Infighting
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Americans informally create coalitions. That's why you hear the term "caucus" a lot more often, like Bernie Sanders "caucusing" with Democrats. Many libertarians may not like Trump and the fascist Republicans, but they still caucus together. The problem with caucusing with Democratic party is that they sideline the left, especially Bernie Sanders, in favour of more corporate friendly candidates. As for the Republican party, well the right always act right and value group cohesion and appeasing the rich more, even if they become fascist.
Caucusing is hardly working and here is the hard to swallow pill for Americans: organise grassroots campaigns and plant actual progressives into primaries. Americans used to be good at doing that. That's how they got the Roosevelts, ended the first Gilded Age, and third party candidates being elected more. The duopoly system became entrenched sometime after the early 1900's, probably when Theodore Roosevelt ran third party and split the vote of progressives, which handed the presidency to the racist Woodrow Wilson.
Caucausing isn't really comparable to coalitions in my opinion, because all the formalisms are missing.
Bernie Sanders has no actual power within the party, no matter how many people voted Democrats because of him.
Compare the situation to an actual multi-party system with coalitions. Sanders would have his own party and there would be 1-3 other parties that are currently part of the Democratic party. Each of these parties would collect separate vote shares which would lead to some of these parties being larger and others smaller. Voters would have to choice to express which exact political direction they prefer instead of just having a binary choice.
After the election, coalitions would be formed. These coalitions wouldn't have to be along the current party lines, but e.g. moderate republicans and moderate democrats could form a coalition with eachother. This way, coalition-based multi-party systems tend towards moderate compromises, while two-party systems tend towards extremism.
In a multi-party system centrists represent reason and compromise, whereas in a two-party system they represent boring blandness.
In a coalition, each of the coalition partners hold power, because everyone of them can end the coalition. This means, more compromise is necessary and someone like Sanders cannot just be ignored for decades.
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This is why far "left" and "right" are itself misguided labels. It's more like far opposite on the other end where they meet.
Horsehoe theory is misguided itself, it was pitched purely to distance liberalism from fascism when historically they are linked, and to demonize those who support collectivization over privatization. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
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Why are you all trying to have a serious discussion under a comic strip?
Where else should we have a serious discussion?
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im sorry to hear that after all of this u continue to claim the state is an extension of its people, and continue to mix representation and delegation. or for that matter, the myth of the state abolishing itself, which has no basis in reality.
ill give up on explaining this to u now.
just one small thing: its spelled Bismarck, not Bismark.I've never seen such unjustified condescension, my god.
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This is why far "left" and "right" are itself misguided labels. It's more like far opposite on the other end where they meet.
For almost all of human history, the current center of the the western Overton window would have been considered far, far left. Does that mean that monarchism and feudalism is the true center, and liberalism is actually the same as being to the far right of monarchism?
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In a fascist dictatorship, they have a lot more in common than opposition.
But if the dictatorship is a communist one they have more in common with the nazis! Or if your country is invaded by Russia you might find yourself fighting side by side with the Azov battalion.
There are libertarians who genuinely care about free speech and might make useful allies on those issues.
Just because someone is the enemy of your enemy, or an occasionally useful ally, doesn't mean you want to unify with them.
the dictatorship is a communist one
A dictatorship of the proletariat and a dictatorship of the bourgeois are actually the same thing, you idiot, you imbecile.
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I mean, even the Holocaust could also be said to boil down to poor management if we're just doing shitty arguments.
The holocaust was the result of pretty effective management, only possible with the latest technology, courtesy of IBM.
What lesson do libs and anarchists take away from the holodomer anyway? Don't try to redistribute grain or stop hording during a famine?
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I looked it up, and yep, looks like the PCF abandoned Marxism-Leninism in 1979 and adopted Eurocommunism, which is a vulgarization of Marxism that upholds western imperialism. MLs would consider them to be patsocs, same as the American Communist Party which espouses "MAGA Communism."
I thought maga communism was a joke.
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I thought maga communism was a joke.
We all wish it was...
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This is why far "left" and "right" are itself misguided labels. It's more like far opposite on the other end where they meet.
Horseshoe theory is literally just
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I believe you are missing the forest for the trees.
First, I acknowledge your examples are separate ideologies.That concept also applies to the right... social conservatives, right-libertarians, and neoliberal ideologies are equally separate. However, those practitioners have no qualms about banding together to suppress dissent (or until such time they are the only voices).
Where the left leaning practitioners are unable to do so, they will be forever tyrannized by the banded majority.
To put it more succinctly, the enemy of my enemy is my friend (when freedom is on the line).
Where the left leaning practitioners are unable to do so, they will be forever tyrannized by the banded majority.
You are assuming no ideological changes of opinion are possible or useful.
People that vote right wing aren't better off just because they voted that way. They're not tyrants oppressing the left, they're fellow citizens who get oppressed just as much. Their vote for the winning team doesn't win them anything.
The solution to right-wing banding isn't left wing banding, it's disbanding the right wing by showing its voters that they're being had. And that takes a cohesive and functional alternative.
Leftist "infighting" is healthy. It's a process of discovering these alternatives, and it regularly churns out consensus issues such as consent-based queer rights, veganism, not funding genocide, and how the US government is now fascist.
Over time these issues get normalized through leftist action until liberal centrists rewrite the histories as if they are responsible for producing them through liberal democracy.
To put it more succinctly, the enemy of my enemy is my friend (when freedom is on the line).
Daily reminder that the DNC does not acknowledge that the US government is now fascist. Uniting under a common front doesn't mean we fight fascism together, it means we canvas for votes until we're black bagged one by one.
Ultimately it is important to vote in every election for a candidate that has a good chance of actually getting in to represent you, but that is just one day every year or two. Everything else should be dedicated to finding and testing these alternatives.
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Where else should we have a serious discussion?
In a comic strip club.
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The People's Front of Judea vs the Judean People's Front
SPLITTERS!
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Horseshoe theory is literally just
Yeah, that really nails it.
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the dictatorship is a communist one
A dictatorship of the proletariat and a dictatorship of the bourgeois are actually the same thing, you idiot, you imbecile.
I was considering putting scare quotes around "communism", but refrained in order to avoid an argument about what is and isn't really communism. Yet here we are. So much for left unity! ;D
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I was considering putting scare quotes around "communism", but refrained in order to avoid an argument about what is and isn't really communism. Yet here we are. So much for left unity! ;D
wrote last edited by [email protected]Of course. Real Communism is everything except AES. As soon as leftists begin making any kind of public policy decisions, they become reactionaries because the anti-communists in the US media told me so.
We're already seeing this in the NYC Mayoral Race and Mamdani isn't even elected yet.
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Horseshoe theory is literally just
Okay yeah I see what you mean.
I rescind my original post. -
Where else should we have a serious discussion?
You can try to have a serious discussion where you want but don't expect to get anything much serious out of comic strips and memes.
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This is false.
Well, I don't see any point trying to continue to have a discussion with someone who's just a blunt genocide denier.
Suffice to say, to all your arguments: This is false.
How am I a genocide denier? Which genocide did I deny?
Why are you putting words in my mouth?
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How am I a genocide denier? Which genocide did I deny?
Why are you putting words in my mouth?
I quoted you directly