This is simple. Everything she said is factually correct and I 100% agree with her.
However, there are systems that you participate in whether you agree with them or not.
One of them is capitalism, the other is a 2-party anti-democratic democracy. And the choice is between fascism now or fascism later (maybe) - you should make sure we get the 2nd option so that we have time to fight and change the system.
Ummm ackchually 99% Hitler isn’t directly genociding me yet so technically this is just authoritarian :smug:
Both bourgeois parties are actively performing genocide in West Asia with a particular emphasis on Palestine right now. They both trip over each other trying to outdo one another’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Both run concentration camps on the Mexico border. Both stoke hatred for LGBTQ+ people for cheap bigoted culture war points. Both crush strikes and protest movements. Both are imperialist servants to capital, and will do anything to further the military industrial complex, pharmaceutical industry, and finance groups which back them.
Fascism is capitalism in decay, it is a corporatist economic structure with brutal repressive elements towards labor, activists, and minority groups. It’s imperial domination and exploitation. It’s establishing a supremacist in-group mindset and stoking all manner of bigotry to redirect people’s grievances away from class consciousness and into oppressing their fellow man. We have all of that now, despite slight differences in rhetoric between the Dems and Republicans. Both parties materially support and facilitate exactly that structure. The USA is a fascist country and has always been the primordial archetype for that system. Voting under a liberal democracy is nearly meaningless given that the system is rigged by capital from the start, but running water for these exploitative bourgeois genicodaires is disgusting. Your vote acts as endorsement and lends legitimacy to exactly these crimes which WILL continue regardless of which ghoul occupies the White House.
Agree on most of what you're saying. However both don't stoke hatred for LGBTQ+, and both don't have the same approach to social and economical matters.
The oversimplification of everything is the same is a path to fascism. That is being seen in Europe, in the US and elsewhere. Fucking Milei in Argentina as well.
Finally, you're not going to change a system that you are forced to participate in regardless of your opinion. Not voting in a 2-party system is accepting that the people who actually want a dictator, mass deportations, and a white evangelical society have one fewer vote to surpass.
No they just both enable hatred for LGBTQ people and do nothing to stop it. the idea that said people at the end of your comment have to "surpass" any votes is childish. They didn't have to surpass any votes to wipe out Palestine, they didnt have to surpass any votes to kill M4A. You bring fascism to everyone's doorstep and then act baffled when we choose not to buddy up with you once it tries to get inside.
Again, you have 2 real options to choose from. On one side you have a guy that wants to be a dictator, on the other the same type of shit as always. Anything, even not voting, is a decision to pick one of these 2 options.
If you really feel they are the same. You're enabling the dictator that has a lot of supporters.
You describe three options, but just keep proclaiming they are really two. Fucking Cardassian BS. You showing your belly to the democrats is enabling the dictator given the dems are TOUTING that they are fighting for Trump's border policy.
The best you can do is work towards creating an alternative for the future, which requires that you do not vote for them - And I need to be clear, not voting for them is less than the least you can do. The least you can do is go out and [redacted]
Elections are not isolated events in a vacuum, devoid of context, purely about which genocidal Imperialist wins.
that workers’ candidates are nominated everywhere in opposition to bourgeois-democratic candidates. As far as possible they should be League members and their election should be pursued by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled.
You have only one outcome: the USA will move rightward.
To the extent that voting matters in a fundamentally broken electoral system like ours, voting for the democrats is an affirmation of the choices they have made: affirmation of their choice to arm genocide in Gaza, affirmation of their choice to move right on immigration, affirmation of their choice to abandon death penalty abolition from their platform, etc.
Why would they ever change course as a party if they still get the only thing they want from you either way? Lesser evil voting is a race to the bottom, and the longer people wait to correct the democrats' course, the more painful it will be to endure a republican government in the meantime.
The democrats will never stop this country from its rightward trajectory if they keep moving rightward with it because their base continually validates them.
Yeah electorialism is a fuck, but if you're the type that believes in it, then you have to accept that it only works if you vote for someone who represents you, not for whomever least doesn't, but is also able to win the whole thing.
