Infighting
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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)
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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)
Talking Nazi has his armband on the wrong arm AND the swastika is backwards, and the ones holding the guns are wearing the armbands near their wrists.
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Except when the DNC doesn't like that candidate so they put their thumb on the scale to ensure they don't win. Why else do you think we keep getting the same handful of candidates? Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, Obama, Clinton, Biden, Biden, Harris. Do you not see the pattern here? They want a dynasty in control not the people with the best ideas.
A thumb on the scale wouldn't really matter if we were united. They put their thumb on the scale with Mamdani and he won anyway.
Why else do you think we keep getting the same handful of candidates?
Because primary turnout is something like 15% of eligible voters, who are disproportionately old and "centrist".
Do you not see the pattern here? They want a dynasty in control not the people with the best ideas.
I'm not saying that this is false, I'm just saying it wouldn't matter if we quit the infighting, rallied behind a good prospect, and actually showed up to vote for them as the Democratic candidate.
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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.
There aren't enough showers in the world to wash off the shame of any part of that interaction.
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Talking Nazi has his armband on the wrong arm AND the swastika is backwards, and the ones holding the guns are wearing the armbands near their wrists.
TFW you worked so hard on little details but didn't take into account the big details…
whoops
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TFW you worked so hard on little details but didn't take into account the big details…
whoops
️Most Nazis are idiots, especially modern Nazis trying to emulate German ones. So it actually fits!
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I think the premise here is flawed. It assumes infighting is the reason why we can't coalesce around a single candidate but the real reason why that isn't happening is because the DNC keeps backing right wing candidates who don't represent any of us. Too many people are under the false belief that being a Democratic politician makes one the "good guy" in the face of "evil Republicans" when in reality we've just been given two Republican candidates to choose from at the ballot box for quite some time now. They all work for the same masters and don't give a shit about fixing this broken country. They aren't two different sides, they're all on the same side against the American people.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I'm not from the USA and I'm tired of US politics 🥺
The current rise of the far right in my country started two decades ago, in part because of leftist infighting. I'm not going to point any fingers, I was guilty of infighting on that day too. It was so unexpected, nobody thought the far right could beat any of the leftist candidates… many lessons were learned that day.
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Most Nazis are idiots, especially modern Nazis trying to emulate German ones. So it actually fits!
Lore accurate explanation I'll use if anyone else asks, thanks!
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It's not only decades of propaganda.
Whether you like it or not, but many countries have suffered enourmosly (genocides, extermination of local language and culture) under the banner of regimes that claimed to represent communist ideals and allegedly aimed to develop a communist society.
I was born in the tail end of the USSR, so I honestly don't really remember it. But from the stories of my parents and relatives, it was trash.
You can't just dismiss the association between the USSR and attempts at achieving communism.
I’ve talked to a handful of people that lived through that era in Russia and none of them had positive things to say. They were all working class folks. I trust their judgment over someone on the internet, and I don’t get sucked into team sports identity type shit. We can pick and choose the good ideas and acknowledge the shitty ones.
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I am aware of that. I'm just like... I see a lot of "leftists" that think "successful socialist projects" have to replicate the USSR 100% with everything good and bad about it mixed in. If your definition of "building a better world" is killing or enslaving people for disagreeing with you, you are not a leftist, you're a nazbol.
And like, the USSR clearly does not exist anymore, and for most of its existence it made a joke out of socialist principles.
We’ve also seen years of what Russia in its current state and Putin are capable of. None of it is good. Hell, when I was more active in activist circles I was in very close proximity to a Russian-driven disinformation campaign in 2016 that used and exploited leftist organizations for its own benefit. It wasn’t some “hey, we’re friends” situation; it was the Kremlin using and disposing of people to destabilize in the same way the US and western powers have for decades themselves. Hitching your wagon to other political powers is a shit idea. There is a reason I don’t trust any politician.
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I’ve talked to a handful of people that lived through that era in Russia and none of them had positive things to say. They were all working class folks. I trust their judgment over someone on the internet, and I don’t get sucked into team sports identity type shit. We can pick and choose the good ideas and acknowledge the shitty ones.
That's my point. USSR and the CCP have arguably permanently damaged the communism "brand".
And you talked to russians, things were even worse for nations occupied by the russians.
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this is terminally online behavior. Marxists I've run into in actual organizing work are generally pretty chill and more interested in the work than trying to tell me I have the wrong opinion.
Anyone complaining about "tankies" when there's actual Nazis around is doing their work for them.
You're from .ml, your opinion on tankies is coming from inside the house.
