@voldage - eviltoast
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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: May 4th, 2024

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  • Yeah but those people helping Trump get elected are the Dems pretending genocide is fine. Say what you want about lesser evil but it really isn’t the smartest political move to alienate voters who think genocide is bad. The messaging of “if you draw the line at genocide then you’re the problem” and blaming voters for not vibing with that instead of, for example, dropping support for Israel and stopping the genocide is just straight up terrible politics. You should be mad at Dems for royally fucking the campaign up instead at people for not buying into this bullshit. Did you also support Biden remaining as candidate after the debate, despite atrocious polling data?

    I do get that there is foreign interference going on, but seriously if you were attempting to sway anyone towards the Dems by shaming people for being against genocide - the obviously weakest point of Dems campaign - then in my eyes you’re most likely the Russian bot trying to remind people that Dems are terrible. And if you aren’t and you actually tried to convice anyone with this argument, then shut the fuck up until the elections are over, if anything you’re costing Kamala votes.


  • I’m Polish and believe me when I say that I would also prefer Germany to learn different lessons from those your government claims to follow. The very idea that what nazis did wrong was targeting Jews instead of creating authoritarian stratified far right society that eventualy decided to displace and genocide people based on somewhat loosely described traits is not only a gross and dumb oversimplification, it’s gross and end evil to even propose. Fascism fits the class interests of the rich and powerfull of today just as much, if not more, as it did a century ago. Germany government siding with Israel in favour of the genocide they’re commiting is not just for show, they’re very happy that defending genocide became a position close to political center. In my opinion, that is.


  • Yeah well Germany does seem a bit anxious for some reason when someone mentions Israel and genocide in one sentence, but if anyone in the world should have any reasons to be unreasonably pro-Israel, that would be them. And even then, their performative support pales in comparison to USA. IDF literally murdered USA citizens and USA congratulated them for that. That takes real dedication to the cause!


  • I don’t think that’s really the case though? I’m pretty sure most nations condemned Israel except for USA, but USA blocked all attempts from anyone to do anything. And when USA says that commiting genocide with their weapons is on the table, I doubt any country wishes to find out what would happen should any concrete action against Israel be taken. It’s a big part of the reason why everyone calls USA complicit in genocide of Palestinians.




  • I literally said that the rethoric was fascist, not person. Fascism is an ideology as well as movement, and people regardless of political power they hold can follow a ideology, so even if I wasn’t referring to rethoric it would still be viable to call someone a fascist - not that it should be done on the basis of single shitty meme. If you believe that communism is the best political system there is, then you are a communist. If you give examples and advocate for this system, then you’re most likely using rethoric that is recognizeably communist, as in, it conveys the message favourable for communism. I’ve already outlined why the message coming from the post is fascist in my oryginal comment. Your claim that one requires a degree of political power in order to be identified by the ideology they believe in would be invalid in terms of USA politics even if it was true - since USA citizens have the right to vote for whomever they want (which the OP tried to restrain with the use of threats) they do hold actual political power and influence, regardless how small it is. I’ve already explained in more details how the rethoric itself was fascist in another comment, referring to the definition and all that. Also, dancing around the definition to whitewash the condemned action is really pointless unless you’re trying to intentionally muddy the water. Convincing people to vote for specific candidate with threats of them being ousted for not doing that is directly what both Mussolini and Hitler did. Mussolini used that tactic in parliamentary elections in 1924, and Sturmabteilung did that in 1932, keeping watch by the pooling stations and threatening voters. Those people absolutely were fascists by any modern definition, and used this rethoric to achieve the same result as one that was intended here. If that isn’t enough red flags for you to call this rethoric fascist, then I don’t think there is enough common ground between our positions to engage in reasonable discussion.


  • From wikipedia:

    Fascism a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

    While it definitely describes Republican party as a whole, I specifically mentioned rethoric as being fascist, as in, one fascists would use. In this case I made a reference to “subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race” part as well, to lesser degree, to “forcible suppression of opposition” as threats can be seen as such. For rethoric to be pro-something it doesn’t need to encapsulate all aspects of said thing, for example you can see pro-leftist rethoric mentioning workplace democracy and not including being against opression of miniorities. “Education should be free” is a leftist rethoric despite not mentioning trans genocide.

