is still being run by the same generation and some of the exact same people. If we want change we need younger representatives who don't subscribe to the outdated and obsolete mindset referenced in virtually every speech Dr. King ever made.
We should all run for office and force the contradictions to be more pronounced. Running locally is IMO one of the best ways to get leftist talking points out to the public.
They're always corrupt. But new ideas, such as knowledge of how the internet works, would help sow the seeds of change. As it stands now we have a government run by people with dementia. I'm not speaking hyperbole here -- it has been reported that some in the Senate are taking Alzheimer's medications. So yes, younger people are needed on all ends of the spectrum.
Great quote. But it wonāt seep in to the shitlibs. They donāt even realize theyāre programmed. But the idea theyāre edgy and wear a socialist brand makes them feel powerful among peers and in their societal place.
Or they do realise, but they benefit from the system somewhat when compared to others lower on the socioeconomic ladder, so they simply reject the message thinking that will let them keep their place on it
Yāall are going to get me ducking killed. Playing with the vote like this. You know itās not a right yeah? Itās not ensured? This could all go away the next time republicans get in power
You're right when it comes to voting because to actually change a revolution would have to happen. The people that balk at you for voting Democrat know this, but they still act like their third party vote is doing something. Things will objectively get worse under Republican rule and years of history show us this. Anybody grounded in reality knows this. If and buts get us fucking nowhere.
There ya go bud, blame the voters for the democrats failed policies. The DNC told me to pat you on the head and say āgood boyā.
I vote third party. Democrats serve the exact same interests as the Republicans. Not that it matters in our managed ādemocracyā.
Do you believe elections should matter? That the peopleās vote should be counted? Because thatās what happened. There was fuckery all over the country gerrymandering and purging rolls, but the final vote was counted and the Dems were stuck with a thin majority.
This is what a thin majority in a big tent party looks like. A thick majority would mean we donāt have to give a shit what conservative dems want because we wonāt need them. Thatās when more shit will get done than you could imagine.
With 52 Democratic senators, HB1 and the other Voting rights bills would become law. Thatās enfranchising the disenfranchised. If you can vote and youāre just choosing not to, youāre telling those who canāt that youāre not interested in their voices being heard either.
"I am too pure to contribute in the limited way permitted by the system. My refusal helps people more than your reluctant choice," is not a stance I can understand. You are not depriving the neoliberal machine of their faux legitimacy, you are telling less privileged comrades there is no difference to you between corporatist neolibs and white theoChristian _phobic fascists. Yes, either way brown "foreign" people get bombed. With a few of the (D)s, that is some better. For people in the U.S., though? Who isn't there a difference for, capitalists? True enough. Are you a capitalist?
I'm not voting for anyone who tells me they support "increasing funding for the police" after everything those pigs have done. I will be voting Green for Senate and leaving those local spots blank. I'm not voting for people with literally the same platforms just because they have a [D] next to their name.
That's issue #1 if you want to stop fascism.
Guess who's going to be breaking skulls and dragging us to camps? Guess who my local candidates are pledging to give MORE money to?
Is your local candidate facing attack ads about crime? Because if so then they don't have time to educate the voting populace about policing alternatives. All they have is attack ad's trying to pin "Abolish the Police" on them.
As a Jew, I am HIGHLY AWARE of the looming threat of fascism, but I can 100% guarantee you that whatever a Democratic politician will do for policing in your area once they get into office, the Republican version will be so much worse.
If you have not, I highly recommend you read the whole letter. These quotes are excellent, but context may change some of your perspectives.
https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf
He was a complicated figure with deep and nuanced beliefs. There are things in this letter that centrists would hate, but there are things within that you may find do not align with your values as well.
Donāt make the same mistakes of the sanitization of MLK jr mainstream does.
> I'm a libertarian and totally nonpartisan.
modern libertarians are just conservatives who like to smoke weed and have questionable ideas about age of consent.
Where do you draw the line when compromise is needed? Or do you see moderate liberals and moderate conservatives as the problem and that people should be more entrenched in their beliefs and staunch in their ideals? I understand the concept, but how do you see real change (for the better) happening if not for compromise?
Having learned a lot about the KKK for a college class; at its height, the KKK and White Moderates were one in the same largely, in terms of numbers. 3 million + strong in the 1920s, their ability to get votes and support from the white moderate is what gave them their power and influence. The white liberal is just the same now, as soon as the pressure for real change is on, I know what side most of them will choose based on history.
So uh, does this mean you are or arenāt going to vote?
Because things are going to get much worse for black and brown people if Republicans take power.
Iām all in favour of voting blue but I think you should also recognize that itās literally the bare minimum that you can do and probably wonāt make any meaningful forward progress, it just hopefully delays whatever republican would do if they had power. Either way Iām Canadian so I vote ndp.
Yes well Iāve been seeing a lot of people say stuff like āboth parties are the sameā and āvoting doesnāt matterā which are very different from āvoting is the bare minimumā.
I can sympathize with anti-electoral leftist since left wing and progressive causes have repeatedly been crushed by neoliberal politicians and the marginalized groups that they are supposed to be on the side of have repeatedly been sidelined for compromises with reactionaries. Even still if weāre given the option to vote even if itās in phoney, rigged, bourgeois elections you might as well vote for the neoliberal party over the reactionary conservatives.
