Alright no hate on Bernie tho, that dude is a role model through and through.
If someone said they were leftist then I would very much hope they were pro EU and pro Ukraine
It’s the far right that is against those
Nah dude. A good portion of leftists want Ukraine genocided.
I’m really struggling to find a party that i fully agree with.
For one, i like true leftist ideals, but i don’t like guns, so i guess the left parts of the image doesn’t apply to me.
On the other side, i think the long-standing support for Ukraine is an atrocious mistake, because it prolongs the suffering unnecessarily (after all, the uproar in Ukraine is mostly an CIA-inspired action after all i believe, and diplomatic solutions were not sought). But shitting on that pink hat (which is clearly a symbol for queer/trans people) is just unacceptable. just leave the people live their own private life as they want. What’s so difficult about that?
Edit: as per the comments, i stand corrected and am sorry for my half-assed take. i’ll leave it up anyways, because i guess it’s a chance to learn for any reader.
But shitting on that pink hat (which is clearly a symbol for queer/trans people) is just unacceptable
That isn’t what that is a symbol for at all. It was a knit hat made for an ineffective Trump protest in 2017. Actually queer and trans people found the hats exclusionary. So did non white people whose genitalia aren’t that color. The entire pussy-hat movement was feel-good liberal activity that accomplished nothing and made no difference. Much like the liberal “support” for Ukraine.
but i don’t like guns
This is extreme privilege. None of us like guns just to like guns. Brother Malcolm was being threatened with his life daily and his home was firebombed then he was assassinated, he was trying to protect himself. Fred Hampton was literally murdered by the police. The Zapatistas and Palestinians don’t resort to violence because they “like it” either, they are targets of the state that act with violence on them and both have learned that civil disobedience has its limits. Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists that were executed by the state after being framed and falsely accused of a bombing, armed robbery and murder which the state of Massachusetts apologized for in 1977.
How you going to seize the means of productions and depose the capitalists without using weaponry?
wait until they self-destruct, mostly.
i say this as an european
this is laughably utopian and ahistorical, i’m sorry but this is fantasy. There’s a reason that the “violent” and “authoritarian” communists have actually won and seized power while the utopian eurocommies have never accomplished a single thing.
Your nation has never successfully had a revolution. They need to be listening and learning from those that have, following their example, and not trying to invent their own perfect (white) system from whole cloth
There’s a reason that the “violent” and “authoritarian” communists have actually won and seized power while the utopian eurocommies have never accomplished a single thing.
Well yeah i can tell you what the communists have achieved in the Sovjet Union, and that’s 20 million people dead due to stalinistic terror. So much for “winning”. No thank you.
Meanwhile, lots of european economies (and people!) have been doing well since after the second world war. Maybe they have accomplished something.
Life expectancy over doubled from the 30s to the 70s in the USSR. Literacy rates went from the 20s and 30s to 99.9%, above Western European and USian rates. Famine was ended by collectivization and industrialization in a country where famine was common under the Tsar. This same nation, barely industrializing at the start of the 20th century, beat the United States into space, and continued beating it with the first man and first woman in space.
Social Safety Nets expanded greatly. Healthcare and Education were free and high quality. Housing was incredibly affordable, and there was full employment. Abortion was not only legalized, but free. Women played a role even in the highest ranks of politics. The economy was democratized. 80% of the combat in World War 2 was on the Eastern Front, the Soviets defeated the Nazis.
Sadly, there were excess deaths, but 20 million people did not die, such a number comes from anti-communist myth-makers before the opening of the Soviet Archives. The numbers given by the Black Book of Communism include Nazis killed during World War 2, and use various other misdirections to grossly inflate the number of excess deaths. Were there excess deaths? Sadly, yes, and nobody denies this. However, when compared to contemporary peers like the British Empire who intentionally starved millions of Bengalis, the French who were colonizing Vietnam, Algeria, and more, or the United States who killed millions of Iraqis, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and more, the USSR played a far more progressive role. From supporting Palestinian resistance against genocide, to helping China throw off their colonizers, to helping Algeria throw off the French, to helping Vietnam against the US Empire and French Colonialists, the Soviets played a far better role.
