That’s why I’d rather call myself center left. By US standards I’m still probably “far left”, because I’m for public healthcare, strong regulations and very robust social safety net. But unlike probably most people here on lemmy, if someone runs a business that’s not completely out of control and has unionized employees, I don’t think there’s a problem with that.
I can see why we lost the election considering people like OP.
If someone said they were leftist then I would very much hope they were pro EU and pro Ukraine
It’s the far right that is against those
Oh yeah that Ukraine is definitely the last bastion of communism
It’s about a super power trying to exploit a small country
Palestine isn’t leftist either but you will find people campaigning for the protection of their people
Nah dude. A good portion of leftists want Ukraine genocided.
The stated goal of the US State Department is to drag out the conflict for as long as possible. Years ago, Boris Johnson threatened to cut Ukraine out of financial markets if Zelenskyy held peace talks with Russia.
There’s a group that wants as much suffering as possible out of this war. But it’s not the people who recognize that being the proxy in a struggle between the US and Russia is only going to hurt the people of Ukraine.
There’s definitely some BS the west is imposing on Ukraine to drag this conflict out. It feels like it’s to financially ruin Russia. I just don’t understand why Russia doesn’t cut it’s losses and just take what they already have. Ukraine is never going to be a part of NATO so I don’t understand the NATO expansion argument either.
Russia could foil all those plans by simply ceasing the invasion and going home.
Why would they? That’s like saying the Capitalists in the US could willingly implement Socialism. This isn’t an actual solution, as long as it is in Russia’s interests to continue, they will. Russia gains nothing by packing up and going home, and they have the means and will to continue.
Right, because being willing to accept an end to the war in any other way than Zelensky’s impossibly maximalist goals means wanting Ukrainians to be genocided. Also history began on Feb. 24, 2022.
Hey, I’m actually interested in your personal opinion. Are you pro Russian and if so why? Is there a long game being played out that fits your views with Russian expansion? Or rather the west’s decline.
I don’t think Russia currently has an interest in expansion. I already linked above to the reasons for Russia’s invasion, and they weren’t revanchism or Lebensraum, as Western governments & media claim.
It’s also often said that Russia is imperialist. I think that if Russia could be imperialist it would be, but since it presently can’t, it presently isn’t. Putin tried to join NATO once, to join the imperialism club, but the US rejected Russia, because the US wanted (and still wants) Russia Balkanized and re-plundered instead. Russia has figured out that it’s better off allying with Global South countries than attempting imperialist adventures upon them. And this war has accelerated that allyship.
Are you pro Russian and if so why?
I’ve answered this before: https://lemmy.ml/comment/9498456
Thanks. The nuance is appreciated. If Russia “reclaims” Ukraine through total victory do you think they would allow the Ukraine identity to subsist? Are there more countries Russia would like to revanche? I think Moldova would be an easy grab.
I think Russia knows full well that it can’t “reclaim” western Ukraine: few people there want to be part of Russia, and the Banderite fascists especially don’t. It would be a absolute nightmare to hold. There would be endless insurgencies and bloodshed, and it would be a huge drain on state resources. Russia wants what is says it has wanted since the 1990s: a neutral buffer state.
Keep in mind that when the invasion started, Eastern Ukraine had been in a civil war with Western Ukraine for almost a decade, and some in Eastern Ukraine had for years pleaded Russia to intervene. Eastern Ukraine is a very different situation from Western Ukraine. Russia had almost no issues when it “invaded” Crimea in 2014, because most of the people were glad to no longer be ruled by the Banderite coup government. They were right, too, because they didn’t suffer nine years of fascist paramilitary terrorism like their northern neighbors in Eastern Ukraine did.
Are there more countries Russia would like to revanche? I think Moldova would be an easy grab.
As I said, revanchism isn’t what this was ever about, despite what Western states publicly claim and Western media repeat. Russia would piss off its allies and its enemies if it invaded another country, and its enemies would probably ramp up their war machines against it significantly.
