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we like guns?
Most leftists, generally yes.
Doesn’t mean they like US style gun culture or obsessed with them. But the system leftists oppose is armed and has/will use those arms upon leftists that gain any significant amount of power.
Arm the oppressed.
Honestly, the “likes guns” part doesn’t work anywhere outside the US, if that. And that includes conservatives.
Internationally I’m pretty sure “hates Trump” would absolutely be in the center, too.
“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary” - Karl Marx
This quote applies to Marx’s time though. When armed workers would have had nearly the same arsenal as a professional military. When horse carriages and trains were the only way to move soldiers at all.
In the age of tanks, jets and missiles, do you seriously believe workers have the slightest chance against a military? It takes a single nuke to crush a revolution that is not supported by the military.
Nukes are, like, the worst example for counter insurgency (COIN). Any government that vaporizes a city of their own people will quickly have the rest of their population in open revolt as well.
And, as proven again and again, classical militaries are horrendously bad at fighting insurgencies that have popular support. There are no front lines, only fighters. Every attempt at suppressing a movement harms bystanders much more than militants, driving more people away from the government.
Nukes can be used in various ways though, vaporizing a city would be quite the way up the escalation ladder.
I don’t have a study to cite, obviously, but I believe military threats can be extremely effective.
Start with detonating a nuke in the middle of nowhere as threat. If that doesn’t have the desired result, an EMP blast above a target city could be the next step. And so on and so forth.
Whenever guns are mentioned, I’m just reminded of how the US usually acts in case a single cop is killed:
After Matthews stumbled out of the house, a SWAT team – unaware that Kahl was dead – began firing thousands of rounds at the house, eventually setting it ablaze by pouring diesel fuel down the house’s chimney. Kahl’s burned remains were found the following day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Kahl
Sure, he was a far right extremist and his death has probably bettered the world. Yet it proves that the amount of firepower usually determines the result.
They can do that to individuals, or even small, localized organizations (MOVE bombing comes to mind). But overwhelming force fails to work once the enemy is organized, can change locations and hide with comrades, etc. That’s why for any reasonable leftists guns are important, but not the be-all end-all. That’s organization. Repression and COIN has many faces, and open mass violence is but the last of them.
Modern COIN (when done right) is all about eroding popular support for the revolution. As long as the majority of civilians sympathize with the cause, it’s next to impossible to militarily defeat an insurrection. And bigger guns are of limited use for that, what matters is who you aim them at
Nukes didn’t help that CEO. Asymmetric warfare is a thing. I want to think there is a totally peaceful solution, and maybe there is. But even peaceful solutions only work with a silent threat of armed revolt in the background.
Who won the Vietnam War? It is not at all clear that the US military could defeat a committed domestic guerrilla force. Especially if the military was split on the nature of the conflict. A bloodless political revolution is possible and there’s historical precedent for it wrt socialist movements, although expect a civil war of some kind. The fallacy that socialists just want to wage a bloody civil war in order to get free healthcare is so tired and fake and divorced from anything but liberal delusions.
Also the arms are needed to defend the political and social revolution, which will be directly attacked by armed thugs and reactionaries if it managed to gain traction toward actually upending the capitalist system. Look up The Deacons of Defense and the history of defending civil rights orgs and leaders, while kicking the Klan out of southern mainstream political life. Its not optional. However individuals armed is meaningless, there needs to be civil defense groups and left wing militias to be able to actually protect the people that need protected when they become targets of attack.
I hear this argument a lot and it rings hollow to me. State violence is mainly through police, not military campaigns. The Black Panthers were openly armed as a show of force against police. As a result, Ronald Reagan (while California governor, with support from the NRA) put some of the strictest gun control laws on the books to disarm them. If an openly armed group popped up today, you can’t send in tanks and jets against them. They don’t have command centers and bases to target. Even for our high level of state violence, it would be a huge escalation (and unconstitutional) to involve the military. Even with actual military campaigns, an armed population doesn’t just get steamrolled. Look at the decade of insurgency fighting that took place in Iraq. Gun control means cops are the only ones with guns.
