The comments have went so far off the rules (and rails). Locking, because mods volunteer, and we've been flooded with reports for this post thread alone.
The tankies seem incapable of reckoning with the fact that an informed citizen can vote for the lesser of two evils (usually fairly easily) and also take other action like boycotts protests and community organizing etc. I also don't believe most of the keyboard communists actually do jack shit to fight back, aside from impotent online rage.
It's even worse than that. Most of them are incapable of understanding any kind of nuance. To them every issue is black or white. And everyone who doesn't agree with every single point on their extremist agenda is an identical enemy.
And Lemmy (or at least certain instances on Lemmy) is infested with them. Which means they go around in clusters, swarming anyone on the other instances who doesn't conform with their impractical ideology and blinkered views.
Edit: Ooh, looks like they found my comment! Just wanted to add a special note to them: grow the fuck up!
And let your instance admins know you'd like them to defederate! There's a good chance they might also want to but don't want to force the decision upon their users.
My instance defederated both Hexbear and db0 and it's crazy how much more emotionally mature the vibe is without those users.
I think their instance admin was the guy behind the tesseract scandal a few months ago, might want to look into that if you haven't heard of it.
Basically snuck a hidden blob into a "small" update that shadowbans a bunch of users and keywords. Doesn't sound that bad on the surface, but the implementation was really shady, the blacklist itself was sloppily constructed, and the way he handled the fallout when people called him out on it was really immature.
If I have this confused with a different instance, then my bad. I think he's involved with sh.itjustworks at a fairly high level too though.
There's a couple graphics floating around somewhere mapping defederations of major instances if you want alternatives. I'll see if I can dig them up.
Dang I knew this was a honeypot thread I didn't realize it was for THAT.
I'm still upset that you guys managed to sucessfully bully a developer into deleting his (free) project (that had like 10 users), because now his blocklist has to be rebuilt manually, thankfully so many of you out yourselves and make it easy to report.
Oh, you're the guy I was talking about? Hahaha, I didn't even realize, but now you're glowing.
You reported me for an objective delivery of the facts, as I understand them? Sure, don't care.
Next time be more honest about the diffs in your "free" software updates, and handle things a bit more maturely when people take notice of the unethical payloads you hide behind "security patches."
If telling you that is "bullying" you, then you need thicker skin. In fact you're suspiciously bordering on DARVO, a common tactic among narcissists. (Not calling you a narcissist, by the way. Just pointing out how your response resembles how one would react).
Oh by the way, did I just make the tesseract ban list? If so, I'll consider it an honor.
Yeah, people need to stop conflating MLs with Marxists, because Leninism and Marxism are not the same thing at all.
Leninists appropriated the "Marxist" label to lend credibility to their own ideology. Hence it's "Marxist-Leninism," not "Leninist-Marxism."
Nobody is out there calling actual Marxists "tankies." We're calling MLs tankies, and then they retreat behind a mote and bailey by saying "yOuR cAlLiNg AlL mArXiStS tAnKiEs?!1?1?!1?1??1?1!!"
Also, "tankie" is a term I exclusively hear used by the left to refer to their own fringe (who, by the way, refer to the rest of the left as "liberals" and "fascists" for not being as extreme as them...). It's like the left-wing version of maga. They're completely irrational, bad-faith, militant, and authoritarian.
I never hear centrists, liberals, or conservatives call anybody a "tankie." To them, the entire left are all just "commies," because that's the pejorative they use. They don't need the term "tankie," because the entire point of that term is to differentiate between the irrational, extremist fringe of the left, and the rest of us leftists who are capable of both rational thought and empathy (crazy idea, I know...), and are typically somewhere in the democratic range of the socialist spectrum.
::: spoiler disclaimer:
(Although I'll add that anarchists exist among us reasonable socialists too, but that's a very broad term and some self-declared "anarchists" truly are actually authoritarian tankies, which becomes clear when you listen to the things they say and how they handle disagreement.
Conversely, some "anarchists" are also actually neofeudal capitalist/corporatist fascists cosplaying as freedom fighters when all they really want is deregulation of industry...).
:::
Leninism is not a replacement of Marxism, Leninism refers to Lenin's own advancements on Marxism. Lenin used Marxist analysis to bring Marxism to a new era, from the era of industrial capitalism to the imperialist stage of capitalism. The primary advancements of Leninism are the following:
The Leninist strategy and tactics of revolution
The Leninist critique of Imperialism
The Leninist understanding of the national question, and the right of self-determination.
Marxism-Leninism is called as such because the basis of Marxism-Leninism is Marxism. Marxism-Leninism carries over the 3 basic fundamentals of Marxism:
Dialectical and historical materialism as the guiding worldview
The Marxist critique of capitalism based on the Law of Value
The scientific approach to socialism, grounded in class struggle.
In the modern era, the number of Marxists that reject Lenin are incredibly fringe. Lenin's work as a Marxist is incredibly obvious to anyone who has read both Marx and Lenin, and it's very clear that Lenin was history's greatest Marxist, after the deaths of Marx and Engels. MLs are the dominant form of Marxism in the modern era, and most relevant historically, so trying to claim Marxism-Leninism isn't Marxist requires an enormous level of justification on your part.
The primary advancements of Leninism are the following:
You forget to add "Assassinating the soviet leadership because they defeated the bolsheviks in a fair election, and that was unacceptable to Lenin; and then replacing the dead soviets with bolshevik stooges while appropriating the term "Soviet."
Oh and betraying the anarchists and other groups who supported them during the revolution.
Oh and highly centralized and controlling surveillance state apparatus, and making the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat" a permanent fixture rather than a transitional government.
Marxism-Leninism
It's Marxist-Leninism, not "Marxism-Leninism." You might want to get your own label right before trying to school people on the internet about it.
In the modern era, the number of Marxists that reject Lenin are incredibly fringe.
Someone's never read Merleau-Ponty, and it shows...
No, you said Marxism-Leninism isn't Marxist. Marxism-Leninism is Marxist. All of Marxism in the modern day has historically evolved from the era of Marx, be it through accepting ideas, changing them, or rejecting them. There is no such thing as a Marxist that has no opinion on Lenin one way or the other, for example. The ideology "Leninism" is used to refer specifically to Lenin's advancements, "Marxism" to the ideology created by Marx and Engels, and "Marxism-Leninism" as the unified ideology created by Lenin and forged in practice.
You then make vague references to the Russian Civil War without actually contextualizing them. The Bolsheviks did not "lose fair elections," and fighting amongst the Soviets did coalesce around the Bolshevik line, as the Bolsheviks were supported by both the proletariat and peasantry. The fighting between the communists and anarchists wasn't some one-sided betrayal either, it was a civil war and some sections of the anarchists that did not join the Bolsheviks took up arms against the soviets.
Further still, the soviet state was not some "permanent fixture." Such an idea is inherently against Marxist understanding of dialectical materialism, as nothing in the world is permanent, as well as the economic basis for the withering of the state. The USSR was a socialist state gradually building towards communism.
As for "Marxist-Leninism," no, I mean Marxism-Leninism, as understood by Wikipedia, science direct, and Stalin when coining the term. You're very confident about this point despite being trivially proven wrong.
As for Merleau-Ponty, yes, Western Marxism is incredibly fringe in the global and historical context.
^ that, friends is what we call a "bad-faith argument" based on a distorted interpretation of what was actually said, utilizing flashy one-liners to deride a commenter without actually addressing any of the content of the comment they made.
it's called paraphrasing, you wanted to make it very clear that you're one of the good ones for the liberals, as opposed to tankies who are the bad ones. i don't think i misrepresented you.
the term is literally a left facing pejorative the way it's used, especially how you were using it.
Cowbs there is fully ideological and fails to reconcile his understanding of classroom theory with real world application. Fucker genuinely believes the cow is a perfect sphere and is a bad faith propagandist. He'll probably report my comment too because he's a little bitch that just gish gallops bullshit and pivots every time you pin him down. You're wasting your time. Their whole account is dedicated to getting republicans in power.
I organize in real life, my perspective is based on what I actually do as an organizer and activist as well as someone who studies Marxist-Leninist theory and history so as to apply it better. Just because I oppose the democrats doesn't mean I support the republicans, I oppose the entire capitalist system. My goal is socialism, and like all Marxists, I believe that this can only be established through revolution, which means I do spend a fair bit of time combatting misconceptions surrounding reformism.
I haven't reported any of your comments yet, btw. You have this absurd caricature of me that lives on in your brain, this must be the second dozen comment you've made about me specifically with no actual substance. Take a break, touch grass.
i'm just being observant, an overwhelming amount of people calling others 'tankies' are perfectly fine with team blue sending in the tanks/bombs/drones.
No not really, I am way left of Biden, universal Healthcare, free community College, strong social safety net etc. are not radical left ideas, they are centrist.
I also know enough about history to understand that power systems formed around Marxism communism or anarchism are not inherently good or just when put into practice.
I despise the wholesale slaughter of civilians by the military industrial complex, I also despise the violent crushing of dissent by 'communist' or 'socialist' governments.
A good and just society will always be a mix of different 'isms' and marxism definitely needs to be a prominent part of the mix. I'm against total ideological purity, be it capitalist imperialism that can justify industrialized human suffering, or naive tankie bullshit that can justify being on the side of the tanks in Tiananmen square.
You're a dumbass. Liberals don't even know what a tankie is, let alone call anyone that.
"Tankie" is what rational socialists call the irrational people on the extreme fringes of the left who are incapable of arguing in good faith, like you for instance.
No, that's not even true. You're just calling anyone a liberal who calls you a tankie, so clearly it's only liberals using the term from your perspective. That's called mental gymnastics.
Also,
the reality is that ‘tankie liberal’ is one of those terms that gets stretched until it’s just a pejorative for anyone to the left center of the person using it.
No, "tankie" is just a pejorative for anyone that defends and supports existing socialist states. Being good faith doesn't matter, what matters is what people support, whether they be Marxists, anarchists, or even SocDems.
Mind telling us what "existing socialist states" you're referring to? Do the PRC and DPRK feature in that list? Because yes, defending and obfuscating for those authoritarian and rigidly hierarchical ethno-states truly is something that tankies often do. How astute for you to point that out!
And no, if someone is capable of rational discourse and argues in good faith, then by definition they're not a tankie and I've never seen anyone call someone like that a tankie. Tankies are usually all about "less chat, more splat"
well i'm an anarchist and i literally vote in every primary and every year for municipal/nonpresidential elections, so it was nice to have you identify me correctly.
what was funny to me is that this comic is so dishonestly framed, like take panel 1, my trans comrades have already been getting arrested by democrats for protesting their abandonment of trans kids healthcare in favor of institutions and placating trump. 'i don't want to arrest trans people' is clearly not the same as 'i won't arrest trans people'.
the way the comic is structured is like actually nonsensical too, the person being anti-voting says stuff after the vote has already been cast, and then when it fails we're supposed to blame the those two? i blame the democrats for losing more than i do voters.
Yes, that's the hyperbolic slander it tries to assert when in reality it is just a buzzword for imbeciles to use when they want to stop engaging with the argument.
okay then please tell that to everyone calling me a tankie plsss
the reality is that 'tankie' is one of those terms that gets stretched until it's just a pejorative for anyone to the left of the person using it.
started as a specific reference to people who defended the soviet invasion of hungary in 1956, then it gets applied to anyone who doesn't denounce every socialist state on demand, now it's anyone who doesn't want to vote for biparitsan war consensus
Sister, you're the one that decided that OP was lumping the anarchists and Marxists in with the tankies! You appear to be trying to claim that OP is portraying everyone who says 'both sides are the same' as tankies. A is a subset of B; B is not equal to A. Just because some people don't actually understand what 'tankie' means doesn't mean everyone shares that view, in the same way that 'liberal' doesn't actually mean 'everyone who votes Democrat'.
it's a heavily sanctioned garrison state that emerged from a brutal colonial occupation and a war that killed a third of the population.
i dont particularly care for any states, but i have special contempt for the US. that makes it hard to share in the fearmongering about the US's designated enemies on the other side of the planet from where i live.
"Tankies" just means people who support existing socialist states. Typically we are Marxist-Leninists, but anarchists and socdems also fit this sometimes and are targeted.
Tankies are the ideological opposite and intellectual equivalent of libertarians. Like if you're in high school it's ok to dabble but if you maintain those viewpoints into adulthood you probably weren't top of your class and you definitely weren't popular. Ideology for dumb assholes.
I've said it in another comment but I'm pretty sure most lemmings genuinely believe that the cow is a perfect sphere. Lemmy US political discourse is fuckin garbage.
Let's be straight here: the likliest scenario is that Lemmy was explicitly created for the purpose of giving tankies a platform to spread misinformation and hate. It is the Nazi bar.
Lemmy was indeed made for the purpose of spreading communism, as a reaction to Reddit's censorship. Communism isn't "misinformation and hate" though, that's your ideological spin on it.
I dislike the term Communism, as it's associations with Stalinist thought muddies the waters between it and Fascism. I identify as socialist, myself.
What I take issue with is the fact that you support fascism and call it by a different name. I quite enjoyed "misinformation and hate" as a more direct statement. As an aside, go fuck yourself, fascist.
Communism is a post-socialist society where class has been eradicated and all production and distribution has been collectivized. Socialism is the transitional system between capitalism and communism. All socialism either moves towards communism, or falls backwards.
As for "Stalinism," that doesn't exist. Marxism-Leninism is an ideology, the one guiding Cuba, the PRC, former USSR, Vietnam, Laos, etc. Stalin's contributions to it are extremely minor, the vast majority of Marxism-Leninism comes from Marx and Lenin.
Socialism, as it has historically existed, is by no means "fascism." Equating the Soviets with the Nazis is a form of Holocaust trivialization. The communists represent the working classes, and always fight in their favor. The Nazis created an ideology based on racial supremacy, and cemented bourgeois rule with an iron fist. They are not at all equivalent, and to do so is immensely anti-socialist.
Stalin's contributions to it are extremely minor, the vast majority of Marxism-Leninism comes from Marx and Lenin.
LOOOOLLLLLLLLL, Mao literally took direct inspiration from Stalin's innovations over Leninism. Mao, whose version of "communism" was then propogated to most of those other countries you mentioned.
If "Stalinism" doesn't exist, then neither does "Maoism."
Your only hope in this conversation is that no one here knows enough about it to dispute your attempts at obfuscation.
What were Stalin's innovations over Leninism? Be specific. Mao was a Marxist-Leninist, same as Stalin, carrying over Lenin's ideology the way Lenin carried over Marx's ideology. "Maoism" isn't the ideology of Mao, but a deviation made by Gonzalo.
Nah, more like they found a small enough community that they could abuse with their relatively weak numbers. Also the fact that there's no corporate backing to ban them and that's by design. This is free speech in a nutshell. There's a lot of people with really stupid political views.
