It is kind of baffling to me that many don’t seem to have an analysis/understanding of maga beyond “stupidity and racism”.
Of course that’s a big part, but by itself, it’s only scratching the surface?
And you don’t have sympathy for Trump voters turning cloak? Seriously? I hope you can at least pretend because you aren’t getting out of this mess without working with people like that. Else you might as well give up now.
Trump didn’t brainwash people more than Hitler did. Both catered to a selfish, bigoted, entitled worldview and promised people they could act on their worst impulses towards others and that while doing so their lives would improve. They delivered on the first part but their regimes do nothing for improving the quality of life. “Trump’s a con man” is not the same as reflecting on one’s own worldview, taking accountability for what they’ve enabled, and putting in the effort to fix what you can while making sure you don’t go down the same path again when the next huckster runs for office. These people were motivated by blaming anyone else for their “problems”. They blamed immigrants, women, people of color, liberals, antifa, queer folk. Nothing has changed, they’re just blaming Trump and not themselves. Until that attitude changes, fuck ‘em.
What I don’t understand is how you expect that attitude to change. Bigottry isn’t some kind of inate human characteristic, it is a tool/weapon used to divide us and stop us from reaching our goals.
I get that it’s nice to imagine people just snapping out of it an realizing all their mistakes, but in the vast majority of cases, this won’t happen by sheer magic…
Bigotry is thaught by your environment. And environment won’t change without great effort. The right is putting in great effort to change people’s environment so they don’t get exposed to ideas which are dangerous to them. What is your suggestion, to just let them and give up? You think leftists and organizers of the past did that?
I don’t expect that attitude to change. My suggestion is not to give up and let them. My suggestion is that this is not a situation where voting in better candidates will make the bigotry end, it would just end the executive power enabling it to run rampant for a time but the lost cause attitude would be passed on until it found a way to power again. I don’t expect them to snap out of it nor do I think the solution is sheer magic. I think the solution is doing what we did against this kind of bigotry in 1861 and 1941, only this time we don’t “reconcile” with our neighbors after. We politely explain the cost of bigotry and, if we succeed (and that’s a big “if” because that’s going to come with a massive human expense) we use the advantage of their loss of legacy bigots to force the next generations to abandon the cause. Even then it’s not a guarantee. Denazification and education hasn’t prevented younger generations in Germany from taking up the cause, but it has helped contain those who pick up the banner of hate.
The cost of freedom of thought will always be that there will be people who choose to think the worst. Some of them are taught this, some of them find their own way there. I will never stand for indoctrination and overriding free will, even in the name of good. Everyone has their right to think however they want to think. But the catch is that allowing that comes with the cost of occasionally reminding them thinking something and acting upon it are not the same and when your worldview involves violating the rights of others to exist, your right to exist and do that becomes a struggle, not of ideology but of physical force between your people and the people who would stand in your way.
“Fuck ‘em” isn’t a dismissal of their beliefs, it’s a dismissal of their right to exist. They have chosen their path and walk one paved with the corpses of those they can victimize. The Confederacy and Germany weren’t defeated by leftist ideology alone, they were defeated by people of a wide variety of beliefs who joined forces to declare “your worldview is intolerable”. Both those eras brought about indiscriminate suffering, hardship, and death. It’d be wonderful if we could have learned from that and didn’t head down that path again, but apparently we didn’t.
Fascism and state enabled bigotry is a capstone, removing it does nothing but make it incomplete for a time. You have to destroy the foundation and support columns, then make the idea of rebuilding that foundation unworthy of the effort. That’s when leftist organization and values come in. Right now we’re just a disparate mass of humans facing another band of disparate humans who’ve agreed hate it their uniting ideology and empowered the biggest haters to do their dirty work for them. The consequences have to trickle down.
My suggestion is that this is not a situation where voting in better candidates
I’m not talking about voting, I’m talking about building organised mass movements who eventually can excercise leverage to achieve goals.
Maybe I’m too old school, but I still believe that the only way to achieve the radical change is by organised mass movements.
And you can forget about that if you are not even willing to get into contact with people who are losing faith in their right wing leader, but who might not have abandoned all their right wing believes. That’s the perfect time to engage and further challenge their views, otherwise nothing will change and they will fall for the next right winger.