If Ukraine wants to breakup with Russia. The correct response is to not rape and murder them.
Citation needed
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Probably not left then
Just want to pretend they are because they aren’t as far right as someone they can point to
I’m trying to avoid certain words on .ml. there are different kinds of “leftists”
But in doing so you’re making your message less clear, because it’s saying that tankies are leftists. (Uh oh you made me say it!)
“You can’t trust those leftists because they’re just tankies”
The Tankie they’re referring to:
What if I’m neither?
175·21 hours agoIf you aren’t one of these, then what are you? I guess there still is reactionary, off to the right of the image.
This makes me sad, I thought we mostly agreed that what FDR did is a good way forward.
All he did was save capitalism which inevitably led to what the US has today. There is no future for humanity with oligarchs like him and his family despite their supposed good intentions
He did a lot more than “save capitalism”. Social Security, the Citizens Conservation Corpse, and the full blown WW2-era command economy (complete with ration cards and production quotas and public housing for all the rapidly mobilized industrial workers) had far more in common with Stalinism than Coolidge’s laisse-faire market economy. Hell, FDR even had his share of gulags, when you consider how Japanese Internment Camps were created and administered.
There is no future for humanity with oligarchs like him and his family
There’s a sharp line between an oversized land baron clutching a fist full of stock certificates and a popular elected bureaucrat charged with administering the public labor force.
Oligarchy can’t just be “guy with rich parents” or it quickly descends into austerity fetishism. Oligarchy is fundamentally anti-populist. It requires a strong centralized police force to compel a broad, disorganized public into acting against their own material interests. FDR’s New Deal was a meaningful shift away from oligarchy precisely because he adopted policies from his left-leaning proletarian base in defiance of the Depression-Era economic elites. And he implemented them with the enthusiastic support of the body public. Nobody was getting held up at gunpoint to take a salary from the Parks’ Department or to pile into Keynesian school house construction programs or to patch up wounded soldiers at the VA.
FDR’s personal wealth gave him a platform upon which to propagandize left-liberal policies on a national stage. But his messages resonated because they had a popular basis not because he simply hammered people with Madison Avenue propaganda.
You seem to be arguing that FDR was a leftist because of the policies he implemented. But I think what you are missing is why he implemented those policies. I think the truth is he didn’t really have the public interest at heart. His agenda was to contain a growing threat to capitalism in the form of the Communist Party of the 1930s. His strategy to contain the CP was to neuter the party by bringing it into the Democratic party fold, alienating their most militant members, and slowly squashing their agenda. Of course he had to appeal to their interests to do so. But it was a temporary strategy, not a real shift in US policy. There are a few articles on the topic if you are genuinely interested. Here’s one. And here’s a quote from another.
The New Deal reforms Sanders evokes were not the product of a farsighted, enlightened reformer, but responses to tumultuous class struggles in the early and mid-1930s. These reforms sought to contain explosive social struggles and were never truly universal, excluding women and African-Americans, for example. After mass struggle ebbed, Roosevelt shifted back to his original goal of stabilizing US capitalism while moving toward establishing US global domination during World War II. Progressive reforms came to an abrupt halt in the late 1930s, allowing the rollback of many popular gains during the 1940s.
FDR was a leftist because of the policies he implemented.
Its hard to argue a politician is something other than his policies.
you are missing is why he implemented those policies
The why hardly matters. Only the consequences. You can definitely argue that FDR failed to cement the more progressive programs (fully employment through public agencies, public control of finance and agriculture, a long term peaceful coexistence with the Soviet states). And for that reason, he was a kind-of failure. But I would argue putting the weight of the world on one man’s shoulders is deeply unfair. FDR took US policy as far as he could. Then it was Truman and Eisenhower and their lackeys who fumbled the bag (or capitulated to corporate interests deliberately).
His strategy to contain the CP was to neuter the party by bringing it into the Democratic party fold, alienating their most militant members, and slowly squashing their agenda.