To be honest, I think they only get Kremlin money indirectly in a form of propaganda, having everyone on a paycheck is way too expensive when you can make them work for free
And Lemmy (or at least certain instances on Lemmy) is infested with them. Which means they go around in clusters, swarming anyone on the other instances who doesn’t conform with their impractical ideology and blinkered views.
That's why i switched to piefed. Out of sight, out of mind.
And a big problem with a lot of them is they antagonize you into saying shit they report you for. It’s not just about spreading propaganda, it’s about removing anyone that disagrees with it.
Their civility rules are fake. They will say the most vile, violent shit to you, and never have a comment removed. But suggest that their political strategies are stupid, and you get banned.
These kinds of sweeping generalizations that collapse the entirety of leftist thought into simple black and white binaries is the exact behavior you're trying to criticize, no?
Cowbee is incredibly patient and doing marvelous educational work in threads like this. You confuse it for a debate, but you'd need to be on even footing for that. It's more like they are a teacher who calmly tries to make some common sense stick with western people who behave like spoiled children and are to privileged and racist to see the simple and plain truths that literally most people in the (non-western) world see clearly.
Cowbee is a bad faith propagandist that can't reconcile their understanding of theory with literally all of recorded history. Cowbee is full of shit and as bad faith as it comes here on Lemmy.
No? I study theory and history, it's pointless to only study one aspect. I'm 100% genuine, and making a dozen comments complaining about me in a row without actually adding anything is a bit ridiculous.
Cowbee has some good points and his heart is in the right place, but always seems to show up to imply people shouldn't vote, which I think is foolish and dangerous.
Nah, I directly state that organizing is more important than voting, and treating them like it's the opposite is dangerous. I don't argue against voting, I argue for organizing, and stress it as more important than voting.
"Not a debate" is 100% accurate. They just copy paste some tangential and paper thin propaganda and tweak the verbiage. Basically LLM slop with some extra steps. If you punch a hole in that topic (after a bunch of equivocation and nit picking) they retreat to some other copy-paste talking point.
It's easy to look "smart" at a glance when your conversation technique is the exact same playbook as Charlie Kirk:
Pick someone random with minimal preparation (college student :: commenter)
in a poor environment for a debate (a desk under a tent :: deep thread in a random comment section)
and throw a nonstop stream of garbage at them (unexamined statistics on black crime :: unexamined stats on USSR beef production)
when cornered, appeal to a genetic fallacy and change the topic ("that's a fake woke study" :: "that's CIA propaganda")
There's no way to have a conversation unless you already start in agreement with their priors. I've watched them get backed into a corner on basic stuff that contradicts their own talking points in the same thread. Paraphrasing it went something like "Communism is a perfect rational science" => Why don't we discard the pseudo-religious trappings and make decisions that optimize for quantifiable quality of life indicators à la the HDi? => "Well actually communism is required for the vibes"
Look ladies and gentlemen, no straw man needed! Already here in the flesh! Like a terminally online Candyman, say the name you'll summon the keyboard praxis warrior.
Too hard to search your own comment history? I don't blame you, 21.4k comments at an average of 668 per month is too much for me too. And of course that's just your .ml account, lord knows what you'd have to sift through on your alts.
Having actual real life responsibilities prevents me from keeping up with your Kirk-esque pace of a reply every 43 waking minutes, so how about we compromise. You can just copy-paste the existing comments calling out your bullshit right underneath the drivel you regurgitate. It's all the same conversation anyway, it will save us both time.
That's odd, you kept making a strawman of my argument and kept berating me for not sourcing the strawman. After I sourced the actual point I made, I only got crickets.
Unsure what you mean by "flying monkeys," but if there's one thing anarchists and Marxists near-universally agree on, it's the necessity of directly struggling against the system itself, rather than treating voting as our primary means of political engagement. Collapsing leftist point of views into this unprincipled, nuance-lacking strawman doesn't actually engage with the primary critique, which is that we need to organize outside the system and direct that organization against said system to gain change, be it revolutionary or even to gain reforms or concessions.
And no, I don't represent the entirety of leftist thought. I was responding to a sweeping generalization of leftist thought.
I'm not, I'm responding to the comment directly. I suppose you could argue that their comment was vague enough that they could claim to be talking about a specific group in a clarification, but as it stands they seem to be lashing out against the left in general. Further, when people treat voting as their primary means of political engagement, they do check out! I'm not denying that people can organize while voting for the DNC, many people do, but the problem is that most see voting for the DNC as their primary political agency, and not a pressure valve designed to siphon away agitation against the system itself.
Further, when people treat voting as their primary means of political engagement, they do check out!
Citation needed. If this is the basis of why you think Voting Bad then you're going to have to back that up with some science. Not quoting Lenin, I want a solid peer reviewed study.
If you don't have that your entire reasoning falls on a hunch and vibes.
Personally I think voting helps people become more politically engaged, not less.
Their comment was very clearly talking specifically about tankies who want to "well acktyually" people on "Theory" while being the textbook definition of useful idiots helping the fascists. That behavior isn't encouraging people to organize; it's discouraging them from it because if organizing means dealing with that sort of condescension then they want no part of it!
Everybody but you understood that. You're the only one who's so fucking full of yourself you think you're entitled to speak for the entire Left!
They call out a cluster of traits as being bad. The only sane way to parse their comment is to interpret it as only applying to people who have all those traits. You're doing something equivalent to demanding someone clarify that they didn't mean they hated all food when they complained about not liking things that are sweet.
If you're pro-military, pro-dictatorship, you're not a leftist. Leftists don't want to keep wallowing in the same monkeybrained shit we've been doing for the last ten thousand years, we want to grow the fuck up as a race. Violence isn't doing the job. It doesn't work for the enemy when they try to use it on us, and we'd be stupid to think it'd be more effective in the hands of the less violently inclined. We need better tools, better ideas. Fuck Marx, fuck Lenin, fuck Mao. Don't even try to pretend their authoritarian thinking is compatible with anarchism.
I'm a Marxist-Leninist, but I did used to be an anarchist, and from my time as an anarchist I cannot recall any anarchists opposed to revolution as a means to establish anarchism, which is something anarchists and Marxists share in common. Further, Marxists are not "pro-dictatorship," not in the sense of an individual with immense power, but in favor of the working class taking control, in favor of radical and genuine democracy.
What happens to the working class after they take control? History says they don't stay the working class. They become the new rich or the new military leaders. They do their dance just to fall back into the same shit patterns they worked to overthrow. Their revolutions mean nothing because they just use violence as a response to violence rather than taking a holistic proactive approach to the advancement of mankind.
There is no such thing as genuine democracy; each individual must be taught how to control themselves, take responsibility for their actions, and move beyond the ways that failed us so many times. A tyranny by majority vote is still tyranny.
Oh hey, it's you, the person who said voting for Democrats was accelerationist. How ya been?
Actually collapsing 'all of leftist thought' as Tankie-owned is the mistake here. Leftist thought is broader and more flexible than you'd like to think because you've painted youself into the most austere, ineffective corner that consistently results in the worst possible outcomes. Leftist thought is a biiiig panoply of ideas and strategies of every color, and you guys are the button that says 'clear all', indicated by little grey and white squares.
Accelerationism means supporting the most competent capitalists and imperialists, to speed up concentration of capital and speed up collapse as a consequence. The Democrats are the more competent party when it comes to ensuring capitalism remains more stable. This would make them the accelerationist option. Accelerationism isn't "burn down the system now," it's a specific (and wrong) strategy.
As for claiming "all leftist thought is tankie-owned," I did no such thing. I generally categorize the left as being predominantly Marxists and anarchists, those who oppose capitalism. I myself am a Marxist-Leninist, which is an ideology that has consistently managed to both take power for the working class, and wield it to do tremendous things like double life expectancies, eradicate homelessness, and more. Not sure what you mean by your assertion that I am painting myself into an ineffective corner, nor the bit on saying "clear all."
Marxist-Leninist strategy is time-tested and clear-cut. Capitalism runs into crisis from its own contradictions, so to make revolution we need to develop a working class party that builds up disciplined, educated cadre that struggle along with the rest of the working class directly against the system. With this party, we can make effective organizers, educate the working class, agitate among them against the capitalist system itself, and create unity among the working class that can become an unbreakable hammer, an unblockable spear. The party just becomes the spearhead, the actual working class is the one making the real moves and changes. You know, the old adage,
You said he thinks that voting for democrats is accelerationist, and he explained why he believes that.
You claimed that he thinks all of leftist thought is whatever tankies think (a pretty vague claim, tankie is not exactly a well established term), and then you use some flowery sequence of platitudes without real refutable specifics to propose a broader definition of leftism. Cowbee responds by clarifying what he believes leftism is, which is broader than his own ideology.
What words are you saying he ignored? Are you upset he didn't answer "how ya been?" Are you confused as to which comment he's responding to?
Man you're late I ain't going over all this shit again. There's a whole conversation you can go look over and be weird about if you want to try and draw any more context from my interactions here. It's all in the open in the replies. I don't even understand if you're trying to make a point or. White kniting at this point and I don't care. Come at me with your own shit or stay out of it.
You're clearly trying to identify a pattern, though, and simply implying there are exceptions to this pattern doesn't mean your assertion that the pattern itself exists is justified in reality. I think it would be better to directly attack the ideology/ies you are taking aim at, than to concoct a strawman.
When voting is treated like the absolutely most important means of political struggle, people do tune out and neglect to organize. The electoral system is a pressure valve, and political theater is a funnel to direct people's rage away from the system itself and towards said pressure valve. Organizing is far more important than voting, yet societal pressures make it seem like the opposite is the case. That is the point Marxists are making, and this is why organizing in a working class party isn't just optional, but necessary for progressive change.
Every major reform and concession has been won through struggle. Not because the ruling class was bested in the marketplace of ideas or anything. The Stonewall Riots were the catalyst for progressive change, not a change in heart in the ruling class. Same as the Civil Rights Movement, where Dr. King was assassinated as he began pivoting not just from anti-racist agitation, but towards the Poor People's Campaign, a growing socialist movement. It's why the Black Panther Party was infiltrated, and its top leaders killed or imprisoned. That's why we need to actually focus our political energies on organized struggle.
When voting is treated like the absolutely most important means of political struggle, people do tune out and neglect to organize.
Prove it. Where's the peer reviewed study? If you can't back that up with some science this entire argument is based off of an assumption. What if voting gets people more politically active? If this is the whole reason why you think people shouldn't vote and take direct action, it's a flimsy one.
And, even if it was true, there's nothing that is stopping you from reminding people to be active and not just vote. You could go into comment sections and say people should go participate in building a revolution after they vote.
But I digress, you made a claim that's the basis of your whole argument, do you have any proof that voting leads to less organizing?
Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said the act of voting makes people tune out, or that people should not vote. I said treating voting like the primary means of gaining effective change deflates organizational pressures. If you cannot respond to the actual arguments at hand, then do not invent new ones.
No, you quoted me saying that treating voting like the absolute most important means of political struggle causes people to tune out. Not the act of voting, the treatment of the concept at a societal level. Stop making up strawmen.
The closest direct source I found suggests that there is a negative correlation between system-justifying beliefs and collective anti-system action. If people believe voting legitimately is a means by which they can enact social change, they are less likely to organize against the system itself. This does not mean voting itself is against organizing, in fact organizers vote at higher rates than non-organizers. The importance here is that collective action is diminished when that is directed towards engaging with the system itself.
Thats right. But I do understand where it comes from. Theo lesser Evil evolved to a downward spiral.
The less evil is bare minimum. And it sometimes feels like that politicians are more busy With being a bit better than the actual Evil, to still satisfy their own voters and trying to win the others. Better Take would be to actually improve stuff.
But yes. No vote will Just hand over the vote for the stronger party. So the less evil kinda ist the only option.. and I rather Take that, than nothing
Exactly. You shouldn't treat voting for a politician as a marriage, you should treat politicians as a vehicle to get you to the place you want to be.
There almost never is an ideal candidate because everyone has different opinion what ideal candidate is. Even in countries where there are multiple parties most people don't get exactly who they want.
If you want better choices you need to get more involved on politics, vote in primaries, vote in local elections, find and help candidates that are not popular but are closer to what you want or even run yourself.
If you don't get involved at lower levels don't be surprised the candidates in general aren't what you want. Of you don't vote, don't be surprised that candidates ignore needs of your group.
Primaries are for getting the candidates you want. General elections are for picking the candidate who is closest to your values. If you really want change, get involved for your primary candidate. Just bitching on here and sitting out on civic action is selfish catharsis.
"Remember you stupid tr#nnies, your job is to support the party, no matter how much the candidate we nominate hates you. Your job is to sit down, shut up, and get in line. We need your votes, not your voices. The correct time to oppose the TERFS is not during the first year's primary (we let candidates hide their transphobia during the first primary.) It's certainly not during the first general election. It's during the primary, you stupid tr#nny!"
"Also, please be aware that it is irresponsible to primary a TERF democrat running for reelection in a purple district. We can't give up an incumbent seat after all. You'll just have to wait and vote SO HARDS until that district votes so overwhelmingly blue that it becomes a safe seat. Then it will be acceptable to primary the TERF we put forward. Also, please be aware that before running in that primary, your new candidate will first have to get passed the real primary, the money primary to decide who gets to be on the primary ballot. Ok, now that your role is clear, blue no matter who. Remember tr#nnies, you're fabulous and we love you. And remember, if we lose, it's all your fault and you deserve whatever laws are passed against you! Slay gurl! Hope this helps! Don't forget to sign up to canvas for the terf as this year's pride! 🥰 🥰 🥰 "
One, democrats have already demonstrated their lack of appetite to protect trans rights.
Two, it's a hostage situation that allows the "left" party to do nothing by just not being the actual villain. It won't win them elections and won't actually help anyone. You can't pretend you're the good guy if you just stand there while the bad guy shoots the people who you claim you want to help.
Three, vote for the love of gods. I don't care if they're the lesser evil, we can still make them change and that's better than active evil. Their strategy of hostage taking might be a losing one, but we can force them to become the actual good guys
I grant you, enforcing unjust laws isn't ideal. But pull your head out of your ass, the air up there is killing your brain!
There's worse ways to enforce bad laws. The rights of the accused is an older and more powerful revolutionary idea than whatever toothless shit "state oppression of the working class" is meant to represent, though it isn't clear you understand the shape behind that shadow.
You're embodying the joke here. Don't let the fantasy of a perfect world that exists in your dream blind you to the realities of the one we're in.
Many people do not see a functional difference between "enforcing unjust laws" by-the-book compared to "worse ways to enforce unjust laws" (I presume, based on the topic of this particular thread, that you're alluding to whatever the fuck ICE is doing right now). Whether ICE nicely follows all the regulations while arresting and deporting an immigrant family, or they storm into the house of an immigrant family and beat them up before arresting and deporting them, the net effect is the same when observed from a certain level of abstraction.