I think the solution is doing what we did against this kind of bigotry in 1861 and 1941
It’s not 1941, it’s not even 1933 yet, although very close to it. And until then, you shouldn’t have a working class civil war, but organize…
“Fuck ‘em” isn’t a dismissal of their beliefs, it’s a dismissal of their right to exist.
I’m not sure what your point is or rather I think I’m misunderstanding. Are you suggesting leftists should start to assasinate all trump voters? If yes, that’s very silly and not something that will happen. And if it would happen, it would be devestating for the left and only benefit the right. Violence is their game, our game is numbers and leverage.
I’m not talking about voting, I’m talking about building organised mass movements who eventually can excercise leverage to achieve goals.
So am I. An individual can probably find ways to survive the worst, even a nuclear holocaust. But we’re social creatures and the better of us have empathy and don’t want to enjoy life at the expense of others. That’s the root of this fight. We’re not in a survive or die world currently, we could work on creating a world where exploitation of our fellow humans is not the norm, but we haven’t and now we’re one foot beyond the hierarchy of capitalist exploitation and into eradication.
I still believe that the only way to achieve the radical change is by organised mass movements.
Same, but I’m leaning towards the idea that us having numbers alone isn’t enough in this situation if we don’t show why numbers matter. It’s why I’m critical of leaders. Our masses are upset, angry, reactive. We need leaders who can channel and guide the strength of numbers and turn it into something useful. Sometimes that’s a peaceful million person march, sometimes that’s an organized strike, sometimes that’s a fight. Our leaders have failed because they had power before all this came to a head and didn’t take action to prevent the ability of the opposition to get to where it is because doing so would have limited their own power. They have allowed the system to be manipulated because they enjoy the loopholes when it works in their favor, only now they’ve gotten outplayed at their own game.
Governors have the power to call up the National Guard and put the threat of reciprocal force between the Feds and the people who live in the territories they are elected to protect. They fail to do so and claim “if we did it would give the abuser the excuse to escalate”. That’s the same logic a victim makes when they’re in an abusive relationship, don’t make them angry or they’ll be justified in hurting you. An abuser doesn’t require justification and setting boundaries is not provocation, they were going to abuse you whether they had a “reason” or not.
And you can forget about that if you are not even willing to get into contact with people who are losing faith in their right wing leader, but who might not have abandoned all their right wing believes. That’s the perfect time to engage and further challenge their views, otherwise nothing will change and they will fall for the next right winger.
Losing faith in their leader is not the same as losing faith in the ideology. Massie and MTG are perfect examples of this. Both have turned on Trump himself, both remain ideologically conservative. They refuse to abandon their cause even if they abandon the person who has become the embodiment of that cause taken to its extreme. And they abandon him not because he’s a monster, but because the promise of what comes of their ideology doesn’t benefit them personally as much as it does him and his elites.
We should be accepting of whatever help we can get, even if it’s some an-cap that only sides with us 10% of the time. We should be constantly be working to use their disillusion of what happens when their ideology reaches its climax. But we should also not delude ourselves into thinking that the enemy of our enemy is our friend and that they won’t go right back to their old ways once the threat is removed.
it’s not even 1933 yet, although very close to it. And until then, you shouldn’t have a working class civil war, but organize…
Alligator Alcatraz and El Salvador are not Dachau or Auschwitz. I agree that we’re not at the level of industrialized genocide like the Nazis were, but we’re deeper than should be allowed.
I’m not sure what your point is or rather I think I’m misunderstanding.
My point is that the people who want to put themselves in positions of leadership need to use that power to exercise their office to the full extent of their authority to stand up to an increasingly lawless and violent federal executive. I hope that some are quietly planning for the possibility that there might come a day where they might have to say “that’s it, the Union is broken, we’re withdrawing and will do what we must to protect the people within our borders; if other want to join, join. If you are someone of similar values, this is your safe haven. If you’re not, this is not the place for you.” As for the rest of us, this potential path is why we stockpile resources, why we network with people of various skills like food production, medical expertise, logistics, the ability, capacity, and willingness to stand between those who aren’t able to/don’t want to/shouldn’t have to push back against victimizers in the worst way humans can do. Solitary survival is easy compared to community survival, that’s the difference between us and them. They’re running on selfishness united by greed, willing to trample others for the biggest slice of pie. They’re infighting because the people they empowered are getting way bigger slices while their constituents get crumbs, but instead of recognizing this is the inevitable outcome of their ideology they still will take the crumbs they can get and blame everyone else for stealing crumbs they think they’re entitled to.
