I can't even begin to recount all the fucked up shit I went through a few years ago just trying to advocate for the right of Black people to not be murdered by police. DURING the Biden administration, to be clear.
have you considered simply killing the fascist and his supporters so he wouldn’t take power, thus preserving the ability to reform and protest, instead of dignifying and legitimizing the fascist by involving him in a sanctioned competition
you are describing the DNC, not the left.
the left would actually do something with power, which is why the bougie system will not let them touch the levers and will merc anyone who poses a serious threat.
insert Adam Curtis speech about how liberals are afraid of power
Power is a dirty word to libs, they're brainwashed by endless children's movies about how power is bad and must be destroyed.
But yeah, you can't attain victory without power. The idea that capitalists will just let us win without us forcing them to us just childish and naive.
You need power to do anything. That's the whole point of the left organising, to make people realise that there is power and strength in community and that there are more of us than of the ruling class.
All rights that women gained were won violently.
All rights slaves gained were won violently.
All rights poc won were won violently.
The defeat of Nazis Germany in WW2 was won violently.
Even the right to have your weekend off was won violently.
“but it was republicans and democrats who signed off on ‘granting’ women rights, poc rights, turning against the nazis they inspired and supported, and to give weekends off, checkmate tankie electoralism works”
Well according the poster and the annoying philosophy grad they are the only way to get things done. I don't know what "things" are here. To them slavery or jim crow ended cause they put to vote to no longer do it. They reiterate that we respectfully vote and get reforms respectfully. Otherwise its satlin mao authoritarian gulag 0 freedumb.
online misanthropes whose politics is "firebomb a Walmart" and then not firebombing a Walmart
They got Target tho.
What kind of criticism is this? Any time there are protests (Gaza protests?) liberals are falling over themselves to tut tut the protestors for inconveniencing people or whatever. Now that the gaza protests have subsided been put down they can go back to criticizing the movement as if they were supportive rather than hyperventillating over the inconvenience.
According to them the overall outcry towards genocide is bad and they are really destroying biden winning chances. Cause that's apparently the most important thing those out of touch people opposing genocide don't get. And anyone protesting or not willing to vote has no politics and did not go to philosophy college. That's their gist.
You owe the 40 hour work week to the unions who advocated for it and the officials who signed it into law. You need both.
words cannot describe how angry reading that made me. It's like it was a CIA sleeper agent activation code, but only for pissing me off. My god, what a fucking ingrained dirt speck of a take. Imagining her saying this to one of the people who fought for those rights"Yeah the people you almost killed and had to pin the arm behind their back in order to get the smallest of concessions were just as vital for this process as you. It HAD to be signed into law, so without them you're nothing, really they did more. They could have done it at any time, but only did it when you forced them to, which means they did it and were necessary. I understand how power works I am very smart." what the fuck.
THEY WERE PRESSURING ELECTED OFFICIALS BECAUSE THEY HELD THE REINS OF POWER NOT BECAUSE OF SOME INHERENT LAW OF NATURE THAT REQUIRES THE OFFICIALS PRESENCE THE SOVIETS KILLED THE TZAR FOR PEACE LAND AND BREAD AND FUCKING GOT IT. What an immense fucking copout "oh since a large state needs administrators then" AHHHHHHH The people who signed this shit into law didn't do it because they were fearing for reelection, they did it because they didn't want a revolution or to get shot. They could've done this at any time, but didn't, so they're not necessary for the process.
I think it shows such a lack of critical thinking. The 40 hour work week law was signed by politicians, so that is the end of the story.
Kind of like looking at the state of monarchies in Europe and going “gee, sure is nice of the monarchs to relinquish executive power of their own accord”. I guess if they had any kind of deeper thinking they wouldn’t be the brand of liberal they are, but they have the analytical ability of a child.
You owe the abolition of chattel slavery to all the people who fought and died for it AND the slavers who signed it into law at gunpoint. You need both.
I wish people would stop pretending we're all saying dont vote, never vote, ever! the nerds in here just dont want to vote for the dems or repubs, we're not mud guzzling reformists, but in my view, I love a good democracy larp
Pretty much. Vote for whoever you want, just don't pretend it actually does much of anything. I'll take a hardworking comrade who voted for biden over someone who refused to vote but also refuses to do any other political activity or organizing work, but I completely respect anyone who can't stomach voting for biden, or says its pointless, because it is. As long as you take that lesson and start doing more than just light charity and doorknocking for democrats.
watching some of this a new movement wont materialise out of thin air accompanied with ps vote blue ✌️ is pretty funny, theyre not perfect but there are socialist orgs in the states worth getting excited about.
Drooling for the democrats is some intense american exceptionalist, defend tradition bullshit if I ever saw it.. I would personally love to know what kind of on the ground local organising Nat does lol, organising an interview with a war criminal doesnt count 💅
As someone who doesn't give a fuck about voting but will spend a thousand dollars of my own money to go half way across the country and do relation building with Lakota, Canadian, Romanian, Mexican, German, etc. and other comrades from all over the world in the most impoverished place in the entire US, that take of hers makes my fucking blood boil. Like great Natalie, what the fuck have you ever done but grift off patreon with your artsy vapid "philosophy" video essays you monumental piece of shit. Go hang outt with more war criminals and call it praxis you slimy fucking ghoul.