To be clear, I personally think it's clear that the scenario in which the immigrant family gets beat up is worse (as it results in the family being beat up, and the outcome is otherwise the same). However, if presented a "choice" between the two options it's hard to see the first one as particularly compelling. It's like asking "would you rather fracture your skull in a car crash, or fracture your skull in a car crash which also breaks your arm?", it's hard not to look at the two shitty choices and not be bitter that there isn't a choice in which you don't get hit by a car.
Oh hey the whole gang is here. Blaming a worldwide pandemic and ridiculous panic buying on political lines? Jesus I almost thought we were going to have a reasonable conversation here. Lmao.
I'd chime in and add that trump and co actively tried to profit off of the pandemic, by confiscating PPE from states and then selling it back to their hospitals at a markup. They also wanted to let covid run rampant because they believed it would affect higher density blue states worse than the lower density red states.
Biden wasn't great, but it cannot be understated how fucking evil the trump administration was.
Just so we're clear you were responding to a post about Biden fixing things and you brought up these events in 2021 which was NOT during Trump's term, so yes I am pretty sure you're being disingenuous here and trying to derail the claim,
In Good faith I will respond that I do remember Trump disbanding the Pandemic reaponse team in... 2017/18? It was early on and a sign of things to come in regards to his willingness to just undo anything Obama had credit for.
And yet there were no government mandated lockdowns and the toilet paper rush was, as far as I can tell, not a cultivated psyop.
Wild. By the time the area was vacated his admin was completely disavowing it and gave full "credit" to Biden. Guess I fell for some stupid shit and Biden can't even claim that.
Biden overturned a Trump-era ban on trans people serving in the military and made it possible for U.S. citizens who do not identify as male or female to select an “X” as the gender marker on their passports.
So having no control of the Senate, House, or the Supreme Court or the unilateral ability to pass laws, Biden failed to stop the fascists years into the future, and now it’s his fault that Republicans are violating the constitution?
I’m curious what kind of laws you think he (congress) should have created for trans people.
Are you just as upset that he didn’t create new laws to protect Muslims, immigrants, atheists, women, and leftists as well? Or do those laws already exist and are strong enough, but trans people are missing their specific protections?
AIPAC Democrats are funding aipac Republicans over DSA and progressive candidates that are against blowing up children and innocents. This means no one of importance will be held meaningfully responsible for the destruction of our country.
"Democratic Primaries: AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project (UDP), spent $53.6 million in independent expenditures by August 2026, primarily to defeat Democrats like Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan) and Cori Bush (Missouri). In the 2024 cycle, AIPAC spent $24 million to unseat progressives in Democratic primaries.
Republican Campaigns: AIPAC also supports Republicans, endorsing over 100 members of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election. However, its Republican spending is often directed against candidates AIPAC deems "insufficiently supportive" of Israel, such as Thomas Massie (KY) in 2026, whom UDP targeted with $3.58 million in opposition.
Donor Overlap: A Politico report found that 46% of AIPAC donations to Democratic candidates in 2024 came from donors who had previously supported Republican causes or candidates since 2020, including GOP billionaires like Paul Singer and Haim Saban. "
Tammy Duckworth says that Dems shouldn't be "impeaching nobody" and we should work with the pedophilic, traitorous, authoritarian who has broken more laws than exist.
No one likes the Dems and everyone knows that nothing will happen that causes any real change after they get elected. Everything we want will be on the back burner because "we don't want another trump again"
lmao I got called "Blue MAGA" for encouraging strategic voting just yesterday. I was a card carrying member of DSA before it was cool.
You can tell an election is coming up because all the bots and shills crawl out of the woodwork to start arguments between centrist Democrats and progressive leftists. I'm often disappointed by Status Quo Democrats but I'll take a status quo that doesn't work well enough for everyone over a lurch towards fascism that intends to claw back every right we've secured since the 1860's and eagerly steal the territory and resources of middle powers... and do it all fucking incompetently.
Muricans, don't fuck this up. We're so tired of all the political news from your country dominating every single "global" space. Sincerely, the rest of the world.
No one is saying that the Democrats and Republicans are the same. What we're saying is that the Democrats allegience to the ruling class puts them in a position that makes them unable to deal with fascism, and the result is that their function as a political party is to defang otherwise radically leftist movements.
Joe Biden spent a record amount on ICE camps while the threat of fascism was obviously clear.
Biden continued building Trump's border wall.
Joe Biden sat on his ass for 4 years and refused to prosecute Trump.
Democrats sat with their thumbs up their butts while Merrick Garland got flogged for scotus, and then turned around to immediately confirm Barrett.
Obama not only discovered Tom Homan, but awarded him with a medal when Homan devised a plan to separate migrant children from their parents at detention centers.
Every single dem senator voted to confirm Marco Rubio, who has obviously been one of the biggest champions of "immigration enforcement.
Democrats capitulated during the multiple government shutdowns.
Democrats blatantly shafted Bernie in 2016, and all but guaranteed Trump's ascension.
Democrats refused to pull Biden out of the race and all but assured Trump's second term.
Kamala promised to build the world's most lethal military during an active genocide
Democrats, during a period of blistering inaction, rushed into action to censure Al Greene when he was rude.
The fighting on this thread was completely and masterfully predicted and orchestrated by op. Bravo. A master craft lesson in left in fighting. 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
I still can't get over the fact that, in my party, the idea that someone might not have voted because of a genocide generates more anger and resentment than the party leaders being openly complicit in a genocide does.
I already give any democrat a free 'harm reduction' vote so I'll be damned if they're going to guilt trip me for being pro-Palestine and anti-genocide on top of it,
Primaries are for getting the candidates you want. General elections are for picking the candidate who is closest to your values. If you really want change candidates, get involved in your candidates primary push. Just bitching on here and sitting out on civic action is selfish catharsis.
I'm choosing to believe they were being sarcastic but yeah. Don't forget that the tankies would rather have everyone die than not have every one of their demands met under their terms.
Yeah and I would wager that tankies are actually even doing it intentionally some decent percentage of the time because it's a movement based in ego and supremacy, and that usually follows that they tend to have a lot of sacrificable out groups...
The problem with "All lives matter" is that it dismisses the fact that there is racial discrimination alive and well in our law enforcement system.
This is an argument against ideological purists kneecapping ONE movement trying to make change in order to maintain their purity. The effectiveness of that change is very much up for debate, but the sacrifice people who choose to vote are making is negligible compared to the potential impact their vote CAN make (see Zhoran Mamdani or Donald Trump for the extremes of that change).
The goal of this argument is not to discount the concerns of the people who refuse to vote, but to advocate for them to use their privilege, in spite of their disagreements, to increase the likelihood that this ONE method will have the CHANCE to try to affect positive (or at least less negative) change.
So if I'm in plane that's lost pressure with an oxygen mask on, I shouldn't help anyone get their's on because I couldn't help everyone get their masks on in the like 1.5 minutes you get before brain damage?
Like I know this is a slippery slope example, and I do a agree with you that you should aim to save as many lives as possible...
But FFS this is literally the same wording right-wing politicians use to break down laws and decay public infrastructure because if it can't work perfectly its not worth having, and then they let companies in to canabalize what's left.
My point was that the “if you won’t save everyone, why save anyone” argument is dumb. I would rather vote the bastards running things right now out and replace them with boring and ineffective Democrats.
Sure, it would be better to put someone with a spine who will repudiate and fix everything the Trump administration has done. But the “don’t vote, the Democrats aren’t good enough” crowd would rather let even worse people run things.
Ok i think there may have been several misunderstandings. I took the commemt ypu replied to as a facecious statement lampooning those who refuse to vote for someone unless they check every box. Spiting progress for perfection. I took your comment to be in support of that voting strategy
Guys this is the most important election of our lifetimes, you have to keep doing what we've always been doing, otherwise things will keep going the way they've always been going!
On the one hand: Yes, go to the ballot and vote blue. Even if they're 99% Hitler. If you think you have "nothing to lose", go look at Syria or Russia. 'The worst the Republicans could do' is worse than you can imagine.
On the other hand: Have you ever heard of the ultimatum game? Imagine you and a friend are offered $100, and your friend offers you a split of $X. You can either accept the $X, or reject it and you both get nothing. You might think you should accept the $X no matter how low, but if the scenario happens again and you have rejected low values last time, your friend will be more likely to offer you a fair X. Otherwise, if your friend's a bastard (and he is), he'll offer you $1.
Anyway, in 2020 the X offered was a Biden, and in 2024 the X offered was a Kamala. If every Leftist votes for Biden/Kamala/Next, then the DNC will keep offering the same dogshit or even shift right because 1) they want to grab more centrist voters (who won't vote for a more progressive candidate), and 2) they won't lose any leftist voters so why not. And then when the right-shifted candidate loses they'll blame it on "leftists didn't vote enough" anyway, in spite of the statistics saying otherwise.
So in other words: If you're willing to vote for a 99% Hitler, don't be surprised if you're offered a 99% Hitler. Unless you're expecting the DNC to be extremely principled, anti-corruption, and spineful?
"Vote blue no matter who" isn't a solution; it's forfeiting democracy (if you follow it, you literally don't get to choose not to vote blue) in pursuit of... not letting Republicans in. Great! The Dems reliably prevented Trump from being re-elected, right? No, he trod water in the status quo but didn't actually fix the core problems, so Trump's "vote me in and I'll burn down the system" still resonated with voters. But hey, at least Biden prosecuted Trump and all the criminals who he enabled to flagrantly break the law and rewrite it to their benefit? Not really, no.
"Vote Blue No Matter Who" is a travesty which can be at best justified as a strategy of lesser evil - but still evil. If it doesn't have an expiry date then you've already abolished democracy, and that's fucking horrifying, even if it's the correct strategy.
The truth of the matter, as it's often the way, it's there's nuances
If you're in a blue safe seat - vote third, if you're very lucky they might even win that seat, but the real purpose here is to go "WE DON'T WANT YOU TO SLIDE RIGHTWARDS BLUES, LOOK AT HOW MANY SEATS YOU LOST FROM DOING THAT"
If you're in a swing state - vote blue no matter who
If you're in a red state - vote blue no matter who
Dems supporting trans sports bans (and lockeroom bans and bathroom bans and other sex segregation) are supporting the exact same ideology that justify sending us to men's prisons. The idea is that we are too strong and manly and will r*pe and kill women if we are allowed to have freedom, so we need to be quarantined away with other men so that we get r*ped and murdered.
I'm not voting for my genocide. If the choice in 2028 is between a transphobe and a transphobe, I'll just kill myself.
Maybe don't use an issue where the Blue capitalist lap dogs are moving closer to the position of the Red capitalist lap dogs every day to illustrate your ridiculous point that the Blue capitalist lap dogs are somehow preferable?
But guuuuuys muh rachet effect! Every DEMONcrat is exactly the same ok? The system is broken so we shouldn't try to do anything about it, it's way more cool and revolutionary to talk about an eventually revolution generations down the line, the trans and browns can wait! If you vote you're CAPITALISTIC SWINE WHO LOVES GENOCIDE. The 33% who didn't vote last election didn't just let Trump win they were actually cool revolutionaries ok?
the funny part about this 'blue no matter who' post is that it is specifically about trans people and all of the comments are about tankies. either way, you're expected to vote for gavin newsom, right?
America libs are really hung up about this, those lib voter criticizing the liberal gov aren't not going to vote liberal, donald is an obvious nightmare. they're going to just try and get a socialist democrat into the in during the Dems primary, stop being a bunch of soapbox premadonas.
@Godric You are so obsessed with MLs. You post about this issue so often that I see you complaining about it way more than I see MLs saying that voting is useless.
This account is constantly posting this kind of BS that blames progressive voters and leftists for an authoritarian coup.
Non voting lefties contributed so little to trump seizing the whitehouse. The democratic party have much more responsibility for refusing to offer the progressive policies that their base and the majority of the electorate wants.
Also we have a system when dark money and open bribery matter far more than voting. It's especially ridiculous to blame any voters in a non-democratic system.
Those trans people and Palestinian children are so selfish! Don't they realize that .ml users won't be able to act smug and feel better than everyone else if they vote for a party that they don't agree with on every single issue? How else will they deal with their insecurities? Palestinian children should be happy to die for true leftist's need to feel superior.
Marxists have been opposed to electoralism since the time of Marx, and not simply around election season, but year-round. It's more that liberals seem to notice revolutionary rhetoric from Marxists more around election season, because that's when liberals are more likely to tune into politics. This meme doesn't actually do the Marxist position any justice, and it misidentifies Marxists as the cause of voter apathy, rather than the actual source: the widespread feeling among voters that voting doesn't actually bring change.
We understand that the state is ultimately a product of the class struggle of society, determined by the base economic structure. Reforms and concessions are not won at the ballot box, they are won through organizing on the ground and directly fighting the system, forcing it to concede. The Stonewall Riots were the catalyst for progressive change, not a change in heart in the ruling class. Same as the Civil Rights Movement, where Dr. King was assassinated as he began pivoting not just from anti-racist agitation, but towards the Poor People's Campaign, a growing socialist movement. It's why the Black Panther Party was infiltrated, and its top leaders killed or imprisoned.
This meme makes it seem like Marxists are some omnipresent movement terrifying liberals into withholding their votes, but the truth of the matter is that political apathy is high across the board. This isn't an inorganic reaction to Marxists finger-wagging people for voting, it's an organic reaction to the fact that both mainstream political parties do not represent the working class. This is understood across the political spectrum. Especially considering the electoral college system means that a huge portion of votes that lie in solidly red or blue states do not actually make a difference, we have to return to how we actually can gain change.
Learning from past struggles, we can see that in every major concession, struggle is what earned reforms. The point isn't that voting for the DNC magically harms the movement, the point is that treating voting as your primary or sole political outlet means no change is possible. The electoral theater is treated like the single most important thing anyone can do politically, but history shows that change has only ever come from the people fighting for it. This is why the age-old adage is
The electoral college is irrelevant for midterms. And political apathy is most definitely at a low right now. Democrats are absolutely surging in new voter registrations and in early voting, especially among Black Southerners.
Democrats are actually lowering in favorability. Neither the DNC nor GOP is more favorable than unfavorable, while more people are paying attention politically. The apathy is directed towards the system overall, as people do not feel their votes get them much, if anything. What is surging in the electoral realm is support for the DSA, which signifies that, if nothing else, people want an actual change.
Now, reformism cannot actually establish socialism, so the DSA is still a dead-end. But what the DSA does highlight is the fact that establishment dems are wrong in claiming they need to "appeal to the moderate." This has always been a lie told to protect deliberate inaction. The DNC isn't a smol bean progressive party but a complicit party in US imperialism.
I don't really care about favorability ratings because people can and will still vote for parties they view as unfavorable. The actual numbers of how people are voting are what really matters.
I would certainly rate the Democratic party as more unfavorable than favorable but you'll never catch me not voting blue, especially in these midterms.
The very fact that both major political parties in the US are wildly unpopular means the system needs to change, then. Neither the DNC nor the GOP are going to do it, so we need to directly struggle against the system. Funneling the majority of political activism into the system and away from agitating against it is the problem, not whether or not people vote for the DNC. The actual numbers of how people are voting are less important than the actual numbers of how people are organizing.
