this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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Right, and if you have a minute I may tell you about the tragedy of Darth Plagueis.
This is not about the dark side being easier and more appealing, this is about them having weaponized social media. It's a material problem, not a moral one.
I'm afraid some ideas really are just easier to accept. In every field I've studied or worked in, people very rarely accept unfortunate truths, instead believing that which is easier to stomach.
For example, you believe that leftists just aren't "trying hard enough," when the reality is that leftism doesn't have access to the same tools that its opposition has. Fascists, tankies, or liberals can use the powerful forces of group identity and hierarchy to win. At the end of the day, they all function as similar machines that seek to gain the most amount of power and control for themselves as possible. They inevitably entangle with national identities, bureaucracy, religion and cultural values in whatever way they need to.
Social media is not the problem; you're just blaming technology because it's easier than thinking leftism is uniquely unsuited to take control in this ecosystem. It has the "authenticity" every system markets, but it can't just allow itself to become a competitive machine without just becoming Marxist-Leninism. It can free people from the machine, but the machines compete better with each other by mechanizing us.
It's not about morals holding leftism back, but morals being incompatible with welding power over your opposition. It's the will to power of societal constructs making everyone's lives hallow and miserable. Our happiness is instrumental in forces larger than ourselves and always has been. Our freedom isn't at war with other people's freedom, but the success of things that aren't individuals.
I call BS. Leftism isn't a minority stance by necessity. There have been plenty of popular and populist left wing movements. Many got to power. Some kept it. Some even did all of that under representative democracy.
There is no reason left wing stances should be harder to communicate over social media than they were through newsletters, often while being outright outlawed.
I refuse to be so self-indulgent to think my elders were able to put out left wing media with an illegal printer while being persecuted but mastering Facebook was beyond us.
You're not wrong, but the game leftism needs to play isn't gonna look the same as right wing ideologies. It can do things the right wing can only maintain off of hype, which is enough for the right to ascend, but not to maintain.
The biggest thing leftism can do is kneecap systems without the systems ever fully getting rid of them. It was heavily co-opted and redirected by liberalism, but with liberalism dying, it can reassert itself.
I'm sure the opportunistic tankies will waste a lot of time and energy, but anarchy is the real way forward. It probably can't serve as a status to be reached, but as an ultimate check on the power of whatever system is in control. It needs to assert people as goal of society, not the means. Organizations cannot be seen as allies ever, only monsters to restrain and keep watch of forever.
Well, the idea is you ascend this way, you maintain by being actually competent at governing using solid policies that improve things for people.
That should be an advantage, you know? Actually having a solid framework for economics and social policy. It should take care of that whole "maintaining" part once the ascendancy is dealt with.
I think a lot of leftists, and particularly terminally online lefitsts, have grown used to not having to deliver that part and are more comfortable feeling like morally superior underdogs. I have no interest in those. Like I was saying elsewhere, the only leftists that are real leftists are the ones that hold some political power.
The problem with "real political power" is how the power itself can do the thinking for you. Your tribe or ingroup as an inhuman entity has no desire for anything but winning. If you're not careful, it convinces you to take the realist path to victory.
We can worry about the dehumanizing nature of political power once we have the political power.
I'd rather have that conversation about the non-fascist guys at our leisure than take solace in the moral harm the fascists are suffering from their abuse of power.
It's not a problem of moral purity, but simply being another standard agent of the system. All efforts by well meaning activists in my country failed to resist being another pawn, or not gain substantial power. Capitalism effectively neutralized left wing threats by keeping the working class unwilling to question power. Bolder action with more urgency was necessary, but team blue held everything back.
Now that the liberal democratic order is dead, the rules are different, and bolder action is necessary for anyone to hold power. The threat level is higher, with state violence escalating faster than even I expected. You need to utilize violence to have any chance of resisting fascism, even if it's the "non-violent" mass movement strategy of MLK Jr (although i doubt we have enough time for that)
Who is talking about well meaning activists? Who is talking about activists at all?
I mean, activists are great, good for them, but the activist label inherently means you are deploying activism as a replacement for institutional power.
I care about left wing politicians, not activists.
You are right that this conversation was for last year, or the election before that or the one before that or the one before that. But yeah, no, I'm not letting the failures of the US left define the playbook. Maybe instead of passing your perception of this stuff as universal you guys could look at the parts of the world actually getting results. Let Lula tag in for a while or something. Flip Mexico inside out like a sock and give Sheinbaum a go. Single most popular prime minister on the planet at the moment.
"You need to utilize violence" my ass. You need structured power, institutional strongholds and a network of activated supporters.
It's my own fault for engaging with US politics at all. I said I'd cut those off after the Trump inauguration and I've been slipping.
I guess you have a point about getting caught up in the American context, where so much imperial power and wealth can be leveraged to keep leftism from ever gaining an institutional foothold. It's probably the major difference between America and elsewhere, as they even work to kill leftist institutional power abroad. Sorry
Man, even the apologies are tinged in exceptionalism. I promise you guys aren't the first (or even best) to persecute dissenters.
Look, I know I come across as just pushing back to be contrarian, but if anything it's a hopeful message. I think the US left and a lot of the worldwide left have been negligent and self-centered in their political action. But I also think American leftists give their ability for action way too little credit.
There's a bit of that exceptionalism. Like if you aren't changing the fundamental fabric of the system at a national scale you are not "making a difference" or whatever, but what I'm saying, for good and bad, is that movement leftward is about institutional networks, unified strategies and long-term groundwork.
Maybe it's too late now, I don't know. But the goal should always be to get the right people to the right places. As a country in the Americas struggling with oligarchy and rising populist fascism in an unstable political landscape I say this now more genuinely than ever: you're not that special.
There are playbooks out there. Problem about playbooks is you need a team to run the plays. It's not going to be a switch flipping from degenerated neoliberalism into socialist utopia.
Definitely. The problem is that America isn't special. It might've been the dominant empire for most of our living memory, but every empire falls, and given the alterations being made to the military, it'll become capable of separating into multiple nations in the long run. That won't happen overnight and won't be caused by leftists, but they have no reason to stop it.
The long term strategy that American leftists failed to use for years was a local one. The local leftist politicians suck at appealing to local issues rather than the bigger picture, and your not wrong about it.