The Democratic Party, as a whole, has a vested interest in neutralizing rival movements and harvesting their members. That’s not a strategy FDR invented or pioneered. Neither was the DemSoc liberalism of FDR incompatible with a more Reform Oriented American Communist Movement. The strategy worked in large part because American Communists saw FDR’s outreach to Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China as a positive turn foreshadowing a real global movement.
I might argue that Stalin’s “Communism in One Country” and Mao’s failure to open China up until Nixon, thirty years later, that did more damage than FDR’s liberal-washing of Communist organizing efforts. I could easily argue that the Truman/Eisenhower Cold War was what ultimately did in the American Communists. Socialists couldn’t uproot Hoover from the FBI or unseat McCarthy from a strong union state like Wisconsin or keep guys like Nixon or Kennedy from worming their way into the upper echelons of the US government on a wave of mafia money.
At some point, you have to acknowledge the failures within the leftist organizing movements that happened in the US. Deng and Khrushchev and Ho Chi Mein and Kim Il Sung didn’t collapse in the face of these problems in their home states and they all had it much worse.
There two sides.
1% and their zombies
The rest of us.
Let’s not split up and weaken. 💪
That is indeed the two sides depicted in the meme
leftist : anti-capitalism :: liberal : pro-capitalism
Why is this so hard for some radlibs to understand? I think it is all the propaganda they passively consume.
I’ll say it again, in the United States the term “liberal” is used to refer to liberal social ideas NOT liberal economic ideas. To the average US citizen left and liberal are synonyms. This doesn’t mean your definition isn’t correct for academics and the entire rest of the world. But this meme, and this left vs liberal argument for this post, are US based.
This is also wrong. US liberals are just as anticommunist as their further right counterparts, and their “social liberalism” goes only so far as not to infringe on capitalist “freedom” to do whatever they can get away with. Hence their hatred of homeless / the poor, communists, and colonized peoples.
As the saying goes, US liberals are against every genocide except the current one. Hence their staunch support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
We know that, which is why we’re trying to deprogram Americans from the Orwellian newspeak they’ve been mistaught so they can develop class consciousness.
I’m not sure how colloquial vocabulary usage prevents developing class consciousness. I’d potentially argue refusing to accept the evolution of language and refusing to communicate to people in the terms they use and understand inhibits said deprogramming.
Again very US centric in this definition but it’s who needs deprogramming.You don’t think words can mean things?
You just live in some kind of word salad blob?
What? That’s literally the opposite of what I’m saying… I’m saying words can have multiple meanings depending on context.
But the point of this was how does “liberal” having a different colloquial definition from how op was using it have anything do with “developing class consciousness” which can be done regardless of this single word?Yes
Sometimes the evolution of language isn’t so much organic as it is a political project, such as a century of red scares and socialist purges.
Americans believe Sanders when he calls himself a socialist because they’ve lost a vocabulary for socialism itself. And they think Sanders’ centrism is “the left,” because the Overton window has shifted so far right that there is no left left.
We can’t simply use their terms, because their terminology is both muddled and lacking.
Sometimes the evolution of language isn’t so much organic as it is a political project, such as a century of red scares and socialist purges.
Ok. But regardless of the cause, organic or political project, it doesn’t change the fact that the language has moved on correct?
We can’t simply use their terms, because their terminology is both muddled and lacking.
But there’s the rub. You/we ARE using their terms and the message is muddled and lacking BECAUSE OF the difference in perceived definitions. And as the past couple decades have shown there is zero chance of getting the American people to learn things, or unlearn as the case may be.
I assume very few people this far down a thread into a political discussion, on Lemmy, don’t know what the Overton windowS are and how fucked the US is because of the current far right position on the left/right scales. I find it lacking and dislike it’s libertarian origins. We are even now discussing the difference of a word being used for social vs economic ideas and these two scales do not necessarily overlap.
Yes, it’s hard for them to understand because of a lifetime of anti-socialist & pro-capitalist propaganda, propaganda which most of them aren’t even aware of, because for them it’s just common sense.
