cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6197747
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
317 points (80.8% liked)
Flippanarchy
1636 readers
54 users here now
Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.
This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.
Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Rules
-
If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text
-
If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.
-
Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
-
Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.
-
No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.
-
This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.
-
No shaming people for being anti-electoralism. This should be obvious from the above point but apparently we need to make it obvious to the turbolibs who can't control themselves. You have the rest of lemmy to moralize.
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Liberals are fascists now? What in the fuck is going on lol
There is a big contingent on Lemmy that has constructed an enemy category called "liberals." They spend a lot of time talking to each other about what liberals believe and how liberals are, and almost all of it is just how stupid, weak, evil, and pointless liberals are. It's actually exactly the same thing that MAGA people do about... well, about liberals.
You can actually see how it operates in this meme. Pretty much none of the "liberals" on Lemmy have anything other than horror for the killing that's happening in Gaza, or are in any way upset about Charlie Kirk not being around anymore, but it's real important to their worldview that they constantly gather around and tell each other about how evil the liberals are, and so none of them will bat an eye at a post like this. Even if they don't really factually agree with it, it feels really good to experience the meme and talk to one another about how true it is.
Why they do this is deserves careful study. It's not immediately obvious but if you keep tugging on the thread and looking carefully at how they perceive the political world and why, it carries some key insights.
Feeling horror for the genocide isn't mutually exclusive to attempting to drown out the sound of their suffering and your and your party's complicity (which is what the liberals in the meme are doing, in case you're unfamiliar). Acknowledging that the genocide is happening and incredibly sad 😔 isn't very meaningful when you're actively trying not to talk about it.
If youve complained about democrats being criticized for enabling Israel over the last year, then you're in this picture.
Here's me trying to drown out the sound of their suffering:
Here's me complaining about Democrats being criticized for enabling Israel:
That was 8 months ago. I have nothing to add to it. It's mostly come true now, and if you actively pushed in any way for people not to keep Trump out of power, you helped make it happen. Even if you don't believe there is any difference between "sending weapons" and "sending even more weapons plus turning vague diplomatic complaining into excited diplomatic approval plus putting Americans on the ground to help make it happen," you still helped usher in the situation where Palestinian protest leaders in the US are getting deported instead of being out there protesting. Good job.
I'm aware that you're trying hard to reframe me saying "Trump is worse" as if it meant I was making excuses for Biden, or that I'm saying it for any reason other than concern for the Palestinians and all the other people Trump is current fucking up. I am not. Biden was very very bad on this issue, and Trump is worse. That's what's up. You can insult me or mischaracterize that any number of types of ways, but that's what's up. Tell me I'm wrong.
This is precisely what I'm talking about in my comment. You're taking a point of view that you might or might not agree with, either of which is fine, and deciding to pretend that it is a horrifying caricature (that I'm so in love with Joe Biden of all the fucking people in the world that I am willing to overlook or downplay a genocide just to have a chance to distract people from talking about a bad thing he did). Because it's easier than grappling with what's really going on, you simply pretend that there's a whole class of people out there running around who are just constantly stupid and wrong, and you comfortably assure one another that's the explanation for why they sometimes come along and expose you to a critical viewpoint that isn't what you want to hear.
Go on, continue with it, if you want.
Stop skirting around what the meme is talking about
"Look at this terrible tragedy" is not the same as "if we do not end our complicity in this active genocide, we risk losing everything"
Liberals act as if their only option is to vote or not vote, but that's simply not the case. If your party is plugging their ears to the tragedy they are helping commit, your job isn't to make sure everyone knows how bad the other candidate is, it's to confront your party about why they're complicating what should otherwise be an easy choice by doing something objectively evil.
2024 was nobody's fault but the democrats', for exactly the reason depicted in the meme. Instead of addressing the cries for acknowledgment in their base, they fucked us all.
And here we are again, dealing with their choice to revere and defend the life's work of a neonazi while we are still waiting for them to acknowledge the genocide they helped commit and which continues a year later. I can't blow smoke for a party that continuously runs cover for fascists while plugging their ears to their own base.
True, but that first one is directly what the meme is referencing. You actually accused me specifically I think of trying to distract from the terrible tragedy.
Well, but I don't act that way. Am I a liberal? According to lots and lots of people on Lemmy, I am. Here's a comment I made earlier tonight:
You'd agree with that, right?
Or no?