Another example: during the George Floyd protests, there were often armed counter protesters and police were brutalizing the protesters while leaving the counter protesters unharmed. A lot of ink was spilled about how this showed how the police were on the side of the counter protesters. That’s almost certainly true. However, there was also a protest in Texas where they showed up openly armed and the police didn’t touch them. They didn’t need to have enough firepower to win a battle. They just had to make it not worth it.
Leftists maintain that Revolution is necessary, and the past century has shown countless guerilla victories over Imperialists with better technology using asymetrical warfare tactics. War is evolving.
Oh, you don’t want to get biblical with 19th century political theory quotes or none of this chart makes sense, in the US or otherwise.
Huh?
Bro thinks the proletariat doesn’t need to be armed because capitalists respect democracy.
Maybe English didn’t their first language but damn that’s just gibberish
Im not sure about your experience, but Trump is liked by a lot of people i have seen in Romania
A fascist has a gun and your minority neighbor doesn’t. The fascist will get their gun illegally if necessary to spread fascism. Do you trust law enforcement to be the shield for minorities against gun-wielding fascists?
Kinda have to, since none of the “leftist” ideologies has any chance of hell of being bought into action without revolution.
Since revolution requires some degree of violence, and established states have access to not just man portable firearms, but bigger guns as well, then attempting to use violence to change said state without access to firearms is what you might call dumb. You might call it suicidal. You might call it a form of Darwinism whereby the truly stupid leftists get killed off by whatever government they’re going at so that the non-stupid leftists that are left breed smarter babies that will then realize that without equal access to arms, no populace can revolt.
I guess you don’t have to like guns. It is possible to dislike something immensely and still use it as a tool. Like toothpaste. It tastes weird, it’s not fun to use, but without it, you have no teeth eventually. Guns are like toothpaste, your squeeze them and weird things come out, but at least your teeth are clean.
To make a revolution you need the people on your side, not guns specifically. The bastille was torn down by hand. Just look at the USA 6 jan. They didn’t need guns, and thats fu-king USA!
If you needed guns to make a revolution, you’d probably need RPGs and tanks too.
They didn’t need guns on Jan 6 because there were traitors in major government offices - namely the White House and the Pentagon - who withheld the National Guard from mobilizing and reduced the number of police in the area that day.
There were soldiers ready and waiting, guns in hand, who were told to standby.
Well guns wouldn’t have changed that.
Also, if the whole population is in on it, the national guard will probably stand down too.
If they had had guns, they probably would’ve succeeded. What kept them from executing Senators was basically a single locked door in a hallway and one or two police officers holding it while the politicians were evacuated through the tunnels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
I don’t think you understand how a military police state works. The government’s monopoly on violence keeps the population in line. It wasn’t until after MLK was killed and over 2 billion dollars worth of damage was done by rioters burning down entire sections of cities that civil rights laws were passed. Years of protests led to nothing. A week of riots had the laws written, drafted, and signed into law. Look at what’s happening right now over the death of a certain CEO of a major health insurance company.
I don’t think that was a revolution, neither that the USA is a dictatorship or a “military police state”.
And yes, dictatorships use violence to stay in place, and revolutions doesn’t bring that down, it’s more the other way around, the dictatorship starts to become weak and actors move in to take power (can be the population, another country, …).
Like Syria. Hopefully Russia in 2025.
Which wasn’t a revolution, Jan 6th or the Civil Rights Movement? The Jan 6th was definitely an attempted coup (unless you ask the MAGA cultists), but the Civil Rights was definitely a revolution of some form. And the Kent State Massacre is just an example of the violent suppression often used by the US government (though we usually prefer it to be in other countries).
The US isn’t a dictatorship (yet, who knows where we’ll be in 2 years time), but you look at how militarized our police force is and how many US citizens are gunned down by them every year and tell me we that we aren’t a militarized police state. Our cops are buying surplus IFVs from the army to drive around in. Palestinian protesters at colleges were having their belongings seized and thrown out by police and administration both - including things like medications. During Bush Jr’s administration, you could only legally protest against the Iraq war in areas cordoned off with concrete barriers and fences (sometimes with barbed wire on them). Several studies were done years back by some Ivy League schools looking at laws that were passed or not and their popularity with the 1% vs the majority of Americans, and their conclusion was that the US cannot be considered a democracy and is in fact an oligarchy.