Representative democracy only works if you vote for a representative.
Why perputrate a failed system that offers 2 Choices , both Zionist ? Thats Undemocratic.
People Need to vote for who represents them , if they dont they fail in their Duty of Citizens and Perputrate a Undemocratic system ,that offers bad choices .
Somebody that doesnt do that but votes for a "Lesser evil" is activly participating in the Destruction of Democracy. He is a Enableer of this Destruction. A traiteor to his Countryman , and in this Particluar case , all of Humanity and its Developments in Humanitarianism.
You are an actual lemming. If you provide your enthusiastic support for the 'same as always' candidate, when do you think things will ever change for the better? Grab a gun! Join a union! Stop telling people to vote for genocide!
America has always been a dictatorship of the capitalist class over everyone else. You do not have two real options to choose from, you have two pre-selected symbolic representations of your subjugation by and for capital.
You could literally just stay home, eat cheetos and masturbate for the entirety of election day and accomplish more politically than endorsing wither genocidal candidate because you withdrew your support from any candidate until they fuck off with the genocide. They're both equally bad, this isn't a meaningful decision, so not bothering to make it is fine.
Yeah electorialism is a fuck, but if you're the type that believes in it, then you have to accept that it only works if you vote for someone who represents you, not for whomever least doesn't, but is also able to win the whole thing.
Representative democracy only works if you vote for a representative.
Edit: I see I posted it twice... Weird, but it works as aresponce to both
The oversimplification of everything is the same is a path to fascism
But you misunderstand us, everything is not the same. In the US, the borgeois double party encompasses a sprawling ecosystem of rich and varied fascism, with every species serving a purpose in facilitating the flow of capital. It's fascists of the blue variety, usually willfully ignorant, who insist on ironically reducing a century's worth of comprehensive analysis to "a simplification" just because it arrives at clear conclusions in a way that is verboten in liberal thought.
In reality, it's that trained liberal reflex of peeling off increasingly atom-thin layers of nuance to wrap over increasingly visible fascist policy that, historically, has only ever ended in naked fascism. Only liberals could torture into being the nebulous mirror image of a fascism to define themselves against that somehow also lets them off the hook for the genocide they've been doing for a year. My brother in capitalism, we are the fascists. You may personally think there's still daylight between liberalism and fascism, but most of the world knows better by now.
Finally, you're not going to change a system that you are forced to participate in regardless of your opinion
Finally, you're not going to change a system that you are forced to participate in regardless of your opinion
Incredible thing to admit. "Finally your opinion doesn't matter in this system" okay cool so it doesn't matter who I'm voting for, glad we are on the same page.
Just had a widdle thought but I think on this site we have conflated "has no meaningful effect" with "doesn't matter." Here thinking of the minor struggle session about voting having a moral value recently. It does matter if you're voting for a genocider, but it has no effect.
I read the kid's version(please don't judge me lol) and even that one had plenty of new wtf moments for me. I definitely have no qualms saying "fuck Columbus" at this point. There is a documentary series called Untold History of the United States that does corroborate a lot of the second half of the book but it's a bit lib and anti-communist at times iirc. I might be wrong though. I watched it early on in my radicalizing.
One thing about Zinn though, he was succdem and anticommunist (though not of the fire and venom breathing variety apparently), his book is mostly honest about USA, but he completely omit the history of communist movements in US and his solution is just more socialdemocracy. He also omits most of the relations betweens US and communist countries (with exceptions of Vietnam and Cuba which he low-key praises). Polish translation by local succdem publishing house even had absolutely scumfucking foreword written by local succdem scumfuck which was 80% AES bashing and 20% "neither Washington nor Moscow" mantra.
Very good comment. I do still try to read some not-so-leftist stuff if it is praise-worthy enough for it's actual content but absolutely keep in mind the author's intentions. I really wish there was something in the same vein that didn't omit the work that communism did in the 20th century. I guess we still got Parenti for that but I'm not familiar with many more.