If CLN had her patreon funding we'd be well on our way to a real revolutionary movement by now. Instead I had to scrape by for the entire year at my shitty retail job to afford just one trip like this.
Gee all these years of telling these social fascists to read theory means nothing then. Our theory is backed by actual revolutions, theirs is just pontificating about how the system™ works if you vote hadd enough
The problem with that, aside from its bad faith, is that it fundamentally gets the causality backwards in a lot of major issues, which is that historically, the way things change is not through eggheads and lawyers figuring out the details and then things change. There’s a broad political movement, a popular movement, to change X, Y, and Z, and then that is agreed upon. And then there’s a deadline set for that change, and then the eggheads and then the lawyers come by afterwards and sort of figure out how best to implement it. And what the nuance trolling does is it sort of inverses that. It says, actually we need to get all the eggheads and lawyers to sign off on something as a way of creating political impotence and undermining political will.
This is a good take about any large project. If you get too into the weeds too early it just leads to stagnation. Everything is possible so anyone can have an opinion and things go nowhere. Once you have a vision and you have a mandate then you have something you have to work backwards from and the eggheads and lawyers can come in and their work will bear fruit. Before that it's a futile, masturbatory exercise.
Isn't this the whole thing that liberals do at their protest? I could see this as viewing the spectacle of peaceful protest as a goal in and of itself, but communists generally are the first to say fuck peaceful protest the workers are the power of the state. It's actually such a stupid viewpoint that clearly lies and misrepresents reality so that they themselves are the heroes of the story, rather than a smug asshole content to drink champagne as the world burns.
It's just so stupid to say goddamn Marxism has no theory of power. MARXISM! The smug aura of this person infuriates me.
She was always lib and her content has been stylishly devoid of substance for years now but hopefully this nonsense will continue to make her a non presence in trans community discourse going forward
We are people just like anybody else, we'll find another egotistical style-over-substance essayist to immediately fill the void with.
P.s. I wish Natalie would see the light of Islam or something so this episode of discourse could end. White queer libs proudly and smugly admitting they don't care anything but themselves for the thousandth time.
I think most people are self interested. That's not an innate matter - we could be raised to be better, we can learn to unlearn the worst things capitalist society imparts to us - but most people are self interested, and Natalie comes from a cohort economically that is insulated from the consequences of the status quo, and even benefits thereof - they were never going to be a proper comrade, and any vision of Natalie as this, was predicated on a misreading of the things she said, and also built from incorrect assumptions about elements of her identity (this idea that trans women are de facto comrades does a lot of harm to trans folk tbqh).
Even in properly left circles, there can be extreme hesitance to surrender to a collective identity and a collective interest, due to any number of things ranging from trauma to just pathological chips on shoulders, to the flatly self-interested seeking to exploit people, but even outside that context, it's just weird anybody ever thought the bougie, well-off white lady was gonna have the life experience needed to be what some leftists saw in her.
I remember watching one or two of her videos a few years back, and they put me off cause they seemed to just be along the lines of "yeah, capitalism is bad, but socialism sounds sooooo difficult, can't we just, like, vote for polite liberals? Anyway, Patreon's in the description"
she says that "they don't want victory, they don't want power. They want to endlessly critique power" but then doesn't initiate the protracted people's war against the genocidal US regime with material support from the Lesser Evil powers. curious
The only thing they care about is putting some DNC approved ghoul in power and put zero scrutiny. If anyone criticizes them then they are a tankie who doesn't understand the world. They just want to do nothing and support empire. But they keep putting these weird rationalization that they are fighting fascism.
There's all of three politicians in my state that I actually respect, since they're vocally pro-Palestine and actively involved in their respective communities. I'll vote for the ones in my district, but obviously that won't do as much as people collectively doing praxis.
what a stupid thing to say, what, is the comedy streamer supposed to start a soviet? the listeners to your loser podcast are not a political constituency; if they were then natalie herself has betrayed the democrats for not starting contraPAC or w/e
Lot of liberals soured on hasan since his outspoken coverage of palestine. He attended the college campus protest at LA. To these people supporting these protests is a bad thing being promoted to his audience. Unlike the genius philosopher youtuber who is using her platform to condemn them and support biden.
hasan piker can single handedly take down trump by telling chat to vote, but he doesnt because he's too busy doing the evil turkish ice cream salesman bit but with politics
This "popular movements fought for rights, but credit goes to the legislators who actually implemented them" take is reminiscent of when Jordan Peterson credited the British Empire with abolition of slavery
That is very true. She gives the powers that be way too much leeway but shits on people who are fighting these structures. I fucking hate liberal philosophy grads.
Hey guys just so you know, if you firebomb a Walmart or Amazon fulfillment center with enough people that's actually a really good way of pressuring electoral officials. Imagine it's like saying "do what we want or we'll kill you and do it ourselves"
Yes, I don't want a victory to materially improve my life, I just want to critique power. That's what I want.
I'm actually in heaven right now because I have a total of 0 victories and 100% complaining about society and how my life sucks. The perfect track record!
Obtaining power is when you briefly appear in some shitty documentary(?) nobody watches and release a tl;dw video once a year. Contra is genuinely stupid when it comes to politics. Why would she suck up to a has-been nobody fucking likes like Clinton when AOC is right there? She's also around the same age as AOC, so there's that connection as well. The only other explanation is that AOC is too brown for lily-white Contra.