This is what I'm talking about. Actually some of what you're saying in this latest message, I agree with. But it has not a lot to do with the meme. My issue with the meme was this wild strawman, lumping congressional Democrats and people on Lemmy into the same ideological category "liberal" and then making a bunch of sweeping statements I guess about both, by which the whole thing can be motte-and-baileyed back around so that all of a sudden I'm an asshole who believes all these wild things and doesn't care about genocide.
Let's try this. Who are some examples of who you are talking about here? Like who are 5 people who fit into this category who are revering Charlie Kirk and also won't admit Gaza is a genocide? I am sure there are plenty of them (not sarcasm, I really do believe lots of those people exist, even some number of them on the American "left.") Ideally out of government if you can, like I said I don't think anyone in the US government is all that left (and if you're only talking about congressional Democrats or something, then yes the meme makes sense.)
I can pretty much guarantee you that whoever those people are, they're (a) a small subset of the people who the Lemmy consensus would describe as "a liberal" and (b) people I also despise pretty much as much as you do.
Right? Or do you believe that everyone the Lemmy consensus would describe as "liberal" also reveres Charlie Kirk, and also wants to silence any voices of Palestinian suffering?
No, and no. The meme is referencing liberals walking out of the Democratic National Convention last year literally plugging their ears to protestors who were kicked out for demanding democrats stop supporting Israel's genocide against palestinians. Liberals then (and now) were refusing to address protestors demanding action against Israel's genocidal campaign. They sometimes separately acknowledged it as a tragedy but refused to take action against Israel. "I think this is a tragedy, but unfortunately there's nothing we can do until after the election".
I haven't actually accused you of anything, but it does kind of seem like i'm describing you. It's not my fault you ascribe that label to yourself and hear that as a personal accusation.
Don't you? Could have fooled me. I could have sworn you were one of those people who place blame on voters for the 2024 election outcome, instead of recognizing the democrats torpedoing their own coalition by demonstrating complete contempt for their own base.
They are talking about liberals, not a narrow group of congressional democrats
I don't see any mention of lemmy in this meme.
I'd also point out that despite repeatedly agreeing that democrats are contributing to Israel's genocide, you've also repeatedly taken offense at the suggestion that liberals are fascist collaborators.
You can claim to care about genocide and also deny that democrats are defending and collaborating with the fascists committing it. The latter certainly casts doubt on the former.
There were 60 out of 212 democrats who voted against a resolution honoring Kirk and to my knowledge only 10 democrats have ever referred to it as a genocide. By my math that's 193 democrats minimum who meet that description.
I believe those people would say something like, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”. Liberals are usually more upset that protestors may have killed momentum for their candidate than for their candidate openly collaborating in a genocide and giving protestors a reason to oppose them in the first place.
Well, that sure makes sense.
Am I a liberal?
Yes, I was pointing to that contradiction. In your opinion, are liberal democrats fascist collaborators? I'm guessing that the question probably makes you feel a little uneasy. but that's just a guess.
Sure seems like the shoe fits, but if you want to make a case for yourself i'm happy to discuss it.
I don't think most US Democratic politicians are liberals. They're clearly center-right conservatives. I would definitely describe most US Democrats in congress as fascist collaborators, yes. But then the people on Lemmy who generally get accused of being "liberals," I don't think are fascist collaborators. Would you disagree with any of that?
This is part of the problem with reasoning by labels. You get into extended wrangling about which labels apply to which people or not, or how to define the labels, or other things that aren't really connected to the reality of the situation. And also you can make weird little indirect constructions ("I know you're a liberal because you believe X" -> "Therefore I know you believe Y, because I know you're a liberal") that can further distort the reality.
I don't see how you could disagree with anything out of the first paragraph there, referencing directly the reality, although you're welcome to if you want to. But then by introducing the label of "liberal" to the equation you can say something that to you probably sounds pretty sensible which is wildly at odds with it. Right? Or you don't see it that way?
Okay, so you think I'm probably a liberal. Noted.
I have no idea how to "make a case" about it, since you're using this label in a very particular way. So I can't even really say anything about the application of the label being right or not. By some definitions, I am. By some definitions, I'm not. My argument is that the application of the label by a big contingent on Lemmy doesn't even really have any factual definition, it's more just a trigger word with a pretty fluid definition which changes around as needed to attack enemies or accuse them of things. Your reaction to me saying most Democrats in government are center-right conservatives for example is super telling to me, where if we were talking about some other topic I feel like it's likely that you would instantly agree with that.
