Infighting
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You pretend, for a little while, then slowly introduce truth to them drip by drip. Like an undercover propaganda agent.
Since that's probably what they're doing to us.
wrote last edited by [email protected]This strategy is dishonest though. We cannot use all the same methods of the far right and ruling class.
There's a conflict of interest between wanting people to think critically and then lying to them and only slowly letting them learn parts of a truth.
In another example, you can't have a democracy when all parties try to deceive the voters. That will damage the concept of democracy and the existing supposed democracy.There is also the danger of falling your own rhetoric and propaganda. Prime example of this is how fascism was created. Mussolini actively engaged in nationalist pro-war propaganda as he thought the continued war would lead to the conditions necessary for socialist revolution. He wasn't wrong about that as then revolutions broke out in several successors / breakaways of the Russian Empire, in Germany and in Hungary. But eventually he fell to his own propaganda and created fascism.
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Still looking for a single leftist here who claims they support communism. I constantly see it being attributed to the left, but in real life scenarios I just don't see it, only in memes, unless you meant socialism, which is a healthy system of every country, including US.
EDIT: I guess I should stop waiting, this feels like strawman argument/gatekeeping
I'm a communist, I support communism. Socialism isn't welfare, it's a transitional status towards the gradual sublimation of private property. The US is firmly capitalist and is in no way socialist, socialism isn't "when the government does stuff."
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ah yes, because marxist-leninism has no history of its adherents glorifying imperialism or state-capitalism.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Correct. Neither imperialism is glorified, nor is state-capitalism like the US Empire, Republic of Korea, Singapore, or Bismarck's Germany if you want an earlier example, are glorified by Marxism of any kind.
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Or Marxism and Marxist-leninist.
Say what you will about Democrats. Outside of the elected ones. Most of them don't have a strong ideology. Just actually wanting things to improve. But I'm sure of how to go about it. And when you approach them like that. Are plenty likely to be sympathetic and allies.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Not really sure what you're trying to say here as "Marxism and Marxism-Leninism." Are you saying these are antagonistic ideologies? Marxism is an umbrella, not a tendency within itself. History has progressed since Marx, and Marxist theorists since Marx have developed theory and practice accordingly. By far the largest tendency in Marxism is Marxism-Leninism, the closest to a "pure" Marxism you can get is Orthodox Marxism, which itself is ironically anti-Marxist and is overall an extreme fringe belief among Marxists.
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[dude with glasses in a communist t-shirt, arguing]
I'm the only leftist here, your opinions are TRASH[dude holding a theory book on smug, arguing]
Read theory you losers, you're all WRONG[dude in an anarchist hoodie, arguing]
Nuh-uh, I'm the only leftist here, you're SHITLIBS[the three dudes are now caught in a cartoon fight, glasses gone flying, punches everywhere, while a firing squad of nazis are targeting them with rifles]
[a confused nazi asks]
Why… why are they still arguing?
Infighting | The Bad Website
Infighting - A comic on The Bad Website
The Bad Website (thebad.website)
bLuE nO mAtTeR wHo unless it's an actual progressive
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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).
It does help that the overarching theme of the right is centered around taking as much for yourself as possible and not caring about the collateral damage. The right is full of single-issue voters who might, say, not actually explicitly hate gay people but who also don’t give a shit about their rights and safety if it means they can keep their guns. The left, almost definitionally, needs to consider the complexity inherent in not being able to ignore the effects that any given policy might have on others and this means that there is so much more opportunity for conflict.
You’re correct, of course, I’m just pointing out the difference such that it might help attack the issue from a better perspective.
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Yeah, pretty much this.
Going over the comments I already see boat loads of people completely missing the point where right wing extremism is taking hold thanks in part due to the constant bickering.
Good old "divide and conquer".
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The only thing that matters is policy, I'll work with anyone as long as it's toward an egalitarian society with wealth redistribution.
Labels are nice for classifying, but not for executing. I don't care if you identify as leftist, or liberal, or progressive; I care if you support good policies.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yeah, but the question ultimately lies in how many bad and straight up harmful policies are worth the small step toward an egalitarian society? Where does it become ignoble to vote for one policy, when there are ultimately many more harmful ones outweighing the positive? Because it’s kinda rare that we get to vote on policy. We vote for people, with the vague promise of policy ideas that face an uphill battle and watering down— not to mention the straight up bastardization of those good policies, turning them into terrible ones.
I wish it were so black and white as us getting to vote on policy. The policymakers surely seem to be unable.
