The enlightened centrism is strong in this one. No, the US don't have a conflict of left vs. right. The conflict is between the right and everyone else. And most of the right are just rubes who think they being part of some kind of movement but in reality are just being fleeced by a bunch of grifters
I'd say the curve it's much flatter on the left side. As in right side is shouting tankie, meanwhile there are like 2 tankies and the right wants to set the whole barn on fire to get them both.
The left is also fighting itself. Literally the comment chains in this post are prime examples.
People who probably align with the majority of the stances, tearing each other down with bad faith arguments, grandstanding over the remaining things they disagree on.
"Perfect is the enemy of good."
I might not politically align with the average .ml user, but my views are a hell of a lot closer aligned with them than MAGAt views.
The left largely fights by arguing, which can lead to better ideas if people are open to listen. That isn't always the case, but it's a possibility. The right is fighting with homicide.
And if they suffer under that Christofacist regime they helped bring about? That is righteous and holy suffering, and their reward will be eternal in Heaven.
Voting against their interest? No, they are voting in their eternal interests, so what does it matter if they endure poverty, violence, sickness, famine and the destruction of our biome in this life? 'Tis but a moment before the beauty they have earned in the Here After brother!
also the usa has never had a true left to begin with, being the most right wing of the western countries should be telling.its most like right on right-lite violence/rhetoric
Perfect example of this was Jimmy Kimmel. He openly said that shooting a commentator was a horrible thing, and tried to call for moderation. MAGA declared that wasn’t enough, and ordered him fired.
They have specified that if you’re not with them, you’re against them.
Doesn't directly bringing up "enlightened centrism" (I assume sarcastically) from a non-right position indicate disdain for centrism? That would be a conflict between whatever you are and both centrists (for not being where you are - right of you, but to them, still left of the Right) and the Right.
Also, if you're aware of the Three Percenters and their claim that only 3% of colonial America supported the revolution, it means that even if they're off by a factor of 10, with 30% for the revolution, and 30% against, it leaves 40%, a plurality of people, who have the sentiment from this meme where they just want to be left alone and not forced against their will into a conflict that indroduces instability and violence to their lives.
"Enlightened centrism" is not the same as centrism and yes that label is meant to be sarcastic. There are basically two kinds of enlightened centrists. One are right-wingers who want to avoid the social stigma of being far right. The other one are people who close their eyes to the blatant attempt by the right wing to destroy democracy and pretend everything is normal. That's what basically the corporate media are doing.
You start off by deriding anyone that isn't carrying the same label as you as either evil or stupid.
Immediately and unironically say that it's only the Right vs. everyone else after just saying that it's the Left vs. everyone else because they're either wearing your label or they're Secret Hitler or an idiot.
Double down and imagine that everyone actually has secret but strong political feelings and simply are confused or too chicken shit to reveal them, but that all the secret opinions of average people are not just mildly conservative, but actually full-on far-right?
My friend, I'm not sure you understand how many people don't spend 18 hours a day online reading political news. Because that's exactly how you end up alienating normal people who are all out of fucks to give about politics, and fracturing opposition to fascism like you're doing here. You're not helping anyone but the fascists by calling the people stuck in the middle fascists for just trying to live their lives.
Case in point, this is a shitpost comm and you're too wrapped up in your self-labeling to read the room and the meme that most people don't care about the things you care about. That's the meme, and lesson, that you missed.
Polls are usually pretty consistent in that the majority of people (usually between about 65% to sometimes up to 80%): 1) Don't actually care about politics at all, which is a big part of why we have a representative democracy in the first place, 2) Certainly don't keep up with political news or even the actual news that much, 3) Are so self-absorbed and wrapped up in their own affairs that until the rapid disintegration of the nation and Constitution affects them specifically, they won't even notice because they have a job and kids and a universe of other shit to be doing so they want the status quo always, whatever that was.
Which is all supported in depth by game theory studies about what it takes to get people out in the streets. Which you clearly can't be bothered to think about because we're all secret nazis and idiots you wouldn't associate with in the streets, right?
You're taking the same bait that Mandella fought against people taking in South Africa. Apartheid specialized in turning everyone who wasn't white against each other. Fracturing opposition was how a small minority stayed in power for generations.
Which is exactly how the GOP managed to work out Red Stating and Gerrymander me and my formerly solid blue district into a solid red district. That's not on me. That's on you for fracturing opposition to fascism, like you're happily doing here, because all the rest of us aren't "pure" enough - because most people are either secret Nazis or idiots, right? I get the same shit from the GOP, but they actually accomplish the shit they set out to do, so at least I have something to react against.
For the people who not only do care about politics, but also hate every bit of it and just want people to shut the fuck up and do rational policy stuff without egos like big boys and girls, it's cringe to see shit like "Hur durr, all Centrists are just closeted Nazis!" because it undoes coalition; it accomplishes exactly what fascists love to see - infighting among their opposition. You give them power like this, with uninformed blanket statements that alienate people who actually ARE fighting these people and now know that you can't be counted on as an ally. But that's fine, I know for sure that I 100% can not count on the Left to accomplish a damn thing because y'all are too enthralled with the Old Money Traditional Branding BS the Dems offer you so they can once again use you up to trot out Candidate Dickbag and get you genuinely thinking "yeah, this time, they're gonna win!" before they lose again and steal your money and time and energy.
But I expect you stopped reading 4 words in and said to yourself "yeah, secret Nazi I think. Or idiot. Either way, I have to hate that one, too" and turned away an ally once again.
Edit: Downvote all you want - look at exactly what the Democrats are doing to the Left right now. This is not an appeal to centrism - this is a party appeal to stay in power because they've fucked themselves.
I disagree that left of center is more nuanced than communism. Most communists historically reject all forms of sectarianism, although we can fall into it anyway for a lot of reasons. I have love and admiration for many progressive liberals, and leftists that are not communists (commies are often not the most left faction, leninists tend to be more center left.) When you get to this level of analysis though, left right and center stop being useful and you have to dig into actual issues and political action.
But many progressive liberals are wrongheaded or idealist and dualist, which is not conducive to nuance. But also people are often much more deep and full of insight than their politics suggest
All people are people, regardless of where they live. Borders are just another way for capitalists to fuel the class war. Keep malding that I'm not a tankie 🤙
i've known too many people who went anarchist > ancap > asshole > sovcit. I'm sure it works well for you, but i feel like it's playing with fire black tar heroin
Say what. No one I know has ever gone down that route. Anarchism is the furthest reach from ancap or sovcit.
I guess I and my friends have the antidote: read some actual theory. You couldn’t possibly agree with theory then go ancap. Sounds like you’re describing YouTube anarchists.
tankie is, as i understand it, a combination of authoritarianism, leftism, and some weird nostalgia for the soviet union i'm not entirely sure i've just been casually trying to pick stuff up.
That's more likely to be Nationalist Bolshevism. The correct term is should be 'NazBol' and they're nationalistic right wingers.
Keep in mind some users on Lemmy use the term 'tankie' to include anyone with opposition to capitalism and will argue to include anyone who is pro-palestinian or even anti-war ironically.
But those users just so happen to be critics of the Nuremburg Trial verdicts, so their opinions matter less than the NazBols to begin with.
i remember talking about the nuremburg trials with some... now that i think about of it most of them were lawyer friends, and i only have basic education about the nuremburg trials. a few of them have studied them in depth, and now that i think about it the only criticism i ever heard about the verdict was, if you'll allow me to paraphrase, "you're going to spend your whole life disappointed if you keep expecting everything to be perfect".
so i'm very much not a fan of the death penalty as i've seen the criminal punishment system fuck up. a lot. they've gotta be above reproach if we can trust them with literal power over life and death.
at the same time, unrepentant Nazi. if it had been up to me, I'd've wanted to give him the ol' Robert-François Damiens. first: people are allowed contradictions. second: sometimes the brutality is part of the point. hold the unrepentant nazis up for generations as villains. don't allow them to be buried in normal cemeteries. Take their ashes and spread them around the country to be on permanent display in each and every post office as an example of why you don't fuck with the postmaster. teach your kids "you end up being one of those damn nazis i'll put you in the community ash jar myself". we really could have done better.
Well they are slightly vague terms, so please don't feel stupid. A shocking amount of people who think they know, don't know.
Left wing politics are generally about a rejection of hierarchy of people. Consequently, they tend to be interested in an international community because we are all the same and deserve the same. As freedom is something that everyone wants for themselves, the left tend to be in favor of an equally free community, e.g. freedom to love.
Right wing politica are generally about hierarchy of people. But not because the hierarchy is necessarily the point, but it tend to be in favor of maintaining the current state, Which just happens to be hierarchical. And usually everything get viewed from a hierarchical pov. E.g. nationalism is a hierarchical view of country and people, your country and its people above other country and their people.
Obviously you could point at the historical stance of us republicans that they want a small government and argue that a small government creates less of 2 class citizens, the law markers and the citizens. But the left would point out that a small government just enables the powerful people to exploit the weak people and create more 2 class citizens.
On the left: The strong hierarchy in the previous attempts of "communism" is the reason why some people will say that true communism was never tried. Other will argue that you need a little bit of authority to run a communustic state.
So the whole thing is a little more complex than "freedom" and "restrictions" and who supports what "restrictions" when.
Most people have confused politics. If you want to land somewhere you need to educate yourself and develop principles so that instead of not knowing where you'll land, you'll know exactly where you stand
might need to back up a little. personal, private, and public ownership are different things in one of the areas i worked in. same distinction? personal property is still legal, just privately held businesses not so much. brain's fuzzy, am i remembering right?
Firstly, this concept only applies to means of production, as in the stuff that is used to produce stuff which could be sold. So e. g. a sewing machine.