How's that organizing going for you? Is your glorious revolution a few weeks out? Our biggest chance at harm reduction is scheduled, how about your solution?
Organizing is, as always, tough work, but it continues to get results. Looking at Minneapolis earlier this year, it wasn't a vote that kicked ICE out, it was a general strike with 100,000 people. It wasn't the democrats helping out, it was the working class organizing and struggling against it. Local struggles against data centers, against landlords screwing over tenants, for labor unionizing, all of this is largely fought on the ground, not at the ballot box, and in many cases democrats directly oppose these struggles at local office.
No, revolution is not a few weeks out. Or, at least I don't think it would be. Revolution happens when the working class is organized, capitalism hits crisis, and the working class party can take it from a local struggle to a pointed attack against the system itself. The George Floyd protests came dangerously close to revolution, which is why organizers were targeted by the state directly. Organizers are targeted now by NSPM-7. The ruling class is scared and afraid.
Revolution isn't something you plan and trigger, it's something that can happen when the conditions are right and the implements necessary are in place. This isn't predictable in the specific sense, only in the general sense as capitalism necessarily enters crisis from its own contradictions. It's our job to make sure the necessary implements are already ready to go beforehand.
I asked this on another place and got a non answer. Cowbee is fine with throwing minorites under the bus for some long game hypothetical revolution that'll happen any day now.
If you're going to take the position that systems/philosophies are illegitimate purely based on their age, then boy do I have some fun facts for you regarding the timeline between the inception of most of the US political systems and Rosa's work. By that logic, the US is entirely illegitimate.
No I am saying they are made insignificant by the growth of a body of work surrounding them.
What I'm saying is shit happens, then we know more about shit and instead of one idea, we have n+ ideas.
The further back you go the more information and context you're going to have to ignore in order for that datapoint to maintain complete signifigance. It's real easy. I'm challenging you to prove the relevance of a historical claim in the face of the history that has taken place since.
And yeah how is America doing these days? How's all that idealism and grit holding up? You get my point now follow through already instead of being a goddamn stereotype.
Essentially, the state is a product of class struggle, and is a superstructural reinforcement of the underlying base of society. The state is not a neutral, system-indepentent "state," but specifically a "feudal state," a "capitalist state," a "socialist state." The systems and mechanisms of a capitalist state cannot simply be reformed from within, they depend on and are built to support the actual capitalist system.
Throughout history, major changes in modes of production have come through revolution. Reformist approaches like in Chile with Allende end swiftly in coups, and we are seeing the current struggles in Venezuela due to not having a complete revolution (though the commune movement is still building dual power). It isn't simply a lack of imagination, it's something tested time and time again throughout history.
The CIA certainly helped in both cases, but the actual state apparatus in both Venezuela and Chile worked against the socialists. In Chile, Pinochet used the capitalist military to coup Allende, in Venezuela companies and businesses resist any progress from the PSUV. The solution is to replace the capitalist state with a socialist one, which doesn't make you immune to CIA influence, but does provide the basis for maintaining socialism domestically without retaining mechanisms that rely on private property to function.
All I'm getting is the US planted opposition during the Red Scare and did a foreign interference, again if the goal is to show reformism always fails you're going to need to show an example that doesn't involve a psychotic i.perialist state actor actively undemining it. A control, I'm asking for a control group here.
I advocate for organizing, because plenty of people advocate for voting already. My concern isn't with people voting or not, it's with people organizing.
You say it's something that keeps people from organizing. It's not hard to draw a line as to what you think people should do, with you being pro organizing.
The insane part here is the red party having ANY loyalty, support, or chance of winning. That is the psycho dystopian impossible part, and the rest is damage control choosing among lesser evils.
Discworld even mocks this. The recurring patriarch of Ankh Morpork is Havelock Vetinari. He’s kind of evil. But he’s nowhere NEAR as evil as some people who’d like to take his place, and actually wants some stability for the city. So he stays.
Seriously though people please vote! Yes, the National ballots are nearly worthless. But you still need to vote for your local City/School/County boards! Your local reps are the people making the decision to sign a flock contract, allow zoning for a data center, and many other things that impact your community. Depending on your state local reps may be elected in the June primary and/or the November election. Please look at your sample ballot on your states Secretary of State website or go to vote411 to see who’s on your ballot.
Just checking in: has 'vote blue no matter who' been working well for you folks the last few elections? Last time I seem to remember dropping trans messaging since it was a perceived liability and trotting out Liz Cheney.
Fuck your genocide party and fuck the GOP. Our differences are not reconcilable. I'm not interested in a party run by liberal capitalists.
Am in the UK were our system allows for 3rd parties so this isnt as much of an issue here.
To be fair to the communist guy in this cartoon if your trans and your only options are get killed or change nothing while its an easy decisión to make once, make it 5 times and it will kill any love or motivation you have for politics.
You need to move the convo, it cant be do trans people exist it needs to be what rights they are allowed if you DONT argue for that then no rights expand and the argument forever stays there. I mean look at the UK as soon as the center/left party stopped arguing for trans rights out of fear, trans people basiclly lost all progress made...
Funny thing how this is the sort of thing that those troll factories we've read about that feed propaganda on all sides of an issue would do. I'm not saying that they don't get momentum going with those brainwashable enough so they all would be shills, just saying, funny how that's where the impetus and motivation to effectively influence an argument would come from. Funny how people who dismiss this possibility just seem to believe those troll factories would just be wasting all their time, money, and effort in ineffective easily detectable propaganda that totally doesn't influence the social circles popular enough to have you engaging in them.
Be smart enough to realize what outcome you are really contributing to when there are no ideal solutions and not the ideology that resides on a dead end that really favors the worst outcome.
If you look at the big issues like healthcare, healthy work/life balance and better pay and benefits which supports a healthy economy, it's like 7/10 Dem platform vs 2/10 for gop, of which would help people the best. This is not new, but the propaganda and brainwashing works enough to prevent sustained progress. Of course they can't pass the big bills w/o enough majority and for long enough to maintain the progress, but enough ignore that and swing the other way and it will get worse again.
I have no hope for America, it's a so-called society of hedonistic, intellectually challenged children and seriously depraved, amoral sociopaths. Being a genocidal settler colony turned slaveowner paradise, I have never expected it to be anything more than what it is. And these kinds of "arguments" just give me more supporting evidence. Oh well. America could have 5 civil wars and they still wouldn't change their ethos, believe me.
Who thinks they're exactly the same? Nobody. One is pro-trans, the other is pro-church, and we all know this (for one example).
They are bOtH anti-union, pro-billionaire, and pro-war. So... some people have a problem with this. To some people, these issues could even be more important to them than trans or church issues. and that's okay.
This is an issue 24 months before an election, or 12 months, or 6 months, or 1 month. You'll hear "bOtH pArTiEs" for the rest of your life, and it's true! Best to come to terms with it.
eta Also, do remember that Trump was pro-trans and a Democrat. It doesn't matter; they don't really hold any convictions and will drop you like a hot potato at the first opportunity.
first of all both parties are the same uniparty system of corruption fraud vs fraud which side is less fraud but usually we get worse and worse fraud corruption as time goes on the main thing 75% of gov are contractors no amount of cutting fed workers will reduce any gov spending since they only are 25% of the fed workforce. if they wanna cut gov fraud waste abuse thats the contractors eg boeing lockheed martin tesla microsoft amazon google apple nvda u know all the fang stonks they been pumping and bought by trump first and insider trading deals.
also no competition at all. plus next both parties are the party of war, death and destruction. republicans are just much more honest about that they are intentionally destroying lives to fund the elite epstein class and gas lighting everyone except the low iq of the country dont realize it.
next the culture wars of the democrat side litterally dont mean jack. fix the economy before your petty culture war distraction to steal even more NO ONE CARES you just make it a talking point that force us to care but really deep down NO ONE CARES leave us alone.
fix the economy by stop STEALING from all of us and actually remove the corrupt epstein class else you can stay at home no one wants you in power.
This happens every election. Russia gets in the heads of all the pseudosocialists and then these kids spread the propaganda and ignorance to every social media platform they can find.
To EVERYONE whose life DEPENDS on this election, just REMEMBER to vote Blue no MATTER who! UNLESS the Blue is a Socialist THEN vote INDEPENDENT no Matter WHO!
the prob with the pic is the person still cast a vote for blue. if the order was reattached and they didn’t cast thanks to the other char, then maybe the comic works?
872 replies
The comments have went so far off the rules (and rails). Locking, because mods volunteer, and we've been flooded with reports for this post thread alone.
The tankies seem incapable of reckoning with the fact that an informed citizen can vote for the lesser of two evils (usually fairly easily) and also take other action like boycotts protests and community organizing etc. I also don't believe most of the keyboard communists actually do jack shit to fight back, aside from impotent online rage.
It's even worse than that. Most of them are incapable of understanding any kind of nuance. To them every issue is black or white. And everyone who doesn't agree with every single point on their extremist agenda is an identical enemy.
And Lemmy (or at least certain instances on Lemmy) is infested with them. Which means they go around in clusters, swarming anyone on the other instances who doesn't conform with their impractical ideology and blinkered views.
Edit: Ooh, looks like they found my comment! Just wanted to add a special note to them: grow the fuck up!
And let your instance admins know you'd like them to defederate! There's a good chance they might also want to but don't want to force the decision upon their users.
My instance defederated both Hexbear and db0 and it's crazy how much more emotionally mature the vibe is without those users.
Putting your instance on highest ranking if I plan to migrate.
I think their instance admin was the guy behind the tesseract scandal a few months ago, might want to look into that if you haven't heard of it.
Basically snuck a hidden blob into a "small" update that shadowbans a bunch of users and keywords. Doesn't sound that bad on the surface, but the implementation was really shady, the blacklist itself was sloppily constructed, and the way he handled the fallout when people called him out on it was really immature.
If I have this confused with a different instance, then my bad. I think he's involved with sh.itjustworks at a fairly high level too though.
There's a couple graphics floating around somewhere mapping defederations of major instances if you want alternatives. I'll see if I can dig them up.
actually i have that account tagged as the admins sock puppet
I was on that list of banned users!
I'll look into, thanks
Not a priority but have thought about migrating.
I found this one. I thought I had the other one too but I must have forgotten to save it. But anyway here you go:
Dang I knew this was a honeypot thread I didn't realize it was for THAT.
I'm still upset that you guys managed to sucessfully bully a developer into deleting his (free) project (that had like 10 users), because now his blocklist has to be rebuilt manually, thankfully so many of you out yourselves and make it easy to report.
Oh, you're the guy I was talking about? Hahaha, I didn't even realize, but now you're glowing.
You reported me for an objective delivery of the facts, as I understand them? Sure, don't care.
Next time be more honest about the diffs in your "free" software updates, and handle things a bit more maturely when people take notice of the unethical payloads you hide behind "security patches."
If telling you that is "bullying" you, then you need thicker skin. In fact you're suspiciously bordering on DARVO, a common tactic among narcissists. (Not calling you a narcissist, by the way. Just pointing out how your response resembles how one would react).
Oh by the way, did I just make the tesseract ban list? If so, I'll consider it an honor.
If I was the guy do you think I would let you Kiwi Farms jerks know my new account?
The pissbabies took offense to your comment.
posted on a thread making a black and white caricature about all marxists and anarchists as 'tankies'
You're telling on yourself. I just said tankies, if you choose to identify with that, and make it about all marxists and anarchists, that's on you.
Yeah, people need to stop conflating MLs with Marxists, because Leninism and Marxism are not the same thing at all.
Leninists appropriated the "Marxist" label to lend credibility to their own ideology. Hence it's "Marxist-Leninism," not "Leninist-Marxism."
Nobody is out there calling actual Marxists "tankies." We're calling MLs tankies, and then they retreat behind a mote and bailey by saying "yOuR cAlLiNg AlL mArXiStS tAnKiEs?!1?1?!1?1??1?1!!"
Also, "tankie" is a term I exclusively hear used by the left to refer to their own fringe (who, by the way, refer to the rest of the left as "liberals" and "fascists" for not being as extreme as them...). It's like the left-wing version of maga. They're completely irrational, bad-faith, militant, and authoritarian.
I never hear centrists, liberals, or conservatives call anybody a "tankie." To them, the entire left are all just "commies," because that's the pejorative they use. They don't need the term "tankie," because the entire point of that term is to differentiate between the irrational, extremist fringe of the left, and the rest of us leftists who are capable of both rational thought and empathy (crazy idea, I know...), and are typically somewhere in the democratic range of the socialist spectrum.
::: spoiler disclaimer: (Although I'll add that anarchists exist among us reasonable socialists too, but that's a very broad term and some self-declared "anarchists" truly are actually authoritarian tankies, which becomes clear when you listen to the things they say and how they handle disagreement.
Conversely, some "anarchists" are also actually neofeudal capitalist/corporatist fascists cosplaying as freedom fighters when all they really want is deregulation of industry...). :::
Leninism is not a replacement of Marxism, Leninism refers to Lenin's own advancements on Marxism. Lenin used Marxist analysis to bring Marxism to a new era, from the era of industrial capitalism to the imperialist stage of capitalism. The primary advancements of Leninism are the following:
Marxism-Leninism is called as such because the basis of Marxism-Leninism is Marxism. Marxism-Leninism carries over the 3 basic fundamentals of Marxism:
In the modern era, the number of Marxists that reject Lenin are incredibly fringe. Lenin's work as a Marxist is incredibly obvious to anyone who has read both Marx and Lenin, and it's very clear that Lenin was history's greatest Marxist, after the deaths of Marx and Engels. MLs are the dominant form of Marxism in the modern era, and most relevant historically, so trying to claim Marxism-Leninism isn't Marxist requires an enormous level of justification on your part.
That's literally what I just said.
You forget to add "Assassinating the soviet leadership because they defeated the bolsheviks in a fair election, and that was unacceptable to Lenin; and then replacing the dead soviets with bolshevik stooges while appropriating the term "Soviet."
Oh and betraying the anarchists and other groups who supported them during the revolution.
Oh and highly centralized and controlling surveillance state apparatus, and making the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat" a permanent fixture rather than a transitional government.
It's Marxist-Leninism, not "Marxism-Leninism." You might want to get your own label right before trying to school people on the internet about it.
Someone's never read Merleau-Ponty, and it shows...
No, you said Marxism-Leninism isn't Marxist. Marxism-Leninism is Marxist. All of Marxism in the modern day has historically evolved from the era of Marx, be it through accepting ideas, changing them, or rejecting them. There is no such thing as a Marxist that has no opinion on Lenin one way or the other, for example. The ideology "Leninism" is used to refer specifically to Lenin's advancements, "Marxism" to the ideology created by Marx and Engels, and "Marxism-Leninism" as the unified ideology created by Lenin and forged in practice.
