bearboiblake [he/him]

Stop supporting and enabling genocidal cunts, then. Otherwise leftists such as myself will continue to endlessly effort post and create a scene.

You need to accept that the shitlib/radical centrist coalition is insufficient to get Democrats to win elections, as clearly demonstrated by Biden/Harris completely failing. You need to push the Democrats to the left. You need to have a candidate actually worth voting for, someone who actually excites the electorate to go out and vote to improve their lives, not just the "technically better than Trump" candidate. That doesn't win elections, no matter how much you rant and rave and shame people.

Deal with this reality, or accept endless Republican victories.

Yes, you are completely right, it's yet another step away from the hard-won labor rights. Capitalism makes these kinds of changes inevitable, and must be abolished.

::: spoiler How does capitalism inevitably lead to fascism?

Basically, the issue with capitalism is that the more wealth you have, the easier it is for you to make more money. And since money can be used to buy goods, services and influence, there is always a way to use money to gain more political and social power. With that political and social power, you can push society and the legal system in the direction you want to go. So you can use your wealth to gain power, and then you can use your power to change laws and society so that you can make even more wealth and power. It’s a positive feedback loop.

Obviously, though, if the billionaires and ruling class are accumulating more and more of our society’s wealth, that inevitably means that there’s less for everyone else to go around - therefore, working class people feel poorer and poorer. Meanwhile, the economy is going absolutely great for rich people, so inflation continues to go up - everything gets more expensive, but wages don’t increase. The wealthy just keep more and more of the wealth for themselves. To accumulate more and more wealth, they change the laws so that they can avoid paying taxes, so public services collapse. Politicians are lobbied to ensure that public funds are diverted away from where it is most needed - housing, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure - and instead into industries where their class interests most benefit from it, such as weapons manufacturing and extractive industries such as fossil fuels and mining.

The working class are bound to notice that their lives are getting shittier and shittier, and if that situation is left unchecked, the working class would realize that the ruling class are fucking them over, rise up, and overthrow their rulers. Obviously, the ruling class need to do something about this, but there’s no solution that the ruling class can offer. They’re causing all of the problems, to fix them they’d have to give up some of their wealth and power - and that’s not something they’re going to do. So they need to find someone else to blame the problems we have in society on. Unfortunately, though, no matter who they blame the problems on, and no matter what they do to “fix” it, the issue will continue to persist, because the material conditions underlying the issues are, very intentionally, never addressed.

So, the conundrum returns: The ruling class said that minority A caused all of the problems, minority A is persecuted and oppressed, but society doesn’t actually get any better. Either the problem wasn’t minority A, or minority A just hasn’t been oppressed enough yet. So the ruling class can either escalate the oppression, or they can shift the focus to another minority group. The division continues to escalate in terms of how vitriolic and extreme it is, and it also continues to divide the working class into smaller and smaller groups.

To get the working class to buy into this hateful message, they need to take advantage of our worst instincts, and one of those instincts is the in-group bias. The majority are manipulated into being suspicious, then intolerant, then hateful, then violent, then genocidal, towards whatever the targeted minority of the day is. Anything that can be used to divide the working class - sexuality, nationality, immigration status, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender identity, age, all of these will be used as wedges to keep the working class split apart and not working together, because they know that if the working class actually unite against them, they are completely and truly fucked.

That’s exactly how fascism manifests. It’s because it’s possible for people to accumulate power through wealth. This is why capitalism must be abolished. If we do not abolish capitalism, fascism will always return. It’s just a matter of time.

:::

::: spoiler But can't capitalism can be reformed?

While, of course, some laws to reform capitalism can be passed, and would definitely alleviate the worst harm caused, over the long term, capitalism cannot be reformed.

Any attempts to reform, democratize or socialize capitalism may yield short term improvements to quality of life of the working class, but if capitalism is not abolished, it will always reassert itself, and capitalism inevitably leads towards fascism.

The New Deal prevented the US from sliding into fascism in the 20th century, so that’s ultimately a good thing, but it did not go far enough, and that’s why we have the resurgence of fascism in the 21st century America. :::

The Metropolitan Police has designated Whitehall, Parliament Square and Trafalgar Square for a far-right demonstration led by Tommy Robinson on May 16, while refusing the Palestine Coalition its requested route for a Nakba commemoration planned for the same day.

Flying Squid was an auto-block for me, as soon as I made my account. He always used to ban me because he couldn't win arguments with me in the comments.