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Correct. Neither imperialism is glorified, nor is state-capitalism like the US Empire, Republic of Korea, Singapore, or Bismarck's Germany if you want an earlier example, are glorified by Marxism of any kind.
glorified by Marxism of any kind.
i didnt claim that.
nevertheless, china was oddly missing in ur list of state-capitalist nations that werent glorified..
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Are you now going to argue that that isn't an authoritarian act because it was justified? Because, guess what, every "authoritarian" believes their actions are justified
Protecting Jewish and other minorities rights to live and safety is not an authoritarian act. It is in fact protecting the most vulnerable's liberty. Anti authorization is not lawless. You are a very weird little person and I have no interest in trying to convince you Nazis are bad. I hope you can figure that one out on your own
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[dude with glasses in a communist t-shirt, arguing]
I'm the only leftist here, your opinions are TRASH[dude holding a theory book on smug, arguing]
Read theory you losers, you're all WRONG[dude in an anarchist hoodie, arguing]
Nuh-uh, I'm the only leftist here, you're SHITLIBS[the three dudes are now caught in a cartoon fight, glasses gone flying, punches everywhere, while a firing squad of nazis are targeting them with rifles]
[a confused nazi asks]
Why… why are they still arguing?
Infighting | The Bad Website
Infighting - A comic on The Bad Website
The Bad Website (thebad.website)
This thread keeps popping up and it just clicked and I had to ask:
Is the guy in the red shirt supposed to be Vaush?
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glorified by Marxism of any kind.
i didnt claim that.
nevertheless, china was oddly missing in ur list of state-capitalist nations that werent glorified..
Your claim, sarcasm aside, was that Marxist-Leninists have a history of glorifying imperialism and state-capitalism, which I rejected, and said not just Marxism-Leninism but all Marxism rejects both. Either you're trying to say Marxism-Leninism isn't Marxist, in which case some heavy justification is required, or I misunderstood your point, in which case I'd appreciate elaboration.
As for the PRC, I didn't list it as state-capitalist for the same reason I wouldn't list the US as socialist. The PRC has a socialist market economy. The large firms and key industries of the PRC are publicly owned, and the medium firms are heavily controlled by the state and rely on the publicly owned key industries to function. Private property and the bourgeoisie don't have political power because they don't control the large firms or key industries.
What distinguishes state capitalism from socialism is private ownership of the large firms and key industries, or public ownership. The US, Singapore, ROK, etc all have large megacorps with firm control of the state, which uses its power to relatively guide and plan the economy for private interest. In the PRC, the opposite is the case, since the large firms and key industries are publicly owned and planned, the bourgeoisie doesn't have political control, the proletariat does. This is reflected in over 90% approval rates for the government in the PRC.
The reason the PRC has a bourgeoisie and private property to begin with is because they haven't yet developed out of it. They are still in a relatively early stage of socialism, market forces are quite useful for small and medium firms to grow into centralized firms that can be gradually sublimated and folded into public ownership. This is a Marxist understanding of economics, and while it isn't what an anarchist would want, I don't personally define socialism in a manner that excludes Marxism.
Does that make sense?
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This thread keeps popping up and it just clicked and I had to ask:
Is the guy in the red shirt supposed to be Vaush?
Would be funny considering how much Vaush hates Marxism-Leninism.
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Protecting Jewish and other minorities rights to live and safety is not an authoritarian act. It is in fact protecting the most vulnerable's liberty. Anti authorization is not lawless. You are a very weird little person and I have no interest in trying to convince you Nazis are bad. I hope you can figure that one out on your own
I believe what @[email protected] is getting at is that all states are authoritarian, and that there are positive and negative uses of authority. Executing SS officers is a positive use of authority. Since all states are an extension of the ruling class, it is better for that ruling class to be the proletariat, rather than the bourgeoisie, and for the proletariat to use its authority to oppress the bourgeoisie and gradually sublimate capital until all production is collectivized, class ceases to exist, and by extension the state withers away, leaving only administration, management, etc.
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This thread keeps popping up and it just clicked and I had to ask:
Is the guy in the red shirt supposed to be Vaush?
It's the factory preset look for these pseudo-tankies that show up in my local activism group every now and then.
Always the big earring, unkempt beard, this specific shape of glasses, and the cheap aliexpress t-shirt with a political message on it.
Not my fault Vaush stole the look!