Dictatorships are usually brought down by their own incompetence, but resistance groups speed that up and help keep people from dying. The point isn’t open warfare against guys with tanks and beyond visual range missiles, but asymmetric warfare meant to cripple the government’s operational capacity for oppression and community support for the population. Like in Myanmar, where resistance groups are fighting against the ethnic cleansing being done by the military using 3d printed guns because not a single nation in the world cares enough to send them aid. They can’t get guns, but they can get hobby 3d printers and bullets, and that’s good enough to kill a soldier and take his gun.
Like George Washington said when he opposed the Second Amendment, “Farmers with guns will never win against a professional army.” But you don’t need to, you just need to be annoying enough that the government falls on their own knife trying to catch you. Rambo getting gunned down in a blaze of glory will be remembered as an idiot. The black militia put together and trained by a black WW2 veteran who put down sandbags and machine gun emplacements on people’s porches to protect them from retaliation by the KKK are remembered as heroes. Just like the people who showed up for MLK’s show of force in D.C. that we call The Million Man March today. That wasn’t just a protest. It was a threat that terrified every white suburbanite across the country. If he could mobilize a million people to the capital just to march, what else could he do?
A revolution is not one event, the French Revolution didn’t end with the storming of the bastile. The french people were armed for the revolution
Jan 6 failed. The Bastille was in 1789.
I think my point still stand, which is it’s not about the weapons.
Yep, you can have your own personal armory. You’ll be limited by what you can hold, and more importantly wield. Worse what was won by a small group of armed insurgents. Can be lost just as easily.
If you have the people on your side, you may never have to fire a shot. And it will be generations before what was gained is forgotten and becomes vulnerable again. If they’re constantly having to look over their shoulders. Wondering if that janitor will come for them. If they can trust the people that cook and bring their food. It simply will not be worth it to them.
They’re sociopaths. They’ll take advantage of anything society allows them to. It’s also why they want AI and robots so badly. Then they won’t need societies permission anymore.
Tell that to the United Healthcare CEO.
I’ve been fighting for a political solution to income inequality for decades now and, at the moment, we are further than ever from any kind of success. Even so, I am still hopeful that we might get a backlash to the second Trump presidency that moves things in the right direction. However, I’m more convinced than ever that were we to start making serious gains that the economic establishment would abandon politics in favor of kinetic solutions. An armed populis is the only deterrence we have.
Not a revolution
Who said anything about a revolution?
Your point is indeed unchanged, whether it was standing in the first place is a different question.
Did a gun company write this? 🤣
checks user name
Ummmm, maybe?
As a leftist who grew up with guns, I’m neutral on guns. individual gun ownership is historically meaningless. Only organized defense and resistance stands a chance against state violence. Our hobbies and consumer identities aren’t radical, and political struggle, which will need to be defended by organized armed resistance, is the only way to get to socialism, unless you’re a fan of that lib Stalin.
Well… recently some guy (definetly Hunter Biden and no-one else) hurt someone else real bad. now a lot of 'murricans are suddenly able to get treatment for things, where they previously couldn’t. So there is a possibility for limited change through single people with single weapons.
Though on the other hand, there previously was a daily quota of two americans being able to be shot, whithout anyone being interested even a slight bit.
There is a reason why 90% of politically active socialists are against adventurism. Maybe this one flies under the radar, it wouldn’t surprise me if the ruling class was as desensitized toward gun violence as the rest of us. It would also give us excellent ammunition if, over the killing of one CEO, there was suddenly all this social change called for by the capitalist class and outcry from the media, especially as our children practice active shooter drills at school. This guy was like the head of a company that is part of a much larger company that owns a bunch of insurance companies, and that CEO is still doing just fine. The insurance company is anecdotally approving more claims, but the system remains. We can’t say what changes will be, but they won’t be meaningful but in the short term, and they won’t last.