It might help a little if you were to provide your understanding of 'liberal', because to me it seems like it's confused at-best. My working definition of liberal is this one, and my chief criticism against it is that it provides no framework or acknowledgement of power existing outside of 'government' nor way of preventing that power from superseding it. My definition fits congressional democrats just as well as internet forum users who write apologia for why liberation politics are unfeasible (at any given moment) because they lack support from capital or from 'moderates'. Nothing you've said so far makes me think you're not a liberal as I've described it, but I'll wait for you to try defining it yourself before hitting you over the head with it too many times.
I disagree, but not because they're frothing at the mouth for genocide. Liberalism is a philosophical framework that functionally separates an individual's objections to the realities of capitalist and imperial systems from the agency to actually address them. "I support you in the goal you seek, but I cannot support your methods of direct action". You might actually think that democrats are committing genocide and that they should be removed from office - but it's your liberalism that prevents you from taking action against them. Hell, even the sitting democratic congresspeople might actually believe they are complicit in genocide, but their belief in liberal systems is what forces them into collaborating instead of resisting. It's the same logic that prevents workers from joining a union or conducting a worker strike - the system of capital traps them by tying their material well-being to the well-being of the capitalist that exploits them:
"I agree we should have safer working conditions, but acting against the company risks me losing my job so I can't support a strike".
"I agree that democrats are fascist collaborators, but acting against them risks letting the fascist take the place of the fascist collaborator, so I can't support protesting them right now".
Liberalism is a system that coerces objectors into being passengers to fascism instead of organizing against it. That's what makes it the 'moderate wing of fascism' - not because liberals secretly harbor fascist opinions. Is being a passenger better than being the driver? Maybe...? but it also ensures that we arrive at fascism either way, and that's what we're trying to avoid. To me, there's no need to delineate between liberals and conservatives because my working definition doesn't make them mutually exclusive. You can be a liberal as a democrat just as easily as you can be a liberal as a conservative. Are there democrats who aren't liberals? Sure, but I think you have the axis of your scale backwards.
I mean, sure, I guess an argument could be made to center an arbitrary scale on someone more like Sanders, which puts most democrats right of center. But my point is that using an arbitrary scale isn't helpful in addressing the core issues of liberal democracy. The most it does is re-frames the field of actors so that some democrats are on the other 'team', but that's only helpful for electoral politics, not liberation politics. You seem really keen on establishing an 'us vs them' dividing line but the the problem is more persistent than the individual actors we're talking about.
Is it?
It sounds like your entire conception of what "liberal" doesn't have much at all to do with this article you sent me, and is kind of centered around this one thing:
... and then some predictions about how it will function to enable collapse into fascism. More or less, the MLK definition of "liberal." Makes sense to me. I can kind of see the narrative you're constructing about how liberalism functions, and we could talk about that whole thing if you want. I don't think that is the academic definition of liberalism though. Basically, it sounds like you're defining liberalism as "allegiance to the government and rejection of methods of change outside of the formal government structure," and kind of nothing else beyond that. IDK, maybe I'm wrong in that, tell me. If that's your definition, then I am not one.
In addition:
By this definition Biden is not a liberal, since he supported basically every strike aside from the rail strike that took place under his term. His labor secretary providing additional weight behind union actions was one of the big enablers of forward progress for the working class under his tenure.
I'd actually go further than this, into things like this and supporting the rail strike also even if it fucks up the economy, but if simply supporting strike actions makes you not a liberal, then I think a whole lot of people on Lemmy are exempted from criticism by this meme because they definitely are not liberals.
I mean that's a very specific example lol. But sure.
I clarified what I think about this with some things here and here for example:
(I also at some point posted some articles I think about specific strategies to make effective protest against the Democrats that would actually make them change their policies, in addition to the obvious example of "uncommitted.")
This is why I dislike having the conversation in terms of "liberal." It's going to mean that I'm going to have to spend an entire week clarifying what I believe and what I support, because you have such a strong narrative in your head that "PhilipTheBucket is a liberal -> PhilipTheBucket opposes protest movements if they might hurt Democrats' chances -> because that's how liberals are and he's a liberal and I know that." Even if I somehow managed to convince you of what I actually believe, you just perceive it as me trying to make this argument that I'm "not a liberal" or something. You'll be deeply suspicious of it, because the bit is already flipped. You have this whole thing so firmly embedded in your worldview that you will tell me I'm lying if I try to tell just what I believe. I mean, it doesn't help matters that I think something that's kind of adjacent to that ("if Trump comes to power then things will be much worse, so it's worth trying to keep him out of power"), but it's not really rocket science to be able to distinguish between those two sort-of-similar sounding things.