Wealth inequality went far down, whike GDP growth was constantly positive except during World War 2. It was one of the most rapidly growing economies in the 20th century.
Western Europe (and of course the US to a greater degree), to this day, relies on brutal expropriation of the Global South through outsourcing industry and brutal IMF loans. They have been doing well because they are Imperialists. To say they are doing well is to say the Trust Fund kid working at his father’s investment firm is doing well, he does so on the backs of actual laborers and did not earn his vast wealth, but inhereted it from former and current Empire.
well i guess it’s good for you to spit these facts but i gotta make my own judgement, and i can see the things around me, and saying “They have been doing well because they are Imperialists. To say they are doing well is to say the Trust Fund kid working at his father’s investment firm is doing well, he does so on the backs of actual laborers and did not earn his vast wealth, but inhereted it from former and current Empire.” does not make me believe your point, just fyi
So you just reject the facts because they feel wrong?
its time to read theory. you are currently at the utopian anarchist stage. which is a step in a better direction, but ultimately irrational.
you need to better understand that the people in the image [conveniently] on the left incorporated violence because they lived under the constant threat of deadly violence. 99% of the violence was directed at them. Fred Hampton was executed by the police not long after that picture of him was taken.
Do you really need to read volumes of theory to grasp what is fundamentally a rather straightforward concept?
Leftism shouldn’t be locked behind intellectual elitism.
TL;DR the capitalist state will use threats of violence/actual violence against threats to capitalism which includes those who stand for progressive ideals. Leftists believe this is a justification to use violence against the state.
There’s merit to your question. Ultimately, as someone who largely hadn’t taken theory seriously until the last couple of years, I think theory is not only useful, but necessary. There are good comrades who do good work without theory, I don’t want to discredit that. However, theory has had a profound impact on my understanding of history, tactics, and life itself. Theory is important because our predecessors have given their lives discovering and handing down the lessons they’ve learned.
From Marx, who dedicated his entire life to discovering the mechanisms of Capitalism to give the Proletariat the tools to surpass it, to Lenin, who analyzed Capitalism’s monstrous evolution to Imperialism, to Gramsci who spent the later years of his life rotting in prison and reflecting on Marxian teachings, to Politzer who stood against the Nazis and taught Parisan workers Dialectical and Historical Materialism before being captured and executed for his Jewish heritage and Communist alliance, to modern theoreticians such as Losurdo, Parenti, and the many Communists who dedicated their lives to the working class. Revolutionaries like Mao, Fidel, Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Lenin, and more all have unique lessons to tell from their experiences in their existence. People like Mao, Deng, Xi, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and more have helped build and design the largest economy in the world. What can we learn from them? What should we copy, what should change?
We owe it to them to learn from the lessons they dedicated their lives to teaching us. We have a duty to humanity to move beyond the wretched system of Capitalism before the planet is destroyed by Climate Change for the pursuit of profit. We owe it to our predecessors to continue the work they started. We owe it to our successors to use the best tools we can to make their struggles easier. We owe it to ourselves, so that we have a future.
Theory is a tool. If you don’t take every advantage you can against the most heartless, greedy, brutal Empire in history, do you really care at all? If you refuse to truly learn your enemy, in all its complicated facets of expropriation, or learn the successful tactics and strategies for overcoming them, or learn from the missteps of our predecessors or the correct actions they’ve taken, we will not have a decisive victory.
Yeah, i’m reading theory alright, i’m studying physics, if that’s what you mean, or what?
1·3 months agoPolitical theory. Like this intro reading list
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That’s why I’d rather call myself center left. By US standards I’m still probably “far left”, because I’m for public healthcare, strong regulations and very robust social safety net. But unlike probably most people here on lemmy, if someone runs a business that’s not completely out of control and has unionized employees, I don’t think there’s a problem with that.
I’m confused what the pink hat is supposed to have to do with the rest of the images
nothing, it’s just anti-trans, anti-queer bullshitting.