“All these revolutions only served to make the state stronger,” is arguably the most important quote of Marx because it addressed how class concessions are just subsumed by the body politic and become part of the apparatus of oppression itself. Don’t be a sucker, get organized if you want to create lasting change
organization may however also lead to infighting, disorganization, insubordination and treason, look no further than the reform! party in the usa at the end of the last century. when one knows what one has to do, one has the means to do it, then doing it and only telling a minimal amount of people (at best 0) will always be a preferable outcome for achieving a small, personal victory.
If one has a plan they should DO IT! JUST… DO IT!talking to others will a) improve the plan against certain unthought factors b) expose the plan to scrutiny, leading to longer planning thymes, leading to less action, c) expose the plan to exposure, resulting in arrests, resulting in failure
Somethymes a movement needs some early victories to get going. Afterwards however it will need to cut itself loose from its beginnings and change tactics, yes. Partly, because, as you’ve said, the system adapts to the earlier strategies.
but in my mind making the big evil afraid and making it flail around untill it fails is a preferable alternative to having it be able to play one as a chess piece in the big game of strife.
Make it be afraid. Make it suffer under its own delusions. While it suffers from itself and focusses down the ghouls of its past, organize, enforce the ghouls, remember who the ghouls are. gain power. destroy power.
Once humans are in power they corrupt. Not everyone to the same extent, but the longer the more is at least a strongly indicated tendency. Soo…
That’s just it, they aren’t afraid. Also encouraging other people to do adventurism and potentially throw their life away is a disgusting, shameful thing to try and do. “Organizing can be inconvenient” so can prison and execution, not to mention the cascade of negative repercussions for the left, in addition to many others, that always come from widespread adventurism. I’m afraid you don’t know enough about the history of class resistance to see why you’re just pinning some hopes on a dream.
Hoping someone else will solve your problem, someone else will pull the trigger, is wrong headed. Don’t pull the trigger yourself, create the conditions for a new way of living. There is no one who could be executed whose death will result in everyone getting free, high quality, gender affirming healthcare. Your first step isnt a step forward its a step back. But in the end we won’t know for sure until the history is decided stay tuned, and in the mean time educate yourself!
Once humans are in power they corrupt.
Corrupt what? Are you religious, because this is some christian mythology. This is why our movements must be democratic. Get a grip
If you don’t then you’re a class traitor and I hate you furiously and I’m now going to split off and start my own party for us true lefties!
/s
Depends on the circumstance…
One of the most settled questions on the Left that applies to both Marxists and Anarchists is the belief that Revolution is necessary and Reform does not work.
guns are a beautiful opinion enhancer.
I like any political map that triangulates liberals from the left and right.
And I love any one that properly omits libertarians.
I am getting more and more confused.
Liberty ≈ Freedom.
Liberal is someone beliveing in something adjacent to freedom. Libertarian is someone believing in something adjecent to freedom.
But I only hear bad things about liberals, alright I already knew 'Merricans are stupid, they get angry about a word while not even being autistic. But I also somethymes hear about libertarians. what the fuck is that supposed to be, especially compared to its namely cousin?
Well I know I’m not being entirely fair to the poor, old 'Murricans, there surely is something they all know about their system, that has not yet reached me. Still calling someone by one of your core tenets ('Murrica, land of the free, home to lady liberty…) and believing that to be an unterstandible slur sure is weird.
Libertarian has two different meanings, depending on who you talk two.
In the modern day, and unless they qualify it, “libertarianism = anarcho-capitalism”.
Classical libertarianism (sometimes left libertarianism, or libertarian socialism) is more akin to anarcho-syndicalism. Advocacy for ownership of the means of production via trade unions and the like, with the goal of obsoleting the state and capitalism, that kinda thing.
EDIT: Also, capital-L “Liberalism” in the US is more than a little bit of a departure from liberalism. It’s mostly evolved into a meaningless pejorative the far right uses against the center-left (and when I say that, I’m talking about center-left from an American perspective, so really more center-right)
not to mention “liberal” in the us usually refers to “neoliberal” as in neoliberal capitalism, which is wack.
Sorry, Bud. The names are mostly just advertisements and not necessarily useful for understanding the underlying philosophy.