Without getting into the weeds:
a. Personal: You own and operate the sewing machine, you pay for the resources consumed and own the item produced. (Good)
b. Private: You own the sewing machine but someone else operates it. You pay the resources consumed, the laborer a previously agreed upon amount and own the item they produced. (bad)
c. Public: the public owns the sewing machine and pays for the resources consumed. The laborer is paid the value of their work. That is, the value of the item produced minus the value of the resources consumed. (Very good)
How "the public" and "the value" are determined is the source of leftist infighting (anarchists vs marxist-leninist). But since both agree that private ownership needs to be abolished the call is for leftist unity to stand together against the people that currently own the means of production privately (the bourgeoisie) and exploit those that have to sell their laborforce in order to survive (the proletariat).
thanks for the refresher! i have worked in too many similar fields with bullshit jargon where they have basically made homophones antonyms just to fuck with anyone who decides to get uppity and do anything cross-discipline so now my brain is:
it's one of those "i know i learned this somewhere, and i'll remember in 3 days i'm sure!" things so thanks for helping a fellow out.
Trying to pretend that there's a concerted far-left effort to create civil war in 'Murica is patently absurd
Sure, there may be a handful of nutters, but they pale in comparison to the number of far-right who are actively lusting for the blood of the people they hate and fear
It also tries to downplay political division "in real life". In real life, the American president is a fascist serial-rapist pedophile directing a masked police force to deport legal residents without due process, illegally deploying the national guard against citizens, and grifting shitcoins and accepting bribes in plain sight.
Trying to pretend that there's a concerted far-left effort to create civil war in 'Murica is patently absurd
Idk man, I spent altogether too much time over in .ml, and now my view on what is "far left" has changed quite drastically. And that group certainly seems hell bent on starting a civil war.
There are absolutely far more MAGAs, but the tankies are, unfortunately, still far left.
If you think lemmy is immune to outside agitators, then you're kidding yourself
I'm certain that there are interested groups trying to whip up a few lunatics so that "the left" can be pitted against the right, and blamed for violence, but there's no doubt that there's a far larger audience of people in the US who are eager to lean into fascism and spill blood when they are encouraged
Bruh there's like a triple-digit number of tankies in all of North America lmao. Meanwhile half of the USA is MAGA. If you need to visualize this, go look for literally any act of violence motivated by far-left beliefs. There's what, like two in the last 30 years? Claiming any sort of equivalence between MAGA and the left is just false.
Because being a passive centrist while the world slides towards authoritarianism, global conflict, and environmental holocaust is not morally acceptable.
You don't have to be a Tankie to want to fight these fascist fucks and their suicidal agenda.
I mean a lot of people don't want to have their way of life userped by these radical idiots. One side is calling for a civil war and the other side is effectively campaigning for concentration camps. Normal people don't want to engage with either brand of insanity. They just want to go to work and go home, spend time with their family.
The left is not calling for a Civil War. They’re demanding basic human rights for everyone, and the capitalists have made it clear they’d rather kill everyone.
If you feel equally threatened by the left and the right, it’s because you support fascism. You just prefer a lighter flavor of it that you benefit from.
But sometimes history comes along and says "too bad." There is no historical precedent for fascism or extreme wealth inequality being corrected by electoral politics.
If you're able to comfortably sit on the fence, recognize two facts: One, that's a position of entitlement (Plenty of people are already having their lives destroyed by what's happening). Two, being passive is choosing to allow authoritarianism to win.
To reiterate, I'm not a Tankie. I don't whitewash the heinous history of revolutions, upheaval, and failed government systems. And I am positive that I'm screaming into the void. In every historical example I've studied, the comfortable middle class eventually sides with elite authority and not the peasants. And the peasants always lose. But the alternative is too awful to surrender to. Centralized techno-fascism and eventual catastrophic conflict with China are what's in-store.
tankies are such a small niche group, i dont think theres enough of them to have a significant on policy, unlike right wingers have real numbers on thier hands.
I don't think any of this happened last time the democrats were in charge? Or any other time before that. Seen from Europe, democrats are definitely right of center, just less so than republicans.
All I'm saying is everything is further to the right in the US. These things you listed aren't even partisan issues here, they're just normal things. But I see you're just downvoting and arguing so I'll be on way cheers.
We'll leave aside that those policies don't line up as well with your initial statement as we're pretending because that still leaves us at Jeffries telling everyone not a neoliberal to fuck off.
Him and the other 94 Democratic reps that voted to honor a Nazi propagandist don't seem to have received the memo that's there's plenty of general policy to align on.
In many cases, I think so. People everywhere get their morality from culture. Since many people are raised conservative, and risk damaging their social connection in their community by straying from conservative values, people can be very protective of certain social conventions and perspectives, out of fear of social isolation or even alienating themselves from their actual nature in order to adhere to social convention.
Its an understatement to say that the far right/fascism weaponizes this fact. But many many conservatives are workers which means that they share lived exploitation with the rest of us. Capitalism is the force that divides the working class, and when we participate in divisive/sectarian tendencies then whatever ideology we claim, leftist or whatever, then we are carrying water for the billionaire class.
Its not always that simple though. Many people experience real trauma by having conservative values thrust upon them. Objective morality is a plague, but so is dualism. We need to think completely differently and work with others to navigate these dynamics
You’re not wrong. Many of them are exposed to propaganda on TikTok and it is a growing issue. Espionage is being done to divide the left and consolidate the right. Just because it’s not as noticeable as the propaganda from the right doesn’t mean that it’s not having subtle effects. If it gets people to disengage or not look out for their best interests then it is effective. All this to say, there is a way to bring about positive change and that has to do with being involved locally.
Thanks for the grasroots money, this small group is actually very loud. The loudest of them all. They maintain the illusion that communism is when you like Russia, and that's their entire purpose
If you think the next US civil war will be fought between Nazis and Marxist-Leninists, you don't understand American politics very well. The US in 2025 isn't Stalingrad in 1942.
This can be attributed to a method of gaining and maintaining political power called divide and conquer. Poisoning the discourse with targeted manipulation in (social) media, while treating politics as kind of bizarre and grievous reality TV show, where everyone is trying to throw the biggest pile of verbal shit on the other.
Ideological polarization is actually pretty low among average Americans. It’s mostly felt among the highly politically engaged and politicians. So to that extent, this image seems accurate.
The ACP is the only american so-called communist org that supports Trump, and virtually every other segment of the serious organized left considers them a fascist org. Don't buy into fascist framing of issues or you are working for the fascists when you spread them
That is a total and complete lie. DSA, the largest socialist org in the USA in 100 years is unwaveringly against us imperialism and capitalism, and Trump. There are virtually no tankies in DSA, even the most ml aligned factions in DSA are not "tankies" as you try to slander.
Democratic socialism is opposed to imperialism and capitalism, none too fond of China or Russia (though I'm sure if you bad faith make certain generalizations you could make illogical connections to suit your purpose), virulently anti Trump and "tankies" when they pop up in our org usually become disengaged ineffective sectarian hyper minorities, though they rarely pop up at all.
In fact if you aren't opposed to US imperialism, you are on the right wing, and have no right to speak on it. Do you think the genocide in Palestine is a left wing position? Be serious
I'm not defending tankies, I'm disagreeing with your extremely narrow categories, that would define 90% of non tankie leftists as tankies.
I'm not making a strawman when I say that support for us imperialism is support for the Palestinian genocide. That's just like common knowledge at this point.
Flattening Sanders entire political career, which started out with him organizing as a socialist, into a narrow category is as dishonest as doing the same with the history of the USSR. There is not much worth defending about the Stalinist bureaucracy that the USSR became. Even throwing the USSR and China in the same bucket when referring to Sanders is a historical revision, since Sanders entire political life began after the Sino/Soviet split. However information about the atrocities of Stalin came from Kruschev. Trotskyists and anti-authoritarian communists, like CLR James, could see that much was wrong with the USSR, but the truth wasn't revealed until the 60s. Other great american communist organizers like James Cannon mistakenly cooperated with the Comintern, who systematically destroyed the movements in the USA that got us our new deal. Cannon and many others were eventually purged from the american socialist movement, turning it into yet another husk of the workers movement under the auspices of the "communist international."
After the Vietnam war, the USA and China both supported the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese communists, who were supported by the USSR. Are you a supporter of the USA's war in Viet Nam? Or the Khmer Rouge? I certainly hope not!
Dealing with reality isn't a strawman, unless you're an idealist. I hope you aren't waiting for the good capitalists to save us from our current situation, because our version of capitalism is irredeemable. We are in the late stage, which only means that we are part of the global financialized economy. An economy that enslaves the third world, and huge swaths of the first world, in order to keep its ruling classes.
If you are in favor of having a ruling class, which would still exist under social democracy, then IMO your position is closer to trumps than any leftist. And I work with thousands of leftists all over the world. Look at how European social democracies are also being taken over by fascist parties. It is not a realistic defense against fascism.
Trumps whole strategy, which is actually the strategy of the global tech elite, is to crash the US economy to force an asset bubble (recession) onto the EU. At which point, anti-immigrant fascistic parties will mobilize their message to overturn the "good capitalist" social democratic reforms and allow capitalist destruction of the welfare state.
Social democracy is falling apart in real time, and I think you can't see it because you have no theory of change. You see things categorically rather than dynamically, which removes you from actual conditions. As much as I'd like to disabuse you of those notions, you seem pretty committed to your narrow idealist views, which is a shame as we could use more spicy fighters on our side against Trump, and less performative resistance that only contributes to mass confusion.
The way finitebanjo defines it though, as anyone who rightly opposes US imperialism as being a tankie, is what I'm arguing against. I'm arguing against conveniently abstracted generalization of messy histories that support a very very narrow view, which defines most leftists as "evil tankies."
I'm arguing against any views, coming from tankies or progressive liberals, that statically categorize historical and political relations, which are inherently dynamic and change over time. I'm arguing against sacrificing deep understanding at the altar of some slanderous and IMO dangerous mischaracterization of most leftists.