You then make vague references to the Russian Civil War without actually contextualizing them. The Bolsheviks did not "lose fair elections," and fighting amongst the Soviets did coalesce around the Bolshevik line, as the Bolsheviks were supported by both the proletariat and peasantry. The fighting between the communists and anarchists wasn't some one-sided betrayal either, it was a civil war and some sections of the anarchists that did not join the Bolsheviks took up arms against the soviets.
Further still, the soviet state was not some "permanent fixture." Such an idea is inherently against Marxist understanding of dialectical materialism, as nothing in the world is permanent, as well as the economic basis for the withering of the state. The USSR was a socialist state gradually building towards communism.
As for "Marxist-Leninism," no, I mean Marxism-Leninism, as understood by Wikipedia, science direct, and Stalin when coining the term. You're very confident about this point despite being trivially proven wrong.
As for Merleau-Ponty, yes, Western Marxism is incredibly fringe in the global and historical context.
post summary:
'tankies bad, i'm not a tankie, anyone who disagrees with me is a tankie'
hate to break it to you but liberals learned a new word and it's just a left-facing pejorative now.
'youre a librul lobrul bad, you jerk off the markets don't you.anyone who disagrees with me is a librul.'
if they're pro capitalist it's just describing their position, sorry that the term offends you
^ that, friends is what we call a "bad-faith argument" based on a distorted interpretation of what was actually said, utilizing flashy one-liners to deride a commenter without actually addressing any of the content of the comment they made.
it's called paraphrasing, you wanted to make it very clear that you're one of the good ones for the liberals, as opposed to tankies who are the bad ones. i don't think i misrepresented you.
the term is literally a left facing pejorative the way it's used, especially how you were using it.
Cowbs there is fully ideological and fails to reconcile his understanding of classroom theory with real world application. Fucker genuinely believes the cow is a perfect sphere and is a bad faith propagandist. He'll probably report my comment too because he's a little bitch that just gish gallops bullshit and pivots every time you pin him down. You're wasting your time. Their whole account is dedicated to getting republicans in power.
I organize in real life, my perspective is based on what I actually do as an organizer and activist as well as someone who studies Marxist-Leninist theory and history so as to apply it better. Just because I oppose the democrats doesn't mean I support the republicans, I oppose the entire capitalist system. My goal is socialism, and like all Marxists, I believe that this can only be established through revolution, which means I do spend a fair bit of time combatting misconceptions surrounding reformism.
I haven't reported any of your comments yet, btw. You have this absurd caricature of me that lives on in your brain, this must be the second dozen comment you've made about me specifically with no actual substance. Take a break, touch grass.
Who's generalizing now?
i'm just being observant, an overwhelming amount of people calling others 'tankies' are perfectly fine with team blue sending in the tanks/bombs/drones.
No not really, I am way left of Biden, universal Healthcare, free community College, strong social safety net etc. are not radical left ideas, they are centrist.
I also know enough about history to understand that power systems formed around Marxism communism or anarchism are not inherently good or just when put into practice.
I despise the wholesale slaughter of civilians by the military industrial complex, I also despise the violent crushing of dissent by 'communist' or 'socialist' governments.
A good and just society will always be a mix of different 'isms' and marxism definitely needs to be a prominent part of the mix. I'm against total ideological purity, be it capitalist imperialism that can justify industrialized human suffering, or naive tankie bullshit that can justify being on the side of the tanks in Tiananmen square.
You're a dumbass. Liberals don't even know what a tankie is, let alone call anyone that.
"Tankie" is what rational socialists call the irrational people on the extreme fringes of the left who are incapable of arguing in good faith, like you for instance.
lmao have you been on the internet in the last few years? it's their latest word that they learned.
the reality is that ‘tankie’ is one of those terms that gets stretched until it’s just a pejorative for anyone to the left of the person using it.
No, that's not even true. You're just calling anyone a liberal who calls you a tankie, so clearly it's only liberals using the term from your perspective. That's called mental gymnastics.
Also,
FTFY
No, "tankie" is just a pejorative for anyone that defends and supports existing socialist states. Being good faith doesn't matter, what matters is what people support, whether they be Marxists, anarchists, or even SocDems.
That's rich, coming from you.
Mind telling us what "existing socialist states" you're referring to? Do the PRC and DPRK feature in that list? Because yes, defending and obfuscating for those authoritarian and rigidly hierarchical ethno-states truly is something that tankies often do. How astute for you to point that out!
And no, if someone is capable of rational discourse and argues in good faith, then by definition they're not a tankie and I've never seen anyone call someone like that a tankie. Tankies are usually all about "less chat, more splat"
I don’t see any anarchists in this comic what are you talking about? Maybe the person voting…
If you don’t think anarchists vote then you do not know what anarchism is.
well i'm an anarchist and i literally vote in every primary and every year for municipal/nonpresidential elections, so it was nice to have you identify me correctly.
what was funny to me is that this comic is so dishonestly framed, like take panel 1, my trans comrades have already been getting arrested by democrats for protesting their abandonment of trans kids healthcare in favor of institutions and placating trump. 'i don't want to arrest trans people' is clearly not the same as 'i won't arrest trans people'.
the way the comic is structured is like actually nonsensical too, the person being anti-voting says stuff after the vote has already been cast, and then when it fails we're supposed to blame the those two? i blame the democrats for losing more than i do voters.
k
Literally no one above you conflated anarchists and marxists with tankies.
Imagine playing victim about something no one said. The very definition of "strawman."
'tankies' is such a broadly defined pejorative at this point and it absolutely does cover anarchists the way liberals use it.
Are these Liberals in the room with us right now?
You can make any argument you want when you imagine words to mean whatever you need them to mean.
yeah, this whole fucking thread
Can't argue with reactionaries mate. They don't engage in good faith.
"liberals" is such a broadly defined pejorative at this point and it absolutely does cover democratic socialists the way tankies use it.
if they are pro capitalism, yes it does; i know many communists/marxists who are also in DSA that the label does not apply to.
If the... democratic socialists... are... pro-capitalism...?
Let's examine that statement. Does it make any sense?
Are you perhaps confusing democratic socialists with social democrats? Because those are different things, if you didn't know...
Tankies aren't Marxist or anarchists. Tankies are eastern imperialists and statists that like to call themselves Marxist.
"Tankie", as used in online discourse, just means "person to my political left making an argument I can't refute".
That is completely false and you know it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
It is about shilling for authoritarian dictatorships like Russia and China.
Sure, if your definition of "shilling for" is "rejecting US State Department narratives about".
Otherwise, it's like I said, it means "person to my political left making a point I can't refute".
https://welshundergroundnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf
No, it means someone who would really love living in a dictatorship as long as the dictator was Xi Jinping, Stalin, or Kim Jong Un.
Yes, that's the hyperbolic slander it tries to assert when in reality it is just a buzzword for imbeciles to use when they want to stop engaging with the argument.
Authoritarians are authoritarians, they just like different flavors of boot.
https://welshundergroundnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf
Parenti wrote about you thirty years ago. Chapter 3 of that book is all about you.
okay then please tell that to everyone calling me a tankie plsss
the reality is that 'tankie' is one of those terms that gets stretched until it's just a pejorative for anyone to the left of the person using it.
started as a specific reference to people who defended the soviet invasion of hungary in 1956, then it gets applied to anyone who doesn't denounce every socialist state on demand, now it's anyone who doesn't want to vote for biparitsan war consensus
Sister, you're the one that decided that OP was lumping the anarchists and Marxists in with the tankies! You appear to be trying to claim that OP is portraying everyone who says 'both sides are the same' as tankies. A is a subset of B; B is not equal to A. Just because some people don't actually understand what 'tankie' means doesn't mean everyone shares that view, in the same way that 'liberal' doesn't actually mean 'everyone who votes Democrat'.
he is tho
yeah plenty of liberals are also republicans
Okay, now I know you're just trolling.
Well, you come from an instance where the rules are literally pro-authoritarian, so yeah people are gonna assume you're a tankie as well.
What are your thoughts on North Korea?
it's a heavily sanctioned garrison state that emerged from a brutal colonial occupation and a war that killed a third of the population.
i dont particularly care for any states, but i have special contempt for the US. that makes it hard to share in the fearmongering about the US's designated enemies on the other side of the planet from where i live.
Well, you didn't describe them as brave freedom fighters trying to maintain true democracy in spite of western fascism, so that's a good sign.
In retrospect, I probably should have asked you about authoritarianism.
"Tankies" just means people who support existing socialist states. Typically we are Marxist-Leninists, but anarchists and socdems also fit this sometimes and are targeted.
Dang what socdems do you know. I'd love to meet them.
Hasan counts, IMO. He supports China, Cuba, etc. but focuses more on welfare capitalism. He gets called a tankie semi-frequently.
Tankies are the ideological opposite and intellectual equivalent of libertarians. Like if you're in high school it's ok to dabble but if you maintain those viewpoints into adulthood you probably weren't top of your class and you definitely weren't popular. Ideology for dumb assholes.
These people are really like swarms of mosquitoes and Lemmy is somehow infested with them.
Not sure where these people exist IRL or at all. So weird ..
I've said it in another comment but I'm pretty sure most lemmings genuinely believe that the cow is a perfect sphere. Lemmy US political discourse is fuckin garbage.
Let's be straight here: the likliest scenario is that Lemmy was explicitly created for the purpose of giving tankies a platform to spread misinformation and hate. It is the Nazi bar.
Fortunately, it also has instructions on how to build your own bar, with built-in methods to kick out the Nazis.
Lemmy was indeed made for the purpose of spreading communism, as a reaction to Reddit's censorship. Communism isn't "misinformation and hate" though, that's your ideological spin on it.
When you're involved it sure is.
I don't see that at all, can you be specific?
I dislike the term Communism, as it's associations with Stalinist thought muddies the waters between it and Fascism. I identify as socialist, myself.
What I take issue with is the fact that you support fascism and call it by a different name. I quite enjoyed "misinformation and hate" as a more direct statement. As an aside, go fuck yourself, fascist.
Communism is a post-socialist society where class has been eradicated and all production and distribution has been collectivized. Socialism is the transitional system between capitalism and communism. All socialism either moves towards communism, or falls backwards.
As for "Stalinism," that doesn't exist. Marxism-Leninism is an ideology, the one guiding Cuba, the PRC, former USSR, Vietnam, Laos, etc. Stalin's contributions to it are extremely minor, the vast majority of Marxism-Leninism comes from Marx and Lenin.
Socialism, as it has historically existed, is by no means "fascism." Equating the Soviets with the Nazis is a form of Holocaust trivialization. The communists represent the working classes, and always fight in their favor. The Nazis created an ideology based on racial supremacy, and cemented bourgeois rule with an iron fist. They are not at all equivalent, and to do so is immensely anti-socialist.
🤡
Excellent point, great job.
LOOOOLLLLLLLLL, Mao literally took direct inspiration from Stalin's innovations over Leninism. Mao, whose version of "communism" was then propogated to most of those other countries you mentioned.
If "Stalinism" doesn't exist, then neither does "Maoism."
Your only hope in this conversation is that no one here knows enough about it to dispute your attempts at obfuscation.
What were Stalin's innovations over Leninism? Be specific. Mao was a Marxist-Leninist, same as Stalin, carrying over Lenin's ideology the way Lenin carried over Marx's ideology. "Maoism" isn't the ideology of Mao, but a deviation made by Gonzalo.
Nah, more like they found a small enough community that they could abuse with their relatively weak numbers. Also the fact that there's no corporate backing to ban them and that's by design. This is free speech in a nutshell. There's a lot of people with really stupid political views.
Lemmy is developed by communists, the communists were here first.
Shhh! You're interrupting their fart-sniffing!
For a non zero chunk of them, this is about getting paid in Kremlin bucks.
To be honest, I think they only get Kremlin money indirectly in a form of propaganda, having everyone on a paycheck is way too expensive when you can make them work for free
That's why i switched to piefed. Out of sight, out of mind.
And a big problem with a lot of them is they antagonize you into saying shit they report you for. It’s not just about spreading propaganda, it’s about removing anyone that disagrees with it.
you are responsible for your own actions. you need to make sure your conduct is congruent with the community rules.
Their civility rules are fake. They will say the most vile, violent shit to you, and never have a comment removed. But suggest that their political strategies are stupid, and you get banned.
And most lemmy mods make reddit mods look fuckin reasonable.
Yeah. Many do. I was a mod for a few communities here for a while. Was in on the discord chats and such… not a thing I’d do again.
Oh you poor thing...
Ehh… it wasn’t horrific or anything, just not something I’d want to do again. Sometimes it’s best to not know how the sausage is made.
Hmm, I'll have to look into that. Thanks.
These kinds of sweeping generalizations that collapse the entirety of leftist thought into simple black and white binaries is the exact behavior you're trying to criticize, no?
You and your flying monkeys don't even come close to representing "the entirety of leftist thought". Get the fuck over yourself.
Cowbee never shuts up and doesn't actually debate, just keeps repeating the same talking points and puts words into your mouth.
Cowbee is incredibly patient and doing marvelous educational work in threads like this. You confuse it for a debate, but you'd need to be on even footing for that. It's more like they are a teacher who calmly tries to make some common sense stick with western people who behave like spoiled children and are to privileged and racist to see the simple and plain truths that literally most people in the (non-western) world see clearly.
Cowbee is a bad faith propagandist that can't reconcile their understanding of theory with literally all of recorded history. Cowbee is full of shit and as bad faith as it comes here on Lemmy.
No? I study theory and history, it's pointless to only study one aspect. I'm 100% genuine, and making a dozen comments complaining about me in a row without actually adding anything is a bit ridiculous.
🤮
I have never read a comment with such a superiority complex
Cowbee has some good points and his heart is in the right place, but always seems to show up to imply people shouldn't vote, which I think is foolish and dangerous.
Nah, I directly state that organizing is more important than voting, and treating them like it's the opposite is dangerous. I don't argue against voting, I argue for organizing, and stress it as more important than voting.
"Not a debate" is 100% accurate. They just copy paste some tangential and paper thin propaganda and tweak the verbiage. Basically LLM slop with some extra steps. If you punch a hole in that topic (after a bunch of equivocation and nit picking) they retreat to some other copy-paste talking point.
It's easy to look "smart" at a glance when your conversation technique is the exact same playbook as Charlie Kirk:
There's no way to have a conversation unless you already start in agreement with their priors. I've watched them get backed into a corner on basic stuff that contradicts their own talking points in the same thread. Paraphrasing it went something like "Communism is a perfect rational science" => Why don't we discard the pseudo-religious trappings and make decisions that optimize for quantifiable quality of life indicators à la the HDi? => "Well actually communism is required for the vibes"
I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees it
Odd considering it's a strawman.
It certainly is very easy to make shit up about people! No examples provided, no links, just pure unfiltered strawman.
Look ladies and gentlemen, no straw man needed! Already here in the flesh! Like a terminally online Candyman, say the name you'll summon the keyboard praxis warrior.