American Liberalism (capital ‘L’) is fluid over time at best in its philosophy, and is actively shifting to further elitist interests from a less charitable perspective. It often prioritises corporations over people and cherry picks which cases of violence are or aren’t acceptable by the state.
American Libertarianism (again, capital ‘L’) is Anarcho-capitalism, which believes the world would be a better place if the state was bordering on non-existent, and companies were allowed to operate completely unregulated.
Jesse…
what the fuck am I talking about?
well im confused. so what do you wanna do about it?
Idk you calling people stupid while also coming off as extremely ignorant on the topic just makes you seem like both an asshole and an idiot.
You can either be an asshole or ignorant but if you’re both then all I can ask is Jesse what the fuck are you talking about.
Well people are stupid. I am a hypocrite, I am somethymes an asshole. And I’ll call americans stupid for however long I wish to.
As for me being ignorant… The search-engines are never useful. I asked for information and gave some sort of premediated Information about my previous understanding. Now I know more than beforehand. Because some people were helpful.
You catch more flies with honey
One catches more idiots with platitudes /s
I would heap written abuse upon you, but it’s true
Wait, why do leftists hate leftists?
It’s a joke, but “leftist” is such a wide term that it encompasses groups which don’t really want to do much with each other, such as anarchists, bernie-bros, and ~red fash~ tankies marxist-leninists. Anarchists tend to not hate anarchists for example.
No I don’t disagree with you! But you are still somewhat wrong! Hey social traitor, I’m splitting and creating my own leftist memes! These will be actual trotskyist memes, unlike your bourgeoisie-tainted memes!
rinse and repeat
Here we go again, an anarchist calling Marxists leninists “red fash”. What country destroyed Nazism, please remind us.
u mad?
Please remind us!
Aliens!
Seriously though, I don’t know how anarchists can look at the consequences of the Perestroika, Glasnost and eventual dissolution of the Eastern Block, the millions of lives lost to unemployment, alcoholism, drugs and suicide, and still use the word “tankie” (coined to degrade the communists in support of the intervention of the USSR in Hungary when it went down that very path).
It’s precisely because we saw the path of the USSR. Because we can see that ML regimes always leads to oppression and capitalism. They’re just another way to convert poor agrarian/feudalist societies to capitalism and have no socialist potential. Terrible system.
It’s almost as if ideology is just some made up bullshit.
SPLITTERS
Most conservatives are able to band together regardless of whether another of them is too racist, or too capitalist. They’re able to look past flaws in that regard.
Meanwhile, we lefties fight among ourselves for not being left enough, or for being too left. It’s why there are very few leftist governments.
Nonsense. conservatives inflight and even kill each other all the fucking time. This is a myth promoted by “left unity” leftists, and “big tent” libs to force everyone to follow them.
Aye, they do, but when it comes to voting they unify.
Take the UK for example. Of our three main parties the Conservatives are, well, conservative, Labour are (ostensibly) leftwing, and Liberal Democrats are centre-left.
In the end, most of my 44 years have been spent under a series of Tory governments because leftists who don’t see Labour as left enough don’t vote out of protest, and leftists who see Labour as too left will vote Lib Dem. Meanwhile, those in the centre or on the right will vote Tory. Sure, there are far right parties here, but they’re mostly cranks and outright racists.
We only have a Labour government right now because the Tories went too lunatic and Starmer’s lot shifted enough to the centre to attract those who would vote LibDem.
Prior to our last election, I saw a whole bunch of fellow lefties going apeshite because Starmer isn’t leftwing enough, and still crying that Corbyn was fucked over (which, to be fair, he was), so much so that I genuinely feared for five more years of Tories reaming us. There was very little room for pragmatism.
As somebody who was an EU immigrant in the UK for over a decade and also lived in other countries of Europe, lets just say that New Labour are plain Rightwing (so, not even Center-Left, although the original Labour definitelly were Leftwing) and the Liberal Democrats are pure rightwing (whislt the Tories have been Far Right since at least the Leave Referendum).