Our leaders need to recognize what many of us have within our own communities. Our institutions are failing and not protecting us or providing us with the quality of life they should. We are not in a position to direct vast resources of wealth, power, and other humans, if we’re organizing (and I hope we are) we’re doing so at a local level, maybe a few dozen at a time. While what’s left of our democracy lasts, those aligned with our values get access to incredible power over society, but they keep failing to use that to protect the most vulnerable. If they keep that up then our various networks of community support will start making their own decisions about how best to protect themselves, and that’s sure fire way to start getting responses that you don’t want.
If you don’t want America to Balkanize you should acknowledge it’s already there but hasn’t boiled over and lead accordingly.
When I say “you”, I mean you Americans and online lefties in general, not you personally… I’m not suggesting you pit yourself in danger, but the only chance of turning around and somehow saving us from global disaster is to build mass movements along class lines.
And I’m not saying bigotry isn’t an issue, quite the opposite. But a prerequisite to combat bigottry and organising in general is contact and engagement, and we are so far away from even that. So many people are desperately searching for solution, and the only people giving them some kind of explanation is the right…
There is so much work to do and so little time, and frankly, having likeminded people talking about working class solidarity and rising up against the ruling class while doing jack shit except for ranting online and somehow expect change to happen by sheer magic is very demoralizing…
So if you don’t feel you are up to it or feel like you are putting yourself in danger, it does not apply to you. But we as the global left cannot afford to dismiss everyone who might still have bigotted views. And moments of disillusion with their right wing idols are perfect opportunities to work on their bigotry.
It’s the only thing combatibg bigotry, it always takes effort and time.
Maybe if he said anything about the racism or sexism being bad instead of just the lying and corruption. Or maybe it’s time for the dumbest people on the planet to learn from the people who saw it coming instead of us always being told to listen to them.
If he wants to start making amends he can be the one that goes and explains it to the rest of the cult. I barely like talking to people who do agree with me, never mind some maga devotee.
Ha ha, no. The analogy is more like you supposedly realized you were brainwashed and it cult twice before and returned to the cult both times after that and now want us to sympathize and help a third time. You will just do it again, so fuck off. Fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me…you can’t get fooled again.
It is kind of baffling to me that many don’t seem to have an analysis/understanding of maga beyond “stupidity and racism”.
Of course that’s a big part, but by itself, it’s only scratching the surface?
And you don’t have sympathy for Trump voters turning cloak? Seriously? I hope you can at least pretend because you aren’t getting out of this mess without working with people like that. Else you might as well give up now.
Trump didn’t brainwash people more than Hitler did. Both catered to a selfish, bigoted, entitled worldview and promised people they could act on their worst impulses towards others and that while doing so their lives would improve. They delivered on the first part but their regimes do nothing for improving the quality of life. “Trump’s a con man” is not the same as reflecting on one’s own worldview, taking accountability for what they’ve enabled, and putting in the effort to fix what you can while making sure you don’t go down the same path again when the next huckster runs for office. These people were motivated by blaming anyone else for their “problems”. They blamed immigrants, women, people of color, liberals, antifa, queer folk. Nothing has changed, they’re just blaming Trump and not themselves. Until that attitude changes, fuck ‘em.
What I don’t understand is how you expect that attitude to change. Bigottry isn’t some kind of inate human characteristic, it is a tool/weapon used to divide us and stop us from reaching our goals.
I get that it’s nice to imagine people just snapping out of it an realizing all their mistakes, but in the vast majority of cases, this won’t happen by sheer magic…
Bigotry is thaught by your environment. And environment won’t change without great effort. The right is putting in great effort to change people’s environment so they don’t get exposed to ideas which are dangerous to them. What is your suggestion, to just let them and give up? You think leftists and organizers of the past did that?