Too hard to search your own comment history? I don't blame you, 21.4k comments at an average of 668 per month is too much for me too. And of course that's just your .ml account, lord knows what you'd have to sift through on your alts.
Having actual real life responsibilities prevents me from keeping up with your Kirk-esque pace of a reply every 43 waking minutes, so how about we compromise. You can just copy-paste the existing comments calling out your bullshit right underneath the drivel you regurgitate. It's all the same conversation anyway, it will save us both time.
You're literally doing it right now.
Cowbee uses the same 'debate' style as Charlie Kirk.
How so?
What a pain in the neck
That's odd, you kept making a strawman of my argument and kept berating me for not sourcing the strawman. After I sourced the actual point I made, I only got crickets.
Bruv I've been doing stuff throughout my day other than telling at people online, give me a minute
Maybe don't spend time implying I should be assassinated then?
Unsure what you mean by "flying monkeys," but if there's one thing anarchists and Marxists near-universally agree on, it's the necessity of directly struggling against the system itself, rather than treating voting as our primary means of political engagement. Collapsing leftist point of views into this unprincipled, nuance-lacking strawman doesn't actually engage with the primary critique, which is that we need to organize outside the system and direct that organization against said system to gain change, be it revolutionary or even to gain reforms or concessions.
And no, I don't represent the entirety of leftist thought. I was responding to a sweeping generalization of leftist thought.
Why are you lying about what the upstream commenter was doing?
Also, fuck all the way off with the fallacious bullshit notion that you can't organize outside the system and also still vote anyway!
I'm not, I'm responding to the comment directly. I suppose you could argue that their comment was vague enough that they could claim to be talking about a specific group in a clarification, but as it stands they seem to be lashing out against the left in general. Further, when people treat voting as their primary means of political engagement, they do check out! I'm not denying that people can organize while voting for the DNC, many people do, but the problem is that most see voting for the DNC as their primary political agency, and not a pressure valve designed to siphon away agitation against the system itself.
Those people are not the average Lemmy user.
Citation needed. If this is the basis of why you think Voting Bad then you're going to have to back that up with some science. Not quoting Lenin, I want a solid peer reviewed study.
If you don't have that your entire reasoning falls on a hunch and vibes.
Personally I think voting helps people become more politically engaged, not less.
Their comment was very clearly talking specifically about tankies who want to "well acktyually" people on "Theory" while being the textbook definition of useful idiots helping the fascists. That behavior isn't encouraging people to organize; it's discouraging them from it because if organizing means dealing with that sort of condescension then they want no part of it!
Everybody but you understood that. You're the only one who's so fucking full of yourself you think you're entitled to speak for the entire Left!
They call out a cluster of traits as being bad. The only sane way to parse their comment is to interpret it as only applying to people who have all those traits. You're doing something equivalent to demanding someone clarify that they didn't mean they hated all food when they complained about not liking things that are sweet.
I don't bring anyone to brigade threads, lmao. Believe it or not, I have nowhere near the influence you claim I do.
If you're pro-military, pro-dictatorship, you're not a leftist. Leftists don't want to keep wallowing in the same monkeybrained shit we've been doing for the last ten thousand years, we want to grow the fuck up as a race. Violence isn't doing the job. It doesn't work for the enemy when they try to use it on us, and we'd be stupid to think it'd be more effective in the hands of the less violently inclined. We need better tools, better ideas. Fuck Marx, fuck Lenin, fuck Mao. Don't even try to pretend their authoritarian thinking is compatible with anarchism.
I'm a Marxist-Leninist, but I did used to be an anarchist, and from my time as an anarchist I cannot recall any anarchists opposed to revolution as a means to establish anarchism, which is something anarchists and Marxists share in common. Further, Marxists are not "pro-dictatorship," not in the sense of an individual with immense power, but in favor of the working class taking control, in favor of radical and genuine democracy.
What happens to the working class after they take control? History says they don't stay the working class. They become the new rich or the new military leaders. They do their dance just to fall back into the same shit patterns they worked to overthrow. Their revolutions mean nothing because they just use violence as a response to violence rather than taking a holistic proactive approach to the advancement of mankind.
There is no such thing as genuine democracy; each individual must be taught how to control themselves, take responsibility for their actions, and move beyond the ways that failed us so many times. A tyranny by majority vote is still tyranny.
Marx-Leninism is literally just another word for Stalinism (as in, the term was first used by Joseph Stalin to refer to his own ideology).
So, while you're correct that Marxism is not pro-dictatorship, Marx-Leninism definitely is.
Oh hey, it's you, the person who said voting for Democrats was accelerationist. How ya been?
Actually collapsing 'all of leftist thought' as Tankie-owned is the mistake here. Leftist thought is broader and more flexible than you'd like to think because you've painted youself into the most austere, ineffective corner that consistently results in the worst possible outcomes. Leftist thought is a biiiig panoply of ideas and strategies of every color, and you guys are the button that says 'clear all', indicated by little grey and white squares.
Accelerationism means supporting the most competent capitalists and imperialists, to speed up concentration of capital and speed up collapse as a consequence. The Democrats are the more competent party when it comes to ensuring capitalism remains more stable. This would make them the accelerationist option. Accelerationism isn't "burn down the system now," it's a specific (and wrong) strategy.
As for claiming "all leftist thought is tankie-owned," I did no such thing. I generally categorize the left as being predominantly Marxists and anarchists, those who oppose capitalism. I myself am a Marxist-Leninist, which is an ideology that has consistently managed to both take power for the working class, and wield it to do tremendous things like double life expectancies, eradicate homelessness, and more. Not sure what you mean by your assertion that I am painting myself into an ineffective corner, nor the bit on saying "clear all."
Marxist-Leninist strategy is time-tested and clear-cut. Capitalism runs into crisis from its own contradictions, so to make revolution we need to develop a working class party that builds up disciplined, educated cadre that struggle along with the rest of the working class directly against the system. With this party, we can make effective organizers, educate the working class, agitate among them against the capitalist system itself, and create unity among the working class that can become an unbreakable hammer, an unblockable spear. The party just becomes the spearhead, the actual working class is the one making the real moves and changes. You know, the old adage,
Educate
Agitate
Organize!
Jesus christ never met a person more eager the talk incessantly without paying attention to a single word that's said to them.
You said he thinks that voting for democrats is accelerationist, and he explained why he believes that.
You claimed that he thinks all of leftist thought is whatever tankies think (a pretty vague claim, tankie is not exactly a well established term), and then you use some flowery sequence of platitudes without real refutable specifics to propose a broader definition of leftism. Cowbee responds by clarifying what he believes leftism is, which is broader than his own ideology.
What words are you saying he ignored? Are you upset he didn't answer "how ya been?" Are you confused as to which comment he's responding to?
Man you're late I ain't going over all this shit again. There's a whole conversation you can go look over and be weird about if you want to try and draw any more context from my interactions here. It's all in the open in the replies. I don't even understand if you're trying to make a point or. White kniting at this point and I don't care. Come at me with your own shit or stay out of it.
I've seen quite a few people in this thread that fit that description, and don't believe that applies to me.
See there we go, a biting comeback and you're still pleasant and polite about it.
I don't fully get your angle but we can make you an effective interlocutor one of these days.
That's why I said "most of them".
Try to keep up, eh.
You're clearly trying to identify a pattern, though, and simply implying there are exceptions to this pattern doesn't mean your assertion that the pattern itself exists is justified in reality. I think it would be better to directly attack the ideology/ies you are taking aim at, than to concoct a strawman.
When voting is treated like the absolutely most important means of political struggle, people do tune out and neglect to organize. The electoral system is a pressure valve, and political theater is a funnel to direct people's rage away from the system itself and towards said pressure valve. Organizing is far more important than voting, yet societal pressures make it seem like the opposite is the case. That is the point Marxists are making, and this is why organizing in a working class party isn't just optional, but necessary for progressive change.
Every major reform and concession has been won through struggle. Not because the ruling class was bested in the marketplace of ideas or anything. The Stonewall Riots were the catalyst for progressive change, not a change in heart in the ruling class. Same as the Civil Rights Movement, where Dr. King was assassinated as he began pivoting not just from anti-racist agitation, but towards the Poor People's Campaign, a growing socialist movement. It's why the Black Panther Party was infiltrated, and its top leaders killed or imprisoned. That's why we need to actually focus our political energies on organized struggle.
Prove it. Where's the peer reviewed study? If you can't back that up with some science this entire argument is based off of an assumption. What if voting gets people more politically active? If this is the whole reason why you think people shouldn't vote and take direct action, it's a flimsy one.
And, even if it was true, there's nothing that is stopping you from reminding people to be active and not just vote. You could go into comment sections and say people should go participate in building a revolution after they vote.
But I digress, you made a claim that's the basis of your whole argument, do you have any proof that voting leads to less organizing?
No Lenin quotes please I want an actual study ty
Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said the act of voting makes people tune out, or that people should not vote. I said treating voting like the primary means of gaining effective change deflates organizational pressures. If you cannot respond to the actual arguments at hand, then do not invent new ones.
I literally quoted you saying voting causes people to check out and not organize. Prove it.
No, you quoted me saying that treating voting like the absolute most important means of political struggle causes people to tune out. Not the act of voting, the treatment of the concept at a societal level. Stop making up strawmen.
So prove it. Where's your source?
The closest direct source I found suggests that there is a negative correlation between system-justifying beliefs and collective anti-system action. If people believe voting legitimately is a means by which they can enact social change, they are less likely to organize against the system itself. This does not mean voting itself is against organizing, in fact organizers vote at higher rates than non-organizers. The importance here is that collective action is diminished when that is directed towards engaging with the system itself.
His ass.
Half of internet Tankies are sockpuppets and the other half are under 25 years old. Any other category of Tankie is statistically insignificant.
Thats right. But I do understand where it comes from. Theo lesser Evil evolved to a downward spiral.
The less evil is bare minimum. And it sometimes feels like that politicians are more busy With being a bit better than the actual Evil, to still satisfy their own voters and trying to win the others. Better Take would be to actually improve stuff.
But yes. No vote will Just hand over the vote for the stronger party. So the less evil kinda ist the only option.. and I rather Take that, than nothing
Exactly. You shouldn't treat voting for a politician as a marriage, you should treat politicians as a vehicle to get you to the place you want to be.
There almost never is an ideal candidate because everyone has different opinion what ideal candidate is. Even in countries where there are multiple parties most people don't get exactly who they want.
If you want better choices you need to get more involved on politics, vote in primaries, vote in local elections, find and help candidates that are not popular but are closer to what you want or even run yourself.
If you don't get involved at lower levels don't be surprised the candidates in general aren't what you want. Of you don't vote, don't be surprised that candidates ignore needs of your group.
Primaries are for getting the candidates you want. General elections are for picking the candidate who is closest to your values. If you really want change, get involved for your primary candidate. Just bitching on here and sitting out on civic action is selfish catharsis.
The majority of those keyboard communists are just paid russian propagandists trying to sow discord in every election.
Their opinion is literally worthless.
No, you gotta be lying. There certainly have been plenty of billionaires beheaded and police stations burned and politicians tarred and feathered.
Clearly theyre doing what they tell everyone else they should be doing.
Edit- triggered all those tough keyboard warriors with this evidently.
Hey, so as a trans person in Ohio, where both of my gubernatorial candidates hate trans people, it's decidedly not an easy choice.
There wasn't a Dem primary either.
Sorry to say, but reality doesn't conform to your MS Paint meme :/
Obligatory Simpsons meme
I'll take "we can't govern", please.
Seems you are the one posting divisive stuff a month before the election, but go off
"Remember you stupid tr#nnies, your job is to support the party, no matter how much the candidate we nominate hates you. Your job is to sit down, shut up, and get in line. We need your votes, not your voices. The correct time to oppose the TERFS is not during the first year's primary (we let candidates hide their transphobia during the first primary.) It's certainly not during the first general election. It's during the primary, you stupid tr#nny!"
"Also, please be aware that it is irresponsible to primary a TERF democrat running for reelection in a purple district. We can't give up an incumbent seat after all. You'll just have to wait and vote SO HARDS until that district votes so overwhelmingly blue that it becomes a safe seat. Then it will be acceptable to primary the TERF we put forward. Also, please be aware that before running in that primary, your new candidate will first have to get passed the real primary, the money primary to decide who gets to be on the primary ballot. Ok, now that your role is clear, blue no matter who. Remember tr#nnies, you're fabulous and we love you. And remember, if we lose, it's all your fault and you deserve whatever laws are passed against you! Slay gurl! Hope this helps! Don't forget to sign up to canvas for the terf as this year's pride! 🥰 🥰 🥰 "
One, democrats have already demonstrated their lack of appetite to protect trans rights.
Two, it's a hostage situation that allows the "left" party to do nothing by just not being the actual villain. It won't win them elections and won't actually help anyone. You can't pretend you're the good guy if you just stand there while the bad guy shoots the people who you claim you want to help.
Three, vote for the love of gods. I don't care if they're the lesser evil, we can still make them change and that's better than active evil. Their strategy of hostage taking might be a losing one, but we can force them to become the actual good guys
Remember Trump's last term?
Remember Biden coming in and turning around a really shitty situation?
Then remember all the leftists 'ree'ing at each other and saying Biden didn't do anything?
Lol, wut
President Biden Signs Anti-Immigrant Spending Bill Reaching Trump-Era Highs
Let's look at some numbers.
Biden's last funding bill gave ICE 9.6 billion
Trump's last funding bill gave ICE 28.9 billion
You are doing the thing in this post. Biden was bad, Trump was infinitely worse.
Obviously I would prefer ICE and DHS dismantled. But instead of the status quo we got the largest expansion ever
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Cost-of-Enforcement-Factsheet.pdf
In addition, look at how enforcement was conducted. Due process. Warrants. No shooting protesters, no mass raids.
And all the other stuff trump has failed at which anyone could have done better by doing nothing at all.
"it's okay guys, we performed state oppression of the working class with proper decorum. That totally makes it okay, right?"
Fuck off.
It's called due process not decorum
I grant you, enforcing unjust laws isn't ideal. But pull your head out of your ass, the air up there is killing your brain!
There's worse ways to enforce bad laws. The rights of the accused is an older and more powerful revolutionary idea than whatever toothless shit "state oppression of the working class" is meant to represent, though it isn't clear you understand the shape behind that shadow.
You're embodying the joke here. Don't let the fantasy of a perfect world that exists in your dream blind you to the realities of the one we're in.
Many people do not see a functional difference between "enforcing unjust laws" by-the-book compared to "worse ways to enforce unjust laws" (I presume, based on the topic of this particular thread, that you're alluding to whatever the fuck ICE is doing right now). Whether ICE nicely follows all the regulations while arresting and deporting an immigrant family, or they storm into the house of an immigrant family and beat them up before arresting and deporting them, the net effect is the same when observed from a certain level of abstraction.