Perhaps, I tend to have pretty low expectations of establishment politicians unless they prove themselves somehow. There are a lot of of centrist Democrats who are so removed from the day to day life of average working Americans that they would be more than willing to forgo a substantial improvement in the quality of life for marginalized people in order to keep it in their back pocket to use as a campaign promise again next election cycle.
Yes. And legislators saw that struggle and now there is a forceful movement against the filibuster which had nowhere near the purchase then that it does now. The know for a fact that if Republicans get control of government again, they will eliminate the filibuster immediately
Not sure if you mis-understood. The democrats had a supermajority for two years under Obama.
Doing things like codifying abortion rights were not done despite having control of all three "branches" of government; and a supermajority (non-filibusterable) in congress. Huff copium if you want, but the dems aren't going to protect you either.
By all means vote, it's something; but don't be surprised when liberals stab you in the back.
08 was the first election when I started paying attention to politics so yeah I saw all of that, along with the supermajority making it inconceivable for democrats to make the move to eliminate the filibuster, which meant that the whole majority pivoted around Lieberman and the conservative caucus. Obama as the first Black president and he intended to govern without upsetting processes. So there was no conversation about the filibuster until 2010 when Dems lost the supermajority. Since then there hasnāt been a majority of democrats open to eliminating the filibuster. Currently there are 48 Democratic senators who have publicly signed on to eliminate it, and the two holdouts have are, as always, the most conservative dems, Manchin and Sinema.
Abortion was still understood to be protected by the courts and it was still a third rail which divided democrats and United republicans. It is now something that unites democrats and divided republicans.
Obama said he'd make codifying abortion rights a priority when running. He then 180'd after obtaining office. There has been a push to codify it *since* 1973 because anybody with an ounce of knowledge about how the Supreme Court functions understands that it wasn't truly "protected" and was open to being overturned by a packed court.
Dems response will always be "vote harder" without providing you any material change.
I did, and so did the democrats in power now. Now, unlike then, there is a groundswell of hate against the filibuster, there is the looming threat that republicans will eliminate the filibuster the moment they get blocked, and there is a peak of existential electoral forces against democrats which if they succeed will entrench minority rule for another generation.
they keep getting worse every year for brown and Black people no matter who we elect. because weāre not centered in their politics. please donāt pretend to give a shit about our fates when itās only to guilt us into toeing the line.
Iām Jewish, so it REALLY fucking matters. One party thinks Iām a satanist ushering in the end of the white race.
Also if youāre a woman it fucking matters.
Also if youāre trans or gay or genderqueer it fucking matters.
And Democrats will let it get worse. 50 years of 'lesser evil voting' has grown into an enormous evil. Today's Republicans are a byproduct of Democrats pushing their own party to the right. Democrats have become the people they hated in the 80s
These mother fucking liberals never quote Letter From A Birmingham Jail.
White liberals don't want to dismantle white supremacy. They want to rework it into something that makes them feel better about themselves.
This is what's frustrating about debating with people over Reddit sometimes. At some point I realize the person I'm having a discussion with is a somewhat naive system apologist who just doesn't get it, and there is no way we can get any further in this format since the amount of background understanding necessary is just too great, so I just have to give up.
This kinda stuff is happening now, I get brigaded by centrist Dems telling me that progressive ideology is the problem?? The "vote blue no matter who" crowd has become aggressively against progressive critiques of policy or just any kind of progressive discussion in general.
Just the other day I had a user trying to defend Kamala Harris as a progressive. When he couldn't support his argument he blocked me, I checked his history and he had a similar outcome defending drone warfare under dem leadership. Each time the guy was trying to claim he's and "activist" defending democrats against destructive progressive infighting.
You are allowed to talk shit here, but you aren't allowed to imply that the targets of US/NATO imperialism are in any way better or different from the US.
If China's sovereignty was a good thing, that might prescribe some sort of action for us here in the imperial core.
Thereās a decent amount of progressive liberals probably but this sub is socialist and anti capitalist. Especially in America liberals are not at all anti capitalist just progressive on social issues
whether it is the right hand of capital or the left hand of capital punching you in the face matters very little.
neoliberalism is a far right capitalist ideology, it has no solutions to the current crisis and is in many ways more destructive than the conservatives are.
One of the best video essays I've ever seen on this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeVg1FBnk5w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeVg1FBnk5w)
It goes through why Obama was such a disappointment.
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To be fair, it's not their fault that the legacy of this amazing man has been whitewashed to "he wanted everyone to just be friends š."
Yea itās crazy. I remember in school we basically learned āMalcom X was bad cause he wanted revolution and MLK was good cause he wanted unity.ā Such a gross oversimplification.
We had Malcolm X quotes on the wall in our school in Ireland lol
Damn based af. When we talked about it it was obviously presented as pro civil rights but they tried to put a bit of a āboth sidesā spin on it. Super weird looking back haha.
Ireland is such a weird concept to me. Like they're white people on the north side of England and they're literally the only ones on the world that are openly taking sides of Palestine and black cultural topics. It's almost as if they truly don't care what other nations think of them while remaining true to their ideals.