Frankly history has shown what happens to leftists who side with tankies. I for one will never be making that mistake again.
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No, but we don't have the popularity and support to elect good candidates yet, so right now it's a choice between bad and worse. We should be doing what we can to avoid worse.
You should be doing all that you can to avoid bad at all.
You should be looking at revolution not voting.
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I'm not from the USA and I'm tired of US politics 🥺
The current rise of the far right in my country started two decades ago, in part because of leftist infighting. I'm not going to point any fingers, I was guilty of infighting on that day too. It was so unexpected, nobody thought the far right could beat any of the leftist candidates… many lessons were learned that day.
It was widely expected that Chirac and Lionel Jospin, the outgoing cohabitation Prime Minister and nominee of the Socialist Party, would be the most popular candidates in the first round, thus going on to face each other in the runoff, with opinion polls showing a hypothetical Chirac versus Jospin second round too close to call. However, Jospin unexpectedly finished in third place behind Le Pen. Journalists and politicians claimed polls had failed to predict Le Pen's second-place finish in the general election, though his strong stance could be seen in the week prior to the election.[citation needed] This led to serious discussions about polling techniques, the climate of French politics and especially the high numbers of candidates from the left-wing.
Although Le Pen's political party, the National Front, described itself as mainstream conservative, observers largely agreed in defining it as a far-right and nationalist party. As a protest, almost all French political parties called for their supporters to vote against Le Pen, most notably the Socialists, who were traditionally billed as the archrivals to Chirac's party. Chirac thus went on to win in the largest landslide in a presidential election in French history (greater even than that of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in 1848, the first by direct ballot), winning over 82% of the vote.
That sure sounds like a carbon copy of US politics (or vice versa). You have politicians and journalists spinning a story about how things will turn out, and when they dont turn out that way the leftist candidates move to the right to find 'solidarity' just before the right sweeps the entire government.
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That's my point. USSR and the CCP have arguably permanently damaged the communism "brand".
And you talked to russians, things were even worse for nations occupied by the russians.
Trying to decouple the term and core ideas from the past actions is going to be an uphill battle forever. That requires imagination and forward thinking, but you have the folks dunking on it because of the atrocities carried out under it, and the folks on the other side that have managed to embrace those parts so hard that they can no longer sea reason or find nuance.
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You're from .ml, your opinion on tankies is coming from inside the house.
Frankly history has shown what happens to leftists who side with tankies. I for one will never be making that mistake again.
You’re from .ml
I'm an anarchist, I have done anarchist organizing for years.
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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)
See the comments for a bunch of examples
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Trying to decouple the term and core ideas from the past actions is going to be an uphill battle forever. That requires imagination and forward thinking, but you have the folks dunking on it because of the atrocities carried out under it, and the folks on the other side that have managed to embrace those parts so hard that they can no longer sea reason or find nuance.
Yes, we need a "brand" that builds upon the ideals (and some of the theory) of communism/Marxism while taking in account both history (e.g. even something as simple as democratic governance being non-negotiable) and the "spirit" and challenges of our times.
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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)
a tankie has a gun with one bullet, and across from them is a socialist, a liberal, a conservative, and a tiny clone of hitler
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I have literally never run into anyone in real life who says any of these as any form of communist, other than 'communist' parties full of pensioners or maga communists.
::: spoiler spoiler
- LGBTQ+ identities are bourgeois degeneracy
- Trans people are a capitalist invention to divide workers
- Nazis have a point when it comes to nationalism
- Assad and Putin are leftists
- Killing millions of people is necessary for a better world
- The socialist state must uphold “traditional values”
- “Socialist” police are a good thing because they don’t serve capital, they serve the people
- The only valid leftist theory is the one that argues Marxism-Leninism is correct
- Stalin exclusively killed Nazis
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I have run into people saying things like this:
::: spoiler spoiler
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Anarchism has never been tried successfully
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Anarchists are all children who don’t know better
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and I'll push back on it, but it's not a monolith, Marxists with decent enough social skills to not insult allies do exist
Animal farm is propaganda, by a social democrat with a clear agenda.
Believe it or not, these are almost never relevant to actual organizing work:
::: spoiler spoiler
- China is communist or will be communist by 2050
- Ukraine is a Nazi state who deserves to be invaded
- Russia taking children from Ukraine and relocating them is just them being nice and removing them out of the warzone
- States are 100% necessary for the development of socialism
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Real life marxists tend to be okay, I don't mind them. But, online those people literally try to dominate ALL discourse in leftism to the point where every single contact people have with leftists is someone who believes those things unironically.