I don’t expect that attitude to change. My suggestion is not to give up and let them. My suggestion is that this is not a situation where voting in better candidates will make the bigotry end, it would just end the executive power enabling it to run rampant for a time but the lost cause attitude would be passed on until it found a way to power again. I don’t expect them to snap out of it nor do I think the solution is sheer magic. I think the solution is doing what we did against this kind of bigotry in 1861 and 1941, only this time we don’t “reconcile” with our neighbors after. We politely explain the cost of bigotry and, if we succeed (and that’s a big “if” because that’s going to come with a massive human expense) we use the advantage of their loss of legacy bigots to force the next generations to abandon the cause. Even then it’s not a guarantee. Denazification and education hasn’t prevented younger generations in Germany from taking up the cause, but it has helped contain those who pick up the banner of hate.
The cost of freedom of thought will always be that there will be people who choose to think the worst. Some of them are taught this, some of them find their own way there. I will never stand for indoctrination and overriding free will, even in the name of good. Everyone has their right to think however they want to think. But the catch is that allowing that comes with the cost of occasionally reminding them thinking something and acting upon it are not the same and when your worldview involves violating the rights of others to exist, your right to exist and do that becomes a struggle, not of ideology but of physical force between your people and the people who would stand in your way.
“Fuck ‘em” isn’t a dismissal of their beliefs, it’s a dismissal of their right to exist. They have chosen their path and walk one paved with the corpses of those they can victimize. The Confederacy and Germany weren’t defeated by leftist ideology alone, they were defeated by people of a wide variety of beliefs who joined forces to declare “your worldview is intolerable”. Both those eras brought about indiscriminate suffering, hardship, and death. It’d be wonderful if we could have learned from that and didn’t head down that path again, but apparently we didn’t.
Fascism and state enabled bigotry is a capstone, removing it does nothing but make it incomplete for a time. You have to destroy the foundation and support columns, then make the idea of rebuilding that foundation unworthy of the effort. That’s when leftist organization and values come in. Right now we’re just a disparate mass of humans facing another band of disparate humans who’ve agreed hate it their uniting ideology and empowered the biggest haters to do their dirty work for them. The consequences have to trickle down.
I’m not talking about voting, I’m talking about building organised mass movements who eventually can excercise leverage to achieve goals.
Maybe I’m too old school, but I still believe that the only way to achieve the radical change is by organised mass movements.
And you can forget about that if you are not even willing to get into contact with people who are losing faith in their right wing leader, but who might not have abandoned all their right wing believes. That’s the perfect time to engage and further challenge their views, otherwise nothing will change and they will fall for the next right winger.
It’s not 1941, it’s not even 1933 yet, although very close to it. And until then, you shouldn’t have a working class civil war, but organize…
I’m not sure what your point is or rather I think I’m misunderstanding. Are you suggesting leftists should start to assasinate all trump voters? If yes, that’s very silly and not something that will happen. And if it would happen, it would be devestating for the left and only benefit the right. Violence is their game, our game is numbers and leverage.
But yeah, I think we are talking past eachother.
So am I. An individual can probably find ways to survive the worst, even a nuclear holocaust. But we’re social creatures and the better of us have empathy and don’t want to enjoy life at the expense of others. That’s the root of this fight. We’re not in a survive or die world currently, we could work on creating a world where exploitation of our fellow humans is not the norm, but we haven’t and now we’re one foot beyond the hierarchy of capitalist exploitation and into eradication.
Same, but I’m leaning towards the idea that us having numbers alone isn’t enough in this situation if we don’t show why numbers matter. It’s why I’m critical of leaders. Our masses are upset, angry, reactive. We need leaders who can channel and guide the strength of numbers and turn it into something useful. Sometimes that’s a peaceful million person march, sometimes that’s an organized strike, sometimes that’s a fight. Our leaders have failed because they had power before all this came to a head and didn’t take action to prevent the ability of the opposition to get to where it is because doing so would have limited their own power. They have allowed the system to be manipulated because they enjoy the loopholes when it works in their favor, only now they’ve gotten outplayed at their own game.
Governors have the power to call up the National Guard and put the threat of reciprocal force between the Feds and the people who live in the territories they are elected to protect. They fail to do so and claim “if we did it would give the abuser the excuse to escalate”. That’s the same logic a victim makes when they’re in an abusive relationship, don’t make them angry or they’ll be justified in hurting you. An abuser doesn’t require justification and setting boundaries is not provocation, they were going to abuse you whether they had a “reason” or not.