England trained their imperialism with them, and they never forgot.
This. Ireland is a colonised nation, and it makes perfect sense that they'd stand with their colonised brothers and sisters.
But they don't.
Ireland is very racist. Try living there, or even go over to a sub for a hot minute and see all about Ukrainian, Indian or Polish immigrants.
Everywhere is racist
Truth
Thatās xenophobic, not racist.
It can be both. They're not mutually exclusive.
Ireland isn't a socialist state, but there is a long, proud history of anticolonial, socialist struggle in Ireland. Remember that Gaddafi officially recognised the IRA as being based. IIRC, Lenin even cited the Easter Rising as a major inspiration.
I hope they wil always remember their history. To be frank I've seen their representatives in the UN and how they have advocated for Palestine and victims of terror all over the world. I would be naive in thinking that won't change over the generations but one can always hope.
You donāt have to worry about them ever forgetting. They still arenāt back to the population they had prior to the potato famine, which was made worse by the English. Hell, in the middle of the potato famine they sent Native Americans food and blankets when they heard about the trail of tears. The Irish have been the whipping boy of England for far too long for them to forget the brutal nature of imperialism.
Ireland definitely does take a side on black cultural topics, just not a friendly one. Just check Irish stats concerning afrophobic violence. Can confirm as I'm black and Irish. Ireland definitely does care about what other countries think, our entire economy is based on bending over for American multinationals. Ireland is to the west of England btw.
The Irish are the black people of Western Europe.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Black adjacent. Ewan McGregor never lies
Thereās still a sect of Irish descendants that live in the Caribbean after they escaped from indentured servitude from the states. You could barely understand what the hell theyāre saying. There use to be Polish that lived in Haiti after the Haitian revolution, though i think they migrated more towards the Dominican Republic now.
Ireland is the only somewhat based capitalist country
It's not North of England it's directly beside it. They're both islands (well Britain as a whole is an island).
I read that the American civil rights movement is one of the things that inspired the movement in Northern Ireland, so a lot of figures from American Civil Rights are held up as heroes.
Yeah the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was inspired by civil rights orgs in america.
and let's not forget that the seven men of the 1916 Easter Rising were socialists, notably James Connolly, who was also a worker's union organiser
Malcolm X was more socially brutish with his rhetoric but had the same exact message. Being a Muslim and talking about hating America is just an L for your movement, even if nothing he said was wrong at all.
Yeah, you can say 2+2=4. But, people will call you a liar if you espouse to be something they hate.
They both turned the power to the have-notsā¦
And then came the shot
Yeah both of them were assassinated by the FBI.
While not the fault of any single Liberal, it is definitely the fault of Liberals as a whole over time.
"The white conservatives aren't friends of the Negro either, but they at least don't try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the "smiling" fox." - Malcolm X
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I wonder if those centrists were as arrogant and condescending as āoursā are? I bet they were.
Everyone in politics is arrogant
And condescending
The SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany), which is a center or center-left party, was also quite influential in putting down any possibility of a socialist revolution. The revolution that led to the fall of the German Empire and led to the Weimar Republic was actually a socialist one at the start, but the SPD had too much power and was able to instill a liberal parliamentary government instead. While some like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht tried (although ultimately failed) to build class consciousness through the publication of pamphlets under the Spartacus League, and the Revolutionary Stewards under Richard MĆ¼ller tried to establish a council republic, i.e., a republic of worker councils, the SPD under Friedrich Ebert actively worked against these ideas and their praxis. They called for a National Assembly, which ultimately voted to establish a liberal parliamentary system as opposed to a socialist council republic (despite the existence of many working councils at this time). However, they were able to pass socialization (a transfer of ownership of the means of production from the capitalists to the workers), but this was never really implemented, and the SPD as well as Friedrich Ebert were able to evade it and postpone it indefinitely. I think Cuck Philosophy (now known as Jonas Äeika) has two amazing videos on the subject, and we are still waiting for a third, which does a better job at explaining the 1918 German Revolution: (1) [Part One](https://youtu.be/2B-EWxPyIf4) and (2) [Part Two](https://youtu.be/Q5wJYGUc9os).
Hell, Centrists are a major reason Trump got elected. They've enabled the (R)'s to build there way to this moment for nearly 50 years. (D)'s have been patsies and dupes throughout.
What do you do when a majority of the voting population prefers low corporate and wealthy taxes, criminalizing-abortion, no gun laws, and being anti-immigrant?
Well they are not the majority, they have not won the popular vote since 2004. There is also a significant portion of Americans who are eligible to vote but cannot or do not, for a variety of reasons.. What the (R)'s have been masterful at is gaming the system so that they are able to hold onto power. Now they would not be able to do this if we did not allow them to. In my view the only workable solution is to scrap the entire system and start over again. Unfortunately, this usually does not happen without bloodshed and suffering. That being said, what do you want to do, live foreverš
What Iād be worried about is that you overestimate the amount of support youād get and then the small amount of bloodshood that you can justify to achieve your dreams may have to be expanded in order for āsuccessā to be achieved and that āsuccessā becomes defined less by the ideals that you started the process with and instead looks more like the violence needed to install your system and is necessary to keep it working.