Edit: after looking it up, if i understand it correctly, it’s misogynistic bullshit? maybe? maybe not? idk
No, it’s anti-pinkwashing. It’s anti-liberals failing to protect the vulnerable yet again. What have we gained since the pussyhat movement but the loss of reproductive rights under Biden’s watch?
the loss of reproductive rights under Biden’s watch?
What did Biden have the authority to do that wasn’t done (to avoid this loss)?
Failed to make an executive action codifying abortion rights.
That would have just been superseded by the next admin
Yeah there is no point in eating, you will just shit it out later so best to not bother at all.
Now this would be like eating things but you’ve had your stomach and intestines removed. Then your analogy works. But it’s a pretty stupid analogy.
So do nothing, got it. Shoo lib begone
If you just want to do things for the sake of doing things so you can say you’ve done things, even though absolutely nothing materially changed. Typical you.
Both can be correct, it’s not a hard black and white split
The leftist revolutionary heroes are resisting the people on the right, it is a hard split. The people on the right are shepherds of the US carceral state and imperial murderers
Until we get ranked choice voting, you still need to support them though.
Ranked Choice Voting is both too ineffective to make any change, and too difficult to get in the first place. It’s the perfect endless carrot on a string, the eternal “just one more lane and traffic will be gone.”
Even if that’s so, you’d still need to vote for the people on the right, because voting third party in first past the post is objectively just terrible for everyone with similar goals.
The people on the right work with the Republicans. They aren’t resistance. Revolution is a necessity.
Even so, voting third party or not voting is worse than voting for the people on the right.
Last time I checked, that’s not how that works, everyone has a wide range of ideals and views. Not 1 or 2, there can be 1 1/2, 1 1/3, 1 1/10000, whatever
Both are good, one is better
should i mention that under one of them many coups around the world were orchestrated? no, dems are no better than gops.
dems are no better than gops
Unless you’re gay, lesbian, trans, atheist, Muslim, Jewish, Satanist, black, brown, female, an immigrant, or really anything other than a straight white Christian man.
What an incredibly privileged take. Try having some empathy for other people sometime.
of course. let’s have some respect for the american minorities while minorities abroad can be tortured in some basement in a third world shithole while being watched over by a cia agent.
and i get to be called privileged by some oversized gringo. oh the imperialist exceptionalism.
No way you’re unironically pulling out the identity politics when just about every single revolutionary party in the US’ history was led by minorities. We are the first to feel the brunt of capitalism and for that reason we are the ones to lead the charge against it while the privileged sit in their condos waiting for everything to blow over so they can say “Oh I actually supported civil rights this whole time :)”
And also, the US bombs all the groups above you just mentioned without distinction. The Obama administration for example dropped an average of 80 bombs every day of his presidency on the middle east and north africa.
For trans people in the U.S., the difference between a GOP win and a Dem win in the house, senate, and presidential elections is the difference between having or not having certain rights.
Federal prisons now will force trans women to be transferred to male prisons and they will be denied gender-affirming care like access to estrogen.
If you are a trans person in the U.S. there is a clear difference between the Dems and the GOP - one is clearly better than the other.
Nothing has responded to this, shown it to be false, etc.
It does not require that we overlook that the Dems have far-right policies, especially on immigration and international affairs. It does not require we defend U.S. imperialism to say the Dems are better than the GOP for trans people in the U.S. Both are true.
I understand the moral disgust and the impulse to see how villainous the Dems are, I feel the same way, but if you care about the political outcomes, you can’t ignore that there remain significant and tangible differences between the parties and their policies.
Rights are proclaimed and fought for by the marginalized, not gracefully given by our rulers. If you put so much emphasis on which group of tyrants to vote for, you’ll never think “maybe I should become a Stormé DeLarverie and actually make a difference”
Ah, I think you may have missed my point - I am responding to the claim that both parties are equally bad. While I can understand if you are primed to expect my points to be accompanied by a liberal attitude that voting is the main form of political action, let me clarify for you that this is not what I’m saying.