I think its possible that you, as someone who seems to feel comfortable using the term tankie, don't understand the way it warps actual political discourse away from radical but sometimes correct positions, and toward ineffectual online camps. I'm aware of the kind of weird super online left that takes up their own ignorant campist positions and defends them with like memes. Sometimes these people even crop up in actual organizing and can wreak havok if they get control, I can think of a few examples of real life "tankies" causing great harm to our movements. But it is very rare.
In fact if you ever meet like a "Stalinist" or as you might call them, "tankie", from a third world country, they are completely unlike the white western online tankie that you're referring to. They have certain questionable views which the synthetic online tankies try to copy, but their practical activity, their organizing work, is incredibly serious, well intentioned, effective and engages actual exploited people in a revolutionary way.
But the way Tankie gets defined sometimes, it seems like anyone who reads and understands Lenin is a trump supporter, which is totally wrong, but exactly how I would describe finitebanjo's polemics. This would put people like Paulo Friere in the category of tankie because he has certain third worldist sensibilites despite being probably the greatest humanist theorist since Marx himself. Considering that this is an author and educator often taught in even christian seminary schools, as well as many secular advanced degree programs, and also studied seriously by every left tendency, the definition of tankie often completely misses the mark.
Maybe I am mis-stating that point a little, I don't know what is in peoples hearts when they use the term. But as someone who is definitely active on the communist left and not a tankie, even anti-tankie peeps don't call me that, that is how it looks to me. The way that I avoid becoming a tankie is by studying, reflecting and applying theory in a practical way. Arguing that I am misunderstanding the situation seems to refute everything that makes me a principled leftist. So I have a hard time with your characterization of my arguments.
Weird how they brought a billion farmers out of poverty. I wonder why they would do that if those farmers didn't have any influence.
We certainly don't see that happening in capitalist countries right nextdoor, such as India.
the remainder is committing their own little genocide at home
lol you still believe that? Anybody can literally just go to Xinjiang, there's no travel restrictions. Don't you think they would try to keep foreigners from going there and talking to people if they were committing a genocide?
Ah yes, if you oppose capitalism too much, you just start hating minorities. That's just horseshoe theory. They wouldn't teach it in schools if it wasn't true.
Definitely don't come to China, Vietnam, or Cuba and check for yourself, just trust your government.
Why? Vietnam is beautiful, experiencing towns built around bikes instead of cars and being able to buy good meal for 1.20 USD is good for your soul. China is the most developed country in the world right now, and I'm planning to go back in a month or so. I haven't been, but I hear Cuba has lovely beaches and rum.
Were you under the impression these places were dangerous?
Instead of listening to anticommunists from a century ago, why don't we compare what communists have done in China over 50 years to their neighbor, India? One of those countries exports food for a profit while the children of the laborers who picked that food suffer from malnutrition. Or why don't we look at life expectancy in Cuba today and before the revolution. You can even compare Cuba to their capitalist ruled neighbors.
If Communists, if we Leftists, if we Marxists, if we revolutionaries, if we progressives, if we—all we want is to hunger for power, then why do we side with the powerless? Then why don't we toady up to power? Why don't we take the road of the Henry Kissingers and the Patrick—Daniel Patrick Moynihans and the Zbigniew Brzezinskis and the Eugene V. Rostows and the McGeorge Bundys, who toady up and mouth for power? When Henry Kissinger was made National Security Advisor for Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller gave him fifty-thousand bucks as a going-away present.
People need something else to focus on. When everything is politics then politics is everything and it's stupidly difficult to get people interested in doing anything positive.
And this is what I mean. Everything is very much not politics but if you politicize everything then by definition it becomes so. People need to stop doing that.
Because either you'll cite a good example and prove me wrong, or you'll cite a bad example and confirm I'm right. While I doubt you'll be convinced in the latter case, someone reading this exchange might be, so there's value to be had in either case.
You've already asserted that everything is politics whether I like it or not, including this conversation, and since I don't get involved in "prove me wrong" political conversations on the internet I'll just exit.
When I have centrist views about anything (not just politics but more trivial matters like pop culture), I'm reluctant to share them online because extremists on both sides interpret you as an extremist on the opposing side
The difference between the two using the following anecdote explains why I hate what you said: if you ask me politely to go fuck myself, I might or might not comply; if you put a gun to my head and do the same thing, I have no choice but to comply. My point is that violence, including the threat to commit it, works more often than not.
That's still an oversimplification. In reality political opinion varies across a spectrum; it's not just hard left, hard right, or no opinion. My own views for example are a little left of centre with a leaning towards liberty (i.e. away from authoritarian). So of course I get called a nazi by the hard left, and a tankie by the hard right, both of which are utter nonsense.
You're not wrong. But in your meme you painted all the people calling for civil war as extremes when for a while it was a pretty average sentiment among the right for decades. They were just doing it more quietly twenty years ago
PA refused to denounce this individual but instead claimed this was planned, intentional, and will be repeated in future.
Ban = Quite Right.
If it was just property destruction then a ban would probably have been a bit excessive but GBH changes that equation drastically. That PC could have been killed for just doing her job. This is absolutely not acceptable, and PA supporters* need to be ashamed of themselves.
*As distinct from "Palestine supporters". Still nothing wrong with protesting in favour of a misogynistic, homophobic, antidemocratic, murderous cult, although it's beyond me why anyone in the West would want to.
No one mentioned Hamas, fascist. You condemned anti-genocide protesters because you consider the target of the genocide to be collectively deserving of extermination.
Centrism doesn’t mean sitting on a fence. It means most of the time understanding that both sides are right and wrong at the same time, I often see the problem identified correctly but the solution that is prescribed is absolutely incorrect.
Here are some centrist positions.
We need to stop unfettered immigration, so closing the borders is great, locking up and kicking out immigrants who have committed legal offenses is good, and we should expedite that process but we shouldn’t be kidnapping or profiling people. We shouldn’t be giving economic assistance to illegal immigrants. I know it doesn’t happen at the federal level but it does happen at the state level.
Banning guns won’t solve the violence problem, guns don’t kill people people kill people. American violence is caused by inequality and lack of mental healthcare. Solve that instead of taking guns away.
We should have higher taxes, universal healthcare and stronger safety nets but also much less regulation because most of it is actually designed to protect the incumbent corporations. Free the markets as much as possible, but never bail out a single corporation that fails, bail out the employees.
Increasing the minimum wage does nothing.
Instead of relying on underpaid immigrant labor the US should stop giving cash and tax subsidies to farmers and instead directly subsidize their wages by paying the employees directly. This is my middle of the road solution, we should actually consider nationalization of farms. One of the few things where that could work right now because I think nationalization in general leads to terrible mismanagement. But farms are already inefficient, corrupt and mismanaged and also living on the government tits so we might as well.
Justifying things as “scientific” when the science is social science and the results are not reproducible is intellectually dishonest, and is rampant in discourse about various topics nowadays. The academia brought upon themselves the mistrust they have garnered. This is good because universities have become job training centers and they were never meant to be that, so maybe we’re due for a little creative destruction.
I’m open to changing my mind, but you need proof rather than just saying that I’m incorrect. I have yet to see compelling evidence that raising minimum wage makes any difference at all in the long term. A lot of studies have been made to prove that it doesn’t cause job loss but none that prove that it changes the levels of inequality or pulls people out of poverty in real economic terms.
Right there it says that there are other measures that led to the reduction in poverty. Here’s my thing, if you increase the minimum wage, don’t change the definition or the line at which someone is considered to be living in poverty, and run a census the next day poverty will appear to have been reduced by a lot because everyone is now making the increased minimum wage yay! However if there’s inflation, in a few more months we might be back to where we were in the first place in real terms, however unless you change the line in which poverty begins, you will still be able to clam that you decreased poverty. Poverty is not about the money someone is making, but rather how much what they make buys.
I’m in favor of social nets but, again, I dont see compelling evidence that raising minimum wage is anything but a placebo.
So you're leaving the US, considering you're an illegal immigrant here right? I mean, unless you're indigenous it seems pretty illegal for you to claim any right to live here and boot others out. See the issue with saying people are illegal?
"Living on the governments tit" is straight up right-winger bullshit. We pay taxes, why the fuck should the government hoard that money and use it on shit that doesn't benefit the people? That is the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT of a government, to pool resources and skills to better society as a whole.
You think science is bullshit and that higher education should be "creatively" destroyed. How you think that isn't fascism is some serious mental gymnastics.
You could continue, but you know your viewpoint is hard right and you're too cowardly to stick around and defend your bullshit because your fragile fee-fees will be hurt.
"Living on the governments tit" is straight up right-winger bullshit. We pay taxes, why the fuck should the government hoard that money and use it on shit that doesn't benefit the people? That is the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT of a government, to pool resources and skills to better society as a whole.
True on your other points, but here they're saying the money should be given to employees rather than employers. That's not rightwing at all; it's leftwing if anything. I mean it's the farming version of being anti-corporate welfare.
Sure, that had a semblance of socialism and rational thought to it, but the fact that they spin it as a negative and imply that the government shouldn't be funding social welfare is pretty clear in showing that they're too ignorant to actually understand what socialism is.
Ironic, considering that right-wingers more than any other group rely on sucking the governments tit to survive day to day
First, they're not claiming to be socialist. Second, they're criticizing corporate welfare, not social welfare. They support social welfare in the exact same comment. Rich pricks sucking on the government's tit and providing nothing to society is a bad thing, or at least the leftwing position considers it to be a bad thing. Are you even reading what they wrote?
First, I never said they were a socialist. Pretty clear they aren't, not sure where you're going with that. Second, they're criticizing the government using tax dollars to ensure we have functional agriculture. Cutting funding for agriculture and giving the funding to corporations instead is literally being carried out by the regime, as shown in project 2025 and with doge cuts.
But sure, we can just assume it's a coincidence that they agree with the fascists on that.