Liberal means PRO LIBERTY. Its right there in the fucking name leftoids
Of course. Its the “liberty” of capitalists do to whatever they can get away with. Unlimited power for the capitalist class.
The freedom to buy an old growth forest and bulldoze it
Liberalism means PRO CAPITALISM.
The first sentence from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism:
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property and equality before the law.
From the first paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_property†:
Private property is foundational to capitalism, an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.
Liberalism: A Counter-History (online copy)
†Not to be confused with personal property.
That line says nothing about capitalism. Pro ownership? That is a tenet of some branches of leftism. I dont agree with corporations or the state having a monopoly on land ownership. Though the government cant come and take an individuals shit for no reason. Being an abusive billionaire though has an asterisk in the foot notes.
Though I’d argue that anyone owning shit comes a large and wide second or 3rd to human rights.
philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed
It says it right there.
Sound like you got some reading to do
Liberal means pro capitalist liberty. Nothing about personal freedom, equity and social safety nets in that.
based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed
Okay buddy. You guys just want to twist a good ideology into a wedge issue. The only thing vaguely “capitalist” about a liberal is the belief that the government isnt allowed to seize your shit unlawfully. The right to own property comes way after personal liberty in my book. That means billionaires dont get a pass for abusing the populace.
Leftist ≠ Liberalism
Liberalism is Leftwing leaning but isn’t leftist
Liberalism ≠ Leftwing
FTFY
🧠🪱
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Alright no hate on Bernie tho, that dude is a role model through and through.
Bernie has been pretty shitty on foreign policy. He supported the NATO bombing of Belgrade for 78 straight days, which is why he fell out of favor with his socialist friend, Michael Parenti. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLNQEHbusSA&t=39s
Before 2017 sure.
What did he do in 2017?
Continued to support Democrats after they fucked him in the 2016 primary, I’m guessing?
I don’t know, I still like him
Same. He saw *gestures broadly* coming and tried to prevent it as best as he could. What’s that Greek legend about an oracle whose catastrophic prophecies always come true, but they’re never believed and always blamed for them?
Cassandra, cursed by Apollo to have the gift of prophecy but to never be believed.
Absol? (j)
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What the hell you talking about? These are all revolutionary heroes acting in self defense and promoting solidarity.
Calling Fanon a tankie is the most ridiculous thing I’ve read today. Try reading a book for once in your life. He talks about how violence psychologically harms the revolutionary more than it does the people they attack.
Malcolm X was protecting himself after being firebombed here.
Fred Hampton was a socialist and preached cross racial solidarity and black power as a way of elevating black people into solidarity.
The Zapatistas are indigenous heroes who are resisting oppression of the state, who prefer civil disobedience but will act to protect themselves.
Sacco and Vanzetti were organizing a general strike and were framed then murdered by the state
Leila Khalid was separated from her family at 15 during the Palestinian expulsion and resisting Israeli occupation
Where the hell are the tankies in this pic? What are you people even talking about
Drag didn’t accuse anyone in the picture of being a tankie. Drag thought the image was relevant to the discussion. As you can see in this thread, users of this community are defending the use of tanks to suppress the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Drag thought that tankies might like to comment on your meme, and called them tankies. And as everyone can see, drag was right.
drag is defending a fascist counter-revolution, and refused to read sources after asking for them. drag wasn’t right about anything. You are defending people that lynched and massacred Jewish people and Communists.
Section from the book “The Truth about Hungary” by Herbert Aptheker; a prominent figure in U.S. scholarly discourse in the 1940’s, and Marxist Historian. Written in 1957 it outlined what later would be confirmed by the bourgeois Western press:
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”
“But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”
“Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
“The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”
"A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:
During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."
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horseshoe theory with “I’m not like other girls” characteristics
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They were putting chalk marks on the doors of jews and communists. It wasn’t a worker’s revolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demands_of_Hungarian_Revolutionaries_of_1956
We demand general elections by universal, secret ballot are held throughout the country to elect a new National Assembly, with all political parties participating. We demand that the right of workers to strike be recognised.