Of course, if your whole point is just to trash me for being "a bad liberal," then it suddenly does become really difficult to distinguish between them, and you can constantly keep swearing that I said the first one.
Kind of - it's true that liberalism was originally conceived as a way of limiting revolutionary democracy from devolving into radical populist movements, but what's important about it is the way it constructs its framework to do that. Liberalism chose to focus on 'individual liberty', but that comes with problems. Edmund Burk saw individual liberty and egalitarianism as a way of ensuring that the aristocratic class - which was well educated and already governed over productive systems - could guide democratic norms and resist the pull into populist hysteria. The side effect of this framing is that it gives space for other systems of power (e.g. capital and governance over the means of production) to accumulate without a real way of setting a limit.
The next two hundred years of liberalism split into two factions that sought to either rectify that problem or dismiss it as a non-issue, but it had already handicapped itself by setting individual liberty as its guiding principle. It meant that even the American flavor of liberalism - which sought to regulate capital through democratic reform - could only conceive of that question through the lens of individual liberty, and still had no way of establishing a limit to the accumulation of individual power other than by the question: 'could this amount of power be used to threaten the liberty of individuals?'. This meant that capital could freely accumulate without regulation, so long as it never abused that power to the detriment of individual liberty.
No - even though that's what liberalism initially sought to accomplish, it's more broadly the way it goes about it that concerns me. Having a stable government that resists reactionary populism is a metric of success of any political system, but how they go about doing it is what distinguishes them.
You really need to take a step back from specific policy decisions if you actually want to understand this. Biden isn't a liberal because he supports worker unions - what makes him a liberal is they way in which he weighs his positions against how it does or does not threaten broader systems of individual liberty. The way he handled the rail strike in 2022 is actually a pretty good example of this - he ended up blocking that strike (and in the process undermining the long-term collective bargaining power of the rail unions), because allowing it to go through threatened the stability of the capitalist economy. Liberalism is happy to concede to worker demands so long as they don't impact the functioning of their individualist economy. This enshrines the 'ratcheting effect' into our system, because it shields capital from the threat of collective organizing. Liberalism is happy(or maybe confortable..?) to watch injustices happen if taking action threatens liberalism's dominant position, and will couch that decision in heroics for having saved us from the chaos of extended conflict.
Yeaaaa, except that's not really where your criticism is being directed at. You're taking issue with people involved with the uncommitted movement engendering a sense of apathy, since their protest of the democratic party necessarily involved persistently pointing out how complicit they actually were. You might project that onto people actually 'choosing not to vote', but there are eligible voters in every election that opt out of voting. The only to be upset this time is that those non-voters were being given ample reason to feel apathetic, but that isn't the fault of protestors bringing the genocide into the national conversation, that's the fault of democrats for trying to ignore it.
What makes this a liberal idea is how the political calculus is constructed and the underlying assumptions within it:
The amount of harm being done in Gaza is never a part of that calculation, it's only ever a question of how much does this or that action threaten individual liberty. Democrats did the math and figured that turning on Israel made losing to the fascists more likely, but if that's the only question they ever pose to themselves, there is nothing preventing them from sliding further and further toward fascism/oligarchy and it never happens that they stand up against evil despite the risk of personal harm to themselves and liberalism. They become passengers and unwilling (at best) collaborators to fascists, rather than true anti-fascists.
I can only comment on what I hear from you, and I hadn't even tried to assign you that label until you repeatedly asked me to. I have a firm understanding of what liberalism is - or at least, the broad framework within that diverse ideological discipline that distinguishes it from other political movements. Whether you fit into that category is immaterial to me. But that doesn't change my criticism of liberalism as I see it pop up into political discourse on lemmy, or my criticism of you when you participate in it.
There is no such thing as a 'good' liberal. There are only good times where liberals don't stand in the way of liberation politics, and bad times when they do. It just happens that we're in very, very bad times, and so liberals look pretty fuckin' bad by extension.
Liberalism, when it was originally conceived, was the radical populist movement. There was no alternative to limit.