Free open borders doesn’t work unless everyone, literally everyone is working on the same legal framework . This could be good long term project for humanity but as it stands right now now, national divisions matter. You can’t have people that weren’t born here overwhelming our nation and getting aid when our own people are suffering economic hardship. The problem with people like you is that you want everything now, and that’s not possible except through extreme violence and often ends up not solving the problems. I would love to be able to remake the system from the top down, but we know that never ends right.
I don’t think science is bullshit, I think non reroducible experiments are not science. I love science, but the social sciences in the present exist in the same stage of development as medicine was in the Middle Ages. This is a provable fact. Universities need to be centers of knowledge again and not job training centers.
Like someone pointed out, I said corporations are living off the government tit, that’s a fact. I would prefer if the tit was feeding us instead. I think I made it very clear that I’m pro social safety nets.
Our nation is not overwhelmed with immigrants stealing our jobs and resources, as much as fox news has convinced you that is the case. It's in fact fascists and capitalists doing that, not that I expect you understand the difference between the working class and capiltalist class.The problem with you people, to use your phrasing, is you think there are MS13 members on every block shooting Americans and taking their paychecks, but "the left" is covering it up.
You keep saying there are studies and provable facts showing science is fake. Let's see it, show us your peer reviewed sources showing us how fake science is.
You did not say corporations. You said farms. Should I quote it back to you? Here: "But farms are already inefficient, corrupt, and mismanaged and also living on the government tits". No coincidence that the Trump regime says the same shit and is cutting agriculture funding and instead lining billionaire pockets, which brings us back to point one. Though I'd imagine you think the leftist immigrants are also the CEOs
I don’t think that, but I do know that if 1 singe American is having a hard time while we are helping 1 illegal immigrant, then we are doing something wrong and it will breed resentment.
You are a bad faith argumenter. I’ve never said science is fake, I’ve said that social science (though it also happens in the natural sciences to a lesser degree) is not really science, not with any degree of certainty as physics etc. here’s a little summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis?wprov=sfti1
but searching in Google Scholar or JSTOR will bring up many many studies about the problem. So when people say “the science backs this” using a social science study that is not replicable, it takes two brain cells to realize that no, there is no science backing such a claim.
Yes I also meant farms which are also very often corporations. And that’s what I said in my very first comment, the Trump administration says a lot of things that are right (they say a lot more that are wrong but they are not wrong about everything ), but they use it to serve their interests instead of actually solving the problems. Farmers are the biggest enemies of any of the solutions to many of the problems in America, we should nationalize the whole industry at this point because it cannot exist without government subsidies and yet they use the money to lobby against environmental and immigration reforms. They like the status quo. But if you don’t want to nationalize them we can stop subsidizing them and simply subsidize their wages directly in such a way that they can pay living wages instead of relying on immigrant labor.
But again you are arguing in bad faith and I do not think that you have any coherent ideology that isn’t “oppose everything the other guys do”.
See, the problem is that you think immigrants don't deserve basic human dignity, while we do. I don't care if someone is born in Missouri or Mexico City; they both deserve guaranteed access to basic services, and we as a country are more than wealthy enough to provide it.
You think punishing immigrants will fix issues caused by capitalists somehow, don't worry about it they deserve it anyways
Whatever sciences you dislike (you keep saying social sciences, which I assume is a dogwhistle for anything you consider woke as you won't give specifics) are fake, but you can't prove it, just google it bro, you'll find the truth
You believe the fascist regime is doing a lot of things right
But it's us leftists that argue in bad faith and have no ideology, and are wrong for opposing things like fascism.
We need to stop unfettered immigration, so closing the borders is great, locking up and kicking out immigrants who have committed legal offenses is good, and we should expedite that process but we shouldn’t be kidnapping or profiling people.
This is literally what modern fascism is made of. It always starts with "expediting the process" and "immigrants who committed legal offenses," but these terms are so malleable that you will relatively soon end up at the kidnapping and profiling stage. And let's not get into how so-called "unfettered immigration" (which is actually pretty fettered when you look at the process) harms exactly nobody if handled properly, as many examples (e.g. Germany) show.
but also much less regulation because most of it is actually designed to protect the incumbent corporations.
What kind of regulation do you want gone?
Justifying things as “scientific” when the science is social science and the results are not reproducible is intellectually dishonest, and is rampant in discourse about various topics nowadays.
Social science is science and underpins many aspects of modern society such as urban design. Do you have an example of this in action?
181 Comments
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 235 pts · 326d
The enlightened centrism is strong in this one. No, the US don't have a conflict of left vs. right. The conflict is between the right and everyone else. And most of the right are just rubes who think they being part of some kind of movement but in reality are just being fleeced by a bunch of grifters
halvar@lemy.lol · 46 pts · 326d
I'd say the curve it's much flatter on the left side. As in right side is shouting tankie, meanwhile there are like 2 tankies and the right wants to set the whole barn on fire to get them both.
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 5 pts · 324d
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 26 pts · 326d
Not just the right vs. everyone else, the right vs. everyone. The right is also fighting itself.
maus@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 326d
The left is also fighting itself. Literally the comment chains in this post are prime examples.
People who probably align with the majority of the stances, tearing each other down with bad faith arguments, grandstanding over the remaining things they disagree on.
"Perfect is the enemy of good."
I might not politically align with the average .ml user, but my views are a hell of a lot closer aligned with them than MAGAt views.
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 326d
The left largely fights by arguing, which can lead to better ideas if people are open to listen. That isn't always the case, but it's a possibility. The right is fighting with homicide.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 7 pts · 325d
Liberals perceive criticism for enabling the right and opposing the left at every opportunity as left in-fighting.
The left identifies the liberals as part of the right.
null@lemmy.nullspace.lol · 0 pts · 325d
Right of what?
Krono@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 326d
Where is the left fighting itself? I only see leftists fighting liberals in the comments.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 324d
Same
Xanthobilly@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 326d
Grifters? They’re hellbent on christofascism.
No_Eponym@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 326d
And if they suffer under that Christofacist regime they helped bring about? That is righteous and holy suffering, and their reward will be eternal in Heaven.
Voting against their interest? No, they are voting in their eternal interests, so what does it matter if they endure poverty, violence, sickness, famine and the destruction of our biome in this life? 'Tis but a moment before the beauty they have earned in the Here After brother!
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 11 pts · 326d
also the usa has never had a true left to begin with, being the most right wing of the western countries should be telling.its most like right on right-lite violence/rhetoric
Katana314@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 326d
Perfect example of this was Jimmy Kimmel. He openly said that shooting a commentator was a horrible thing, and tried to call for moderation. MAGA declared that wasn’t enough, and ordered him fired.
They have specified that if you’re not with them, you’re against them.
Canconda@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 325d
Kimmel got fired for pointing the spotlight back at Trump and Epstein. Had nothing to do with Kirk.
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 326d
GreenShimada@lemmy.world · -8 pts · 326d
Doesn't directly bringing up "enlightened centrism" (I assume sarcastically) from a non-right position indicate disdain for centrism? That would be a conflict between whatever you are and both centrists (for not being where you are - right of you, but to them, still left of the Right) and the Right.
Also, if you're aware of the Three Percenters and their claim that only 3% of colonial America supported the revolution, it means that even if they're off by a factor of 10, with 30% for the revolution, and 30% against, it leaves 40%, a plurality of people, who have the sentiment from this meme where they just want to be left alone and not forced against their will into a conflict that indroduces instability and violence to their lives.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 326d
"Enlightened centrism" is not the same as centrism and yes that label is meant to be sarcastic. There are basically two kinds of enlightened centrists. One are right-wingers who want to avoid the social stigma of being far right. The other one are people who close their eyes to the blatant attempt by the right wing to destroy democracy and pretend everything is normal. That's what basically the corporate media are doing.
GreenShimada@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 326d
OK, so just to recap:
You start off by deriding anyone that isn't carrying the same label as you as either evil or stupid.
Immediately and unironically say that it's only the Right vs. everyone else after just saying that it's the Left vs. everyone else because they're either wearing your label or they're Secret Hitler or an idiot.
Double down and imagine that everyone actually has secret but strong political feelings and simply are confused or too chicken shit to reveal them, but that all the secret opinions of average people are not just mildly conservative, but actually full-on far-right?
My friend, I'm not sure you understand how many people don't spend 18 hours a day online reading political news. Because that's exactly how you end up alienating normal people who are all out of fucks to give about politics, and fracturing opposition to fascism like you're doing here. You're not helping anyone but the fascists by calling the people stuck in the middle fascists for just trying to live their lives.
Case in point, this is a shitpost comm and you're too wrapped up in your self-labeling to read the room and the meme that most people don't care about the things you care about. That's the meme, and lesson, that you missed.
Polls are usually pretty consistent in that the majority of people (usually between about 65% to sometimes up to 80%): 1) Don't actually care about politics at all, which is a big part of why we have a representative democracy in the first place, 2) Certainly don't keep up with political news or even the actual news that much, 3) Are so self-absorbed and wrapped up in their own affairs that until the rapid disintegration of the nation and Constitution affects them specifically, they won't even notice because they have a job and kids and a universe of other shit to be doing so they want the status quo always, whatever that was.
Which is all supported in depth by game theory studies about what it takes to get people out in the streets. Which you clearly can't be bothered to think about because we're all secret nazis and idiots you wouldn't associate with in the streets, right?
You're taking the same bait that Mandella fought against people taking in South Africa. Apartheid specialized in turning everyone who wasn't white against each other. Fracturing opposition was how a small minority stayed in power for generations.
Which is exactly how the GOP managed to work out Red Stating and Gerrymander me and my formerly solid blue district into a solid red district. That's not on me. That's on you for fracturing opposition to fascism, like you're happily doing here, because all the rest of us aren't "pure" enough - because most people are either secret Nazis or idiots, right? I get the same shit from the GOP, but they actually accomplish the shit they set out to do, so at least I have something to react against.