Obviously middle-class Americans have a tendency to think voting is the most significant political action that can be taken, maybe if they are really into politics they might make different consumer choices (avoiding Chick-fil-a, refusing plastic straws, etc.), and even more extreme people might participate in a peaceful protest.
Brick throwing on the other hand is something people who have nothing left to lose do, desperate acts from those who are barely surviving poverty, who are being harassed, jailed, raped, and killed by the police, and so on. Brick throwing isn’t done to carve out civil rights, it is survival.
To that end, Democrats who might advocate for and uphold civil rights have a pacifying and stabilizing effect in so far as some of those pressures that result in marginalized groups throwing bricks are alleviated. The GOP on the other hand seems to care little about stability, they are unskillful tyrants in that sense.
Ultimately all I am saying is that elections do have consequences, which is so obvious it should not have to be said. My statements do not imply elections are the only political events that matter.
Is equating the defense of Ukraine with that hat the entire point of the meme?
.ml people will stand by people resisting the imperialism of one country, and then condemn people resisting the imperialism of another, and still won’t realize they are effectively nationalists.
Liberals will invent fanfiction about Marxists before genuinely trying to engage with Lenin’s analysis of Imperialism or attempt to have a genuine conversation about it.
Marxists are great people. Leninists have fantastic ideas. And Marxist-Leninists betray everything Marx and Lenin stood for.
“Socialism in one country” is the invention of a bourgeois dictator who sought to destroy communism because it was a threat to his power.
Karl Marx died an anarchist.
“Socialism in one country” is the invention of a bourgeois dictator who sought to destroy communism because it was a threat to his power.
Even in Stalin’s time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain.
A lot of the cold war propaganda about the USSR turned out to be bullshit, as contemporary Western academic historians will tell you, including Domenico Losurdo.
Karl Marx died an anarchist.
This is laughably false by simply reading what Marx actually wrote.deleted by creator
I think that report wasn’t an honest assessment but rather the cold war talking points to be used for cold war propaganda. The CIA is as much in the job of disinformation as it is in information. Contemporary Western academic historians, having access to declassified US & USSR documents from the time, have published accounts that put these cold war cartoon villain narratives to bed.
deleted by creator
“I’m a leftist!” Helps get a rapist felon fascist get elected
It is so funny when Americans think that the election was fair and they had a choice. You have a kayfabe version of democracy.
“Take the Blue Pill and the gradual slide into fascism stops accelerating for four years while the current hellscape becomes the status quo, take the Red Pill and buckle the fuck up as we hyperspeed into fascism”
It’s hilarious when people think it is anything other than a 2 party system.
It is a kayfabe democracy. It has only oligarchical management, not democratic representation. No matter who wins the elections the policies are predetermined. Rooting for Kamala over Trump is no different than rooting for The Undertaker in Wrestlemania.
Sure sure, because under Kalama Harris this was how January was going to go too, yep.
It was, yeah. The US was going to implode and decline no matter which person was appointed by your oligarchy. You didn’t vote for any of the corporate board members who control your society and government in November. You also didn’t actually have a choice, in kayfabe democracy the results are predetermined, much like all the elections in authoritarian carceral states.
No, I strongly disagree that Harris would have all DEI removed, all black history everything paused for the military, etc. Harris was not going to push for more tax breaks for the ultra rich. The project 2025 agenda was not going to be pursued under Harris. You may not approve of the Harris agenda, but they are not remotely comparable except through an absolutist all or nothing lens. Claiming they are the same is absurd.
Oh no the imperialist murder machine isn’t being woke anymore?!!?!
You are not understanding what I am saying. You do not live in a democracy. Harris had no chance of winning because your elections are fake. That is what I mean by results are predetermined, just like Wrestlemania. The US oligarchs fixed the elections during redistricting years before the election took place. During the ridiculous run up to the event nothing you did mattered. You live in a authoritarian oligarchy.
leftist : anti-capitalism :: liberal : pro-capitalism
Why is this so hard for some radlibs to understand? I think it is all the propaganda they passively consume.