    It definitely could be a right wing psy op, as someone mentioned. Dems are way too meek to go that far imo.




  • I believe that it’s much less about profits and much more about power. Being unbeliveably wealthy in a world where everyone have their every need satisfied is less favourable for a megalomaniac than being believeably wealthy in a world where everyone is desperate. People rarely desire expensive jewelery or other (relative) luxuries for their own satisfaction, usually it’s used to signify wealth and show power. What use would those extremely rich psychopaths have for their money if there was no human black market to buy a child sex slave from? Where would they get their dose of praise and submission if no one desperately wished to change their dire living conditions and was willing to licktheir boots for that chance? I think capitalism was designed specifically for this purpose, and with class divide growing ever wider, it fulfills it excellently.


  • I don’t think many people on lemmy conflate marxism with leninism outside of .ml, and even there folks seems to see leninism as something on top of marxism and not inherently mixed.

    And then we also have people who feel stalinist style “communo facism” would work well because everyone you like will be fed and everyone you don’t like will be dead. I don’t think anyone ever liked those people, including themselves.


  • voldage@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzCucumber 🥒
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    2 months ago

    As we well know all women and men in history that lived together with someone of the same gender were just friends. There are many historical records in which esteemed historians depicted the factual truth of deep friendships. Luckily for the rest of us, those noble seers always knew all context required and bore no prejudices towards anything whatsoever. That is a model cucumber. It even tastes like one.





  • You can’t just keep asking questions and avoiding answering mine, and I’m not exactly willing to describe “all of everything” to catch you up to speed. This conversation is getting rather tiring due to that, to be honest.

    There are multiple ways to define the “left” and the spectrum itself, but the way I see it described most often is collective approach to the economics on the left, individual on the right, and measure of authoritarianism of the system in the vertical axis, usually with the top being authoritarian and bottom being libertarian. Due to that being the most common way to describe it I know of, it’s one I’m using. You’ve got ML folks in the top left corner, communo anarchists on the libertarian left corner, fascists in the top right corner and libertarian right in the bottom right corner. I’m waving to you from somewhere in the bottom left quadrant. The “Left” in this case typically includes support for social ownership, redistribution of wealth, public control over resources, and greater economic equality. Ideologies on this side often prioritize the welfare of the community or society as a whole over individual wealth accumulation. Policies may include progressive taxation, social safety nets, public healthcare, strong labor rights etc.

    As for what moderate means, I’m using your definition from your first comment. Directly, since you’ve defined centrism by measurement of moderation and reasoned that democratic socialism is centrist instead of leftist due to it fitting that description. I’m not arguing against your definition of moderate politics, but it being a characterizing attribute of centrist political systems.

    the intended changes are radical but good for everyone, and involve no sacrifice or tolerance for mess in getting there, slowly and conservatively enough that nobody’s too uncomfortable at any point except the people who were already DEEPLY uncomfortable and fucked by the current shape of things, not rocking the boat too much, etc.

    that’s, like, the definition of moderate. it’s the psychology and strategy right wingers claim to have when they’re pretending to not just be evil monsters who get off on oppression, applied to ‘make the world better’. that’s almost the definition of centrist.

    As for dems being democratic socialist, you’ve referenced Kamala Harris and her policy propositions, and I’m not sure why, so I explored the possibility of it being the point of our misunderstanding.

    And finally, about what “centrism” is… Come on, man, I’ve described it like 4 times now. It’s time you pick up some weight here.


  • voldage@lemmy.worldtosolarpunk memes@slrpnk.nettotally equal
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    3 months ago

    I never said anything like that. Are you sure you’re not confusing this thread with some other discussion you’re having?

    I’ve yet to meet a person that wouldn’t describe socialism as “far left”, and one of the main principles of socialism is ownership of the means of production by the working class, which is exactly what worker co-ops are. As such, those would be “leftist”.