For the people who not only do care about politics, but also hate every bit of it and just want people to shut the fuck up and do rational policy stuff without egos like big boys and girls, it's cringe to see shit like "Hur durr, all Centrists are just closeted Nazis!" because it undoes coalition; it accomplishes exactly what fascists love to see - infighting among their opposition. You give them power like this, with uninformed blanket statements that alienate people who actually ARE fighting these people and now know that you can't be counted on as an ally. But that's fine, I know for sure that I 100% can not count on the Left to accomplish a damn thing because y'all are too enthralled with the Old Money Traditional Branding BS the Dems offer you so they can once again use you up to trot out Candidate Dickbag and get you genuinely thinking "yeah, this time, they're gonna win!" before they lose again and steal your money and time and energy.
But I expect you stopped reading 4 words in and said to yourself "yeah, secret Nazi I think. Or idiot. Either way, I have to hate that one, too" and turned away an ally once again.
Edit: Downvote all you want - look at exactly what the Democrats are doing to the Left right now. This is not an appeal to centrism - this is a party appeal to stay in power because they've fucked themselves.
chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 326d
Letter from Birmingham Jail, MLK Jr.
Tippy@sh.itjust.works · 158 pts · 326d
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 326d
Can I be a leftist without being a tankie then?
Tippy@sh.itjust.works · 38 pts · 326d
Yes? You do realize tankies are a minority group and that in many nations "leftist" is just a normal political position?
I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to say here
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 3 pts · 326d
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 325d
The vast majority of communists globally are "tankies". I know that Westerners don't consider non-westerners to be "real" though
Juice@midwest.social · 3 pts · 325d
Define tankie? What is this based on?
Tippy@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 325d
Good thing the political spectrum left of center is far more nuanced than just being communism, then.
Also, not going to get into a debate about whether certain people should be considered people or whatever you're baiting, sounds like fascism to me.
Juice@midwest.social · 1 pts · 325d
I disagree that left of center is more nuanced than communism. Most communists historically reject all forms of sectarianism, although we can fall into it anyway for a lot of reasons. I have love and admiration for many progressive liberals, and leftists that are not communists (commies are often not the most left faction, leninists tend to be more center left.) When you get to this level of analysis though, left right and center stop being useful and you have to dig into actual issues and political action.
But many progressive liberals are wrongheaded or idealist and dualist, which is not conducive to nuance. But also people are often much more deep and full of insight than their politics suggest
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml · -1 pts · 325d
"thinking that non-westerners are people sounds like fascism to me. I'm a leftist by the way"
Tippy@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 325d
All people are people, regardless of where they live. Borders are just another way for capitalists to fuel the class war. Keep malding that I'm not a tankie 🤙
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml · -1 pts · 325d
Incoherent.
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world · -14 pts · 326d
To me it looks like you're trying to paint everyone who's not a Nazi or a tankie as an 'enlightened centrist'.
Tippy@sh.itjust.works · 25 pts · 326d
🤷 try glasses
TheMinister@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 326d
Try anarchism. Goes down smooth
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 325d
i've known too many people who went anarchist > ancap > asshole > sovcit. I'm sure it works well for you, but i feel like it's playing with
fireblack tar heroinTheMinister@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 325d
Say what. No one I know has ever gone down that route. Anarchism is the furthest reach from ancap or sovcit.
I guess I and my friends have the antidote: read some actual theory. You couldn’t possibly agree with theory then go ancap. Sounds like you’re describing YouTube anarchists.
Juice@midwest.social · 4 pts · 325d
Yes, you can even be a communist without being a tankie.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 325d
tankie is, as i understand it, a combination of authoritarianism, leftism, and some weird nostalgia for the soviet union i'm not entirely sure i've just been casually trying to pick stuff up.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 325d
That's more likely to be Nationalist Bolshevism. The correct term is should be 'NazBol' and they're nationalistic right wingers.
Keep in mind some users on Lemmy use the term 'tankie' to include anyone with opposition to capitalism and will argue to include anyone who is pro-palestinian or even anti-war ironically.
But those users just so happen to be critics of the Nuremburg Trial verdicts, so their opinions matter less than the NazBols to begin with.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 325d
i remember talking about the nuremburg trials with some... now that i think about of it most of them were lawyer friends, and i only have basic education about the nuremburg trials. a few of them have studied them in depth, and now that i think about it the only criticism i ever heard about the verdict was, if you'll allow me to paraphrase, "you're going to spend your whole life disappointed if you keep expecting everything to be perfect".
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 325d
Here I distinctly recall a user calling the execution of Julius Streicher an inhumane act and that we lost our humanity executing unrepentant Nazis.
So that's fun.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 325d
so i'm very much not a fan of the death penalty as i've seen the criminal punishment system fuck up. a lot. they've gotta be above reproach if we can trust them with literal power over life and death.
at the same time, unrepentant Nazi. if it had been up to me, I'd've wanted to give him the ol' Robert-François Damiens. first: people are allowed contradictions. second: sometimes the brutality is part of the point. hold the unrepentant nazis up for generations as villains. don't allow them to be buried in normal cemeteries. Take their ashes and spread them around the country to be on permanent display in each and every post office as an example of why you don't fuck with the postmaster. teach your kids "you end up being one of those damn nazis i'll put you in the community ash jar myself". we really could have done better.
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 325d
Not now that the term has expanded to mean everything to the left of Kamala Harris.
kadaverin0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 325d
YourMomsTrashman@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 326d
I'm too uneducated on politics (read: stupid) to even know what left and right means. Where do I land
Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de · 9 pts · 325d
Well they are slightly vague terms, so please don't feel stupid. A shocking amount of people who think they know, don't know.
Left wing politics are generally about a rejection of hierarchy of people. Consequently, they tend to be interested in an international community because we are all the same and deserve the same. As freedom is something that everyone wants for themselves, the left tend to be in favor of an equally free community, e.g. freedom to love.
Right wing politica are generally about hierarchy of people. But not because the hierarchy is necessarily the point, but it tend to be in favor of maintaining the current state, Which just happens to be hierarchical. And usually everything get viewed from a hierarchical pov. E.g. nationalism is a hierarchical view of country and people, your country and its people above other country and their people.
Obviously you could point at the historical stance of us republicans that they want a small government and argue that a small government creates less of 2 class citizens, the law markers and the citizens. But the left would point out that a small government just enables the powerful people to exploit the weak people and create more 2 class citizens.
On the left: The strong hierarchy in the previous attempts of "communism" is the reason why some people will say that true communism was never tried. Other will argue that you need a little bit of authority to run a communustic state.
So the whole thing is a little more complex than "freedom" and "restrictions" and who supports what "restrictions" when.
Juice@midwest.social · 5 pts · 325d
Most people have confused politics. If you want to land somewhere you need to educate yourself and develop principles so that instead of not knowing where you'll land, you'll know exactly where you stand
mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 326d
Right: in favor of privately owned means of production.
Left: in favor of publicly owned means of production.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 325d
might need to back up a little. personal, private, and public ownership are different things in one of the areas i worked in. same distinction? personal property is still legal, just privately held businesses not so much. brain's fuzzy, am i remembering right?
mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 325d
Firstly, this concept only applies to means of production, as in the stuff that is used to produce stuff which could be sold. So e. g. a sewing machine.
Without getting into the weeds:
a. Personal: You own and operate the sewing machine, you pay for the resources consumed and own the item produced. (Good)
b. Private: You own the sewing machine but someone else operates it. You pay the resources consumed, the laborer a previously agreed upon amount and own the item they produced. (bad)
c. Public: the public owns the sewing machine and pays for the resources consumed. The laborer is paid the value of their work. That is, the value of the item produced minus the value of the resources consumed. (Very good)
How "the public" and "the value" are determined is the source of leftist infighting (anarchists vs marxist-leninist). But since both agree that private ownership needs to be abolished the call is for leftist unity to stand together against the people that currently own the means of production privately (the bourgeoisie) and exploit those that have to sell their laborforce in order to survive (the proletariat).
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 325d
thanks for the refresher! i have worked in too many similar fields with bullshit jargon where they have basically made homophones antonyms just to fuck with anyone who decides to get uppity and do anything cross-discipline so now my brain is:
it's one of those "i know i learned this somewhere, and i'll remember in 3 days i'm sure!" things so thanks for helping a fellow out.
mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 325d
No issue, here is a good intro to Marxism if you want it https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm
jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk · -33 pts · 326d
Six strawmen in a single post! Well done, that must be some kind of record!
Tippy@sh.itjust.works · 30 pts · 326d
Reeeeeeeeeee I spouted centrist nonsense in a leftist space and I'm getting ratio'd reeeeeee
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social · 4 pts · 326d
The ratio is not enough.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 326d
It is clever, you see, that any disagreement must be done online, therefore reinforcing the premise of the meme.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmynsfw.com · 109 pts · 326d
This is bullshit
Trying to pretend that there's a concerted far-left effort to create civil war in 'Murica is patently absurd
Sure, there may be a handful of nutters, but they pale in comparison to the number of far-right who are actively lusting for the blood of the people they hate and fear
theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world · 61 pts · 326d
It also tries to downplay political division "in real life". In real life, the American president is a fascist serial-rapist pedophile directing a masked police force to deport legal residents without due process, illegally deploying the national guard against citizens, and grifting shitcoins and accepting bribes in plain sight.
Blackout@fedia.io · 21 pts · 326d
Yeah fuck this post. The only ones driving it are the far-right. You'd have to be ignorant to be blaming liberals for the crap going on today.
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 0 pts · 326d
tidderuuf@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 326d
Wasn't there a movement to have the western states cecede after the last 2 Trump wins?
Glide@lemmy.ca · -4 pts · 326d
Idk man, I spent altogether too much time over in .ml, and now my view on what is "far left" has changed quite drastically. And that group certainly seems hell bent on starting a civil war.