The ideology of “Thatcher’s Greatest Achievement” - a “relaxed about wealth” ideology which loves privatisation and derregulation - which took over Labour is not Left of center and the LibDems have always been even more Neolibs than that.
The Overtoon Window in England (not as much the other UK nations) is way to the Right of the rest of Europe, so its understandable that many there think that when they neither grew up back in the days when Labour was actually a party of the Working Class and never saw politics elsewhere in Europe.
It’s because voting is useless. Many leftists don’t bother with voting and focus on things that actually work.
It might be useless, but ultimately it’s the only tool that the majority have at their disposal.
Not at all. Direct action is always an option.
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Leftists have never been the majority though so we can’t rely on voting to adress our issues and interests. Last time I saw numbers more Ameicans wanted a party to the right of the Republicans than Americans who wanted a party to the left of Democrats. We’re the absolute political minority yet many of our policies poll higjer than candidates from either party.
Voting typically has a lower risk than trying to overthrow the government. (assuming elections are still somewhat legitimate, that is)
Direct action isn’t directly “trying to overthrow the government” It’s trying to improve one’s own life directly, instead of begging the elites to do so for you.
Oh I read that comment as you saying “don’t bother voting”, which I hope that isn’t what you meant.
The Republicans have bred a cult that makes up the core of their voting block, though. This is how Trump originally got into the primaries and then elected. He pulled the cultists away from their masters and they couldn’t control the new MAGA cult.
Both my grandfather before he died and my first boss had the same exact reaction if you asked who they were voting for. They’d look at you like you’d grown an extra head and reply, “I’m a Republican. I vote for the nominee.”
Have you never met leftists?
dern leftists… ruinin’ the left
Leftists. What a bunch of bastards.
It is very easy for people without a credible shred of leftist thought to claim to be a leftist.
Challenging those people winds up being an example of ‘leftist infighting’.
So… a leftist and a tankie pretending to be a leftist, in a argument, basically…
Most common pairing for that is moderate centrist and a radical liberal, I find.
What do liberals like?
I’m only told what they dislike. I even know what conservatives like, that’s an easy answer. Liberals, I haven’t a clue.
Given their recent electoral strategies, they mostly expect to be elected for not being Trump/conservative.
It’s an effective strategy, up to a point. “Vote for me because I’m not the guy you hate” is one of the oldest political strategies around. And Democrats have even openly said that they’ve been funding the most extremist right-wing candidates on the ballot for years to set up easy wins when people think their opponent is a nutjob. There was a lady who even wrote a book about how she won an election doing this. And then she lost to that same extremist in the very next election. Because what they’ve actually done is push the Overton Window further and further into extremism.
Ah, the leftist strategy, very bold.
They like progress that happened in the past, and they like stories about that progress where an individual, not a movement, fought for what was right and the individuals in charge of the system, now aware that it was hurting people, changed voluntarily without political struggle or mass organizing.
They like voting in parliamentary representative elections, even if every step of that election is rigged to benefit the rich capitalist class, in fact this is the only kind of democracy they like.
They like the feeling that words like freedom, justice, liberty bring. They like ideals, in fact they are total idealists who dont understand that progress should be based on more than ideas. Change does begin with an idea, but so does reaction.
They like to believe that there is no such thing as class.
They like experts and repeating the opinions of experts, and they like to not think about from what institutions and incentives exist to bestow expertise.
Liberals like good government.
Both conservatives and leftists believe the government is fundamentally flawed. People keep electing conservatives who sabotage the government to prove it’s flawed (but not in a way that would negatively effect them and their friends). Young people support leftism at protests (which are really just social get togethers) until they grow out of it and vote for conservatives because they continue to believe the government is flawed. Or maybe refuse to participate in a system because it’s not perfect.
If a liberal admits there’s flaws to the system which they want to fix, they are blamed for it because they failed to provide good government. The fact that liberals aren’t in power long enough to make the government better doesn’t matter. They’re considered failures if conservatives prevent them from providing good government.
So people vote for the conservatives to run the government because they succeed in preventing liberals from making the government good.
You know the craziest part about all this is that I’ve been given about three contradictory definitions on what a liberal is, and not one person has claimed to be one.