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I believe what @[email protected] is getting at is that all states are authoritarian, and that there are positive and negative uses of authority. Executing SS officers is a positive use of authority. Since all states are an extension of the ruling class, it is better for that ruling class to be the proletariat, rather than the bourgeoisie, and for the proletariat to use its authority to oppress the bourgeoisie and gradually sublimate capital until all production is collectivized, class ceases to exist, and by extension the state withers away, leaving only administration, management, etc.
No I'm pretty sure they pulled something from another post to try to misrepresent it because they're a bitter terminally online loser. That is a very generous interpretation though
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The communists were never "buddies" with the Nazis. The communists spent the decade prior trying to form an anti-Nazi coalition force, such as the Anglo-French-Soviet Alliance which was pitched by the communists and rejected by the British and French. The communists hated the Nazis from the beginning, as the Nazi party rose to prominence by killing communists and labor organizers, cemented bourgeois rule, and was violently racist and imperialist, while the communists opposed all of that.
When the many talks of alliances with the west all fell short, the Soviets reluctantly agreed to sign a non-agression pact, in order to delay the coming war that everyone knew was happening soon. Throughout the last decade, Britain, France, and other western countries had formed pacts with Nazi Germany, such as the Four-Power Pact, the German-French-Non-Agression Pact, and more. Molotov-Ribbentrop was unique among the non-agression pacts with Nazi Germany in that it was right on the eve of war, and was the first between the USSR and Nazi Germany. It was a last resort, when the west was content from the beginning with working alongside Hitler.
Harry Truman, in 1941 in front of the Senate, stated:
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.
Not only that, but it was the Soviet Union that was responsible for 4/5ths of total Nazi deaths, and winning the war against the Nazis.
It's interesting to read that article on sci-hub. It's giving more specific details on what happened in 1939, but is otherwise in line with The Cold War & Its Origins. You don't need access to classified documents to understand the world, you can sit there in 1961 and get shit more or less right.
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No I'm pretty sure they pulled something from another post to try to misrepresent it because they're a bitter terminally online loser. That is a very generous interpretation though
I'm saying it because I've seen them make the same argument, as I have done myself, in different ways.
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It's interesting to read that article on sci-hub. It's giving more specific details on what happened in 1939, but is otherwise in line with The Cold War & Its Origins. You don't need access to classified documents to understand the world, you can sit there in 1961 and get shit more or less right.
Yep! Just having a fairly consistent and coherent understanding of the world is usually sufficient to get things more right than not, not everyone needs to be a grandmaster-level Marxist-Leninist with decades of reading and practice to view the world in a constructive way. Theory and practice is still necessary, but even liberals can acknowledge reality.
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Fair enough, though I do think this can still help with any broader approach to changing their overall mentality.
A moment of consensus on its own might not be enough to sway someone, but if they hear someone try and contradict what they had recently agreed on, it can then make them feel more cognitive dissonance, and potentially make them at the bare minimum just stop and think for a second.
If someone else is later trying to sway them in some way, it's going to be easier when that person says something, and they can think "I remember saying something similar" rather than "this is the opposite of what I already believe."
Plus, there's also just the sort of "exposure therapy" factor to it, as well. A lot of people are radicalized to believe that the "opposing side" is pure, limitless evil, and that they hate you and want you dead, so just interacting with them can be enough to help slowly deradicalize them.
For example, this Pew Research article states, regarding the likelihood of people to support trans people's existence:
"Though Republicans who know a trans person are more likely than Republicans who don’t to say gender can be different from sex assigned at birth, more than eight-in-ten in both groups (83% and 88%, respectively) say gender is determined by sex at birth. Meanwhile, there are large differences between Democrats who do and do not know a transgender person. A majority of Democrats who do know a trans person (72%) say someone can be a man or a woman even if that differs from their sex assigned at birth, while those who don’t know anyone who is transgender are about evenly split (48% say gender is determined by sex assigned at birth while 51% say it can be different)."
But of course, that isn't just limited to acceptance of people by gender. It also applies to race, social and economic status, recipients and non-recipients of welfare programs, people working in different industries, etc.
Again, not saying it's at all some magic universal way to change someone's mind, or that on its own it's necessarily a factor that can override their overarching condition, (hell, that quote from before shows that it had a much smaller impact on republicans than democrats even given the same exposure) but the more and more this happens, the stronger and stronger an effect it has overall, and I'd say that alone makes it worth doing.
True. And I'd expect you'd need fewer of these moments for younger people than older ones. Every little bump might be the one that diverts someone to a different path. I know it hasn't worked well on my older family members, but it was those kind of moments that helped my diverge from my religious upbringing when I was younger.