There are absolutely far more MAGAs, but the tankies are, unfortunately, still far left.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmynsfw.com · 5 pts · 326d
If you think lemmy is immune to outside agitators, then you're kidding yourself
I'm certain that there are interested groups trying to whip up a few lunatics so that "the left" can be pitted against the right, and blamed for violence, but there's no doubt that there's a far larger audience of people in the US who are eager to lean into fascism and spill blood when they are encouraged
astutemural@midwest.social · 4 pts · 326d
Bruh there's like a triple-digit number of tankies in all of North America lmao. Meanwhile half of the USA is MAGA. If you need to visualize this, go look for literally any act of violence motivated by far-left beliefs. There's what, like two in the last 30 years? Claiming any sort of equivalence between MAGA and the left is just false.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 2 pts · 325d
Who over at .ml is trying to start a civil war?
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 84 pts · 326d
Uh... fucking cope hard. The Nazis won't care about your enlightened centrism when they arrest you for being brown and/or the wrong kind of white.
kadaverin0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 325d
surph_ninja@lemmy.world · 44 pts · 325d
Anyone who stands against genocide and opposes war has been lumped in with “tankie” for a long while now. That centrist is empowering the Nazis.
grumpusbumpus@lemmy.world · 25 pts · 325d
Thank you.
Because being a passive centrist while the world slides towards authoritarianism, global conflict, and environmental holocaust is not morally acceptable.
You don't have to be a Tankie to want to fight these fascist fucks and their suicidal agenda.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 325d
Well if you say anything like ‘we shouldn’t give weapons to Nazis,’ you’re going to be labeled a tankie, too.
didnt1able@sh.itjust.works · -8 pts · 325d
I mean a lot of people don't want to have their way of life userped by these radical idiots. One side is calling for a civil war and the other side is effectively campaigning for concentration camps. Normal people don't want to engage with either brand of insanity. They just want to go to work and go home, spend time with their family.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 325d
The left is not calling for a Civil War. They’re demanding basic human rights for everyone, and the capitalists have made it clear they’d rather kill everyone.
If you feel equally threatened by the left and the right, it’s because you support fascism. You just prefer a lighter flavor of it that you benefit from.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 325d
"Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
grumpusbumpus@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 325d
But sometimes history comes along and says "too bad." There is no historical precedent for fascism or extreme wealth inequality being corrected by electoral politics.
If you're able to comfortably sit on the fence, recognize two facts: One, that's a position of entitlement (Plenty of people are already having their lives destroyed by what's happening). Two, being passive is choosing to allow authoritarianism to win.
To reiterate, I'm not a Tankie. I don't whitewash the heinous history of revolutions, upheaval, and failed government systems. And I am positive that I'm screaming into the void. In every historical example I've studied, the comfortable middle class eventually sides with elite authority and not the peasants. And the peasants always lose. But the alternative is too awful to surrender to. Centralized techno-fascism and eventual catastrophic conflict with China are what's in-store.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 325d
I don’t believe that’s true. I’m not aware of any revolution the peasants lost.
Star@sh.itjust.works · -2 pts · 325d
Someone misinterpreted the post.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 325d
Another centrist who thinks the left just doesn’t get it.
missfrizzle@discuss.tchncs.de · 38 pts · 326d
if you were a centrist before 2020, and you still are in 2025, then you've moved Right, since the Overton window shifted Right.
if you kept your principles you're now Left. that's how the window works.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 35 pts · 326d
tankies are such a small niche group, i dont think theres enough of them to have a significant on policy, unlike right wingers have real numbers on thier hands.
Highlandcow@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 325d
Isn't there a difference between the right and the far right though
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 4 pts · 325d
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 325d
The right is sill around. They just have a 'D' next to their name.
finitebanjo@piefed.world · -1 pts · 325d
Obi@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 325d
I don't think any of this happened last time the democrats were in charge? Or any other time before that. Seen from Europe, democrats are definitely right of center, just less so than republicans.
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 2 pts · 325d
Obi@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 325d
All I'm saying is everything is further to the right in the US. These things you listed aren't even partisan issues here, they're just normal things. But I see you're just downvoting and arguing so I'll be on way cheers.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social · 2 pts · 324d
That's what the democratic socialists and social democrats want, sure.
The rest of the Democrats call them radicals and Hakeem Jeffries just told them to leave the party.
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 1 pts · 324d
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social · 0 pts · 324d
We'll leave aside that those policies don't line up as well with your initial statement as we're pretending because that still leaves us at Jeffries telling everyone not a neoliberal to fuck off.
Him and the other 94 Democratic reps that voted to honor a Nazi propagandist don't seem to have received the memo that's there's plenty of general policy to align on.
Gold_E_Lox@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 325d
the one's who do the bad shit and the one's who support it. sure if thats enough difference for you ig
Juice@midwest.social · 1 pts · 325d
In many cases, I think so. People everywhere get their morality from culture. Since many people are raised conservative, and risk damaging their social connection in their community by straying from conservative values, people can be very protective of certain social conventions and perspectives, out of fear of social isolation or even alienating themselves from their actual nature in order to adhere to social convention.
Its an understatement to say that the far right/fascism weaponizes this fact. But many many conservatives are workers which means that they share lived exploitation with the rest of us. Capitalism is the force that divides the working class, and when we participate in divisive/sectarian tendencies then whatever ideology we claim, leftist or whatever, then we are carrying water for the billionaire class.
Its not always that simple though. Many people experience real trauma by having conservative values thrust upon them. Objective morality is a plague, but so is dualism. We need to think completely differently and work with others to navigate these dynamics
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 0 pts · 325d
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social · 3 pts · 324d
Lol
The tankies engaged in hypercapitalism
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 2 pts · 324d
frostedtrailblazer@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 325d
You’re not wrong. Many of them are exposed to propaganda on TikTok and it is a growing issue. Espionage is being done to divide the left and consolidate the right. Just because it’s not as noticeable as the propaganda from the right doesn’t mean that it’s not having subtle effects. If it gets people to disengage or not look out for their best interests then it is effective. All this to say, there is a way to bring about positive change and that has to do with being involved locally.
Nalivai@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 325d
Thanks for the grasroots money, this small group is actually very loud. The loudest of them all. They maintain the illusion that communism is when you like Russia, and that's their entire purpose
flying_sheep@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 325d
The fuck are you babbling
Nalivai@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 324d
You know exactly what I'm talking about, don't be all shy about it now
flying_sheep@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 324d
I just joined the devs’ instance for technical support reasons, not ideological ones. I'm certainly not a tankie, gross.
So no, I still don't know what you mean with that “money”.
Nalivai@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 323d
For examle, Russia spends enormous amount of money on foreign propaganda, both internaly and externally. That money.
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml · 32 pts · 325d
Imagine looking at the current state of the USA and saying "communists are the problem!"
HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 27 pts · 326d
!enlightenedcentrism@lemmy.world
TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 326d
If you think the next US civil war will be fought between Nazis and Marxist-Leninists, you don't understand American politics very well. The US in 2025 isn't Stalingrad in 1942.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 2 pts · 326d
Nitpick: They're Marxist-Leninists, not Marxism-Leninists.
blarth@thelemmy.club · 25 pts · 326d
https://imgur.com/gallery/cmon-do-civil-war-dzKQtkt
But also
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 326d
The very model of the modern major liberal.
passepartout@feddit.org · 18 pts · 326d
This can be attributed to a method of gaining and maintaining political power called divide and conquer. Poisoning the discourse with targeted manipulation in (social) media, while treating politics as kind of bizarre and grievous reality TV show, where everyone is trying to throw the biggest pile of verbal shit on the other.
devolution@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 326d
It's not a bell curve. It's a trumpet headed to the right.
Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social · 14 pts · 326d
Wait does bellend mean at the end of a bell curve?
SlacksMcTavish@lemmy.ml · 11 pts · 326d
Bellend means penis tip cos it looks kind of like a bell
Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social · 4 pts · 326d
I would have never guessed
jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 326d
Double entendre.
DmMacniel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 326d
No its what german dogs do.
BlueCanoe@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 326d
Ideological polarization is actually pretty low among average Americans. It’s mostly felt among the highly politically engaged and politicians. So to that extent, this image seems accurate.
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 8 pts · 326d
Juice@midwest.social · 6 pts · 325d
The ACP is the only american so-called communist org that supports Trump, and virtually every other segment of the serious organized left considers them a fascist org. Don't buy into fascist framing of issues or you are working for the fascists when you spread them
finitebanjo@piefed.world · -1 pts · 325d
Juice@midwest.social · 3 pts · 325d
That is a total and complete lie. DSA, the largest socialist org in the USA in 100 years is unwaveringly against us imperialism and capitalism, and Trump. There are virtually no tankies in DSA, even the most ml aligned factions in DSA are not "tankies" as you try to slander.
Democratic socialism is opposed to imperialism and capitalism, none too fond of China or Russia (though I'm sure if you bad faith make certain generalizations you could make illogical connections to suit your purpose), virulently anti Trump and "tankies" when they pop up in our org usually become disengaged ineffective sectarian hyper minorities, though they rarely pop up at all.
In fact if you aren't opposed to US imperialism, you are on the right wing, and have no right to speak on it. Do you think the genocide in Palestine is a left wing position? Be serious
finitebanjo@piefed.world · -1 pts · 325d
Juice@midwest.social · 1 pts · 325d
I'm not defending tankies, I'm disagreeing with your extremely narrow categories, that would define 90% of non tankie leftists as tankies.
I'm not making a strawman when I say that support for us imperialism is support for the Palestinian genocide. That's just like common knowledge at this point.
Flattening Sanders entire political career, which started out with him organizing as a socialist, into a narrow category is as dishonest as doing the same with the history of the USSR. There is not much worth defending about the Stalinist bureaucracy that the USSR became. Even throwing the USSR and China in the same bucket when referring to Sanders is a historical revision, since Sanders entire political life began after the Sino/Soviet split. However information about the atrocities of Stalin came from Kruschev. Trotskyists and anti-authoritarian communists, like CLR James, could see that much was wrong with the USSR, but the truth wasn't revealed until the 60s. Other great american communist organizers like James Cannon mistakenly cooperated with the Comintern, who systematically destroyed the movements in the USA that got us our new deal. Cannon and many others were eventually purged from the american socialist movement, turning it into yet another husk of the workers movement under the auspices of the "communist international."