As the source you sent me pointed out, the definition has changed over time, and since then more radical alternative has emerged, which "liberalism" often opposes. That's what MLK was saying. But at the time liberalism emerged, there was aristocracy or nothing. Like I said, it seems like your whole concept of it is as a limiting factor on progressive movements (which is certainly an element in the modern day), but that's not the whole of liberalism and those progressive movements didn't even exist in the beginning form of it. Liberalism was the progressive movement.
Which is never.
All makes perfect sense, and I actually agree with you completely on this whole part. My point was that you didn't say liberals oppose strikes once they grow to the point that they threaten even a pretty trivial amount of harm to the overall economy but support them otherwise. You said liberals oppose strikes. I think that second thing is completely wrong, and I was demonstrating it by bringing up a person who I would call a liberal (Biden) and his support for strikes as a way of making economic progress for working people.
This is what I was saying about your definition of "liberal" being shifty in a way where it can change to support whatever you're trying to argue at any given time. I can still be a liberal, even though I support pretty much all strikes including the rail strike. Why? Because I'm saying stuff you don't like, and you need to call me a liberal as a way of attacking me. Biden can be a liberal and support 95% of strikes that happened under his watch, because he needs to be a liberal because he's the enemy too. But also, liberals need to oppose strike actions, because you need to be able to criticize some particular "liberal" person by saying they would rather resolve conflicts with the working class within the political system instead of outside it, and so they oppose strikes. See? Shifty.
That is precisely the opposite of what I am doing. I feel like you're so thoroughly confused by your type of label-driven thinking that I can literally show you examples of me supporting the uncommitted movement, and then you proceed to explain to me why I take issue with the uncommitted movement.
Try just reading the examples again, I think. You're expecting to see criticism so hard that you're interpreting approval for as criticism against.
Well, you're defending a meme which talks about "liberals." My whole point is that the category you're using is poorly defined in a particular insidious way. I think that there's a community on Lemmy which thinks that Lemmy is full of "liberals," accuses other people on Lemmy of being "liberals," and accuses them of believing certain awful things because they are "liberals." I'm trying to bring specifics to the definitions you're using, because I think they will fall apart when they need to be made concrete in reference to certain particular people, as with the strike example above.
Put another way: I am not asking you a question about myself. I am asking you a question about your definitions, using various specific referents (myself, congressional Democrats, Bernie Sanders, Biden, users on Lemmy who are accused of being liberals). You keep talking in the abstract about "liberals" and explaining how this whole thing operates. And sure, I get what you're saying. What I am saying is how some of your definitions fall apart or become contradictory once you have to apply them to specific people yes or no, and then defend the application of the label to those specific people. Which is why I think it's a bad idea to use "liberal" as a key part of your argumentative style. I get why it's attractive, because you can make compelling arguments with it and lots of people on Lemmy will agree with you, but the whole reason why it works so well for that is because the definition is shifty in a way which makes it divorced from you actually having to prove your case. And, you can try to claim things which are wildly divorced from reality by using it, which to me is a bad thing.
Does that make sense?
I have absolutely no idea where you think I said this. I think you're shadowboxing someone else.
It's not being cagey, it's just not a description or list of policy positions. You even just said that the framework has changed a bunch of times since Locke. It's an ideological framework for democratic systems of governance, and i've repeatedly explained why that framework is problematic.
Yup.
Marxism-Leninism is at odds with Trotskyism, but they're both 'marxist'. Liberalism describes a bunch of different particular denominations of the same underlying framework. Does that make sense?
Err, no? MLK was criticizing moderate liberals who were claiming to agree with the civil rights on principle but were complaining about the inconvenience of the demonstrations, arguing (much like liberals in 2024 were) that they should wait for a better season. He wasn't complaining about libertarians, he was complaining about the 'progressives' who were standing in the way of liberation.
Kind of? I mean there had been plenty of democratic systems since the Greeks and Romans, but broadly speaking, sure. John Locke was considered quite radical at the time, but liberalism as it came into focus after the french revolution took on a considerably more 'moderating' focus. But while Locke was certainly a radical at the time, his foundation is most closely related to classical liberalism and libertarianism today, both broadly reactionary and "conservative" in the modern american sense. The 'social' liberalism you're most familiar with probably didn't start taking shape until at least Kant in 1784, or more reasonably 1789 with Bentham. All of them, though, still centered around 'individual liberty' and framed their thoughts on democracy around it. All of the formative problems with liberalism that i've described has been there since the founding.