The entirety of the United States of America was built on Fascist ideology. Just because it didn't have a name yet doesn't mean our forefathers didn't basically invent it.
AHAHAHAAHAHA THE FUCKING AUTHORITARIANISM ASSPULL yessir let's fucking go talk to me about the concept cooked up by the US to conflate the USSR and the nazis. Authoritarianism is fucking meaningless as a concept, the only purpose is to be a scary word we use to describe bad countries.
The US is already fascist as fuck, dumbfuck. People get tortured on US soil, they get disappeared to black sites, they get put in jail and forced to work as slaves, there's concentration camps at the border, genocides like it's going out of style, civil rights being removed and ignored and IT'S HAPPENING NOW and IT'S BEEN HAPPENING FOR YEARS
Uhhhh yeah but under Trump uhhh suddenly I would notice which means that would make it uhhh uhhh <- Your brain after finally having to think
You'll find socialists reject this. It's a vague and imprecise liberal definition that falls short of properly including all instances of fascism. Socialist definitions include all examples of fascism because fascism is correctly defined and more appropriately understood as a reaction to socialism. We call them reactionaries for a reason.
I agree that the US isn't fascist in the traditional sense, which I believe is all that is being argued, but two things:
What do you call a country that continuously props up fascist states abroad? That seems to me to be something [at least] as bad as fascism, even if it bears a different name.
Umberto Eco is a bad source for explaining fascism to someone who isn't a literal child, and even then I think a high schooler can do better. He is describing a disease based on a scant few cases pretty much exclusively through a set of symptoms and never actually understanding the disease itself. You might need to read more than five pages to understand the political-economic mechanics of fascism's development within a society.
Imperialist and colonialist and of course it is bad, not arguing the contrary.
It is, and there are a lot more to discuss the causes and how fascism appears, but it is an attempt at a definition because fascism isn't linearly defined. If you read up on the actual somewhat consensual fascist regimes of 20th century Europe they have significant differences between Salazar, Franco, Mussolini or other. But we don't consider imperialist UK fascist despite being a political abomination.
Words matter and labeling everything fascist does a disservice for any political discussion.
Regardless my main point is that we must, as individuals, live within the realms of systems we disagree with. And saying everything is the same is just not understanding nuance, in my opinion.
Says the person who is arguing for supporting imperialists and billionaires lol
yeah I'm sure Harris is gonna change something real soon because she can feel how your vote for her wasn't actually a vote in support it was just meant against Trump just this one time, it's the most important election of all time after all.
You people are all the same. No reason to waste time writing out new thoughtful arguments, when you just repeat the same bullshit, so here you go another link in the chain
no your really a Bootlicker .. your Modus of Reasoning is the Modus of a Bootlicker .. before every Principle , the "Bootlicker allgoritm" runs over your every Decision.
In a Democracy you vote for who represents you . You do not let a wierd pathetic Bootlicker allgoritm run over the fact that that you vote for who represents you . And if nobody Represent you , you dont vote.
DO you understand how easy it actually is , without you activating the Bootlicker Systems of yours ?
You can understand nuance and still conclude there is no meaningful distinction between 2 things. You're the simplistic fatalist here. Take a nap on some train tracks, bootlicker
A person with a nuanced understanding of the world would be supportive of Hamas, Iran, Russia and China in their respective fights against the US empire.
You people jerk off to the concept of nuance, which is always just a thin veil to obfuscate the fact you support the status quo, but you wanna be able to flirt with communist hotties. You see some talking head on TV say "well, it's nuanced" and you don't think about it any more than that. You don't think about the fact that the alleged "nuance" leads you to the same point that rabid fascists are at, just maybe with a slight tummyache. It's also actually not nuanced, it's incredible simple, straightforward, cut-and-dry and other synonyms.
Let me spell it out for you: Genocide is Bad. Both Candidates Are Fascists. Neither Candidate Will Do Anything Good. You Are A Bad Person For Supporting Genocide And Not Caring About All The Heinous Shit That Is Going On Because You Feel Comfortable Under Democratic Regimes. Just Because You Don't Hear About Things Happening On Last Week Tonight, Doesn't Mean They Are Not Happening. What You Think Matters Not, When What You Do Is Supporting Fascism.