After the Vietnam war, the USA and China both supported the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese communists, who were supported by the USSR. Are you a supporter of the USA's war in Viet Nam? Or the Khmer Rouge? I certainly hope not!
Dealing with reality isn't a strawman, unless you're an idealist. I hope you aren't waiting for the good capitalists to save us from our current situation, because our version of capitalism is irredeemable. We are in the late stage, which only means that we are part of the global financialized economy. An economy that enslaves the third world, and huge swaths of the first world, in order to keep its ruling classes.
If you are in favor of having a ruling class, which would still exist under social democracy, then IMO your position is closer to trumps than any leftist. And I work with thousands of leftists all over the world. Look at how European social democracies are also being taken over by fascist parties. It is not a realistic defense against fascism.
Trumps whole strategy, which is actually the strategy of the global tech elite, is to crash the US economy to force an asset bubble (recession) onto the EU. At which point, anti-immigrant fascistic parties will mobilize their message to overturn the "good capitalist" social democratic reforms and allow capitalist destruction of the welfare state.
Social democracy is falling apart in real time, and I think you can't see it because you have no theory of change. You see things categorically rather than dynamically, which removes you from actual conditions. As much as I'd like to disabuse you of those notions, you seem pretty committed to your narrow idealist views, which is a shame as we could use more spicy fighters on our side against Trump, and less performative resistance that only contributes to mass confusion.
prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 325d
I think the thing you’re asserting isn’t what the person you’re responding to is saying.
Tankies bad, we’re talking about tankies not leftists.
Juice@midwest.social · 3 pts · 325d
The way finitebanjo defines it though, as anyone who rightly opposes US imperialism as being a tankie, is what I'm arguing against. I'm arguing against conveniently abstracted generalization of messy histories that support a very very narrow view, which defines most leftists as "evil tankies."
I'm arguing against any views, coming from tankies or progressive liberals, that statically categorize historical and political relations, which are inherently dynamic and change over time. I'm arguing against sacrificing deep understanding at the altar of some slanderous and IMO dangerous mischaracterization of most leftists.
I think its possible that you, as someone who seems to feel comfortable using the term tankie, don't understand the way it warps actual political discourse away from radical but sometimes correct positions, and toward ineffectual online camps. I'm aware of the kind of weird super online left that takes up their own ignorant campist positions and defends them with like memes. Sometimes these people even crop up in actual organizing and can wreak havok if they get control, I can think of a few examples of real life "tankies" causing great harm to our movements. But it is very rare.
In fact if you ever meet like a "Stalinist" or as you might call them, "tankie", from a third world country, they are completely unlike the white western online tankie that you're referring to. They have certain questionable views which the synthetic online tankies try to copy, but their practical activity, their organizing work, is incredibly serious, well intentioned, effective and engages actual exploited people in a revolutionary way.
But the way Tankie gets defined sometimes, it seems like anyone who reads and understands Lenin is a trump supporter, which is totally wrong, but exactly how I would describe finitebanjo's polemics. This would put people like Paulo Friere in the category of tankie because he has certain third worldist sensibilites despite being probably the greatest humanist theorist since Marx himself. Considering that this is an author and educator often taught in even christian seminary schools, as well as many secular advanced degree programs, and also studied seriously by every left tendency, the definition of tankie often completely misses the mark.
Maybe I am mis-stating that point a little, I don't know what is in peoples hearts when they use the term. But as someone who is definitely active on the communist left and not a tankie, even anti-tankie peeps don't call me that, that is how it looks to me. The way that I avoid becoming a tankie is by studying, reflecting and applying theory in a practical way. Arguing that I am misunderstanding the situation seems to refute everything that makes me a principled leftist. So I have a hard time with your characterization of my arguments.
Mubelotix@jlai.lu · 4 pts · 326d
And they are both downvoting you haha
Auntievenim@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 326d
There is literally only 1 downvote
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 325d
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 3 pts · 326d
lmao what?
lmao what?
Dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't mean total rule by one dude named proletariat, it means total rule by the people.
TurkishKebab@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 325d
These liberals and their "both-siding" will be the death of us all
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 1 pts · 325d
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · -1 pts · 325d
Weird how they brought a billion farmers out of poverty. I wonder why they would do that if those farmers didn't have any influence.
We certainly don't see that happening in capitalist countries right nextdoor, such as India.
lol you still believe that? Anybody can literally just go to Xinjiang, there's no travel restrictions. Don't you think they would try to keep foreigners from going there and talking to people if they were committing a genocide?
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 3 pts · 325d
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · -1 pts · 325d
Ah yes, if you oppose capitalism too much, you just start hating minorities. That's just horseshoe theory. They wouldn't teach it in schools if it wasn't true.
Definitely don't come to China, Vietnam, or Cuba and check for yourself, just trust your government.
finitebanjo@piefed.world · 1 pts · 325d
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 0 pts · 325d
Why? Vietnam is beautiful, experiencing towns built around bikes instead of cars and being able to buy good meal for 1.20 USD is good for your soul. China is the most developed country in the world right now, and I'm planning to go back in a month or so. I haven't been, but I hear Cuba has lovely beaches and rum.
Were you under the impression these places were dangerous?
kadaverin0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 0 pts · 325d
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 0 pts · 325d
Instead of listening to anticommunists from a century ago, why don't we compare what communists have done in China over 50 years to their neighbor, India? One of those countries exports food for a profit while the children of the laborers who picked that food suffer from malnutrition. Or why don't we look at life expectancy in Cuba today and before the revolution. You can even compare Cuba to their capitalist ruled neighbors.
To quote Michael Parenti:
Jinarched@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 326d
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv9rC69VMOI
QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 326d
it is very clear you don't live in a small southern county
umbrella@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 326d
davel@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 259d
TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip · -3 pts · 326d
Maybe if you mean this as the left vs the left… sure.
FridaySteve@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 326d
People need something else to focus on. When everything is politics then politics is everything and it's stupidly difficult to get people interested in doing anything positive.
astutemural@midwest.social · 6 pts · 326d
It's hard to avoid politics when giving kids lunch at school is fucking political for some reason.
There is a group to blame for politicizing everything, and it is disingenuous to blame 'people' in general instead of that group in particular.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 6 pts · 326d
I mean, everything is politics whether anybody likes it or not, because politics is just what you get when you have a hierarchical power structure.
FridaySteve@lemmy.world · -6 pts · 326d
And this is what I mean. Everything is very much not politics but if you politicize everything then by definition it becomes so. People need to stop doing that.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 6 pts · 326d
What's an example of something that's not politics but is politicized?
FridaySteve@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 326d
You've already asserted that there are no valid answers to that question. Why did you bother asking?
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 6 pts · 326d
Because either you'll cite a good example and prove me wrong, or you'll cite a bad example and confirm I'm right. While I doubt you'll be convinced in the latter case, someone reading this exchange might be, so there's value to be had in either case.
FridaySteve@lemmy.world · -6 pts · 326d
You've already asserted that everything is politics whether I like it or not, including this conversation, and since I don't get involved in "prove me wrong" political conversations on the internet I'll just exit.
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 325d
So you're wrong but too arrogant to admit it
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca · -4 pts · 326d
When I have centrist views about anything (not just politics but more trivial matters like pop culture), I'm reluctant to share them online because extremists on both sides interpret you as an extremist on the opposing side
BaroqueInMind@piefed.social · 42 pts · 326d
Centrist views such as? grabs popcorn
No seriously, what do you happen to be sitting on the fence about?
Klear@quokk.au · 15 pts · 326d
I don't care from which side to peel banana
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 7 pts · 326d
This will be fun to watch.
iii@mander.xyz · 0 pts · 325d
Preferring discourse over violence
BaroqueInMind@piefed.social · 1 pts · 325d
The difference between the two using the following anecdote explains why I hate what you said: if you ask me politely to go fuck myself, I might or might not comply; if you put a gun to my head and do the same thing, I have no choice but to comply. My point is that violence, including the threat to commit it, works more often than not.
iii@mander.xyz · -1 pts · 325d
If your thinking is very short term. Long term it starts a cycle of increasing violence in which everyone loses.
jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk · -4 pts · 326d
That's still an oversimplification. In reality political opinion varies across a spectrum; it's not just hard left, hard right, or no opinion. My own views for example are a little left of centre with a leaning towards liberty (i.e. away from authoritarian). So of course I get called a nazi by the hard left, and a tankie by the hard right, both of which are utter nonsense.
sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz · 10 pts · 326d
You're not wrong. But in your meme you painted all the people calling for civil war as extremes when for a while it was a pretty average sentiment among the right for decades. They were just doing it more quietly twenty years ago
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 325d
Interesting. Tell me, what's your opinion on the banning of Palestinian Action?
jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk · -1 pts · 259d
I can answer this now we've got some additional information: Male PA activist strikes female PC with a sledge hammer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g1r15eo
PA refused to denounce this individual but instead claimed this was planned, intentional, and will be repeated in future.
Ban = Quite Right.
If it was just property destruction then a ban would probably have been a bit excessive but GBH changes that equation drastically. That PC could have been killed for just doing her job. This is absolutely not acceptable, and PA supporters* need to be ashamed of themselves.
*As distinct from "Palestine supporters". Still nothing wrong with protesting in favour of a misogynistic, homophobic, antidemocratic, murderous cult, although it's beyond me why anyone in the West would want to.
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 259d
So you don't actually "lean away from authoritarian" at all, you just want it to be wielded against your own political enemies.
