this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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Lefty Memes

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/11258523

American Democrats try not to support a fascist agenda challenge (impossible)

Full post for context.

I wish I had a cookie for every time a Democrat told me the concentration camps are good ackshually

Fuck your border and your president

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[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

hmm ok where to start

first of all, I'm sorry if my

In what world are liberals and socdems considered socialists?

seemed like a passive aggressive reminder of the com's rules, since it was not meant as such but rather an honest expression of opinion, that liberals and so called social democrats could not be further away from socialism than conservatives.

Consider this: socialism (by it's non-revisionist defenition) is the public ownership or democratic control over the economy by working ppl (instead of ppl who own for a living as it is now). Liberals and "socdems" have accepted the neoliberal economic base and have long given up on actually overcoming it. Unlike their openly reactionary or conservative counterparts (or rather brethren in defense of financial capital), however, they do a ton of virtue signaling and fluffy talking about how they're going to fix things.
The Republicans act as the stick of capital, while the Democrats as it's carrot.
From them you'll get nothing but token concessions at best (like some of their domestic policies) and reactionary politics with a nice paint job at worst (like their foreign policies. They still have us imperialism at heart, even if they might put on a silk glove on the iron fist that the Republicans use, it hurts just as much in the global south).

To quote X:

The white liberal is the most dangerous thing in the entire wester hemisphere. He is the most deceitful, he's like a fox. And a fox is always more dangerous in the forest than the wolf. You can see the wolf coming, you know what he is up to. But the fox will fool you. He comes at you with his mouth shaped in such a way, that even though you see his teeth, you think he is smiling.

All their supposed progress and opposition to capital only reinforces and propels capitalism, alleviating the need for fascism just for a little longer (which arises for the ruling classes when the majority of the population grows disillusioned with their lies, be they conservative or "progressive"). In the end only legitimizing the underlying framework, without ever threatening it.

Now don't get me wrong, in the USA the dictatorship of capital reigns supreme and manifests in essentially two wings of the same party ("The United States is a one-party state, but with typical us opulence, they have two of them."), swapping the mask of opposition every once in a while (good cop, bad cop). Under such conditions I also would vote for the Democratic party. However the apologetic attitude of "Vote for the Dems, it'll gradually solve our problems and save our democracy from the reps", which translates in all the agitprop efforts being put into electing one rich corrupt old man over another, takes energy away from the real socialist struggle: not fighting the symptoms, but taking the problem that is capitalism by the root and ripping it out. You can vote all you like, you will still live under dictatorship of capital...

As Berthold Brecht said:

Those who do not want to give up the private ownership of the means of production will not be able to get rid of fascism, but need it

In other words: fascism is a degenerated, protective form which capitalism relies on, when it can no longer fool the people and keep them docile with liberalism

(just to clarify on my use of quotes: I do not think of the people I quote as some form of authority to appeal to in mediation. It's just when I remember what someone else has already put into words (much better than I ever could) smth relevant to the discussion, I like to use it directly and give credit (when I can remember who said it) instead of rephrasing it.)


tl;dr: the distinction between dems and reps is not one of "left/right" but rather one of "right/further right". And the distinction between socialist on the one and liberals (and their socdem variety), revisionists, and outright reactionaries in a red coating on the other side, is not a case of leftist infighting but the distinction between the collaborators of capital and it's enemy's.
You can still vote for the Dems, just don't waste your (and the peoples) energy on creating the illusion that they'll be anything other but a temporary breathing stop in late stage capitalism's road to fascism.

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

FYI I'm not American so I won't be voting for either. But I think you are contradicting your own argument when you say:

tl;dr: the distinction between dems and reps is not one of “left/right” but rather one of “right/further right”.

What I was arguing was that the Democrats (aka liberals) are further left than the Republicans (at least in some key social areas). So, while you have defined the difference here as right/further right, that is still an acknowledgment that they are to the left of the Republicans, even if they are "not-quite-left-enough" to qualify as leftist from your ideological perspective. So, it still makes no sense to treat them as equally bad options - there are still degrees of 'bad' we should be concerned about to minimise harms.

It seems to me that many people on the left are currently earnestly trying to destabilise the US by pushing it even further towards right wing fascism, in the hope that it'll eventually provoke some sort of domestic revolution or an international backlash to US influence. This seems to me like a high-stakes strategy that could horribly backfire in so many ways, and I just can't get on board with it.

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I fail to see the contradiction tbh. It is precisely bc I am aware that the Dems are more progressive than the Republicans, that I said "I'd vote for the dems" (despite both of them serving capital).

And ofc the Dems are not leftists if we define the status quo as capitalism and leftism as the progressive opposition to the status quo (and those are the definitions I uphold).

Also I (unfortunately) am not posting from a socialist agitprop centre. I am under no illusion that my (shit)posts will destabilize anyone or anything. They are meant for other socialists and are a way of venting frustrations among other things.

tl;dr: one can recognize the Dems as the "lesser" of two evils, while still heavily criticizing the fact that the only choice is between two (or more under multi-part bourgeois "democracy") evils in the first place...
"If voting changed things systematically, it would be illegal"