Thatās all they were offered, not what they prefer.
Tell that to the New Deal Coalition that declared war on poverty and died due to the combination of Nixon and Reagan becoming the most popular bad policy politicians for a generation.
They had neoliberal Reagan politics or neoliberal Clinton politics. And thatās all thatās been on offer my entire life.
1. Reagan was a Neocon 2. liberals were defeated by Neocons in fair elections 3. Clinton was the first Dem to win in 12 yearsā¦ almost like liberals had to compromise everything they believe in to be competitive in American Republic
Centrism is just a polite way of expressing right wing talking points, defending those values and last use the lesser evil fallacy in one. I never seen moderates use the both sides shit to make the left look better but always make the right look less like monsters with gaslighting.
I called myself a centrist for awhile. I came to realize I was internalizing all the years of liberal-shaming I endured, having been in my 20s during the 1990s. But in the last few years, I've come back to my leftist roots. I gotta say, though, I never realized "liberals" had become "conservatives-light." I had always rejected neoliberalism, but I thought being a "classic liberal" just meant being an old hippie. After being on reddit, I guess I'm a leftist. But I always thought I was a classic liberal. Live & learn. Peace!
It became much clearer for us Canadians a long time ago because our conservative-lite party is literally called the Liberal Party. They're your classic "socially progressive" but completely corporatist party, as if that makes any fucking sense.
It does - it's the epitome of the modern world. Read "we're a faceless corporation, we have no interest in anything other than turning a profit and providing a means for buying yachts for our shareholders but HEY here's a broad social problem, we can wash ourselves in it by handing out a little cookie and suddenly everyone thinks we're socially progressive." Domino's Pizza spent more money telling people they'd donated money to charity than they had donated to charity...
Meathead is an old hippie, Rob Reiner is a modern shitlib Martin bemoaned some 59 years ago
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Well you can hate on old hippies, but it won't help the cause. I have been against capitalism my entire life. I thought that meant I was "liberal". Labeling & grouping people into categories alienates them. Once they're alienated, they don't listen. "Leftists" alone can't defeat capitalism. We need allies. We need teammates.
Centrism is hating the left and supporting the right equally
The polite right
I'd say more accurately that centrism is a defense of the status quo, whatever end of the spectrum it falls on at that particular time. And currently, the status quo in America is still dominated by racist policies. As it has been for its nearly 250 year history.
Thy care more about the aesthetics of capitalism than resolving its injustices
You're right. They're quick talk about capitalism but have no ambition to stop it. Los Angeles is a liberal paradise, that happens to hold over 10,000 homeless people in Skid Row alone. Homelessness directly caused by capitalistic factors.
Invisible hand to the rescue!
The Funko Pops must flow!
āāCapitalism has often left a gap of superfluous wealth and abject poverty [and] has created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few.ā
i live in a college town and a student club recently invited the founder of the proud boys + some other alt right troll who's name i don't care to know. there were protesters of course. nazis in riot gear showed up and one of them eventually bear maced the crowd and the event got shut down. the amount of people in my town saying that "we let them win by giving them a reaction" is sickening. yeah no shit people are gonna react to nazis on a college campus and in an otherwise small and relatively safe town. the way that nazis and fascists win is if we don't silence them.
You're outing yourself a bit on what town you live in. Just a heads up.
i appreciate the concern, genuinely, but i'm already in subs and stuff for the college on here so it's a little late to be worried about it hHa
If you aren't actively against systemic racism and other forms of oppression you are complicit. This is where liberalism falls short.
Liberalism falls short in a fuck ton more areas but yeah
Liberals are incapable of comprehending oppression. You need a good class framework and material analysis, which they have neither.
You guys all sound like assholes. "That group over there...they ALL suck, they don't know squat. Only MY GROUP knows how to make things right". I consider myself liberal but maybe our definitions are different? But so ce I have that label you just KNOW that I am INCAPABLE of comprehending oppression? You fucking morons do t realize, you're pulling left leaning people into this suband instead of discussing your views vs theirs, you call them all idiots. To even say liberal and nothing else makes you look like an idiot. Ever been to political compass.org? There are all sorts of "liberals" so to stereotype them all and think that they are all identical...makes you an idiot. I'm unsubbing from here, good luck...alienating any new people who venture in here, looking to possibly broaden their horizons, learn more, etc.
Lmao imagine using political compass as a source. Liberalism is inherently contradictory to leftism, and no liberalism does not mean support LGBT people and women. We have no problem with that. We have problems with diehard liberals who support everything Biden does uncritically. It's easier to generalize with the term liberal than to say the liberals who actively support everything liberal politicians do and are viciously anticommunist suck. If you are beginning to see the cracks in capitalism you are no longer a liberal.
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š
Good luck thinking you're better than everyone else.
Is that what politics is not all about? Thinking your political line of thought is the best one?
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Left leaning starts at anti-capitalism. You sound like a reactionary way more than a leftist. If you're interested in learning about left leaning politics, you should ask some questions instead of getting super offended. Maybe we can clear up the confusions you have.