To be clear, I personally think it's clear that the scenario in which the immigrant family gets beat up is worse (as it results in the family being beat up, and the outcome is otherwise the same). However, if presented a "choice" between the two options it's hard to see the first one as particularly compelling. It's like asking "would you rather fracture your skull in a car crash, or fracture your skull in a car crash which also breaks your arm?", it's hard not to look at the two shitty choices and not be bitter that there isn't a choice in which you don't get hit by a car.
Harm reduction motherfucker. Or do you cut off your fuckin foot when you stub your toe? Fucks sake.
I feel pretty confident saying a big reason Kamala Harris lost was because Joe Biden didn't turn things around.
You probably shouldn't feel confident in the future.
No lol what the fuck are you on about
He cancelled student debt and passed the infrastructure bill. Then the republicans fucked it all.
Covid lock downs and no toilet paper?
Supply chain issues every where.
January 2021 was wild.
Oh hey the whole gang is here. Blaming a worldwide pandemic and ridiculous panic buying on political lines? Jesus I almost thought we were going to have a reasonable conversation here. Lmao.
Trump dismantled government organizations dedicated to protecting Americans from pandemics and lied about the extent of it and what to do about it.
Or did you forget about that?
I'd chime in and add that trump and co actively tried to profit off of the pandemic, by confiscating PPE from states and then selling it back to their hospitals at a markup. They also wanted to let covid run rampant because they believed it would affect higher density blue states worse than the lower density red states.
Biden wasn't great, but it cannot be understated how fucking evil the trump administration was.
Just so we're clear you were responding to a post about Biden fixing things and you brought up these events in 2021 which was NOT during Trump's term, so yes I am pretty sure you're being disingenuous here and trying to derail the claim,
In Good faith I will respond that I do remember Trump disbanding the Pandemic reaponse team in... 2017/18? It was early on and a sign of things to come in regards to his willingness to just undo anything Obama had credit for.
And yet there were no government mandated lockdowns and the toilet paper rush was, as far as I can tell, not a cultivated psyop.
The. Fuck. Is. Your. Point.
I’m talking about how things were in January 2021.
Can you please fully read comments before you start commenting please?
I talk mad shit on the old fuck but he's literally the only US president to end a war in my lifetime. That does count for a thing
If you're talking about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, that was Trump.
In February 2020, the first Trump administration and the Taliban signed the United States–Taliban deal in Doha, Qatar, which stipulated fighting restrictions for both the US and the Taliban, and in return for the Taliban's counter-terrorism commitments, provided for the withdrawal of all NATO forces from Afghanistan by 1 May 2021.
Wild. By the time the area was vacated his admin was completely disavowing it and gave full "credit" to Biden. Guess I fell for some stupid shit and Biden can't even claim that.
It’s like you made a point, and then a bunch of morons showed up to prove it in responses. I can’t believe how easy that was! 😂
Biden overturned a Trump-era ban on trans people serving in the military and made it possible for U.S. citizens who do not identify as male or female to select an “X” as the gender marker on their passports.
Well, yes, but it’s his fault for everything Trump does, so, checkmate.
No it’s the American voter’s fault.
Wait are we for or against electoralism here, does it work or does it not?
Trump was voted in by people voting for him.
Say it fuckin louder for all the fuck-ignorant US Americans that don't vote.
Wait, so Biden couldn’t protect you from a future lawless government whose every branch is controlled by fascists? Foolish Biden.
So having no control of the Senate, House, or the Supreme Court or the unilateral ability to pass laws, Biden failed to stop the fascists years into the future, and now it’s his fault that Republicans are violating the constitution?
Are you… okay?
I’m curious what kind of laws you think he (congress) should have created for trans people.
Are you just as upset that he didn’t create new laws to protect Muslims, immigrants, atheists, women, and leftists as well? Or do those laws already exist and are strong enough, but trans people are missing their specific protections?
Gotta love the schordinger leftist, simultaneously responsible for the Dems loosing and not significant enough for Dems to pander to.
Here is why no one on the progressive left likes Democrats.
And the fact everyone on the left gets called "liberals" in here shows this is probably a rightwing bs post
Democrats are not an opposition party. They just play one on tv, like professional tv wrestling. They take turns being the "heel" and the "hero".
Anyway,
Hakeem secretly meets with Kushner who is a known traitor and foreign agent and also, officially, is an unelected official with no standing in the government. https://time.com/article/2026/08/24/hakeem-jeffries-private-meeting-with-jared-kushner-draws-backlash-ahead-of-midterms/
AIPAC Democrats are funding aipac Republicans over DSA and progressive candidates that are against blowing up children and innocents. This means no one of importance will be held meaningfully responsible for the destruction of our country. "Democratic Primaries: AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project (UDP), spent $53.6 million in independent expenditures by August 2026, primarily to defeat Democrats like Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan) and Cori Bush (Missouri). In the 2024 cycle, AIPAC spent $24 million to unseat progressives in Democratic primaries. Republican Campaigns: AIPAC also supports Republicans, endorsing over 100 members of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election. However, its Republican spending is often directed against candidates AIPAC deems "insufficiently supportive" of Israel, such as Thomas Massie (KY) in 2026, whom UDP targeted with $3.58 million in opposition. Donor Overlap: A Politico report found that 46% of AIPAC donations to Democratic candidates in 2024 came from donors who had previously supported Republican causes or candidates since 2020, including GOP billionaires like Paul Singer and Haim Saban. "
Tammy Duckworth says that Dems shouldn't be "impeaching nobody" and we should work with the pedophilic, traitorous, authoritarian who has broken more laws than exist.
https://youtu.be/Cm53m1L4Vas?is=qDThCb9RhXqqzxkl
No one likes the Dems and everyone knows that nothing will happen that causes any real change after they get elected. Everything we want will be on the back burner because "we don't want another trump again"
Status quo doesn't work anymore
Blue when in power: But boo hoo we are so powerless we cannot undo any of these anti-trans laws red put in place.
lmao I got called "Blue MAGA" for encouraging strategic voting just yesterday. I was a card carrying member of DSA before it was cool.
You can tell an election is coming up because all the bots and shills crawl out of the woodwork to start arguments between centrist Democrats and progressive leftists. I'm often disappointed by Status Quo Democrats but I'll take a status quo that doesn't work well enough for everyone over a lurch towards fascism that intends to claw back every right we've secured since the 1860's and eagerly steal the territory and resources of middle powers... and do it all fucking incompetently.
Muricans, don't fuck this up. We're so tired of all the political news from your country dominating every single "global" space. Sincerely, the rest of the world.
Yes blue maga loves this kind of alienating liberal bullshit.
No one is saying that the Democrats and Republicans are the same. What we're saying is that the Democrats allegience to the ruling class puts them in a position that makes them unable to deal with fascism, and the result is that their function as a political party is to defang otherwise radically leftist movements.
Joe Biden spent a record amount on ICE camps while the threat of fascism was obviously clear.
Biden continued building Trump's border wall.
Joe Biden sat on his ass for 4 years and refused to prosecute Trump.
Democrats sat with their thumbs up their butts while Merrick Garland got flogged for scotus, and then turned around to immediately confirm Barrett.
Obama not only discovered Tom Homan, but awarded him with a medal when Homan devised a plan to separate migrant children from their parents at detention centers.
Every single dem senator voted to confirm Marco Rubio, who has obviously been one of the biggest champions of "immigration enforcement.
Democrats capitulated during the multiple government shutdowns.
Democrats blatantly shafted Bernie in 2016, and all but guaranteed Trump's ascension.
Democrats refused to pull Biden out of the race and all but assured Trump's second term.
Kamala promised to build the world's most lethal military during an active genocide
Democrats, during a period of blistering inaction, rushed into action to censure Al Greene when he was rude.
The fighting on this thread was completely and masterfully predicted and orchestrated by op. Bravo. A master craft lesson in left in fighting. 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
I still can't get over the fact that, in my party, the idea that someone might not have voted because of a genocide generates more anger and resentment than the party leaders being openly complicit in a genocide does.
I already give any democrat a free 'harm reduction' vote so I'll be damned if they're going to guilt trip me for being pro-Palestine and anti-genocide on top of it,
Now do Gazan children.
I love being a pawn in your attempt to stomp out class consciousness
Primaries are for getting the candidates you want. General elections are for picking the candidate who is closest to your values. If you really want change candidates, get involved in your candidates primary push. Just bitching on here and sitting out on civic action is selfish catharsis.
If you don't save everyone, what's the point in saving anyone?
To virtue signal, naturally
Don’t save a drowning child because there could be other drowning children who didn’t get saved. /s
Don't turn off the orphan crushing machine because sometimes it spares the white ones
Except your solutions don't turn it off, they turn it up.
Big "all lives matter" vibes
I'm choosing to believe they were being sarcastic but yeah. Don't forget that the tankies would rather have everyone die than not have every one of their demands met under their terms.
Literally. Tankies would gladly sacrifice every trans person if they thought it would usher in their nonsense global revolution.
Yeah and I would wager that tankies are actually even doing it intentionally some decent percentage of the time because it's a movement based in ego and supremacy, and that usually follows that they tend to have a lot of sacrificable out groups...
Not really.
The problem with "All lives matter" is that it dismisses the fact that there is racial discrimination alive and well in our law enforcement system.
This is an argument against ideological purists kneecapping ONE movement trying to make change in order to maintain their purity. The effectiveness of that change is very much up for debate, but the sacrifice people who choose to vote are making is negligible compared to the potential impact their vote CAN make (see Zhoran Mamdani or Donald Trump for the extremes of that change).
The goal of this argument is not to discount the concerns of the people who refuse to vote, but to advocate for them to use their privilege, in spite of their disagreements, to increase the likelihood that this ONE method will have the CHANCE to try to affect positive (or at least less negative) change.
Sometimes, ya gotta punish people loudly as a deterrent. Nazis, I mean. Let's not save the Nazis.
So if I'm in plane that's lost pressure with an oxygen mask on, I shouldn't help anyone get their's on because I couldn't help everyone get their masks on in the like 1.5 minutes you get before brain damage?
Like I know this is a slippery slope example, and I do a agree with you that you should aim to save as many lives as possible...
But FFS this is literally the same wording right-wing politicians use to break down laws and decay public infrastructure because if it can't work perfectly its not worth having, and then they let companies in to canabalize what's left.
I think that's the point, the person forgot to put the /s so people who don't get it was sarcasm can see it was sarcasm.
WAS it sarcasm?
Yeah I mean, pretty easy to tell related to the situation.
With the range of political opinions on lemmy, Poe's law is definitely in effect.
If you won’t save anyone, what’s the point in pretending you want to save everyone?
What was the death count on the cancellation of us aid again
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/07/01/nx-s1-5452513/trump-usaid-foreign-aid-deaths
But i guess you dont care about them
I think you might be misunderstanding me?
My point was that the “if you won’t save everyone, why save anyone” argument is dumb. I would rather vote the bastards running things right now out and replace them with boring and ineffective Democrats.
Sure, it would be better to put someone with a spine who will repudiate and fix everything the Trump administration has done. But the “don’t vote, the Democrats aren’t good enough” crowd would rather let even worse people run things.
Ok i think there may have been several misunderstandings. I took the commemt ypu replied to as a facecious statement lampooning those who refuse to vote for someone unless they check every box. Spiting progress for perfection. I took your comment to be in support of that voting strategy
The argument of the 2024 Presidebtial election.
Guys this is the most important election of our lifetimes, you have to keep doing what we've always been doing, otherwise things will keep going the way they've always been going!
On the one hand: Yes, go to the ballot and vote blue. Even if they're 99% Hitler. If you think you have "nothing to lose", go look at Syria or Russia. 'The worst the Republicans could do' is worse than you can imagine.
On the other hand: Have you ever heard of the ultimatum game? Imagine you and a friend are offered $100, and your friend offers you a split of $X. You can either accept the $X, or reject it and you both get nothing. You might think you should accept the $X no matter how low, but if the scenario happens again and you have rejected low values last time, your friend will be more likely to offer you a fair X. Otherwise, if your friend's a bastard (and he is), he'll offer you $1.
Anyway, in 2020 the X offered was a Biden, and in 2024 the X offered was a Kamala. If every Leftist votes for Biden/Kamala/Next, then the DNC will keep offering the same dogshit or even shift right because 1) they want to grab more centrist voters (who won't vote for a more progressive candidate), and 2) they won't lose any leftist voters so why not. And then when the right-shifted candidate loses they'll blame it on "leftists didn't vote enough" anyway, in spite of the statistics saying otherwise.
So in other words: If you're willing to vote for a 99% Hitler, don't be surprised if you're offered a 99% Hitler. Unless you're expecting the DNC to be extremely principled, anti-corruption, and spineful?
"Vote blue no matter who" isn't a solution; it's forfeiting democracy (if you follow it, you literally don't get to choose not to vote blue) in pursuit of... not letting Republicans in. Great! The Dems reliably prevented Trump from being re-elected, right? No, he trod water in the status quo but didn't actually fix the core problems, so Trump's "vote me in and I'll burn down the system" still resonated with voters. But hey, at least Biden prosecuted Trump and all the criminals who he enabled to flagrantly break the law and rewrite it to their benefit? Not really, no.
"Vote Blue No Matter Who" is a travesty which can be at best justified as a strategy of lesser evil - but still evil. If it doesn't have an expiry date then you've already abolished democracy, and that's fucking horrifying, even if it's the correct strategy.
I said this last time it cropped up, and it's still true now
https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/48205840/22263227
The truth of the matter, as it's often the way, it's there's nuances
Reminder: While establishment dems are cringe, tankies first and foremost want to see the US and its citizens die, for shits and giggles.
Dems supporting trans sports bans (and lockeroom bans and bathroom bans and other sex segregation) are supporting the exact same ideology that justify sending us to men's prisons. The idea is that we are too strong and manly and will r*pe and kill women if we are allowed to have freedom, so we need to be quarantined away with other men so that we get r*ped and murdered.
I'm not voting for my genocide. If the choice in 2028 is between a transphobe and a transphobe, I'll just kill myself.
"For dinner you can pick between overcooked turkey, or a bowl aged horse urine, children's fingers, and broken glass. You have to eat one of them."
"Neither option is vegan and the turkey is dry, so it doesn't matter which one I eat ."
Are you sure about that? Are you absolutely sure that the Dem party is not moving in an anti-trans direction?
This has been my experience with everyone who refused to vote for Kamala
You can vote third party, the important thing is to be a voter rather than a non-voter.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/some-democrats-recalibrating-approach-to-transgender-issues
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/19/kamala-harris-book-trans-athletes-00573966
Maybe don't use an issue where the Blue capitalist lap dogs are moving closer to the position of the Red capitalist lap dogs every day to illustrate your ridiculous point that the Blue capitalist lap dogs are somehow preferable?
Maybe try immigration!
https://theintercept.com/2024/11/07/harris-trump-election-immigration-border/
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4361/text
Ooops!
Well I'm sure you'll find something! Good luck!!
"Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me."