    I’ve already described what centrist system is in my view and argued against your arguments about it being rooted in being moderate as opposed to shift in society the system intends to implement. I’ll reiterate my argument against classification of democratic socialism as a centrist political system - it intends to implement fundamental changes (which already makes it non-centrist if you wish to use subjective definition of centrism, where it protects the status quo) that will lead to fall of capitalism and rise of socialism (which is a far left political system, and that would make democratic socialism non-centrist by ‘objective’ definition, in which centrism is a mid point between furthest left and right).

    You claimed that being moderate is the definition of centrism and then used right wingers as example of using it as political strategy. I see that as a clear contradiction. By your own admission right wing use the veil of moderate politics to smuggle through their evil policies. So are they the center if they mask their intent, or are they right wing? If they are right wing, despite using moderate politics to disguise their plans and garner popularity for their policies, then democratic socialism would be left wing for exactly the same reason.

    That’s my reiterated argument against moderate politics = center. You’ve never described center as anything other than moderate politics, not shaking the boat etc. - which I wouldn’t say inherently applies to democratic socialism either, but that’s a whole different discussion. I’ve disagreed with this definition of centrism, as it’s unrelated to political spectrum - you can be moderate anarcho communist just as well as nazi that doesn’t want to rock the boat, so they remain popular with the public.

    Regarding popularity, because your argument about Republicans not being popular still seems weird to me, it’s not related to ‘doing good’. Nazis were popular, won the democratic elections, you know? Some people just like facism, but others are drawn in by charisma and stuff like that. You accused me of conflating popularity with good, and I still have no idea where you got that from.

    I’ll remind you we’re discussing whenever democratic socialism is a centrist political system or not, not how far left it is. And re-reading your first comment, I’m not even sure we define this term in the same way, so I’ll just point out the definition on wikipedia is mostly compatible with mine. You seem to think that perhaps the Democratic Party in US is democratic socialist party, judging from your remarks about Harris policies? Because if so, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

    I’ll be honest, I’m very confused with your replies. I’m trying to address what I ‘think’ you’re talking about, but I feel like you came to this conversation with a baggage of context (or misunderstanding) that I’m not privy to.


  • The popularity I’ve talked about referenced your point about it being moderate and easy on everyone nerves. I’ve oryginally started my previous comment by saying, that full blown socialism right here and right now would be good for everyone and it would be considered pretty leftist, but deleted that after deciding this part was pretty much obvious. Something being good doesn’t make it centrist. That’s why I stayed on point of public sentiment, which you seemingly invoked by defining center as moderate in the eyes of voters.

    Say whatever you want about their hienous ideas, there wouldn’t be an issue in USA right now or anxiety about Trump winning if they weren’t reasonably popular. And I’m not conflating that popularity with doing good, but using their example to reject your argument about popularity making a political system ‘centrist’.

    I don’t understand where did you get popularity = ‘doing good’ from me, but before we get into argument about that, I don’t see how either of those would make a system centrist. ‘Good’ is relative, and further left would be ‘better’ by this logic, right? So how does that make a democratic socialism ‘centrist’ if ‘doing good’ is the measure you’re using here? It being moderate is for the sake of popularity, gradual shift to the left so no one has any major complaints, and I think I’ve spoken enough about how I don’t see popularity as reasonable measuring standard here.

    Democratic socialism wants to overthrow the capitalism, bring socialism, give everyone free healthcare, have worker co-ops as default mode of working, UBI, yada, yada, all of those propositions are radical (as in fundamental) and definitely leftist. Instead of violent revolution this system proposes a reformative approach, and that’s basicially the main difference from wide range of socialist systems that would attempt to implement the same things. So how is that centrist? Moderate, I get. Popular, sure. But center would refer to either a midpoint between the furthest right and left ideologies, or a minimal degree of change from the current political system, depending on how you want to define that word. I can’t see Democratic Socialism fitting either of those definitions, so it has to be a leftist system. I don’t see how it being moderate or popular would even influence that.