Edit to spill the tea:

Hello Lemmy.world admin team, I am writing to complain about the conduct of the moderator FlyingSquid.

On two occasions I have had negative interactions with FlyingSquid on the /world community, both times he has used, or threatened to use, his moderator powers against me, because of his personal disagreements with me.

I am happy to refer you to both conversations:

link 1

In this conversation, we had a long conversation about laws and politics. Personally, I feel he acted in bad faith on several occasions throughout our conversation, in my opinion, he was trying to bait me into getting upset so he could righteously ban me.

And your silly prediction is wrong. I am not going to ban you for this despite the incivility rule violation. I am just going to stop talking to you.

But you have just earned yourself the eye of a moderator who will not tolerate your rule-breaking with anyone else. Including if I see any in your recent history.

More recently, we had a conversation today:

link 2

Again, in this conversation, he was, in my opinion, highly rude, dismissive and arguing in bad faith. He even admitted as much. I said I wasn’t interested in talking with him, he continued to push me for an answer, and then said:

You didn’t let me down, because I knew you didn’t actually have an answer

I completely understand that sometimes people get heated or struggle to deal with arguments where they care about the topic, so I am totally willing to look past that. However, I am not willing to look past his abuse of power.

What a bullshit cop-out. I have asked you multiple times what the next step is and you're now claiming I'm not interested?

That's two lies you've told about me now. That is coming close to trolling. This is seemingly a pattern for FlyingSquid - goading people he disagrees with into becoming frustrated with his bad-faith arguments, then accusing them of “trolling” when the people he experiences push-back, and using that as an excuse to ban someone he disagrees with.

I was writing a response to his post pointing out that he was arguing in bad faith when I accidentally submitted it half-way through, when he suspended me for “trolling”.

I do not believe that he has the disposition to be a moderator if he gets so upset at a polite discussion that he feels compelled to use moderator powers to silence dissent. I go out of my way to be as polite, kind and compassionate as possible and to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I do not believe we should allow those in a position of trust or power to use that to settle their personal disputes. I know there has been some issues with that recently regarding the vegan community so I am hopeful that you will do the right thing and either remove his moderator powers or at the very least let him know that his abuse of powers is not tolerated.

I would prefer not to make a community spectacle out of this, hence the email.

Thanks and all the best,

I have explained this, again, and again, and again: I am just explaining why and how the democrats lost. I have voted in every election I have ever been eligible to vote in, ALWAYS for the candidate which minimizes harm.

Please stop being so reactionary and try to understand what I am writing. Jumping to conclusions and getting angry at me for explaining why OTHER PEOPLE didn't vote doesn't make me a fascist enabler.

there’s no reason for a non muslim fish to either literally not be halal nor abide by muslim dress code

This is peak content. May the light of Allah shine upon Dory and guide her to the truth, inshallah.

They fought tooth and nail for three years against a regime which was supported by Hitler and Mussolini. Clearly they should have used anarchist magic to defeat a regime that completely dominated the continent.

For a more current example of an anarchist society working in practice, you could also check out the Zapatista movement, an anarchist society which today consists of at least 300,000 people.

So the system that lasted for less than 3 years before enabling Franco

It fought tooth and nail for three years against a regime which was supported by Hitler and Mussolini. Clearly they should have used anarchist magic to defeat a regime that completely dominated the continent.

America was never invaded. If it had been, it would have folded like a paper bag. Heck, it still hasn't been invaded, and yet it is fascist anyways, and has been for a long time now.

did Fidesz directly provide the crib notes or did they let you copy paste from r/politics directly?

I wrote literally all of it myself. I haven't been on Reddit for years. I notice you'd rather disparage me than actually address any of my arguments, and I prefer not to waste my time with people who argue in bad faith, so I will leave this here.

Much love, solidarity forever!

I'd suggest you check out an anarchist FAQ's answer to the question, "Does revolutionary Spain show that libertarian socialism can work in practice?".

Appreciate the support comrade! It's not uncommon for me to defend communist states/leaders in much the same spirit, whenever I see them being unfairly maligned, such as recently where I defended Mao Zedong, my anti-imperialist goat. Stalin is a bit harder to defend. I'd defend Khrushchev, except I don't think I've ever seen anyone criticise him. Probably because most liberals don't really know much about the USSR tbh.

Anyways, solidarity!