Ah, so you are, in fact, a genocidal fascist. I suppose it makes sense why you lied then.
jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk · 0 pts · 258d
All societies need rules to function, even whatever tankie paradise you believe you occupy. Break those rules at your peril.
Unless of course you're telling me you live in a society which doesn't sanction anyone at all even if they commit GBH against law enforcement.
Those four terms can be derived directly from observation of Hamas' behaviour. There's no genocidal fascist here.
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 258d
Lol. Yeah, you sound really "anti authoritarian".
No one mentioned Hamas, fascist. You condemned anti-genocide protesters because you consider the target of the genocide to be collectively deserving of extermination.
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works · -6 pts · 326d
Centrism doesn’t mean sitting on a fence. It means most of the time understanding that both sides are right and wrong at the same time, I often see the problem identified correctly but the solution that is prescribed is absolutely incorrect.
Here are some centrist positions.
We need to stop unfettered immigration, so closing the borders is great, locking up and kicking out immigrants who have committed legal offenses is good, and we should expedite that process but we shouldn’t be kidnapping or profiling people. We shouldn’t be giving economic assistance to illegal immigrants. I know it doesn’t happen at the federal level but it does happen at the state level.
Banning guns won’t solve the violence problem, guns don’t kill people people kill people. American violence is caused by inequality and lack of mental healthcare. Solve that instead of taking guns away.
We should have higher taxes, universal healthcare and stronger safety nets but also much less regulation because most of it is actually designed to protect the incumbent corporations. Free the markets as much as possible, but never bail out a single corporation that fails, bail out the employees.
Increasing the minimum wage does nothing.
Instead of relying on underpaid immigrant labor the US should stop giving cash and tax subsidies to farmers and instead directly subsidize their wages by paying the employees directly. This is my middle of the road solution, we should actually consider nationalization of farms. One of the few things where that could work right now because I think nationalization in general leads to terrible mismanagement. But farms are already inefficient, corrupt and mismanaged and also living on the government tits so we might as well.
Justifying things as “scientific” when the science is social science and the results are not reproducible is intellectually dishonest, and is rampant in discourse about various topics nowadays. The academia brought upon themselves the mistrust they have garnered. This is good because universities have become job training centers and they were never meant to be that, so maybe we’re due for a little creative destruction.
I could continue, but I got shit to do.
Soulg@ani.social · 13 pts · 326d
Yeah but the problem with so many right/"centrist" positions is that they're factually incorrect.
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works · -4 pts · 326d
I’m open to changing my mind, but you need proof rather than just saying that I’m incorrect. I have yet to see compelling evidence that raising minimum wage makes any difference at all in the long term. A lot of studies have been made to prove that it doesn’t cause job loss but none that prove that it changes the levels of inequality or pulls people out of poverty in real economic terms.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 3 pts · 326d
Proof: It's literally what the Mexican government did in 2018-2024. Lifted millions of people out of poverty even as the economy mostly remained the same and/or shrunk. See: https://apnews.com/article/poverty-mexico-president-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-social-welfare-c7ec7f184ce8163e84fffa1b9f47aed8
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works · -1 pts · 326d
Right there it says that there are other measures that led to the reduction in poverty. Here’s my thing, if you increase the minimum wage, don’t change the definition or the line at which someone is considered to be living in poverty, and run a census the next day poverty will appear to have been reduced by a lot because everyone is now making the increased minimum wage yay! However if there’s inflation, in a few more months we might be back to where we were in the first place in real terms, however unless you change the line in which poverty begins, you will still be able to clam that you decreased poverty. Poverty is not about the money someone is making, but rather how much what they make buys.
I’m in favor of social nets but, again, I dont see compelling evidence that raising minimum wage is anything but a placebo.
Tippy@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 326d
So you're leaving the US, considering you're an illegal immigrant here right? I mean, unless you're indigenous it seems pretty illegal for you to claim any right to live here and boot others out. See the issue with saying people are illegal?
"Living on the governments tit" is straight up right-winger bullshit. We pay taxes, why the fuck should the government hoard that money and use it on shit that doesn't benefit the people? That is the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT of a government, to pool resources and skills to better society as a whole.
You think science is bullshit and that higher education should be "creatively" destroyed. How you think that isn't fascism is some serious mental gymnastics.
You could continue, but you know your viewpoint is hard right and you're too cowardly to stick around and defend your bullshit because your fragile fee-fees will be hurt.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 3 pts · 326d
True on your other points, but here they're saying the money should be given to employees rather than employers. That's not rightwing at all; it's leftwing if anything. I mean it's the farming version of being anti-corporate welfare.
Tippy@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 326d
Sure, that had a semblance of socialism and rational thought to it, but the fact that they spin it as a negative and imply that the government shouldn't be funding social welfare is pretty clear in showing that they're too ignorant to actually understand what socialism is.
Ironic, considering that right-wingers more than any other group rely on sucking the governments tit to survive day to day
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 2 pts · 326d
First, they're not claiming to be socialist. Second, they're criticizing corporate welfare, not social welfare. They support social welfare in the exact same comment. Rich pricks sucking on the government's tit and providing nothing to society is a bad thing, or at least the leftwing position considers it to be a bad thing. Are you even reading what they wrote?
Tippy@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 326d
First, I never said they were a socialist. Pretty clear they aren't, not sure where you're going with that. Second, they're criticizing the government using tax dollars to ensure we have functional agriculture. Cutting funding for agriculture and giving the funding to corporations instead is literally being carried out by the regime, as shown in project 2025 and with doge cuts.
But sure, we can just assume it's a coincidence that they agree with the fascists on that.
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 326d
Exactly. I think government and corporations exist to generate wealth to benefit society. Right now it exists to benefit corporations.
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works · -3 pts · 326d
Free open borders doesn’t work unless everyone, literally everyone is working on the same legal framework . This could be good long term project for humanity but as it stands right now now, national divisions matter. You can’t have people that weren’t born here overwhelming our nation and getting aid when our own people are suffering economic hardship. The problem with people like you is that you want everything now, and that’s not possible except through extreme violence and often ends up not solving the problems. I would love to be able to remake the system from the top down, but we know that never ends right.
I don’t think science is bullshit, I think non reroducible experiments are not science. I love science, but the social sciences in the present exist in the same stage of development as medicine was in the Middle Ages. This is a provable fact. Universities need to be centers of knowledge again and not job training centers.
Like someone pointed out, I said corporations are living off the government tit, that’s a fact. I would prefer if the tit was feeding us instead. I think I made it very clear that I’m pro social safety nets.
Tippy@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 326d
Our nation is not overwhelmed with immigrants stealing our jobs and resources, as much as fox news has convinced you that is the case. It's in fact fascists and capitalists doing that, not that I expect you understand the difference between the working class and capiltalist class.The problem with you people, to use your phrasing, is you think there are MS13 members on every block shooting Americans and taking their paychecks, but "the left" is covering it up.
You keep saying there are studies and provable facts showing science is fake. Let's see it, show us your peer reviewed sources showing us how fake science is.
You did not say corporations. You said farms. Should I quote it back to you? Here: "But farms are already inefficient, corrupt, and mismanaged and also living on the government tits". No coincidence that the Trump regime says the same shit and is cutting agriculture funding and instead lining billionaire pockets, which brings us back to point one. Though I'd imagine you think the leftist immigrants are also the CEOs
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works · -2 pts · 326d
I don’t think that, but I do know that if 1 singe American is having a hard time while we are helping 1 illegal immigrant, then we are doing something wrong and it will breed resentment.
You are a bad faith argumenter. I’ve never said science is fake, I’ve said that social science (though it also happens in the natural sciences to a lesser degree) is not really science, not with any degree of certainty as physics etc. here’s a little summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis?wprov=sfti1
but searching in Google Scholar or JSTOR will bring up many many studies about the problem. So when people say “the science backs this” using a social science study that is not replicable, it takes two brain cells to realize that no, there is no science backing such a claim.
But again you are arguing in bad faith and I do not think that you have any coherent ideology that isn’t “oppose everything the other guys do”.
astutemural@midwest.social · 3 pts · 326d
See, the problem is that you think immigrants don't deserve basic human dignity, while we do. I don't care if someone is born in Missouri or Mexico City; they both deserve guaranteed access to basic services, and we as a country are more than wealthy enough to provide it.
Tippy@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 326d
So to sum up:
You think punishing immigrants will fix issues caused by capitalists somehow, don't worry about it they deserve it anyways
Whatever sciences you dislike (you keep saying social sciences, which I assume is a dogwhistle for anything you consider woke as you won't give specifics) are fake, but you can't prove it, just google it bro, you'll find the truth
You believe the fascist regime is doing a lot of things right
But it's us leftists that argue in bad faith and have no ideology, and are wrong for opposing things like fascism.
Thanks for playing.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 7 pts · 326d
This is literally what modern fascism is made of. It always starts with "expediting the process" and "immigrants who committed legal offenses," but these terms are so malleable that you will relatively soon end up at the kidnapping and profiling stage. And let's not get into how so-called "unfettered immigration" (which is actually pretty fettered when you look at the process) harms exactly nobody if handled properly, as many examples (e.g. Germany) show.
What kind of regulation do you want gone?
Social science is science and underpins many aspects of modern society such as urban design. Do you have an example of this in action?
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works · -1 pts · 326d
Fascism has an established definition. Hell there’s a literal manifesto
BaroqueInMind@piefed.social · 3 pts · 326d
Everything you said here i agree with, yet none of this shit you said is centrist
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 326d
Then what is it? Because it sure as fuck doesn’t sound right wing but someone just called me right wing because I agree in some points with MAGA. 🤣
iii@mander.xyz · 1 pts · 325d
The sister comments to this one are already calling the poster a fascist :)
ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 326d
Literal fascism and/or communism
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works · -2 pts · 326d
I identify as a fascist communist that leans libertarian
Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social · 3 pts · 326d
Daniel Sloss has a funny bit about exactly this.
https://youtu.be/O-qcXpapsoY Sadly it's so true