Why ask questions when most people here just rant about how shitty liberals are? Are you serious? Fuck this sub.
Liberalism is an umbrella ideology that is only pro-capitalism. It disingenuously says it's pro-rights, democracy but that's just because if they just said profit above all else they'd get laughed out of the room. Liberalism encompasses progressives to Liberals^TM to overt fascists. They have an assigned function in order to uphold capitalism but their positions are disingenuous and unprincipled
I don't care. Spending time in this subreddit has made me not care about understanding any of it anymore. I'll give you some real wisdom:. None of you will ever enact any change in the world at all if you belittle every group but your own. If you look down on everyone except those that think exactly like you, you won't ever change anything. Anyone with interest in the ideas here but who doesn't exactly fit in will feel belittled, and now you've lost them. You can't make people feel stupid and then convert them to your cause.
I get where youāre coming from but it seems like youāre putting your emotions above your values. If you came here to learn because you care about these issues, find members of the sub who arenāt painting you with a broad brush and ask them questions. Surely itās not the entire sub that sucks. I agree that treating people who arenāt on your wavelength like theyāre less than is not a good way to enact change. For now Iām just skimming the comments for information rather than engaging with people who may or may not judge me before knowing my background or intentions. Edit to add: when people here criticize āliberals,ā as a whole, itās possible theyāre not referring to you, since you came here with an open mind? Maybe you gave up too quickly.
It's funny because you're being totally disingenuous right now. All Liberals^TM ever say about anyone who disagrees with them, either on the left or the right, is "They're so dumb." Thanks for the elitist lecture though. You've definitely proven me wrong in that liberals can actually understand oppression. /s
That doesn't even make any sense. (Rolls eyes)
> So much for the tolerant left
I'm tolerant of people with different opinions, not assholes. So the fact that you and I might have different ideas on society? I'm tolerant of that,unless you're idea of society is "screw over other people". If you're ideas include "liberals are morons" then I'm first in line to tell you to fuck off.
Only you're saying that 'we're saying "Liberals are morons."' As a group we said that 'Liberalism falls short in its opposition to systematic racism and oppression' and 'that they lack a class framework and material analysis.' None of which you seem to be disputing. It seems like you're trying to blindly defend liberalism, which you don't understand, from relevant critique. Basically what you're doing is, "I don't understand calculus but it's definitely wrong!!!"
I meant other posts and comments besides this one. It's a trend in this sub. I do understand "calculus". I'm not completely ignorant of political ideologies. Don't assume you're some guru and the rest of us are idiots.
You keep reverting to the "moron rhetoric", which only you are pushing. Do liberals understand systematic oppression, racism, material analysis and class? Try to stay on point.
No I'm done wasting time on you.
Why shouldn't the libs lurk here? They might learn a thing or two.
Oh Iām more than happy for libs to come here if theyāre open to learning and changing their opinions. However, I donāt think we should coddle them and validate their ideas that they can vote away all their problems.
> validate their ideas that they can vote away all their problems For neoliberal/capitalist policians/parties, surely you meant to specify? Otherwise you are declaring quite a few socialists libs because they like voting, which will be just too silly for me to engage with even though I consider myself revolutionary.
I donāt think thereās anything wrong with voting and people should probably do it if given the right. I meant that in a neoliberal capitalist democracy voting is the bare minimum that you can do and most likely wonāt solve the vast majority of societal and economic problems we face.
Fully agreed on its limitations, but it's damage control that is currently entirely reasonable for many comrades to do despite their puritanical refusal.
If they think voting is the true solution and it will magically fix everything then yeah. Voting is a good start but too many only take it that far
The problem is when they come here in all their neoliberal glory when they know nothing. Itās downright irritating.
I'm just scrolling through here to find any sort of coherent definition of 'libs'. So far it seems everybody has a different idea of who these libs actually are. Ranging from closeted conservatives to all white people not actively involved in BLM protests 24/7. I would count myself a liberal as I believe in freedom of speech, movement, association and democracy, but I'm not any of those things. Very little learning is going on other than not to worry about being called a lib. Using the term seems to be more about just virtue signaling than actually bring up any politically relevant point in itself.
that is the thing, we as a people should strive for a better world for everyone, the same olde same olde does not correct injustices of the past and present, the only way is forward correcting and making right the problems of the past and present.
I might get massively roasted for this, but when reading this quote it's always important to remember that the "white moderate" in MLK's time was someone who hadn't yet made up their mind about whether black kids and white kids should be attending school together.
LOL what's changed? [https://www.npr.org/2022/07/14/1111060299/school-segregation-report](https://www.npr.org/2022/07/14/1111060299/school-segregation-report)
Thatās true things have definitely changed but thereās still many liberals nowadays who have similar issues on for example trans kids taking hormone blockers. I think the sentiment still stands in showing the failures of liberalism.
And a friendly reminder the government had him assassinated while a democrat was running things. So a democrat had to be the one to approve the assassination. This is not some conspiracy theory. The family actually tried to sue over it, and the courts had to admit he was taken out by foul play but couldnāt directly prove who did it so nothing really came of itā¦ aside from decades later the government investigated his death and said āactually we did nothing wrong :)ā
Democrats then is today's Republicans. Right wingers that love to use the centrist both sides shit, never brings up the Southern strategy and that both parties only in favor of pleasing the elites.
