this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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[–] millie@beehaw.org 2 points 19 minutes ago

This framing isn't particularly helpful for solidarity.

The left relies on coalitions. Criticizing the stewards of those coalitions because they fail to address the needs of the people they rely on for votes is helpful and constructive. Just reducing all left-wing voters to a pair of stereotypes and trying to push one of those stereotypes away from the other? Not helpful.

We need nuanced dialogue and mutual aid. It's a matter of survival. This isn't that.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

"You can't trust those leftists because they're just tankies"

The Tankie they're referring to:

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

This makes me sad, I thought we mostly agreed that what FDR did is a good way forward.

[–] hamid@vegantheoryclub.org 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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.

[–] BobTheDestroyer@lemm.ee 1 points 3 minutes ago* (last edited 1 minute ago)

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.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Always relative to the point of view, for an far right wing everybody else is an leftist/communist.

[–] AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Both are good, one is better

[–] vfreire85@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

should i mention that under one of them many coups around the world were orchestrated? no, dems are no better than gops.

[–] AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee -1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (2 children)

dems are no better than gops

Unless you're gay, lesbian, trans, atheist, Muslim, Jewish, Satanist, black, brown, female, an immigrant, or really anything other than a straight white man.

What an incredibly privileged take. Try having some empathy for other people sometime.

[–] vfreire85@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 minutes ago

of course. let's have some respect for the american minorities while minorities abroad can be tortured in some basement in a third world shithole while being watched over by a cia agent.

and i get to be called privileged by some oversized gringo. oh the imperialist exceptionalism.

[–] Dengalicious@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 58 minutes ago

Well, except you are wrong. Biden reversed Trump’s decision to pull out of Somalia. You are just being fed right wing propaganda to make one of the groups seem better than the other.

[–] Lila_Uraraka@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Both can be correct, it's not a hard black and white split

[–] hamid@vegantheoryclub.org 8 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

The leftist revolutionary heroes are resisting the people on the right, it is a hard split. The people on the right are shepherds of the US carceral state and imperial murderers

[–] Lila_Uraraka@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 hours ago

Last time I checked, that's not how that works, everyone has a wide range of ideals and views. Not 1 or 2, there can be 1 1/2, 1 1/3, 1 1/10000, whatever

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Until we get ranked choice voting, you still need to support them though.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Ranked Choice Voting is both too ineffective to make any change, and too difficult to get in the first place. It's the perfect endless carrot on a string, the eternal "just one more lane and traffic will be gone."

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Even if that's so, you'd still need to vote for the people on the right, because voting third party in first past the post is objectively just terrible for everyone with similar goals.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 hours ago

The people on the right work with the Republicans. They aren't resistance. Revolution is a necessity.

[–] vga@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] hamid@vegantheoryclub.org 6 points 3 hours ago
[–] tiredturtle@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Who mean those on the right? They don't even self identify as leftists, why should some of their followers say that?

[–] hamid@vegantheoryclub.org 4 points 4 hours ago

Yeah a better title would have been "I'm left wing" or something but I hate the English language and refuse to respect it.

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