I’d consider that “Lemmy 101” if the subject was conservatives. They’d never know to come here to begin with, but liberals?
Shouldn’t this thread be full of infighting and opinions?
…where are they? Is this something no one wants to be?
I mean this is a leftist meme community, so I’d expect mostly leftists to be the ones responding. Just like if on a conservative meme platform you asked what leftists are, you’d mostly get conservatives answering.
But I feel like the replies to your question don’t really contradict each other. One was describing them as the Democrats in the US, which is basically accurate. It’s gotten turned into a word meaning leftist by the Republicans, but it’s basically just people who think the current system is pretty much good, and only needs small tweaks.
This amounts to effectively a support of capitalism and the free market, with some regulations being added on top of what we have now. Communism is bad though, and at most we should have some more safety nets. The civil rights movement is good now, but go back to then and liberals were the “white moderates” MLK talked about. Stuff like that disrupts the status quo too much. Since what constitutes the current system changes over time, what liberals support also will, just like any ideology evolves.
Obviously everyone here (me included) will probably be a bit biased against liberals, but also a lot of anarchists or communists or other left wing folk will have probably identified as a liberal at some point in time, and statistically still know and/or be family with a lot of them.
At a Systemic level hey’re big fans of the only true Power being Money whilst the Vote is nothing more than a bit of loud Theatre & Clown Show that doesn’t actually control the managing of a country - or in other words, of Oligarchy rather than Democracy.
At a personal level they’re big fans of personal upside maximization with no legal, ethical or moral limits, aka Greed Is Good, or in other words, for sociopathy to be totally legal, socially aceptable and even celebrated.
What do liberals like?
Performative actions that give them the illusion of being enlightened.
As a leftist… I can’t say I see a flaw here.
As a leftist, I resent that
Hey, fuck you, buddy!
See you at the next meeting.
Leftists hate themselves?
Leftists ruined leftism
Search your feelings you know it to be true
No just each other
I like guns and some parts of capitalism, I like some ideas from the ML people and anarchists. The complete evolution of human thought and philosophy is worthy of consideration without bias or prejudice.
Addendum not racial supremacy, though
Leftist here: I swear to fuck if I hear one more Tankie put a “Trump winning is actually a good thing because Kamela’s literally the same person as Trump” card on the table with a “Actually North Korea is this amazing paradise and EVERYONE ON THE FUCKING PLANET is just pretending it’s awful. Source: Trust me bro!” stat booster
So help me God I will… Roll my eyes and drown my sorrows in another round of Dead By Daylight where I hope to find a Joshua in the lobby because I’m a Killer Main…
Seriously, why can’t we have unity like the Rightists do? I mean they just point and say “Look! It’s a gay!”, they all form in a line.
If I point and say “Look! It’s a fascist!”, the whole squad starts pointing at each other and somehow I’m “cancelled for being a rape apologist” because the way I pointed was actually a dog whistle because it vaguely resembled the ancient Anti-Black symbol called “Ligma” popularized in the year 19Dickety2 in response to white men being annoyed that black people could afford chewing gum or something… Which obviously everyone totally knows is a real thing!
I just want us to ya know, save the fucking world from Neolibs and Literal Nazis before we start doing purity tastes on each other. Like, can we wait to do the “Everyone in the group gets chronic backstab syndrome.” shit AFTER we win?
I mean fuck the Deadly Alliance had the fucking patience to wait till they killed the main cast, Raiden included, before that shit… and they’re literally Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, the exact two people I expect to constantly lose Among Us by reporting each other when they’re both the Imposter! In a SELF-REPORT! Because I’m reliving all of my negative experiences with other socialists, and when I’m angry I try to make the nerdiest references I can make while still ensuring there’s a chance for others to get them.
starts frothing, dies of self-inflicted rabies
Seriously, why can’t we have unity like the Rightists do?
You’re american and you spent months telling everybody that genocide wasn’t a deal-breaker. My wife and I had friends in lebannon.