That isn't my whole concept. Liberalism being a framework for the limits of the ideal democratic system is only it's reason for being, but that's not what it is. It's a set of political ideals that centers around the liberties of the individual. That applies just as much to modern progressives as it does to Locke and libertarians.
Because your understanding of the uncommitted movement, and how protest is meant to work in-general, is quite limited. People expressing discontent with democrats online is an extension of that movement. So is asserting the reality of how that issue was shaping their unpopularity at the time - both of which you have been critical of, even in your own examples. You've expressed concern with that type of messaging 'influencing voters', even though bringing those issues into the public conversation is precisely the point of protest. You repeatedly assert your utilitarian calculus on others who are expressing despair with their options. Admittedly I am making a broader assessment of your intentions than you've explicitly stated, but you're still misunderstanding the issue with liberalism i'm describing. It's not a set of policy positions or opinions
Liberalism is a way of understanding political organization that centers around individual liberty and abides by a system of ideals that are together functionally incapable of resisting fascism. I don't know how much more explicit I can be. Sometimes someone with progressive positions can be a liberal, especially when they abandon them in favor of protecting liberal institutions. I can't tell you what category every person or user fits in because I don't have some magic 8 ball that tells me.
I know what you're complaining about. I've been trying to tell you that it isn't a matter of policy, it's a matter of ideology. The policies that result from liberal thinking are not always consistent, because they are situationally dependent on opposing forces. Is Biden a liberal? Yes. Is Sanders a liberal? Probably not, but on occasion it can seem like it. Schumer? Pelosi? Jefferies? Harris? 100% certified. And not because they hold specific positions, but because the rationalization of those positions abide by liberal principles (does this or that policy or action infringe on individual liberties? Does this or that policy grant me greater influence to protect individual liberty? Does this or that policy depend on the practicalities of a capitalist system of governance?).
Well it certainly seems to frustrate you, but I think that has more to do with your political framework necessitating clear declarative categories than with the coherence with my definition of liberalism.
Frankly? No. It might frustrate your understanding of the world but it in no way hinders my own.
Id also point out that many of us have been screaming about this genocide for far longer than 8 months, but were yelled down by liberals for bringing it up while democrats were trying to campaign. I'm not going to trudge through your history for evidence that you cared about it before trump was president elect, but it's a little telling to me that 8 months ago is when you made that bold declaration.
You were not yelled down. The majority consensus on Lemmy was that Kamala Harris was responsible for the genocide, I got banned from a couple of places for trying to say any different.
You're confusing "someone popped up and disagreed with me" for "I was yelled down." I don't think you'll ever find me going into some comments section about Palestine and saying, "Ssh! Don't talk about this before the election!" Definitely you won't find me banning anyone for it. What you'll find is me pushing back hard on people saying "Don't vote for Democrats, they did genocide!" That there was plenty of, because I don't think that strategy makes any sense, and because I care about the Palestinian people, I was pushing back on it hoping that the genocide that's currently taken a massive acceleration would not do that.
If I thought the DNC consultants who make up their awful strategy read Lemmy, I probably honestly would have approached it very very differently than I did. However I do not. I do not think posting on Lemmy influences Democratic politicians. I do think it influences voters (in some pretty tiny way), and so my main input to it is going to be centered around "how can voters behave in a way which will minimize genocide." Surely that makes sense?
https://lemmy.world/search?q=palestine&type=Comments&listingType=All&creatorId=13369510&page=1&sort=Old
https://lemmy.world/search?q=gaza&type=Comments&listingType=All&creatorId=13369510&page=1&sort=Old
https://lemmy.world/search?q=genocide&type=Comments&listingType=All&creatorId=13369510&page=1&sort=Old
When were you screaming about it in a way that didn't also lead to "don't vote for Democrats"? Most of what I see here looks pretty electoral. That's an honest question, I am genuinely asking.
Go and check the political memes comm from early to mid 2024. Check the mod logs of the politics comm from the same time period. There were several struggle sessions about specific users, complaining that 'all they do is post about Gaza' and being super paranoid that they were intentionally trying to throw the election. Several were accused of being paid operatives.
Whoomp, there it is.
Go take it up with MLK.
You'd have to go look at my previous accounts. I rotate accounts regularly and keep them as separated as possible.
Which users?
Which part of this were you disagreeing with?
Or do you think me saying these two true things is a gotcha about something else? Tell me.