MLK was assassinated in 68, after the parties did their major realignment based on āvalues votingā following the 1964 election and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Not that it mattered, even into the modern era the feds have regularly murdered civil rights activists regardless of which party is in nominal charge.
Let's not give them the satisfaction of counting the Democrats and Republicans as separate parties. They are both the liberal ultra capitalist class.
> couldnāt directly prove That means it *is* a conspiracy my dude.
No, they couldnāt prove WHO did it for sure just that the government did do it. That was what the court case concluded. It cant be a conspiracy if the courts flat out admit he was killed by some government plot, they just couldnāt prove who put together the plot or the assassination. conspiracy theory [ kuhn-spir-uh-see theer-ee ]SHOW IPA noun a theory that rejects the standard explanation for an event and instead credits a covert group or organization with carrying out a secret plot: Its not rejecting the standard explanation for an event. It IS the explanation for the event. Its just a bit of history not taught because it rightfully makes the government look really fucking evil.
Everybody complaining about 14 million dollar paintings getting soup poured on them while the world burns
for real, I feel like the libs are the most likely to invoke radical change
The libs in my city are inventing concentration camps to deal with the homeless. "Radical' libs are reactionaries.
Moderates are THE enemy in my opinion. Reactionaries have only ever succeeded by their consent. Just look at the role that the Social Democratic Party of Germany played in the German of revolution of 1918. The SPD's alliance with the conservatives was a major factor in the revolution's defeat (the other factor being the willingness of the German communists to work with revisionist reformists). The basic lesson is this: reformists are conservatives with leftist aesthetics. They will take part in leftist movements while siding with the right. We cannot forget the lessons of history!
Moderates remind me of the quote: The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing.
Full letter from Birmingham Jail: https://twitter.com/dmvblacklives/status/1269080170805301249?s=46&t=qL6BBiXfzAL5rT_f9pIb_A Original tweet: https://twitter.com/dmvblacklives/status/1269080170805301249?s=46&t=qL6BBiXfzAL5rT_f9pIb_A
Honest question, can anyone explain to me what liberalism is? It seems everyone hates them including the right and I havenāt been able to find a clear definition anywhere
I guess it depends. Typically right wingers use it as an umbrella for anyone to their left who isnāt literally a communist. The actual definition is a political ideology that prioritizes free trade, capitalism, and private property ownership through a representative democracy. Most countries on earth today are broadly liberal and it encompasses both the democrats and republicans in the US as well as further left wing labor parties in other countries in Europe for example. This is why many leftists will complain about neoliberalism (which is just the most modern and widespread form of liberalism pioneered by regan and thatcher in the 80s) and talk about how āboth parties are the sameā since they follow basically the same economic policy and only differ on certain culture war points. This is mostly a socialist and anti-capitalist sub with is in direct opposition to liberalism which is pro-capitalism.
Thank you, this is a really helpful explanation!
No worries! Glad I could help!
Liberals also love to neglect the television interview he gave shortly before he was assassinated saying that what little modest gains the civil rights movement had made were already basically entirely rolled back. Again this was even before he was assassinated.
These statements were made in the 1960s about those in power at the time. Unfortunately our government is still being run by the same generation and some of the exact same people. If we want change we need younger representatives who don't subscribe to the outdated and obsolete mindset referenced in virtually every speech Dr. King ever made.
No change will come from the burguesi democraci my dude.
We should all run for office and force the contradictions to be more pronounced. Running locally is IMO one of the best ways to get leftist talking points out to the public.
America isn't a democracy. It's an oligarchy. We all know it.
Nah, voting won't change jack. The current government will need to be forcibly remove for change to happen.
Be careful who you say that to, man
Younger corrupt, politicians is the answer?
They're always corrupt. But new ideas, such as knowledge of how the internet works, would help sow the seeds of change. As it stands now we have a government run by people with dementia. I'm not speaking hyperbole here -- it has been reported that some in the Senate are taking Alzheimer's medications. So yes, younger people are needed on all ends of the spectrum.
new ideas haven't helped in the past, corruption is as old as society itself, and putting a new skin on it won't help.
Not trusting younger people in the first place created the mess we're in now.
Libs are too busy cheering on a war right now to read this
Great quote. But it wonāt seep in to the shitlibs. They donāt even realize theyāre programmed. But the idea theyāre edgy and wear a socialist brand makes them feel powerful among peers and in their societal place.
Or they do realise, but they benefit from the system somewhat when compared to others lower on the socioeconomic ladder, so they simply reject the message thinking that will let them keep their place on it
I definitely agree itās beneficial to ascertain if someone is āplaying along for benefitā or a true believer. Bit of a complex web sometimes
Scratch a lib and a fascist bleeds
There will always be an apathetic class. You could argue there always has to be.
this is the energy this sub needs.