Losing faith in their leader is not the same as losing faith in the ideology. Massie and MTG are perfect examples of this. Both have turned on Trump himself, both remain ideologically conservative. They refuse to abandon their cause even if they abandon the person who has become the embodiment of that cause taken to its extreme. And they abandon him not because he’s a monster, but because the promise of what comes of their ideology doesn’t benefit them personally as much as it does him and his elites.
We should be accepting of whatever help we can get, even if it’s some an-cap that only sides with us 10% of the time. We should be constantly be working to use their disillusion of what happens when their ideology reaches its climax. But we should also not delude ourselves into thinking that the enemy of our enemy is our friend and that they won’t go right back to their old ways once the threat is removed.
Alligator Alcatraz and El Salvador are not Dachau or Auschwitz. I agree that we’re not at the level of industrialized genocide like the Nazis were, but we’re deeper than should be allowed.
My point is that the people who want to put themselves in positions of leadership need to use that power to exercise their office to the full extent of their authority to stand up to an increasingly lawless and violent federal executive. I hope that some are quietly planning for the possibility that there might come a day where they might have to say “that’s it, the Union is broken, we’re withdrawing and will do what we must to protect the people within our borders; if other want to join, join. If you are someone of similar values, this is your safe haven. If you’re not, this is not the place for you.” As for the rest of us, this potential path is why we stockpile resources, why we network with people of various skills like food production, medical expertise, logistics, the ability, capacity, and willingness to stand between those who aren’t able to/don’t want to/shouldn’t have to push back against victimizers in the worst way humans can do. Solitary survival is easy compared to community survival, that’s the difference between us and them. They’re running on selfishness united by greed, willing to trample others for the biggest slice of pie. They’re infighting because the people they empowered are getting way bigger slices while their constituents get crumbs, but instead of recognizing this is the inevitable outcome of their ideology they still will take the crumbs they can get and blame everyone else for stealing crumbs they think they’re entitled to.
Our leaders need to recognize what many of us have within our own communities. Our institutions are failing and not protecting us or providing us with the quality of life they should. We are not in a position to direct vast resources of wealth, power, and other humans, if we’re organizing (and I hope we are) we’re doing so at a local level, maybe a few dozen at a time. While what’s left of our democracy lasts, those aligned with our values get access to incredible power over society, but they keep failing to use that to protect the most vulnerable. If they keep that up then our various networks of community support will start making their own decisions about how best to protect themselves, and that’s sure fire way to start getting responses that you don’t want.
If you don’t want America to Balkanize you should acknowledge it’s already there but hasn’t boiled over and lead accordingly.
They want me to not exist. I’m not fucking working with anybody that believes that. They can rot in hell
When I say “you”, I mean you Americans and online lefties in general, not you personally… I’m not suggesting you pit yourself in danger, but the only chance of turning around and somehow saving us from global disaster is to build mass movements along class lines.
And I’m not saying bigotry isn’t an issue, quite the opposite. But a prerequisite to combat bigottry and organising in general is contact and engagement, and we are so far away from even that. So many people are desperately searching for solution, and the only people giving them some kind of explanation is the right…
There is so much work to do and so little time, and frankly, having likeminded people talking about working class solidarity and rising up against the ruling class while doing jack shit except for ranting online and somehow expect change to happen by sheer magic is very demoralizing…
So if you don’t feel you are up to it or feel like you are putting yourself in danger, it does not apply to you. But we as the global left cannot afford to dismiss everyone who might still have bigotted views. And moments of disillusion with their right wing idols are perfect opportunities to work on their bigotry.
It’s the only thing combatibg bigotry, it always takes effort and time.
“We were trying to tell you for the last decade that it was a cult. How about you try listening for a few minutes?”
Good point. Fuck learning about why it took so long, fuck trying to deprogram them, get your moment of “told you so”.
Maybe if he said anything about the racism or sexism being bad instead of just the lying and corruption. Or maybe it’s time for the dumbest people on the planet to learn from the people who saw it coming instead of us always being told to listen to them.
If he wants to start making amends he can be the one that goes and explains it to the rest of the cult. I barely like talking to people who do agree with me, never mind some maga devotee.
Lock the gate on the way back in we don’t want any more of you fuckers getting out.
Ha ha, no. The analogy is more like you supposedly realized you were brainwashed and it cult twice before and returned to the cult both times after that and now want us to sympathize and help a third time. You will just do it again, so fuck off. Fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me…you can’t get fooled again.