I'm pointing to the statement that places you in the same category as the 'white moderate' that MLK castigates in LfB. I don't even need to find you a list of users I was referencing, because the evidence for your liberal perspective is right there in the next quote.
You're in the picture, buddy.
Yeah, this is exactly what I was talking about. "I want to influence voters" -> "You're a liberal" -> "You don't meaningfully oppose genocide, and I know that because that's liberals"
Logical fallacy speedrun IOW
No, it isn't "i want to influence voters", it's the fact that the way you talk about democrats (and when) is dependent on how doing so will impact their odds of losing to fascists, even when the topic of conversation is about how democrats are themselves collaborating with fascists.
I don't care if that makes you a liberal by whatever definition you want to use for yourself - I care that you ignore your convictions and turn a blind eye to atrocity when it's politically inconvenient, and I care that democrats do, too.
Whatever word you want to use for that is fine with me.
https://lemmy.world/search?q=biden&type=Comments&listingType=All&creatorId=9155326&page=1&sort=Old
All from before the election. Usually it's connected to some kind of "and Trump is still worse" reminder, but your whole picture that I was "turning a blind eye" is simply because you're confused within this whole mental model where I am a liberal, and you're convinced that you already know what all liberals did and you don't need to learn anything about specifically what I did and said.
Actually, all of my actual engagement with people in congress on the issue was from before the election, too, because I thought there was a nonzero (even if infinitesimal) chance that it might do something. Everything has to start somewhere.
Edit: Actually, this whole thing is worth reading: https://lemmy.world/post/21463451 I posted an interview with the uncommitted co-founder, before the election, and then the top comment was someone saying "uncommitted" did more harm than good, and I somewhat disagreed with him saying I supported their right to do it. That was the context for some of the protest-supportive comments I posted above.
Like I say, I do understand why you have this view of what I believe and are repeatedly doubling down on it so, so hard in the face of me telling you different. The reason I am taking some decent amount of time to talk with you about it is because I think it is worthwhile to help you break out of this type of thinking.
That's great - good job. Like I said before, I have no interest in going through your history to examine your bonafides.
What I was commenting on was this:
Good enough if that simply means discouraging apathy and disengagement. But what I hear in this is, 'i cater my contributions to this conversation in such a way to encourage people to vote democrat in a conversation about their complicity in genocide', and I see that as incredibly unprincipled. More than that - protesting isn't like some private conversation with the strategists at the DNC. The point of protesting is to bring the issue out in the open in order to shift public opinion - that's what actually pressures a politician to the negotiation table. Whinging about people harping on how the democrats were handling the situation isn't subterfuge if the thing being criticized is legitimate.
But I'll gladly admit that your history doesn't seem as bad as some others here, and that does provide some comfort. But like I said - I was never really interested in categorizing you, it was you who first asked me, and you who read something into this meme to be personally aggrieved by. It's immaterial to me if you're a liberal.
Democrats being told that they're becoming less popular because of how they handle criticism isn't subterfuge - as far as I can tell that's just reporting on reality like it was sundays weather forecast.
Well, that's a super condescending way to phrase "Hey, you're right, all those things I was insisting to you over and over again were what you believed, they seem not to be accurate, and I apologize for having to go over and over it and not really acknowledging that I was wrong about it until you provided extensive evidence which I eventually accepted after rejecting the first few iterations of." I wasn't providing "bonafides," I was just repeatedly trying to illustrate how you were wrong in what you were repeatedly telling me about myself and my motivations. If you didn't use this strawman to represent anyone who doesn't agree with you as believing all these stupid and evil things, I wouldn't have had to do that, but you do and so here we are.
Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate that you got there in the end. In the future though I would really recommend against using your preconception of what "some others here" believe and applying it to random people you're talking to. I can pretty much guarantee you that those "others" also do not believe that genocide is basically okay as long as it's being done by Democrats. You and the people you talk to on Lemmy just all agreed with each other to each other that they do. And when you talk outside that bubble, the people outside it just don't have the patience to yell at you repeatedly and demonstrate it at enough length what they actually support and believe that you finally have to halfway backhandedly accept it.
I take it back lol, you're still doing it. You did halfway get there but only halfway.
I'm telling the truth here about what I believe and what I do, and why. If I thought something else, I would do something else (instead of catering my conversation a different way). I'm being straight with people about what I believe, and why it leads to voting and looking at the world the way I do. Of course I might be right or wrong, but that's why I'm saying something when I say it, almost all the time.