But guuuuuys muh rachet effect! Every DEMONcrat is exactly the same ok? The system is broken so we shouldn't try to do anything about it, it's way more cool and revolutionary to talk about an eventually revolution generations down the line, the trans and browns can wait! If you vote you're CAPITALISTIC SWINE WHO LOVES GENOCIDE. The 33% who didn't vote last election didn't just let Trump win they were actually cool revolutionaries ok?
When they nominate Gavin Newsom to be President I will not vote for him.
the funny part about this 'blue no matter who' post is that it is specifically about trans people and all of the comments are about tankies. either way, you're expected to vote for gavin newsom, right?
America libs are really hung up about this, those lib voter criticizing the liberal gov aren't not going to vote liberal, donald is an obvious nightmare. they're going to just try and get a socialist democrat into the in during the Dems primary, stop being a bunch of soapbox premadonas.
I'm curious if you have any interests besides political memes that cause the leftist infighting ya'll seem to hate so much.
@Godric You are so obsessed with MLs. You post about this issue so often that I see you complaining about it way more than I see MLs saying that voting is useless.
This account is constantly posting this kind of BS that blames progressive voters and leftists for an authoritarian coup.
Non voting lefties contributed so little to trump seizing the whitehouse. The democratic party have much more responsibility for refusing to offer the progressive policies that their base and the majority of the electorate wants.
Also we have a system when dark money and open bribery matter far more than voting. It's especially ridiculous to blame any voters in a non-democratic system.
Don't let the loud 0.1% affect your opinions.
The two party system is such a disaster, I truly believe that if that gets fixed so much more will fall in place.
Those trans people and Palestinian children are so selfish! Don't they realize that .ml users won't be able to act smug and feel better than everyone else if they vote for a party that they don't agree with on every single issue? How else will they deal with their insecurities? Palestinian children should be happy to die for true leftist's need to feel superior.
Marxists have been opposed to electoralism since the time of Marx, and not simply around election season, but year-round. It's more that liberals seem to notice revolutionary rhetoric from Marxists more around election season, because that's when liberals are more likely to tune into politics. This meme doesn't actually do the Marxist position any justice, and it misidentifies Marxists as the cause of voter apathy, rather than the actual source: the widespread feeling among voters that voting doesn't actually bring change.
We understand that the state is ultimately a product of the class struggle of society, determined by the base economic structure. Reforms and concessions are not won at the ballot box, they are won through organizing on the ground and directly fighting the system, forcing it to concede. The Stonewall Riots were the catalyst for progressive change, not a change in heart in the ruling class. Same as the Civil Rights Movement, where Dr. King was assassinated as he began pivoting not just from anti-racist agitation, but towards the Poor People's Campaign, a growing socialist movement. It's why the Black Panther Party was infiltrated, and its top leaders killed or imprisoned.
This meme makes it seem like Marxists are some omnipresent movement terrifying liberals into withholding their votes, but the truth of the matter is that political apathy is high across the board. This isn't an inorganic reaction to Marxists finger-wagging people for voting, it's an organic reaction to the fact that both mainstream political parties do not represent the working class. This is understood across the political spectrum. Especially considering the electoral college system means that a huge portion of votes that lie in solidly red or blue states do not actually make a difference, we have to return to how we actually can gain change.
Learning from past struggles, we can see that in every major concession, struggle is what earned reforms. The point isn't that voting for the DNC magically harms the movement, the point is that treating voting as your primary or sole political outlet means no change is possible. The electoral theater is treated like the single most important thing anyone can do politically, but history shows that change has only ever come from the people fighting for it. This is why the age-old adage is
Educate
Agitate
Organize!
The electoral college is irrelevant for midterms. And political apathy is most definitely at a low right now. Democrats are absolutely surging in new voter registrations and in early voting, especially among Black Southerners.
Democrats are actually lowering in favorability. Neither the DNC nor GOP is more favorable than unfavorable, while more people are paying attention politically. The apathy is directed towards the system overall, as people do not feel their votes get them much, if anything. What is surging in the electoral realm is support for the DSA, which signifies that, if nothing else, people want an actual change.
Now, reformism cannot actually establish socialism, so the DSA is still a dead-end. But what the DSA does highlight is the fact that establishment dems are wrong in claiming they need to "appeal to the moderate." This has always been a lie told to protect deliberate inaction. The DNC isn't a smol bean progressive party but a complicit party in US imperialism.
I don't really care about favorability ratings because people can and will still vote for parties they view as unfavorable. The actual numbers of how people are voting are what really matters.
I would certainly rate the Democratic party as more unfavorable than favorable but you'll never catch me not voting blue, especially in these midterms.
The very fact that both major political parties in the US are wildly unpopular means the system needs to change, then. Neither the DNC nor the GOP are going to do it, so we need to directly struggle against the system. Funneling the majority of political activism into the system and away from agitating against it is the problem, not whether or not people vote for the DNC. The actual numbers of how people are voting are less important than the actual numbers of how people are organizing.
How's that organizing going for you? Is your glorious revolution a few weeks out? Our biggest chance at harm reduction is scheduled, how about your solution?
Organizing is, as always, tough work, but it continues to get results. Looking at Minneapolis earlier this year, it wasn't a vote that kicked ICE out, it was a general strike with 100,000 people. It wasn't the democrats helping out, it was the working class organizing and struggling against it. Local struggles against data centers, against landlords screwing over tenants, for labor unionizing, all of this is largely fought on the ground, not at the ballot box, and in many cases democrats directly oppose these struggles at local office.
No, revolution is not a few weeks out. Or, at least I don't think it would be. Revolution happens when the working class is organized, capitalism hits crisis, and the working class party can take it from a local struggle to a pointed attack against the system itself. The George Floyd protests came dangerously close to revolution, which is why organizers were targeted by the state directly. Organizers are targeted now by NSPM-7. The ruling class is scared and afraid.
Revolution isn't something you plan and trigger, it's something that can happen when the conditions are right and the implements necessary are in place. This isn't predictable in the specific sense, only in the general sense as capitalism necessarily enters crisis from its own contradictions. It's our job to make sure the necessary implements are already ready to go beforehand.
Nice you dodged the question there with a novel. Why don't you answer it?
I asked this on another place and got a non answer. Cowbee is fine with throwing minorites under the bus for some long game hypothetical revolution that'll happen any day now.
Nope, still making a strawman.
Endless blood on the altar to summon the always-imminent Revolution.
"Reformism cannot actually establish socialism"
Says who? No, really, tell me. I'm not saying it's the only way but this statement lacks context, history, or imagination.
Rosa Luxembourg 126 years ago.
Great! A data point from a time where the industrial revolution hadn't even started walking briskly.
How does this mean anything to me today aside from a consideration in the huge calculus of direct action?
If you're going to take the position that systems/philosophies are illegitimate purely based on their age, then boy do I have some fun facts for you regarding the timeline between the inception of most of the US political systems and Rosa's work. By that logic, the US is entirely illegitimate.
No I am saying they are made insignificant by the growth of a body of work surrounding them.
What I'm saying is shit happens, then we know more about shit and instead of one idea, we have n+ ideas.
The further back you go the more information and context you're going to have to ignore in order for that datapoint to maintain complete signifigance. It's real easy. I'm challenging you to prove the relevance of a historical claim in the face of the history that has taken place since.
And yeah how is America doing these days? How's all that idealism and grit holding up? You get my point now follow through already instead of being a goddamn stereotype.
Essentially, the state is a product of class struggle, and is a superstructural reinforcement of the underlying base of society. The state is not a neutral, system-indepentent "state," but specifically a "feudal state," a "capitalist state," a "socialist state." The systems and mechanisms of a capitalist state cannot simply be reformed from within, they depend on and are built to support the actual capitalist system.
Throughout history, major changes in modes of production have come through revolution. Reformist approaches like in Chile with Allende end swiftly in coups, and we are seeing the current struggles in Venezuela due to not having a complete revolution (though the commune movement is still building dual power). It isn't simply a lack of imagination, it's something tested time and time again throughout history.
You really need to work on being concise and accessible, this isn't a classroom it's a comment section.
And both of those examples were, I'm just gonna guess, subsumed by US CIA activity and not an organic failing of reformism.
So what's the solution, revolution the CIA away? Does that sound like a good plan?
The CIA certainly helped in both cases, but the actual state apparatus in both Venezuela and Chile worked against the socialists. In Chile, Pinochet used the capitalist military to coup Allende, in Venezuela companies and businesses resist any progress from the PSUV. The solution is to replace the capitalist state with a socialist one, which doesn't make you immune to CIA influence, but does provide the basis for maintaining socialism domestically without retaining mechanisms that rely on private property to function.
Again, concise.
All I'm getting is the US planted opposition during the Red Scare and did a foreign interference, again if the goal is to show reformism always fails you're going to need to show an example that doesn't involve a psychotic i.perialist state actor actively undemining it. A control, I'm asking for a control group here.
Then why don't you advocate for voting and organizing?
Oh wait you said people who vote will organize less.
Hey where's that source for that? You got a scientific study? Not just a Lenin quote?
I advocate for organizing, because plenty of people advocate for voting already. My concern isn't with people voting or not, it's with people organizing.
Then why not tell people to vote as well as organize?
People who vote will do so regardless. The focus of my organizing work is in pushing people to get organized.
Then why do you advocate against voting each and every time people say to vote?
I don't, so this just returns to your insistence on beating me with a strawman.
You say it's something that keeps people from organizing. It's not hard to draw a line as to what you think people should do, with you being pro organizing.
The insane part here is the red party having ANY loyalty, support, or chance of winning. That is the psycho dystopian impossible part, and the rest is damage control choosing among lesser evils.
Discworld even mocks this. The recurring patriarch of Ankh Morpork is Havelock Vetinari. He’s kind of evil. But he’s nowhere NEAR as evil as some people who’d like to take his place, and actually wants some stability for the city. So he stays.
Seriously though people please vote! Yes, the National ballots are nearly worthless. But you still need to vote for your local City/School/County boards! Your local reps are the people making the decision to sign a flock contract, allow zoning for a data center, and many other things that impact your community. Depending on your state local reps may be elected in the June primary and/or the November election. Please look at your sample ballot on your states Secretary of State website or go to vote411 to see who’s on your ballot.
Just checking in: has 'vote blue no matter who' been working well for you folks the last few elections? Last time I seem to remember dropping trans messaging since it was a perceived liability and trotting out Liz Cheney.
Fuck your genocide party and fuck the GOP. Our differences are not reconcilable. I'm not interested in a party run by liberal capitalists.
I mean if it’s that easy to lose…
"Just shut up and take your bullet like Che did!"
Am in the UK were our system allows for 3rd parties so this isnt as much of an issue here.
To be fair to the communist guy in this cartoon if your trans and your only options are get killed or change nothing while its an easy decisión to make once, make it 5 times and it will kill any love or motivation you have for politics.
You need to move the convo, it cant be do trans people exist it needs to be what rights they are allowed if you DONT argue for that then no rights expand and the argument forever stays there. I mean look at the UK as soon as the center/left party stopped arguing for trans rights out of fear, trans people basiclly lost all progress made...
Y'all got any more of them pixels?
https://i.imgflip.com/ayizw8.jpg
How about we just all tell the truth and base our actions on it
People are really bad at math.
Funny thing how this is the sort of thing that those troll factories we've read about that feed propaganda on all sides of an issue would do. I'm not saying that they don't get momentum going with those brainwashable enough so they all would be shills, just saying, funny how that's where the impetus and motivation to effectively influence an argument would come from. Funny how people who dismiss this possibility just seem to believe those troll factories would just be wasting all their time, money, and effort in ineffective easily detectable propaganda that totally doesn't influence the social circles popular enough to have you engaging in them.
Be smart enough to realize what outcome you are really contributing to when there are no ideal solutions and not the ideology that resides on a dead end that really favors the worst outcome.
If you look at the big issues like healthcare, healthy work/life balance and better pay and benefits which supports a healthy economy, it's like 7/10 Dem platform vs 2/10 for gop, of which would help people the best. This is not new, but the propaganda and brainwashing works enough to prevent sustained progress. Of course they can't pass the big bills w/o enough majority and for long enough to maintain the progress, but enough ignore that and swing the other way and it will get worse again.
I have no hope for America, it's a so-called society of hedonistic, intellectually challenged children and seriously depraved, amoral sociopaths. Being a genocidal settler colony turned slaveowner paradise, I have never expected it to be anything more than what it is. And these kinds of "arguments" just give me more supporting evidence. Oh well. America could have 5 civil wars and they still wouldn't change their ethos, believe me.
Who thinks they're exactly the same? Nobody. One is pro-trans, the other is pro-church, and we all know this (for one example).
They are bOtH anti-union, pro-billionaire, and pro-war. So... some people have a problem with this. To some people, these issues could even be more important to them than trans or church issues. and that's okay.
This is an issue 24 months before an election, or 12 months, or 6 months, or 1 month. You'll hear "bOtH pArTiEs" for the rest of your life, and it's true! Best to come to terms with it.
eta Also, do remember that Trump was pro-trans and a Democrat. It doesn't matter; they don't really hold any convictions and will drop you like a hot potato at the first opportunity.
Blue Party: I want to help you. We can work together every day collaborating and doing the same job while I do nothing meaningful to oppose you.
RIP Iowans, though, I guess.
first of all both parties are the same uniparty system of corruption fraud vs fraud which side is less fraud but usually we get worse and worse fraud corruption as time goes on the main thing 75% of gov are contractors no amount of cutting fed workers will reduce any gov spending since they only are 25% of the fed workforce. if they wanna cut gov fraud waste abuse thats the contractors eg boeing lockheed martin tesla microsoft amazon google apple nvda u know all the fang stonks they been pumping and bought by trump first and insider trading deals.
also no competition at all. plus next both parties are the party of war, death and destruction. republicans are just much more honest about that they are intentionally destroying lives to fund the elite epstein class and gas lighting everyone except the low iq of the country dont realize it.
next the culture wars of the democrat side litterally dont mean jack. fix the economy before your petty culture war distraction to steal even more NO ONE CARES you just make it a talking point that force us to care but really deep down NO ONE CARES leave us alone.
fix the economy by stop STEALING from all of us and actually remove the corrupt epstein class else you can stay at home no one wants you in power.
I feel like post like these are a psyop to get no one vote.
Anyone else notice that when school started letting out that their comments started getting downvote-bombed?
Tankies fuckin telling on themselves, lol.
Saint @[email protected] out here doing the Lord’s work on Michaelmas. Keep it up!
This happens every election. Russia gets in the heads of all the pseudosocialists and then these kids spread the propaganda and ignorance to every social media platform they can find.
To EVERYONE whose life DEPENDS on this election, just REMEMBER to vote Blue no MATTER who! UNLESS the Blue is a Socialist THEN vote INDEPENDENT no Matter WHO!
the prob with the pic is the person still cast a vote for blue. if the order was reattached and they didn’t cast thanks to the other char, then maybe the comic works?