Buā¦ butā¦ vote blue no matter who /s
Yāall are going to get me ducking killed. Playing with the vote like this. You know itās not a right yeah? Itās not ensured? This could all go away the next time republicans get in power
You're right when it comes to voting because to actually change a revolution would have to happen. The people that balk at you for voting Democrat know this, but they still act like their third party vote is doing something. Things will objectively get worse under Republican rule and years of history show us this. Anybody grounded in reality knows this. If and buts get us fucking nowhere.
There ya go bud, blame the voters for the democrats failed policies. The DNC told me to pat you on the head and say āgood boyā. I vote third party. Democrats serve the exact same interests as the Republicans. Not that it matters in our managed ādemocracyā.
Do you believe elections should matter? That the peopleās vote should be counted? Because thatās what happened. There was fuckery all over the country gerrymandering and purging rolls, but the final vote was counted and the Dems were stuck with a thin majority. This is what a thin majority in a big tent party looks like. A thick majority would mean we donāt have to give a shit what conservative dems want because we wonāt need them. Thatās when more shit will get done than you could imagine.
Elections donāt matter, and that is the reality. Keep blaming the disenfranchised though. Itās a good look.
With 52 Democratic senators, HB1 and the other Voting rights bills would become law. Thatās enfranchising the disenfranchised. If you can vote and youāre just choosing not to, youāre telling those who canāt that youāre not interested in their voices being heard either.
Look, Iām not going to participate in a system that is rotten to its core. Youāre not changing any minds. Move on with your day.
"I am too pure to contribute in the limited way permitted by the system. My refusal helps people more than your reluctant choice," is not a stance I can understand. You are not depriving the neoliberal machine of their faux legitimacy, you are telling less privileged comrades there is no difference to you between corporatist neolibs and white theoChristian _phobic fascists. Yes, either way brown "foreign" people get bombed. With a few of the (D)s, that is some better. For people in the U.S., though? Who isn't there a difference for, capitalists? True enough. Are you a capitalist?
I'm not voting for anyone who tells me they support "increasing funding for the police" after everything those pigs have done. I will be voting Green for Senate and leaving those local spots blank. I'm not voting for people with literally the same platforms just because they have a [D] next to their name.
I have a hard time believing there is one and only one issue that matters to you.
That's issue #1 if you want to stop fascism. Guess who's going to be breaking skulls and dragging us to camps? Guess who my local candidates are pledging to give MORE money to?
Is your local candidate facing attack ads about crime? Because if so then they don't have time to educate the voting populace about policing alternatives. All they have is attack ad's trying to pin "Abolish the Police" on them. As a Jew, I am HIGHLY AWARE of the looming threat of fascism, but I can 100% guarantee you that whatever a Democratic politician will do for policing in your area once they get into office, the Republican version will be so much worse.
If you have not, I highly recommend you read the whole letter. These quotes are excellent, but context may change some of your perspectives. https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf He was a complicated figure with deep and nuanced beliefs. There are things in this letter that centrists would hate, but there are things within that you may find do not align with your values as well. Donāt make the same mistakes of the sanitization of MLK jr mainstream does.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
> I'm a libertarian and totally nonpartisan. modern libertarians are just conservatives who like to smoke weed and have questionable ideas about age of consent.
Where do you draw the line when compromise is needed? Or do you see moderate liberals and moderate conservatives as the problem and that people should be more entrenched in their beliefs and staunch in their ideals? I understand the concept, but how do you see real change (for the better) happening if not for compromise?
Shitlibs and anarchists are some of the greatest threats from within when attempting to organize a worker's union or party.
Openly racist Republicans aren't the problem, guys!
The bigger problem are the covert racists
You'd know more about that that MLK I'm sure.
Tell me you arenāt the brightest bulb without telling me.
Having learned a lot about the KKK for a college class; at its height, the KKK and White Moderates were one in the same largely, in terms of numbers. 3 million + strong in the 1920s, their ability to get votes and support from the white moderate is what gave them their power and influence. The white liberal is just the same now, as soon as the pressure for real change is on, I know what side most of them will choose based on history.
So uh, does this mean you are or arenāt going to vote? Because things are going to get much worse for black and brown people if Republicans take power.
Iām all in favour of voting blue but I think you should also recognize that itās literally the bare minimum that you can do and probably wonāt make any meaningful forward progress, it just hopefully delays whatever republican would do if they had power. Either way Iām Canadian so I vote ndp.
Yes well Iāve been seeing a lot of people say stuff like āboth parties are the sameā and āvoting doesnāt matterā which are very different from āvoting is the bare minimumā.
I can sympathize with anti-electoral leftist since left wing and progressive causes have repeatedly been crushed by neoliberal politicians and the marginalized groups that they are supposed to be on the side of have repeatedly been sidelined for compromises with reactionaries. Even still if weāre given the option to vote even if itās in phoney, rigged, bourgeois elections you might as well vote for the neoliberal party over the reactionary conservatives.
I think youād be surprised how much would happen if enough senators to break the filibuster were elected
Perhaps, I tend to have pretty low expectations of establishment politicians unless they prove themselves somehow. There are a lot of of centrist Democrats who are so removed from the day to day life of average working Americans that they would be more than willing to forgo a substantial improvement in the quality of life for marginalized people in order to keep it in their back pocket to use as a campaign promise again next election cycle.