We demand complete revision of the norms operating in industry and an immediate and radical adjustment of salaries in accordance with the just requirements of workers and intellectuals. We demand a minimum living wage for workers.
So you’re saying the revolution demanding minimum wage and the right to strike wasn’t a worker’s revolution? Are all tankies this right-wing or just you?
drag does realize that the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries were working with literal Nazis, and were marking the doors of Jews and Communists, right? They were lynching people, and even freed Nazis from jail to help with the lynching. The “political parties” they wanted to be able to participate were not worker parties, but fascist ones.
This is genuinely what liberals often accuse “tankies” of doing: uncritically supporting movements based on nominally being progressive, despite in reality being highly reactionary. Further, Hungary wanted to get out of paying reparations for World War II, that was one of the biggest cruxes of the situation. Who did Hungary fight alongside in WWII, does drag remember?
Spoiler: the Nazis.
Source?
This is a decent overview of the background that led up to the events of 1956, and this is a decent overview of the darker side, where the lynchings happened. Content Warning: lynched corpses. Here is a source on MI6 training and arming the counterrevolutionaries. Those 3 articles give only the briefest overview of the events, but don’t do the real buildup to them, their complexities, what the people actually supported, or the real character in any depth. If drag wants to actually take a deep dive, these are additional sources:
The History of the Working Class Movement in Hungary
1956 Counter-Revolution in Hungary
Others can offer more sources.
Overall, when it comes to geopolitical enemies of the United States in particular, it would not be a bad idea to treat drag’s current understanding with extreme skepticism until drag has investigated counter-sources as well. That doesn’t mean the US always lies, in fact it frequently tells mostly the truth, but will distory either the quality or quantity of an event.
What do you think “all political parties participating” means in 1956 Hungary?
One of the biggest and most dangerous mistakes made by Communists is the idea that a revolution can be made by revolutionaries alone. On the contrary, to be successful, all serious revolutionary work requires that the idea that revolutionaries are capable of playing the part only of the vanguard of the truly virile and advanced class must be understood and translated into action.
- Lenin, 1922
It probably means they read Lenin and liked his ideas a lot better than Stalin’s nonsense. Now, you were explaining how tankies oppose minimum wage and the right to strike?
To be clear, drag is calling Nazis and Nazi sympathizers “the advanced working class.” Trying to twist Lenin into supporting fascism is incorrect, to say the least.
Moreover, Stalin was dead before 1956, this was Khrushchev.
Found ⬇️ 87 Liberals who believed they were comrades. 😆
One day these liberals are going to realize the ⬇️ is more telling then a comment
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Did I hurt your feefees? 😘🩹🤕
No lol. Your spelling is wrong just like your ideals
Which ideals? It kinda sounds you just left reddit homie.
Anti liberal? I mean, you probably dont meet many like me who arent going to just take that ignorant shit.
Oh you mean pro-Incarceration, pro-imperialism, pro-colonialism pro-genocide? Honestly I think you need to pick up a book if you think supporting any of that isn’t ignorant shit. Shit, there’s whole songs about how you’re wrong.
I hate liberals because they think they can stay in their heated box and ignore their community while people freeze and starve to death because they can’t contribute to some oligarch’s capital and only leave to work for said oligarch so they can afford their funco pops and magic cards.
I hate liberals because they don’t intersectionalize and they’re quicker to bend a knee to their boss then to join in a strike.
But you do you, spineless lib.
Always relative to the point of view, for an far right wing everybody else is an leftist/communist.
Who are those ninjas?
Zapatistas
Who mean those on the right? They don’t even self identify as leftists, why should some of their followers say that?
Yeah a better title would have been “I’m left wing” or something but I hate the English language and refuse to respect it.
We should make a special political spectrum just for these people. Let’s call it the imperial political spectrum.