I haven’t seen anyone say Trump winning is a good thing, nor have I seen anyone say the DPRK is a paradise (closest to that is people saying the DPRK has living standards around the level of Cuba these days). Where are you finding these people at significant enough numbers to cause you anguish? Legitimate question here, you’re calling for Left Unity but it seems like you’re misframing others at best, which goes against that ideal.
I hate all you dick licks.
Aw. I hate you too. ♥️
Hate u more, babe 😘
Both liberals and conservatives are right wing (capitalists).
Leftists are capitalists too, they just know that strong social safety nets are required to keep the ball in play instead of letting the billionaires take it home with them.
No, you are clearly not a leftist. Everyone should get a ball, or at least be communally shared. If we seize the means of ball production we can **** CEOs without worrying about going ball-less.
Leftists exist between liberal and communist.
And since communism can’t work with our current understanding of humanity leftist is about as left as you can get
In my analogy everybody does get a ball because that’s the social safety net necessary for gameplay. Not everybody gets a fancy hat with a neat feather though
And here you see a microcosm of the problem. “Leftists” range from “we have to destroy the system and everyone in it damn the consequences” to “I just want the government to provide reasonable services”. (but no, only I am the true left)
Those are Social Democrats, a subcategory of liberal.
Gross, wrong
Truth
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whats a leftist who doesn’t want guns to be legal for citizens and only for military and police? I don’t like capitalism.
How do you plan on ending Capitalism without revolution?
no clue, but i am a pacifist. I’d only go to war if my country was being invaded.
In that manner, are you actually a Leftist? Morally you support the ideas of Leftism, but oppose the only actual methods of bringing them about. It’s similar to supporting the idea of everyone becoming a millionaire overnight, if such a solution does not exist it ceases to be something to support and becomes a nice dream.
i guess so. i don’t really have a political affiliation anyways
A “pacifist” who goes to war for their country is affiliated with a political ideology called nationalism
would you not defend your country if you were invaded? i’d assume most normal people would
Does the invading country have universal health care?
Trump is not a conservative. Fascists and reactionaries are not conservatives. Far right is not the right, eventhough the right did sliped into far right because of the liberals.
The right slipped into the far right because of the far right. Don’t blame anyone but them for their actions
The Democrats did spend years funding the most extremist opponents in their elections to set up easy wins for themselves. A lady even wrote a book about how she won her election this way.
And then she lost to that extremist the very next election.
Maybe, but the far right are responsible for the actions of the far right. Stop deflecting
Don’t misunderstand me, I agree the extremists are responsible for their actions and the extremism. But there are other factors that led to those views being pushed into mainstream politics. The Democrats didn’t help things by funding extremist candidates for the easy win in the same way that the Republicans breeding their core voting block of “I’m a Republican, I vote for the nominee” cultists didn’t help when Trump stole them from less extremist candidates in the primary. Like how TV channels choosing to air 30 minutes of Trump’s empty podium instead of Bernie’s speech during the Democratic primaries didn’t help run a fair primary that year.
Extremists are responsible for their actions, but those who help to push their views aren’t spotless.
Stop
Deflecting
Every accusation is an admission.
Stop deflecting by pretending that there’s no greater issue than just the extremists. The rot’s just gonna come back if we don’t stop it at the source after we deal with the cancer in front of us.
Or are you incapable of thinking about what happens after the extremists are dealt with.
AFTER is the key word here. Stop trying to find someone else to blame and look directly at the people who are to blame
I blame the liberals because they had the power for decades and they are actively supporting the fascists in order to fight the left. They are responsible.
But as always liberals will always, always pretend nothing is their fault. They took all the decisions for a century, but somehow they shouldn’t be accountable for the problems they brought on the world. They’re spoiled children if you ask me.
Fascists are responsible for fascism. Could others have stood up top them? Yeah that would be nice. Did they cause it? No of course not!
Liberals are causing fascism. They are directly responsible.
That is the most stupid thing I’ve read today. Granted it’t not even half one in the morning but it’s gonna be a high bar to bear
Trump campaigning on conservative values is like Harris campaigning on wealth inequality.
Instead we got “fuck immigrants” and “gay rights”.
Don’t you mean “fuck immigrants and gay rights” from both candidates?