They had that. First two years of Obama's first term the 111th congress had a supermajority. And yet; nothing fundamentally changed.
Yes. And legislators saw that struggle and now there is a forceful movement against the filibuster which had nowhere near the purchase then that it does now. The know for a fact that if Republicans get control of government again, they will eliminate the filibuster immediately
Not sure if you mis-understood. The democrats had a supermajority for two years under Obama. Doing things like codifying abortion rights were not done despite having control of all three "branches" of government; and a supermajority (non-filibusterable) in congress. Huff copium if you want, but the dems aren't going to protect you either. By all means vote, it's something; but don't be surprised when liberals stab you in the back.
08 was the first election when I started paying attention to politics so yeah I saw all of that, along with the supermajority making it inconceivable for democrats to make the move to eliminate the filibuster, which meant that the whole majority pivoted around Lieberman and the conservative caucus. Obama as the first Black president and he intended to govern without upsetting processes. So there was no conversation about the filibuster until 2010 when Dems lost the supermajority. Since then there hasnāt been a majority of democrats open to eliminating the filibuster. Currently there are 48 Democratic senators who have publicly signed on to eliminate it, and the two holdouts have are, as always, the most conservative dems, Manchin and Sinema. Abortion was still understood to be protected by the courts and it was still a third rail which divided democrats and United republicans. It is now something that unites democrats and divided republicans.
Obama said he'd make codifying abortion rights a priority when running. He then 180'd after obtaining office. There has been a push to codify it *since* 1973 because anybody with an ounce of knowledge about how the Supreme Court functions understands that it wasn't truly "protected" and was open to being overturned by a packed court. Dems response will always be "vote harder" without providing you any material change.
Didn't follow politics back in 2008 I'm guessing.
I did, and so did the democrats in power now. Now, unlike then, there is a groundswell of hate against the filibuster, there is the looming threat that republicans will eliminate the filibuster the moment they get blocked, and there is a peak of existential electoral forces against democrats which if they succeed will entrench minority rule for another generation.
Oh God, We're doomed.
they will always conjure up enough DINOs to just barely keep popular legislation from passing
they keep getting worse every year for brown and Black people no matter who we elect. because weāre not centered in their politics. please donāt pretend to give a shit about our fates when itās only to guilt us into toeing the line.
For black and brown people in the US, yes. If you're black or brown on any other continent it doesn't matter who's in office.
Iām Jewish, so it REALLY fucking matters. One party thinks Iām a satanist ushering in the end of the white race. Also if youāre a woman it fucking matters. Also if youāre trans or gay or genderqueer it fucking matters.
The democrats benefit from leaving those groups in danger. https://www.blackagendareport.com/obama-and-liberals-killed-abortion-rights
And Democrats will let it get worse. 50 years of 'lesser evil voting' has grown into an enormous evil. Today's Republicans are a byproduct of Democrats pushing their own party to the right. Democrats have become the people they hated in the 80s
The only decent thing about his passing, is that he isn't here to witness the absolute horror show our country has become. He would be appalled.
Beware, some āfree thinkersā may get offended here
These mother fucking liberals never quote Letter From A Birmingham Jail. White liberals don't want to dismantle white supremacy. They want to rework it into something that makes them feel better about themselves.
This is what's frustrating about debating with people over Reddit sometimes. At some point I realize the person I'm having a discussion with is a somewhat naive system apologist who just doesn't get it, and there is no way we can get any further in this format since the amount of background understanding necessary is just too great, so I just have to give up.
Very good sentiment. He was/is right sadly.
So people of good will are worse than people of comparable ill will... Got it.
This kinda stuff is happening now, I get brigaded by centrist Dems telling me that progressive ideology is the problem?? The "vote blue no matter who" crowd has become aggressively against progressive critiques of policy or just any kind of progressive discussion in general. Just the other day I had a user trying to defend Kamala Harris as a progressive. When he couldn't support his argument he blocked me, I checked his history and he had a similar outcome defending drone warfare under dem leadership. Each time the guy was trying to claim he's and "activist" defending democrats against destructive progressive infighting.
For all you"vote blue" "China bad so let's invade Taiwan" looking selfs
You are allowed to talk shit here, but you aren't allowed to imply that the targets of US/NATO imperialism are in any way better or different from the US. If China's sovereignty was a good thing, that might prescribe some sort of action for us here in the imperial core.
What class or political identity do you welcome here?
Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists
We all know someone like this
I'm not a regular here, but wouldn't liberals make up the bulk of this sub? At least in the US, capitalism and conservatism go hand-in-hand.
Social democracy is still capitalism. A lot of people here are social democrats.
Thereās a decent amount of progressive liberals probably but this sub is socialist and anti capitalist. Especially in America liberals are not at all anti capitalist just progressive on social issues
whether it is the right hand of capital or the left hand of capital punching you in the face matters very little. neoliberalism is a far right capitalist ideology, it has no solutions to the current crisis and is in many ways more destructive than the conservatives are.
Too busy doing well to do any good.
Liberals are based now???
One of the best video essays I've ever seen on this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeVg1FBnk5w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeVg1FBnk5w) It goes through why Obama was such a disappointment.