Now if it was this scenario where the DNC could hear me here saying that I was planning to vote for them anyway to keep Trump out of power, that would bother me a lot, because that actually would produce this impact you're talking about which could increase the genocide in the world. That would be fucking horrifying. That would probably make me not be straight about what I believe where they could hear me (or, even better, look for an organized coalition of people to be a part of so that I could threaten them with withheld votes in a way that they would interpret and understand as pressure to be better on Palestine.) That's part of the reason I contacted my congresspeople about funding for Israel and have gone to Palestine protests -- to effectively communicate, with whatever little limited voice I have, what it is that I and a lot of other people are horrified by about it. A big part of my horror at refusing to vote for Democrats "because of Gaza" is that I think the Democratic campaign machine is far too incompetent to accurately figure out that signal, and move to the left as a result. I think they're at least as likely to move to the right to try to fix the "losing elections" problem. Fixing that sounds great, but I'm disgusted in general with this big Lemmy contingent who seem to be a lot more vocal about not voting than they are about any other strategy for fixing US support for genocide. That's a shit strategy, straight up.
I wasn't aggrieved by it, I just thought it contained a logical fallacy that was worth calling out. Talking with you has abundantly demonstrated that yes, there are people here (one at least) who are suffering from that logical fallacy.
Yes, which is why I'm in favor of that. IDK, I feel like you sort of halfway absorbed and halfway failed to absorb what I was telling you about my own viewpoint on protest and effective advocacy for change, and you're still kind of stuck in this strawman model of "the enemy" who doesn't believe in protest and so you have to lecture me, or doesn't believe in criticizing Democrats and so you have to lecture me.
Honestly, like I say, a lot of people will not have this kind of patience to try to talk with you until you're able to grasp this stuff. You'll just yell at them that they're okay with genocide and being aware that they absolutely are not, they'll decide you are off your rocker and not want to interact with you. That may be your goal, you may be happier just in the echo-chamber where everyone agrees what monsters all these genocide happy "liberals" are and unable to ever really have a political conversation with anyone outside that realm, in which case mission accomplished I guess.
I've repeatedly said I didn't care if you, specifically, were a liberal. When you asked me several times, I acquiesced with "probably", but nothing you were saying was 'proving' your position relative to liberalism - if anything it was making more suspicous. I never went through your history because it's immaterial to me if you, specifically, are the type of liberal I'm being critical of. Mostly I was just glad you weren't as bad as others who routinely complain about people castigating liberals, but you're still incredibly disingenuous with your own accusations. Take whatever you want from that as a concession.
When people all get together and say, "what the democrats are doing is absolutely horrible, but it's incredibly important to vote for them anyway", and then accuse anyone not explicitly declaring their intention to vote for them of being dishonest about their intentions, of course it's going to reinforce that behavior. And why would I assume you think otherwise? Why would you take issue with people sharing reporting that you think is 'misrepresentative' if it isn't because that reporting might shift public opinion in a meaningful way? It's not out of principle that you tone police those political news comms - if anything it's because you believe the best way to minimize genocide is to elect democrats over republicans, and that means protecting public opinion against popular resentment.
Yes, i'm interpreting your behavior. Yes I know you insist that's not what you're doing or why you're doing it. But you've given me no reason to believe otherwise other than a few quotes affirming that the genocide is a problem, and a bunch of examples of justifying your electoral position by comparing democrats to how bad the republicans are in comparison. Honestly, though - and I feel like i've said this a few times already - i don't give a shit if i'm describing you. I never set out to prove that you're a liberal. If you really think that what i'm describing as liberalism in practice, then fine.
Those people aren't being vocal about not voting, they're describing why electoral politics are a huge part of the problem, and that voting can't fix it. Yes, democrats are the harm reduction option. Yes, trump is a fascist. No, voting does not even begin to fix the problem with our liberal democracy, and insisting everyone make their intention to vote a prerequisite for being considered an honest broker online is the problem i'm talking about. That it remains the central issue in your diatribes serves only to reinforce my opinion of you.
Because you continue to carve out exceptions to what you claim to believe, like this:
If that's not a hyperbolic comment about people expressing their distaste for the inadequacy of democratic policy and governance, I don't know what else to call it.
I'm not sure where you've gotten that assessment, I haven't told you that you're OK with genocide. I can see how you might have gotten there, though.
It's fine, you seem committed to your misinterpretation and your attachment to your label. You can have it.