Fair enough! Personally, I am all in favor of slow decision making if it means everyone is free and we can live in a world without rulers, but if you disagree, that's fine. I'm sure you believe that some sort of compromise is possible where you can somehow have representative democracy without inevitable extreme corruption, but we can agree to disagree on that.

For the record, I’m not the person downvoting you :)

I haven't downvoted you, either! I never downvote people who disagree with me in good faith..Might interest you to know that upvotes/downvotes are a matter of public record, too - you can use e.g. https://lemvotes.org/ to see who has upvoted and downvoted a comment/post.

Thanks for a pleasant and civil discussion, it's always a breath of fresh air <3

For the sake of efficiency, [let's just revert to representative democracy]

Well, if efficiency in decision making is more important than freedom, we may as well just have a dictator, no? With that said, there are anarchist traditions which do propose systems where delegates have limited mandates, you can learn more about that on an anarchist FAQ.

I have explained why representative democracy is a system which inevitably leads to corruption and I have outlined for you a basic framework for one possible bottom-up system of direct democracy/consensus decision making. I've stated my case, and I think I explained it quite well. I understand that it's a lot to take in and it seems difficult to achieve, but I fully believe that this system would work very well. It has worked in the past, and it is working right now.

As I like to say, I can lead you to water, whether you drink is your prerogative. I hope you take time to reflect on it, and change your mind.

Either way, I wish you all the best, much love, solidarity forever!

I completely understand your frustration, and I am completely on your side that we need to dismantle capitalism.

The thing is, though, if we use mass violence to abolish the ruling class in the way you advocate, will not work at all.

I'm not saying that the movement to abolish capitalism must be completely pacifistic and disavow all violence - on the contrary, we need to be willing and able to defend ourselves against the violence of the ruling class.

Remember, the ruling class has almost all of the advantages, so we need to use the one thing we have: our numerical advantage. That means we need to build an inclusive, people-powered movement of the working class, based on solidarity.

A violent movement will deeply alienate and push away vast swathes of the population. Humans are innately repulsed and disgusted by acts of violence and brutality - especially for acts of killing innocent people, and even children, as you're advocating here.

The only way that such a movement can hold together for any time is with pure anger, rage, and hatred. That is not the soil that a healthy, non-violent society can grow out of.

I would argue that in many ways the society we have today is because of how violent and brutal our past has been. If we want to get rid of exploitation and violence, we need to make the radical choice to break the cycle, and turn away from violence, except as a very last resort.

I'd be happy to explain my theory of change and share ideas for how we can end capitalism in a non-violent way - and no, I don't mean just by voting every few years or whatever. Happy to chat. I really hope you'll hear me out.

Much love, and solidarity forever.

You cannot imagine how little people cared about the things you care about in US (Ie. Israel/Gaza)

Well, to begin with, Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people was just one issue I mentioned among half a dozen, but I think you'd actually be surprised:

Top Democratic officials who worked on the party's still-secret autopsy of the 2024 election concluded that Kamala Harris lost significant support because of the Biden administration's approach to the war in Gaza

If you're making the point that Israel's genocide wasn't the biggest contributor to Kamala's loss, I would agree. Polling has shown that voters care about medicare for all and the cost of living crisis far more, but the DNC completely refuse to address those issues in any meaningful way either. The fact is, they put the interests of the wealthy before the interests of the working class, because of wealthy and corporate donors, and PACs. With that said, Israel's genocide absolutely was quite a significant issue, and acting like it wasn't just because you feel like it wasn't, is ignorant denialism.

If you genuinely thought Harris would support Israel more than Trump, I have few bridges to sell you.

Do you not recognize that I am presenting a nuanced position? I'm not saying that Harris was worse than Trump, I'm saying that she did not significantly differentiate herself from Trump because she held positions that were close to the Republican party and she refused to yield to the left/progressive flank of the Democratic party, and that is why the Democratic party lost.

You really should come to terms with the fact that the Trump presidency is now in power because the DNC refused to give working class voters what they want, because the DNC is more responsive to their wealthy donors than they are to the needs of the working class. Both mainstream parties are completely beholden to the interests of the ruling class.

Anarchy in definition is not organized by any principles. It’s lack of ruling.

That's not true - it's lack of rulers, from the greek "an archos", meaning "without rulers". In an anarchist society, there are still rules, but the rules are decided by the people who live and work in a place, rather than a king or a politician or a billionaire or a CEO or whoever. There are many ways to determine what those rules are, such as direct democracy and consensus-based decision making. You might want to check out the Q&Anarchy video series to learn what anarchists actually believe and practice.