Contrary to my fellows, I basically agree with your main point -- though I also agree with the counter that Eco's definition of fascism would consider America fascist -- but ultimately when I said that his definition was inadequate because it doesn't touch on the basic mechanics of fascism at all, your solution was to mystify by saying "well, they're diverse".
Here's the problem with that: You're still identifying all those states as fascist despite the preponderance of diversity that is such a concern for you. This leaves two possibilities:
Fascism is basically a rhetorical style, not a genuine political ideology
There is something in the mechanics of these political movements that allows you to call all of them fascist
I think that 1 is the much flimsier point. I'm surprised no one has given you a good account of 2, but the really short answer is that it is what happens when capitalism as a mode of production comes under threat (especially from itself) and capitalists unite to find a way to clear-cut more room to expand in, while defending capitalism and its instrument, the state, with the greatest viciousness from any challengers either one face. It is capitalism panicking.
Well, I'm not a genocide supporter but you are happy with mass deportations of millions of people. How intelligent, how brave, you truly understand the inner workings of political thought.
You are a fascist though. You are voting for a genocidal racist who has diminished civil rights, bragged about jailing black people and promised to support genocidal regimes abroad. What you think doesn't matter when what you do is in direct support of fascists. Fuck you, you fascist piece of shit.
Looking at absolute numbers is disingenuous
akchually if you don't look at the amount of people deported - A statement cooked up by the absolutely propagandized.
If it's disingenuous, you have to provide reasoning for why you believe Biden to be better than Trump and Obama with respect to deportation. You were given a clear and sourced argument, then went "nuh-uh."
I think they found the same article I posted in the dunk tank a while ago that has a title like "no Biden hasn't deported more."
Now they're reading the article and realising it doesn't support the argument they wanna make
One day you will look back upon how you are now and you will cringe immensely. I wish you experienced more pain and suffering for your behaviour than a simple cringe, but such is life.
Lmao at the idea of trying to polish leftist credentials here. Fucking pathetic. Go back to your echo chamber on reddit where they'll jerk you off for having a seedbox and having organised a protest with witty signs.
You are voting for a fascist genocider and arguing why others should do the same. You are, at very very best, a liberal.
not beating the infected by liberalism allegations. What, are you an "anarchist" whose every world view lines up with the state department? that's a liberal
We have no idea who you are, if you want to make a claim of authority you can elaborate, or you can just not try to make a claim of authority. Smugly stating that you are somehow immune to liberalism without offering evidence to the contrary is goofy.
You think Umberto Eco understands fascism, therefore you are a lib
Try reading Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti if you actually want to learn, otherwise keep being an ignorant lib who supports fascism and genocide
You are an american-supremacist without self-awareness. You believe that your lives are more important than other lives in the world. Your opposition are white-supremacists with self-awareness.
The lack of the awareness that you're a supremacist is what allows you to convince yourself you are a good person compared to the other supremacists.
And the choice is between fascism now or fascism later (maybe)
The only reason you believe this is because you don't think the 2million lives that america has murdered abroad every decade since ww2 matter. In your heart it is only fascism if it happens in america.
You are a nationalist and a supremacist, you just don't realise it.
So that butchering of Palestinians now is not fascism yet? Or the mass deportations? Christ what would it take for something to be fascist other than an R next to the person doing it's name?
Also who is this "we"? There is no way to buy time for the people being exterminated. You are not buying time for the people being left to die in the face of natural disasters. You are not buying time for the hundreds of thousands of minorities who's lives are destroyed by law and order democrats.
I’m sorry about the unwarranted dogpiling that’s being done to you in this thread. I hope you’ll understand that this instance has a handful of loud users, that don’t represent the majority. We’re a couple of users and mods who have recently started actively trying to improve the culture of the site, and summed up our mission in a short document we call the Posting Policy Bulletin which I hope should give you some pause. It’s still a mission in progress and we make compromises daily, but for now we have adults in the room making hard decisions!